Robert Munro (archaeologist)

This article is about the Scottish archaeologist. For other uses, see Robert Munro (disambiguation).

Robert Munro FRSE FSA LLD (21 July 1835 – 18 July 1920) was a Scottish physician and noted amateur archaeologist.^[1]

Stained glass of Dr Robert Munro FRSE in Scottish National Portrait Gallery

An illustration from Monro's Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe of a bronze celt (a prehistoric, chisel-bladed tool), a bronze and bone awl, and a variety of objects used either as beads or as spindle whorls.

Edinburgh University's Munro Lectures in Archaeology and Anthropology are named in his honour.^[2]

Life

He was born on 21 July 1835 at Assynt in Rossshire, and educated at Kiltearn Free Church School, and at the Royal Academy in Tain.^[3] He studied Medicine at the University of Edinburgh graduating MA in 1860 and MB ChB in 1867.^[3] He worked as a General Practitioner in Kilmarnock until 1886, when he turned his whole attention to archaeological research.^[4] He was a member of many learned societies at home and abroad and published several books on the subjects of his research.^[4]

In 1891 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.^[3] His proposers were Rev John Duns, Sir Arthur Mitchell, Alexander Buchan and Ramsay Heatley Traquair.^[3] He served as Vice President of the Society 1903 to 1908.^[3] In 1894 he was elected a member of the Harveian Society of Edinburgh.^[5][6]

In 1912 Munro began lecturing in Anthropology and Prehistoric Archaeology at Edinburgh University.^[3]

He died on 18 July 1920.^[3]

Family

In 1875 he married Anna Taylor (d.1907).^[3]

Publications

• Ancient Scottish Lake Dwellings or Crannogs (1882)^[4]
• The Lake Dwellings of Europe: being the Rhind Lectures in Archaeology for 1888 (1890)^[4][7]
• Rambles and Studies in Bosnia, Herzegovina and Dalmatia, with an account of the Proceedings of the Congress of Archaeologists and Anthropologists held at Sarajevo, August 1894 (1895)^[4][8]
• Prehistoric Problems: being a selection of essays on the evolution of man and other controverted problems in anthropology and archæology (1897)^[4][9]
• Prehistoric Scotland and its Place in European Civilisation (1899)^[4]
• Man as Artist and Sportsman in the Palæolithic Period (1903)^[10][11]
• Archaeology and False Antiquities (1905)^[12]
• The Munro Bequest (1910)^[7]
• Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe: Being the Munro Lectures in Anthropology and Prehistoric Archæology in Connection with the University of Edinburgh, Delivered During February and March 1912 (1912)^[13]
• Prehistoric Britain (1913) .
• From Darwinism to Kaiserism: being a review of the origin, effects and collapse of Germany's attempt at world-dominion by methods of barbarism (1919)^[14][15]
• Autobiographic Sketch of Robert Munro, M.A., M.D., LL.D., 21st July, 1835 - 18th July, 1920 (1921)^[7]

Munro wrote articles for the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, attributed by the initials "R. Mu".^[16]