The Illustrations of Benjamin Harrison
By Frank Beresford
A GREAT EARLY PREHISTORIAN
Benjamin Harrison (1837–1921) became a grocer in Ightham to carry on the family business, but he had an outlook and intellect that demanded a much wider field of activity. He found it by devoting every hour of his restricted leisure time for over 65 years, ending only with his death, to exploring the country within an extensive walking radius of his home for relics of the past. He was an exceptional and observant field walker, and on his early morning walks, he discovered many examples of struck flint. In 1878, it was pointed out to him that his field collection of struck flint included Palaeolithic implements from Oldbury (Harrison 1928, 81; Beresford 2021, 30).
Harrison then concentrated on the search for Palaeolithic implements with outstanding success that is still recognised.
However, soon after accepting the great antiquity of Palaeolithic material in 1859, the possibility of earlier human-made objects began to be explored. So, in the mid-1880s, Harrison extended his search to sites in high-level deposits (Fig 1) and was rewarded by the discovery of stone objects comprising chipped flint nodules and pebbles that he was convinced were recognizable as primitive tools made by humans. The term eolith (dawn stone) was introduced to describe such finds.
He and his two colleagues in this work – Sir Joseph Prestwich and de Barri Crawshay, near neighbours in Northwest Kent – promoted eoliths as the earliest evidence of people in the area. Eoliths are now regarded as being formed by natural geological processes without any human intervention (Prestwich 1889, 1891, 1892; O’Connor 2003 & 2007; McNabb 2009; Ellen & Muthana 2010, 2013; Ellen 2011.)
HIS MUSEUM AND STUDY
His stone collection, Palaeoliths and eoliths and some from later prehistory, were housed in an attic which contained his museum and study on the top floor above his grocer’s shop in Ightham (Figs 2 and 3). The museum was filled with deep shelves on all four sides in 1892. They provided the space to store his collection – many were in cigar boxes, each with a distinctive name (Fig 4). From the front of the shelves, geological maps and sections were hanging, as well as paintings of flint implements and portraits of eminent anthropologists and geologists.
Many people remembered with pleasure the exciting and congenial conversations they had with Harrison in this room.
However, it was principally where he studied his varied collection of lithics and stones – he spent many hours there each day dealing with correspondence, sketching implements, labelling and classifying his finds and showing them to interested visitors.
Benjamin Harrison kept an extensive collection of notebooks in which he recorded almost everything that he did. His son, Sir Edward Harrison, the General Secretary of the Kent Archaeological Society in the 1930s, collated and condensed Ben’s archive into a significant book, Harrison of Ightham (Harrison E., 1928). This gives a detailed record of Harrison‘s flint hunting – Palaeolithic and eolithic, compiled from his notes and letters, and also of the development of his ideas. Many of the notebooks are now in Maidstone Museum.
HIS ILLUSTRATIONS
His son (Harrison E., 1928, 343) pointed out that Harrison had a natural aptitude for the brush and pencil and that, working in his study (Fig 5), he began to sketch the flint objects he collected at an early point of his collecting. His palaeoliths and his eoliths were numbered and sketched in a book that served as a catalogue of his finds.
His drawings were completed in pen and ink for many years, but later he used watercolours. His son (Harrison E. 1928, 343) suggests that during the last twenty or thirty years of his life, he probably painted representations of several thousand examples.
A SUPPLEMENTARY INCOME
Harrison was not a prosperous shopkeeper and so looked elsewhere for additional income. Later in life, he was awarded two pensions. However, at this time, there were many collectors of lithics, all wishing to obtain a small representative sample from each known site. Consequently, Harrison sold parts of his collection and frequently included, for a further appropriate charge, an illustration or set of illustrations.
For example, in January 1917, Harrison wrote in a letter to W. J. Lewis Abbott (Harrison E. 1928, 316): ‘I am getting real patriarchal palaeoliths from the chalk crest at Boxley.’ Then, in 1920, he wrote to Dr George Abbott, the first curator of Tunbridge Wells Museum (TWML): ‘My friend and fellow worker in the 80s, Mr Crawshay, was so charmed by the Boxley evidence that he at once said ‘Do you wish to dispose of these?’ I at once displayed on the table all the finds, implements, flakes, etc., and he began to place in order, in groups of type and asked ‘Will you let me have the option of purchase and name your price?’ We at once came to terms for £5.5.0.’ De Barri Crawshay was another field worker but also a wealthy individual – based on inherited wealth. This enabled him to assemble a large collection of Lithics. Harrison’s letter to George Abbott was to thank him for returning Harrison’s illustrations of the Boxley Palaeolithic artefacts he had sent him as an example, which he now needed to pass on to Crawshay.
Although some were Palaeolithic examples, Harrison mainly sold eoliths with illustrations. In a letter written to George Abbott in 1912, he explained, ‘In order to supplement my income derived from the Civil Trust pension £26 and the Royal Society Annuity £25,
I now sketch in sets and single specimens – the latter I offer at 2/-’ (TWML.) Some examples of single-sheet illustrations are shown in Fig 6. Many of these single- sheet drawings and sets are now in museums in Kent and elsewhere, as well as in the British Museum.
In June 1920, he wrote (TWML): ‘I am now engaged in sketching in watercolours hundreds of eoliths to aid Sir Arthur Pearsen’s fund for the blind soldiers, singles at 1/- each (5p) plus postage and if any benevolent beings are desirous to help the cause and possess specimens of the most ancient works of man, I shall be gratified if orders are placed and they will have value for their money.’
THE ILLUSTRATION SETS
Harrison also sold many sets of flints and their illustrations, for which he charged around £2/10/- (£2.50.) These illustrations were drawn and painted in small artist’s drawing books. One example of these books, including eolith illustrations, is shown in Figs 7a & 7b. Illustrations of the Palaeolithic material from Oldbury from another notebook are shown in Fig 8.
In addition, Harrison produced more extended notebooks that contained copies, in his handwriting, of his thinking, poems and extracts from other relevant writing, and his illustrations. Figure eight is from one of his extended notebooks in the British Museum.
These extended notebooks often contained photographs (Figs 1 & 2 are his photographs from extended notebooks in the British Museum) and cut- out sections of relevant text.
A GIFT TO THE KAS
Recently, Brian Philp presented an illustrated set to the Kent Archaeological Society Library (Figs 9a & 9b). It contains 28 drawings by Benjamin Harrison of ‘Eolithic Implements from the Chalk Plateau of Kent collected and arranged by B. Harrison’ and is an early example dating to 1897.
For each eolith, the place where it was found is given. Some are described by a suggested use such as ‘Hollow End Scraper’ or
‘Bodystones.’ Others are described by their form, such as ‘Pear Shaped’ (Figs. 10a, 10b & 10c).
Although no colour is used in these illustrations, Harrison’s skill in delicately presenting the contours and chippings of each stone is very evident. His son wrote, ‘In portraying his implements Harrison wished to make the chippings visible – his drawings would have been purposeless without it – and consequently he sometimes showed a little more of the edges than was visible from above without turning up the stones.’ He added that Harrison’s use of this artistic licence drew from Sir John Evans – never a believer in eoliths – the observation that the drawings were better than those they represented (Harrison E. 1928, 243).
BENJAMIN HARRISON IN CARICATURE
Harrison also had a sense of humour. He enjoyed the 1892 caricature of himself drawn by his friend Worthington Smith – also never a believer in eoliths - because he traced it and included it at the front of some of his writings and illustrations (Figs 11a & 11b)
ARE THEY?
From the 1890s to the early twentieth century, eoliths quickly gained popularity among a large, enthusiastic group of eminent prehistorians and amateurs, many of whom were Harrison’s friends, such as W. J. Lewis Abbott. Those of other people soon followed Harrison’s finds of eoliths. By 1898, there were reports of eoliths from elsewhere in Kent and neighbouring counties (Kennard 1898, 29.) Initially, most specimens were found on the edge of the Weald in West Kent.
Subsequently, they were reported more widely from southeast England and elsewhere, including material from East Anglia that was described as ‘Pre-Palaeoliths’ (Moir 1919.) The eolith debate spawned extensive literature. Four examples of the papers written by those who supported eoliths as human products, including
W.J. Lewis Abbott’s 1894 paper and Ben Harrison’s own 1904 paper, are shown in Figs 12a, 12b, 12c & 12d. All are from de Barri Crawshay’s collection and were sent to him by their authors.
OR ARE THAT NOT?
Opponents of the eoliths scrutinized Harrison’s collection for features demonstrating human workmanship and found none. Two – Samuel Hazeldine-Warren and Frederick Haward – studied flint fracture by experimenting, observing flakes formed by geological forces, and comparing natural flakes with those known to have been knapped by humans. Both produced a series of papers. Two written by Warren, again from de Barri Crawshay’s collection and sent to him by Warren, are shown in Fig 13.
Haward introduced the concept of chip and slide in a paper in 1912.
He proposed that the distinctive chipping on eoliths occurred naturally due to lateral movement under vertical pressure, a stationary flint being flaked by a block moving over it (O’Connor 2007.) As shown in Fig 14, he included the idea on his 1914 Christmas card.
EOLITHS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM
As more and more eoliths were discovered, they were added to many museum collections, initially in local museums but subsequently by 1900 into the national collection at the British Museum. The British Museum’s experts maintained an uncertain attitude to eoliths. For many years, the public display included eoliths collected by Harrison in case 108. In November 1903, Harrison visited the British Museum but departed annoyed because the ‘eoliths were poorly displayed and not showing proper chipping’ (Ellen & Muthana 2022.) Later eoliths collected by de Barri Crawshay were displayed in case 61. All three editions of the British Museum Guide to Stone Age Antiquities (1902, 1911 and 1926) included eoliths with illustrations (Fig 15). However, the text of each guide was ambivalent about their validity.
Reginald Smith, a curator at the museum who produced the second and third editions of the Stone Age Guide, sent a copy of his 1922 paper about Flint Implements of Special Interest to de Barri Crawshay. He noted that he had searched through a box of hundreds of eoliths and found only one he could accept, which he consequently illustrated in this paper. Crawshay annotated both the text and the illustration in his copy of the paper and suggested five other examples from his collection that were similar to Smith’s choice (Figs 16a, 16b & 16c)
Although the validity of eoliths as human products was accepted by an extensive range of respected British authorities from the
1890s until the 1920s, they were acknowledged by all as the product of natural forces and were fully discredited by the 1950s. In 2023, the British Museum’s eolith collection slumbers in crates in a quiet corner of the Sturge Room at Frank’s House. The labels show that many were found by Benjamin Harrison (Figs. 17a, 17b & 17c).
AN ENDURING LEGACY
Benjamin Harrison has left an enduring legacy. The 1911 edition of the British Museum Guide to Stone Age Antiquities has a full-page illustration (Fig 18) of Harrison’s finds from Oldbury, and this, along with his Palaeolithic finds from the Chalk Uplands in Kent, remain central to current thinking and research on the Palaeolithic and, in particular, the later Neanderthal occupation of Britain.
A successful archaeological illustration is based on carefully examining and understanding the artefact linked to artistic skills and talent. It has one foot in archaeology and the other in art, linking attentive and informed observation to careful drawing. Benjamin Harrison had exceptional talent in both fields and has left a fascinating legacy of this in the many illustrations that are now in museums and elsewhere.
Brian Philp’s gift of this example of Benjamin Harrison’s skill in illustrating his field walking finds represents an interesting addition to the Society’s collections.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author would like to thank Brian Philp for his gift to the Society, which provided the starting point for this research. Also, Christopher and Margaret Jones who kindly gave a large collection of de Barri Crawshay’s annotated papers to the author for further research, a few of which are used here. He would also like to thank Nicholas Ashton and the team in the Sturge Room at the British Museum (Franks House), Ian Beavis, the Tunbridge Wells Museum & Art Gallery, and Christopher Taylor and the Croydon Natural History and Science Society Museum. Thanks also to Stan Matthews for his helpful comments and suggestions on the first draft. Figures 1, 2, 7, 8, 15, 17 are courtesy of the British Museum, 4 and 6 are courtesy of the Tunbridge Wells Museum & Art Gallery, and 11 & 14 are courtesy of the Croydon Natural History and Science Society Museum.
REFERENCES
Beresford, F. R. 2021. The Late Middle Palaeolithic site at
Oldbury, Kent and a memory of Benjamin Harrison (1837–1921.) Kent Archaeological Society Magazine 115 Spring 2021, 30-37
Ellen, R. 2011. The Eolith Debate, Evolutionist Anthropology and the Oxford Connection between 1880 and 1940. History and Anthropology 22(3):277–306
Ellen, R. & Muthana, A. 2010. Classifying ‘Eoliths’: How Cultural Cognition Featured in Arguments Surrounding Claims for the Earliest Human Artefacts as these Developed Between 1880 and 1900. Journal of Cognition and Culture 10 (2010) 341–375
Ellen, R., & Muthana A. 2013. An Experimental Approach to Understanding the ‘Eolithic’ Problem: Cultural Cognition and the Perception of Plausibly Anthropic Artefacts. Lithic Technology 38:109–23.
Ellen, R., & Muthana A. 2022. The Kentish eoliths of Benjamin Harrison: Their Rise and Fall in Museum Collections and what this tells us about the circumstances of their Survival. Museum Anthropology 45: 180 – 194. 1
Harrison, E.R. 1928. Harrison of Ightham: a Book about Benjamin Harrison, of Ightham, Kent, made up principally of Extracts from his Notebooks and Correspondence. Oxford University Press.
Haward, F.N. 1912. The chipping of flints by natural agencies. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia 1, 185 - 195
Kennard, A. S. 1898. The Authenticity of Plateau Man: A Reply. Natural Science 12:27–34.
Moir, J. Reid. 1919. Pre- Palaeolithic Man. London: Simpkin, Marshal, Hamilton and Kent.
McNabb, J. 2009. The Knight, The Grocer, and the Chocolate Brownies; Joseph Prestwich, Benjamin Harrison and the second ‘Antiquity of Man’ debate. In R. Hosfield, F. Wenban-Smith & M. Pope (eds.) Great Prehistorians: 150 Years of Palaeolithic Research, 1859–2009 (Special Volume 30 of Lithics: The Journal of the Lithic Studies Society): 97–115. Lithic Studies Society, London.
O’Connor, A. 2003. Geology, archaeology, and ‘the raging vortex of the “eolith” controversy’ Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association, 114, 255–262.
O’Connor, A. 2007. Finding time for the Old Stone Age. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Prestwich, J. 1889. On the occurrence of Palaeolithic flint implements in the neighbourhood of Ightham, Kent, their distribution and probable age. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London 45: 270–297.
Prestwich, J. 1891. On the age, formation, and successive drift- stages of the valley of the Darent; with remarks on the Palaeolithic implements of the district, and on the origin of its chalk escarpment.
Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London 47: 126–163.
Prestwich, J. 1892. On the primitive characters of the flint implements of the chalk plateau of Kent, with reference to the question of their glacial or pre-glacial age with notes by Messrs B. Harrison and de Barri Crawshay. Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 21: 246–276.
TWML: Tunbridge Wells Museum Letters – a series of about 35 letters from Benjamin Harrison to Dr George Abbott, the first curator of Tunbridge Wells Museum. The letters were written as part of prolonged negotiations between Harrison and Abbott who was seeking to secure from Harrison a selection of evidence for early people in Kent. It now includes about 75 eoliths, about 20 Palaeolithic and Neolithic flints, a hand-axe knapped by Harrison himself, 3 sketch books, 17 individual drawings, about 35 letters, 4 printed verses, and some original specimen boxes. This material all came directly from Benjamin Harrison to Dr George Abbott.
