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Folklore of Fossils Part I

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Kenneth Oakley
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Extract

Culture includes not only the material products of a human society, but also its non-productive acts and practices. Yet it is these of which we can know so little in regard to prehistoric peoples. However, there is one class of natural objects which, although as a general rule having no obvious practical value, have been noticed, picked up and evidently regarded with some interest since the earliest times: fossils. Certain types of fossil have attracted more attention than others, probably because they are both fairly common and of striking appearance. It occurred to me that it would be worth while attempting to gauge what kinds of ideas may have been associated with such fossils in the various stages of culture.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 39 , Issue 153 , March 1965, pp. 9 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1965

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Footnotes

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Dr Kenneth Oakley is in charge of the Sub-Department of Anthropology in the British Museum (Natural History). He has recently published Frameworks for Dating Fossil Man, to be reviewed in a subsequent number of ANTIQUITY, and The Problem of Man's Antiquity: An Historical Survey, which was reviewed editorially in this journal in our September 1964 number. Here, Dr Oakley has indulged himself, and us, in a jeu d'esprit, by putting down his long-collected thoughts about the kind of ideas that may have been associated with fossils in antiquity; ‘a subject’, he writes, ‘which I find refreshing in so far as it is in the category of useless knowledge’. We venture to predict that our readers will be grateful to have a peep into Dr Oakley's ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’. To illustrate this article adequately we have divided it into two parts. Part II will appear in our June number and will be accompanied by a full bibliography.

References

Page 9 note * I wish to thank those friends and colleagues who, for a number of years, have indulged my interest in the folklore of fossils. I would particularly mention encouragement in this field during World War II from the late Mr C. E. N. Bromehead and the late Mr A. Templeman of the Geological Survey. During post-war years Miss Elsie Begg unfailingly encouraged me to write this paper, whose preparation owes much to Mrs Marjorie Nixon, who made a preliminary typescript from the rough notes of a lecture on the subject which I gave to the Folk-Lore Society in 1949, to Miss Marjorie Gillespie with whom I usefully discussed some of the archaeological aspects, and to Lady Helen Greenfield who patiently retyped many final addenda; and I am grateful to Miss Rosemary Powers who was responsible for many of the illustrations, and to Miss Jane Beckett for help in the final arrangement. I am also indebted to Mr Frank Willett and to Mr Maurice Sawyers for preparing photographs.

Page 10 note * Scene 22, p. 74: ‘Trading with Ornamental Shells’.

Page 11 note * By M. Jean Roger.

Page 11 note † In manuscript.

Page 12 note * J. Needham, Science and Civiiization in China, Vol. 3, 611–23, especially 615, shih-yen. A further oyster. note on this will appear in Part II.

Page 13 note * One Taoist writer in the 8th century recognized that ‘stone-swallows’ were really sea-shells raised on to the mountains by catastrophic changes in geography (Needham, op. cit.).

Page 13 note † King, C. W., Antique Gems (London, 1860)Google Scholar.

Page 14 note * Camden, W., Britannia (London, 1586)Google Scholar.

Page 14 note †† Another illustration of a belemnite has been grouped with other thunderbolts, and will appear with Part II.

Page 14 note † Hilda was founder and first abbess of a monastery at Whitby which she ran as a double house, for nuns and monks, from 657-So a.d. ‘The relics of the snakes which infested the precincts of the monastery were, at the abbess’s prayer, not only beheaded, but petrified, are still found about the rocks, and are termed by Protestant fossilists, Amnzonitae.’ (Note in Warne’s Albion Edition of Scott’s Poetical Works.)

Page 15 note * Brand, J., Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, Vol. 1 (London. 1870)Google Scholar.