The Archaeology of Race

By Debbie Challis,

Book cover of The Archaeology of Race: The Eugenic Ideas of Francis Galton and Flinders Petrie

Book description

How much was archaeology founded on prejudice? The Archaeology of Race explores the application of racial theory to interpret the past in Britain during the late Victorian and Edwardian period. It investigates how material culture from ancient Egypt and Greece was used to validate the construction of racial hierarchies. Specifically…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

1 author picked The Archaeology of Race as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This was the first book to introduce me to the relation between race studies, eugenics, and archaeology.

It was quite a revelation: I was volunteering at the Petrie Museum at the time, and the book uncovers the dodgy relationship between Petrie and Francis Galton.

It was pivotal in transforming the ways I looked at familiar places: it reminded me that places I called home, like the Petrie Museum but also the Louvre, have been very exclusionary to many. It taught me to look differently at places I navigate on a regular basis, to look for the other story.

You’ll then…

If you love The Archaeology of Race...

Ad

Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest by Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route up…

Want books like The Archaeology of Race?

Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like The Archaeology of Race.

Browse books like The Archaeology of Race

Book cover of The Mummy's Foot
Book cover of Morbid Curiosities: Medical Museums in Nineteenth-Century Britain
Book cover of The Whole Picture: The colonial story of the art in our museums & why we need to talk about it

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,885

readers submitted
so far, will you?

Ad

📚 If you like The Archaeology of Race, you might also like...

Book cover of Harry and Arthur: Truman, Vandenberg, and the Partnership That Created the Free World

Harry and Arthur by Lawrence J. Haas,

With Franklin Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, Vice President Harry Truman and Senator Arthur Vandenberg, the Republican leader on foreign policy, inherited a world in turmoil. With Europe flattened and the Soviets emerging as America’s new adversary, Truman and Vandenberg built a tight, bipartisan partnership at a bitterly partisan time…

Book cover of Radical Friend: Amy Kirby Post and Her Activist Worlds

Radical Friend by Nancy A. Hewitt,

Radical Friend highlights the remarkable life of Amy Kirby Post, a nineteenth-century abolitionist and women's rights activist who created deep friendships across the color line to promote social justice. Her relationships with Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Sojourner Truth, William C. Nell, and other Black activists from the 1840s to the…

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in eugenics, anthropology, and archaeology?

Eugenics 23 books
Anthropology 104 books
Archaeology 136 books