Sir Edward Burnett Tylor

Sir Edward Burnett Tylor 1832-1917, English anthropologist. His extensive researches helped to develop interest in anthropological science in England. Tylor became (1883) keeper of the University Museum at Oxford and was professor of anthropology there from 1896 to 1909. His work on the mentality of primitive peoples, and especially on animism, made an important contribution to the study of primitive religion. Tylor's pioneering book, Anthropology (1881, abr. ed. 1960), is still essentially modern in its cultural theories and concepts. His other works include Researches into the Early History of Mankind (1865) and Primitive Culture (1871, repr. 1958).

Bibliography: See study by R. R. Marett (1936).

Tylor, Sir Edward Burnett (1832–1917). The ‘father’ of cultural anthropology, whose most influential work was Primitive Culture (2 vols., 1871). In his view (first expressed in 1866), animism is the earliest form of religion, to be studied through ‘survivals’.