Robert Ranulph Marett
Founded by Marett's older colleague, Edward Burnett Tylor, it asserted that modern primitive societies provide evidence for phases in the evolution of culture, which it attempted to recapture via comparative and historical methods.
Studying the evolutionary origin of religions, he modified Tylor's animistic theory to include the concept of mana.
Marett's anthropological teaching and writing career at Oxford University spanned the early 20th century before World War Two.
Earlier, Philip Maret, third son of the second Seigneur of La Haule, born in 1701, had emigrated to Boston, where he became a merchant captain.
She was one of the eight children of the Janvrin sisters, Esther Elizabeth and Maria Eliza, by one Philip Marett, who was not in Robert Pipon's immediate line.
[5] Cyril Norwood said of him, in a review of his autobiography in 1941:[6] Born of good family, reaching back through many generations of service in Jersey, he was brought up in a good home with wise and cultured parents in a beautiful place set fair in the freedom of sky and sea.
This was the former home of the Martel family, merchants, in Saint Aubin, Jersey, which was not far from La Haule Manor.
On the death of Le Maistre in 1873, the new headmaster and owner was John Este Vibert, who had a military frame of mind.
[12] After finishing school in 1884, he planned to start at Balliol College, Oxford University in autumn, but his father's lingering illness delayed him.
It was an ideal summer home as it was sparsely populated, located on the shore, spacious, luxurious, but without such amenities as electricity[citation needed].
Though well-to-do, Marett applied for financial assistance, the award of which was based on excellence and typically demonstrated in an examination.
In British English, he won an "exhibition" from the Council of Legal Education (today's Inns of Court School of Law).
It is divided into two sequential parts, Honour Moderations, or "Mods", a study of the Ancient Greek and Latin languages.
Knowing he was in a possibly life-threatening condition, he intruded on the first doctor's office he saw, and he was lucky enough to be diagnosed immediately by an experienced physician.
In July he was granted the degree of Bachelor of Arts (BA) in absentia with a First anyway, but he still needed to pass the Bar in Roman Law.
However, being a young man of wealth whose father had been known internationally, he had an informal access to the upper echelons of society.
He found some tutoring work at Balliol, and became a secretary to Toynbee Hall while he was studying for the exam that he eventually passed.
In Marett's time at Oxford, fellow meant in essence a member of the faculty with the same basic privileges as any.
[22] As to how he may have obtained the position, he says in his autobiography that all he asks of the historian is that he be classified as "even the least of 'Jowett's men,' referring to the long-standing Master of Balliol College.
He worked on the palaeolithic site of La Cotte de St Brelade from 1910 to 1914, recovering some hominid teeth and other remains of habitation by Neanderthal man.
In 1914 he established a Department of Social Anthropology, and in 1916 he published "The Site, Fauna, and Industry of La Cotte de St. Brelade, Jersey" (Archaeologia LXVII, 1916).
His students included Maria Czaplicka, Marius Barbeau, Dorothy Garrod, Earnest Albert Hooten, Henry Field[27] and Rosalind Moss[28] E.B.
Tylor had considered animism to be the earliest form of religion, but he had not had access to Robert Codrington's linguistic data on the concept of mana in Melanesia.
He managed to meet one of its students, the youngest daughter, Nora, of the British explorer of Africa and subsequent Vice Consul to Zanzibar, John Kirk (1832–1922).
Livingstone and Kirk were both dedicated to the suppression of the slave trade in Africa, a cause championed by British liberals.
This contradiction brought down the second premiership of William Gladstone in 1885, when he did not go to the assistance of Charles George Gordon at Khartoum.
On the strength of his new income and importance, he married his fiancée, Helen Cooke (1843–1914), and together they had a son and five daughters, one of which was Nora (1873–1954).
[29] A liberated woman for the times, she attended the new college that would bring women to Oxford, where she met Marett.
Alike in political views and sentiments, they loved each other dearly, but Marett's contract with Oxford stipulated that he must not marry for a certain number of years.
In the first decade of the 20th century, they had four children: John Ranulph (1900–1940), Philippa Suzanne (1904–1991), Joyce Elizabeth (1905–1979), and Robert Hugh Kirk (1907–1981).
