James Reid Moir
| James Reid Moir FRS | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Born | 1879 | ||||||||
| Died | 1944 | ||||||||
| Residence |
12 St Edmunds Road, Ipswich [1914] One House, Henley Road, Ipswich [1917] Hedges, One House Lane, Ipswich [1933] | ||||||||
| Occupation |
archaeologist museum work | ||||||||
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Contents
Notes
Office Notes
AI Council 1924 - Member
AI Council 1925 - Member
AI Council 1926 - Member
House Notes
1914.02.05 proposed by Arthur Keith, seconded by T.C. Hodson
1931.04.28 A letter was read from Mr Reid Moir resigning his Fellowship on financial grounds. It was unanimously resolved to invite Mr Reid Moir (under article 22) to retain his Fellowship as a non-contributing Member.
death noted in Report of the Council 1943-1944
President of Ipswich Museum 1937
Notes From Elsewhere
Mr. J. Reid Moir,who did valuable and original work on the early history of man, particularly in relation to the geological deposits of East Anglia, died on the 24th February, 1945, at the Mill House, Flatford, aged 64. Although born at Hitchin he was educated in Ipswich and was associated with the town for the whole of his life. His serious life work upon the older and more obscure periods of pre-history began with investigation in the bed of stones at the base of the Red Crags and exposed in the Dales Road Brickfield of Messrs. Bolton & Laughlin, Ipswich.
Without fully realising the revolutionary nature of his contentions, he published in 1910 the results of this research, maintaining that flints which he had found at the base of the Suffolk Crag had been humanly worked, although that deposit had previously been regarded as of the Pliocene Age and previous to the existence of man. His views accordingly secured limited acceptance at the time ; but he was supported by Sir Ray Lankester who dealt with the discovery in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, giving the name Rostro-Carinate to the beak-like flaked flints discovered by Moir,who meantime demonstrated how these could be made by hand, and showed that they formed a link in the evolution of the Paleolithic hand axe from the notched or side
trimmed Eoliths which were represented in the same deposit,and had also been discovered on the North Downs,though their age was still uncertain. The controversy still remains ; but the trend of expert opinion both here
and abroad has been modified by the discovery of Rostro-Carinate implements among ancient stone industries of Africa and India and by later general acceptance of evidence that Palaeolithic Man was present in Western Europe between and during the successive advances of the ice.
Mr. Moir's researches on the varieties of worked flints from below the Red Crag showed that these represent five distinct periods of time and industry, and that even if the deposit is of early Pleistocene date, as now generally held,the basement bed including them contains debris from the preceeding Pliocene Age. He reviewed the evidence for this succession of periods in a paper on the " Age of the pre-Crag-Implements" published in 1935,and summarised the evidence as to the age of man in the world in the Huxley Memorial Lecture, which he delivered before the Royal Society in 1939,estimating that it was about two million years since the first implements were made.
From 1910 until within a few weeks of his death Mr. Moir devoted a large part of his time to excavations in the Tertiary and Pleistocene deposits of East Anglia and to examining natural exposures of these in the cliffs of Suffolk and north Norfolk. For example he investigated the basement beneath the Cromer Forest Bed and conducted many excavations in the Ipswich district. With the late Professor J. E. Marr and Mr.Miles Burket
of Cambridge,he investigated the relation of the Palaeolithic implements in the pleistocene loam at High Lodge,Mildenhall,to the Chalky Boulder clay capping the ridge. He conducted excavations on behalf of the British Association,at the noted site at Hoxne where John Frere had first discovered flaked flints in 1798. Moir showed that these were clearly of inter-glacial age, and obtained similar results from examining deposits in an old brick field near Derby Road station, Ipswich. He dealt with a like problem during prolonged excavations in the deposits flanking the Dales Road valley, where he found a series of superimposed occupation levels in loam and clay later than the excavation of the valley itself. The discovery of a small fragment of a very thick human cranium, comparable with those of the Neanderthal race,supported' the opinion expressed by the late Professor Commont of Paris, that these finds belonged to the Mousterian and Aurignacian industries ; but the presence of pottery on
the same level led other authorities to ascribe the implements to the Neolithic Age. The few animal remains found on the level in question unfortunately did not suffice to date the deposit. Mr. Moir's more recent work was accordingly applied to studying deposits elsewhere in the Ipswich region where similar implements occurred in association with Pleistocene animal remains, in the hope of gaining confirmation as to the possible occurrence of pottery with palaeolithic industries.
One of his deductions from studying the Dales Road valley deposits was that climatic conditions producing such beds of loam and clay in a lateral valley above the main stream, would result in accumulations of gravel and sand in the main valley, beneath which would occur the mid and later Palaeolithic levels. This contention was confirmed by the discovery that magnificent specimens of leaf-shaped flint blades of the type associated in France with the Solutrian period had already been found in deep cofferdam excavations at the power station in Constantine Road,
Ipswich. Also by the finding of numerous Mid-Palaeolithic implements beneath masses of sand and flint brought down to the old river level by the melting of the last ice upon the higherground. His observations thus added considerably to knowledge of the position of Mid and Later Palaeolithic industries in the river valleys of Eastern England.
Mr. Moir supported the formation, and was twice President, of the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia, which was long the only body to issue in the English language specialist publications on pre-history, and developed
later into the Prehistoric Society of Great Britain. He gave assistance in the Society's clearing of one of the flint mines at Grimes Graves, and took part in explorations of a later period, notably the investigation of the Roman Villa at Castle Hill, Whitton, which he himself conducted. Mr. Moir was connected with the Ipswich Museum for many years as a member of the committee, becoming president upon the death of Sir Edwin Ray Lankester, and adding largely to the Museum's collections, which during the period in question attracted the leading specialists from
all over the world. He read widely and was always active in supporting measures for the development of the museum's interest and efficiency in any department. He contributed to our Transactions in 1915 and 1918
articles on " Pre-palaeolithic Man " and on " The Ancient Flint implements of Suffolk" adding to the latter a very valuable bibliography. He became Vice-President of this Institute in 1925. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute, and an Honorary Member of various Continental Institutions concerning the Palaeontology of Man. In addition to the specialist articles which he produced in number he published two books, the one,Prehistoric Archaeology and Sir Ray Lankester, the other "The Antiquity of Man in East Anglia ", written for the general reader, and admirably fulfilling its purpose. He held to his views with firm conviction and was at times an active and trenchant controversialist,but he was also a fluent,lucid, and much sought after writer and lecturer on the subjects in which he was interested, and possessed in marked degree the power of making them attractive to the general public.
Mr. Moir presented to the British Museum and other public collections a certain number of his more typical and significant finds drawn from East Anglia, and succeeded in converting to his views (with some reservations)
the chief authorities of the Museum on Prehistory (cf. Archaeology in England and Wales 1914-1931 " by Kendrick and Hawkes, pp. 8, 10, 13, 14, etc.). Tribute to his researches has also been paid by the Abbé Henri Breuil of France and by Friedrich E. Zeuner PH.D. Professor of Environmental Archaeology, University of London. (cf. Dating the Past, 1946,pp. 180-183,etc.). His name has been given to the Archaeological Department of the Ipswich Museum which contains the results of his many researches and where a portrait and inscription commemorates his work.
He was deeply concerned for the preservation of the natural beauty of the countryside, and as to the rapid disappearance of ancient buildings, supporting proposals for the preservation of both. A memorial seat
bearing his name has been placed beneath a large oak tree, which together with the open space beside the Ipswich by-pass road on which it stands was purchased and presented to the corporation of Ipswich by the late Alderman T. R. Parkington, then chairman of the Museum Committee,as a result of an appeal made in the press by Mr. Moir for its 'exclusion from a building scheme which would have entailed the tree's removal. G.M.
One man who was hugely influenced by Darwin's writings was Ipswich man James Reid Moir, president of Ipswich Museum from 1929 until his death in 1944, and one of the leading archaeologists from the early years of the 20th century. Reid Moir was fascinated by flint deposits in the Ipswich area, which he believed dated settlements and signs of human habitation much earlier than had previously been believed.
Archaeologist and former keeper of archaeology at Ipswich Museum Dr Steven Plunkett said Reid Moir was convinced that man lived and hunted in the Ipswich area before the last ice age.
Moir pointed to evidence of knapped flints found in the local crag pits which were laid down long before the ice sheets spread over the area.
He said these flints were obviously worked on by ancient man and could have only been found where they were if they were left in situ before the last ice age rolled into Suffolk.
Dr Plunkett said: “Large flints which he found buried beneath the Crag in the local crag pits looked to him as if they were made by primitive humans. Many were shaped liked the huge beak of a bird.”
He said that Reid Moir was ridiculed at the time for his beliefs but a new discovery in Spain has proved, 80 years after the fact, that this leading Suffolk archaeologist was correct in some of his conclusions.
“Since the 1920s, most scientists have laughed at his theories. It was generally thought that human ancestors, which originated in Africa, did not migrate into northern Europe until about half a million years ago at the most.
“But about a year ago, tools from before the Ice Age, about 600,000 years old, were found on the coast in East Anglia. These have been generally accepted and they push the date of migrations much earlier. Now these latest finds from Spain are twice as old as that.”
He said that flints from crag pits across Suffolk - which were much older still - convinced Reid Moir he was correct and even though his pronouncements side-lined him in the scientific community he would not be swayed.
Dr Plunkett says that this new find could be extremely important because it throws accepted theories back into the melting pot. “If early man had reached northern Spain at that time, the chances are that some came as far north as Britain, which was then connected to mainland Europe. They are going to have to rewrite the Pre-History Books! So - shall we, in time, discover that James Reid Moir was right after all?”
He said that our primitive ancestors were hunters and gatherers. They did not have fixed, long-lasting settlements but were nomadic, following migrating herds and moving around to avoid the snows and bad weather.
Dr Plunkett said that although time and subsequent discoveries have proved that Reid Moir was not always right when it came to specifics, it now seems that he was on the right track.
“You have to realise that the whole history of early man was only being written after 1860. Some of the people who went over to France early on, to see the finds made in Abbeville by Jacques Boucher de Perthes were connected with Ipswich Museum - particularly Professor Henslow who created the first Ipswich Museum and whose galleries of stuffed animals were lifted bodily and moved up into the High Street in 1880.
“Professor Henslow was Charles Darwin's teacher and this was before Darwin's theory came out. Professor Henslow went over to Abbeville and had to revise his ideas about the age of human beings.
Another leading figure to visit the digs was Sir Ray Lankester, later director of the Natural History Museum in London. He became president of Ipswich Museum in 1901 - a position that Reid Moir took over from him.”
He said that Ipswich Museum played a leading role in these early investigations into the development of early man. Their interest was backed up by excavations in Suffolk and the Ipswich area in particular. This area was particularly rich in finds because the geology was laid down quite recently, shaped by glacial outwash which buried and preserved the levels where human ancestors had been active.
“At the same time there was Miss Nina Layard, a famous woman archaeologist based in Ipswich who lived in a house called Rookwood at the bottom of Fonnereau Road.
“It became the rectory for St Mary-le-Tower church. She was very interested in early flints. She and Reid Moir were piecing together the story of human evolution and settlement. She made some fascinating discoveries on the Foxhall Road in 1903 and she also excavated the Anglo-Saxon cemetery in Hadleigh Road.
“Before that, she carried out a really good excavation of a site in Foxhall Road and found a lot of flints. She was able to prove that they had been worked by hand and had been left by this dried-up river channel. She was able to ascertain that these items had been left before a thick layer of clay was deposited by one of the later ice advances.”
Then, in 1908, Norwich and Ipswich Museums got together to set up the only official society dedicated to the exploration of early man - the only society of this sort in the UK - and that was called The Prehistoric Society of East Anglia. In 1935 it became THE Prehistoric Society, the national society which exists today.
“And it was into this environment that Reid Moir arrived. His father was a councillor, I believe, and a tailor in town. Reid Moir didn't get on with his father, didn't want to follow him into the family business. He got interested in flints after he discovered a flint arrow head while on Rushmere heath.
“He ran excavations more or less continuously until his death in 1944 and kept copious notes. He really tried to do a good job and tried to make sense of it all. He created a large prehistoric department at the museum.”
Reid Moir worked closely with Sir Ray Lankester, who became something of a mentor. He found a kindred spirit in Miss Layard and eventually got himself co-opted on to the museum committee.
Reid Moir advanced his personal theory that these early flints were worked by early humans, that they were found in deposits beneath the glacial outwash and therefore were proof that early humans were wandering across East Anglia before the ice age.
“His mentor, Sir Ray Lankester, advanced these arguments on his behalf at meetings of the Royal Society in London and he was rather ridiculed. Sir Ray was a big man, not very diplomatic, and if anyone disagreed with him he tended to shout at them. On this one occasion he was talking about some of Moir's flints and had a rough implement that was supposed to be a drill, which he called a borer.
“Professor Sollas from Oxford said 'You have there a borer than cannot bore.' To which Lankester replied, 'But you, sir, are not a borer that cannot bore.”
Dr Plunkett said that now this latest discovery of human fossils, with stone tools, has been found in northern Spain dating back to about 1.2 million years now maybe it's time that Reid Moir's reputation within the scientific community was re-evaluated.
Publications
External Publications
House Publications
JRAI Vol. XLVII 1917 Plate XVI On Some Human and Animal Bones, Flint Implements, etc., Discovered in Two Ancient Occupation-Levels in a Small Valley Near Ipswich. J. Reid Moir
188. Further Hand-Axes from the Cromer Forest Bed; J. Reid Moir. Man Vol. 31 (Sep., 1931)
30. The Implementiferous Deposits of the Lower Thames Valley and of East Anglia; by J. P. T. Burchell and J. Reid Moir. Man Vol. 33 (Feb., 1933)
Related Material Details
RAI Material
census
photos box 27
Other Material
BM; Ipswich Museum
