Reconnecting Thomas Gann with British Interest in the Archaeology of Mesoamerica: An Aspect of the Development of Archaeology as a University Subject

‘He [Thomas Gann] was lecturer inCentral American archaeology at the University of Liverpool (1919–1938), and adviser tothe British Museum expeditions to British Honduras’ (Dictionary of NationalBiography 1931–1940 [1949]: 306).Thuswrote the great archaeologist of the Maya, Sir John Eric Thompson (1898–1975), who knewThomas Gann, the subject of this paper, from around 1926 until his death, andmemorialised him elsewhere in the 'Boletín Bibliográfico de AntropologíaAmericana'(Thompson 1940) and the 'BritishMedical Journal'(Thompson 1975). Curiously, all publishedsources, including Thompson, are seriously mistaken about Gann’s Liverpool connection,wrongly dating it to the period when it was inactive or had lapsed. Thus, ‘from 1919 to1938 Gann was Lecturer in Central American Archaeology at Liverpool University, thefirst Americanist ever to hold a university position in Britain. I have never comeacross anyone who went to his lectures (I am not even sure if he gave any) and he seemsto have trained no students’ (Bray 1994: 6; cf. also Brayand Glover 1987: 119). I shall offer some new archival evidence to correctthis. We shall also see that Bray’s conception of Gann as a British, university,ancestor, if an odd one, is unhelpful (but understandable); Gann’s position says as muchabout the atmosphere of the early years at Liverpool University (Freeman'In preparation'; James 'Inpreparation') as it does about the study of Ancient America inBritain during the first few decades of the twentieth century. Recenthistorical research in the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology at Liverpool(the direct descendant of the Institute of Archaeology with which Gann was connected),by Mac James, our supervisor Dr Philip Freeman and myself, has included exploring thepapers of Francis Chatillon Danson, an important early supporter of the Institute. Thefollowing paper is based on the Danson papers, now in National Museums Liverpool(Archives Department). In this paper I will introduce the late nineteenth and earlytwentieth century Central American archaeologist Thomas Gann; explore what his realconnection was with the University of Liverpool ‘back home’; discuss some of thedifficulties we currently encounter in studying the practice of early British CentralAmerican archaeology, and offer some conclusions: chiefly, that what we are reallystruck by is not so much working in the field in Belize a hundred or so years ago, butthe early years of archaeology as a discipline at Liverpool (and England), when itspromoters were making it up as they went along