Thomas Harriot, the world’s first ethnographer?

This year’s Thomas Harriot Lecture will be given by Professor Mark Horton in the Champneys Room, Oriel College, Oxford at 5 pm on Wednesday 24 May 2017. The lecture will be followed by an informal drinks reception at 6 pm, also in the Champneys Room.   Professor Horton’s subject will be:                      

Thomas Harriot, the world’s first ethnographer?  

Mark Horton, Professor in Archaeology at the University of Bristol, works in global historical archaeology and has been leading excavations in North Carolina since 2009.   He has provided the following summary of his lecture:

In 1585-6, a young Thomas Harriot accompanied the Virginia expedition to the Outer Banks, to establish the first English Colony in North America. In preparation, he had already mastered the local Algonquian language from two Native Americans brought back in 1584. He was able to use this to understand indigenous society and its culture. Current archaeological research on these same settlements in the Outer Banks is providing a detailed insight into these communities and confirmation of the extreme accuracy of Harriot’s observations, allowing us to be able to claim that he may have been the world’s first ethnographer.    For further details, contact Professor Robert Fox at robert.fox@history.ox.ac.uk