Primitive Labour

viii+272 pages with index. Octavo (8 3/4" x 5 3/4") bound in original publisher's green cloth with black lettering to spine. Reprint of the 1924 edition. Leonard Halford Dudley Buxton (1889-1939) had obtained a distinction in the Diploma in Anthropology at Oxford. He was appointed Demonstrator in Physical Anthropology in 1913. Buxton was appointed Lecturer in Physical Anthropology in 1922 and University Reader in 1927, the first Reader in Physical Anthropology at Oxford. His work was assessed by one of his professional descendants: Buxton undertook some craniometrics and was, for example, involved in examining archaeological material from Crete and Mesopotamia. But he never became a slave to the approach like so many of his contemporaries. He was much more interested in general ethnology and recording the patterns of human variety around the world. . . . A particularly insightful piece of work [Arthur Thomson and Buxton] undertook was to examine the global distribution of variation in the nasal index. This showed a high correlation with the variability in the geographical distribution of atmospheric relative humidity and was perhaps the first occasion when anthropometrics were examined in a functional way. Condition: A very good to fine copy.