Tylor, Edward Burnett (1832–1917)

English anthropologist. Often called ‘the father of anthropology’, he was the leading evolutionary anthropologist of the 19th century. His definition of culture in his book Primitive Culture (1871) was the first anthropological definition of the term; most modern definitions have derived from it.

His Anthropology (1881) was the first textbook on the subject, and in 1884 he became the first person to hold an academic position in anthropology when he became a lecturer at Oxford.

He developed a theory of animism (the notion that spirits inhabit inanimate objects) as the most primitive religion, and believed that many customs, such as wearing earrings, were ‘survivals’ from a primitive stage of culture.