No CrossRef data available.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2016
This study presents the career of late-nineteenth-century Assyriologist William St. Chad Boscawen (1855–1913) as a case study in recovering contributions to knowledge-making by low-status, marginal actors. Boscawen took Assyriological knowledge and expertise, gained at the British Museum, into a new disciplinary setting: a private museum of history of medicine, owned by pharmaceuticals entrepreneur Henry Wellcome (1853–1936). Yet his relocation was only partially successful, and his contributions to knowledge were transient. I employ a sociological framework to explore how social factors, as much as academic ones, influenced Boscawen's career trajectory. In doing so, I argue that studying marginal figures offers a richer understanding of past Assyriological practices and the wider research community in which the most prominent figures operated.
This article is adapted from my doctoral dissertation, which was undertaken with the support of a studentship from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council 2009–12 and additional financial assistance from the Williamson Fund, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge. The argument has benefitted from draft presentation at the Field Notes: Histories of Archaeology series at CRASSH, University of Cambridge and at a Wellcome Library staff development seminar. I would like to thank Eleanor Robson for her astute advice on various drafts, and the anonymous reviewer at Iraq for their valuable comments. I am also grateful to the following people and institutions for advice, clarifications and archival assistance: staff at the Wellcome Library, especially Ross Macfarlane, Simon Chaplin, Sharon Messenger and all in the Rare Materials Room; Stephanie Clarke at the British Museum Central Archive; Mirjam Brusius, William Carruthers, Christina Riggs, Simon Schaffer and Jim Secord.