Lubbock, John William (1834-1913)

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
British banker, politician, and antiquary, later Lord Avebury, best known to archaeologists as the author of Prehistoric Times (1865, London). Lubbock became interested in archaeology at an early age and as a close friend of Charles Darwin was an early advocate of evolutionary thinking in his approaches to archaeological material. He published Prehistoric Times at the age of 35, introducing two new archaeological terms—Palaeolithic and Neolithic—as subdivisions of the Stone Age. The book went through seven editions, the last in 1913, and was enormously popular. It drew on ethnography to help interpret the archaeological material, and it also touched on one of Lubbock's other interests, the preservation of archaeological remains. Lubbock was the architect of the first ancient monuments legislation in Britain, finally succeeding in getting the Ancient Monuments Protection Act onto the statute book in 1882 after nearly a decade of negotiations. Outside of his archaeological life, Lubbock was a successful banker and a hard-working Liberal MP. Amongst his other successes in parliament was the introduction of a bill to establish bank holidays.

PUBLICATIONS

 * Lubbock, J. 1880. Observations on ants, bees, and wasps; with a description of a new species of honey-ant.- Part VII. Ants. J. Linn. Soc. Lond. Zool. 15: 167-187


 * Lubbock, J. 1883. Observations on ants, bees, and wasps.- Part X. With a description of a new genus of honey-ant. J. Linn. Soc. Lond. Zool. 17: 41-52

REFERENCE

 * Hutchinson, H.G. 1914. Lif of Sir John Lubbock, Lord Avebury. 2 vols. portraits.