Frederick Corbin Lukis : a remarkable archaeologist and polymath

Abstract

Frederick Corbin Lukis, lived in Guernsey in the Channel Islands from 1788-1871.  This study is an assessment of his archaeological archive, the majority of which is now held in the collections of Guernsey Museum and Galleries. Evidence is presented to make the case that he should be remembered as a remarkable archaeologist, worthy of recognition alongside the central characters omnipresent in many histories of archaeology.

The introduction outlines the research design and is followed by a review of the history of antiquarianism and the development of archaeology as a discipline, with particular reference to the nineteenth century. The various genres of the writing of histories of archaeology are also considered, including broad narratives, the development of the earliest archaeological institutions and local societies, and biographies of many of well known archaeologists who made significant contributions to the burgeoning discipline in the nineteenth century. A description of Guernsey is then drawn, and a biography of Lukis’ life is presented, against the social background in which he grew up and lived, in nineteenth-century Guernsey society. Most importantly, his work as an archaeologist is examined and evaluated, and through his network of contacts, both home and abroad, his intellectual milieu is established. It soon becomes apparent that F.C. Lukis is an important player in the transition period between the early nineteenth-century ‘barrow diggers’ such as Colt Hoare and the more scientific methodology and fieldwork of Pitt-Rovers at the end of the nineteenth century.

Finally, the legacy that Lukis left his successors and its importance to the study of archaeology in general, but in particular to Guernsey and the other Channel Islands, is discussed. The fieldwork legacy, the museum collections and Lukis’ influence on the development of practical and intellectual archaeological epistemologies is considered, and an assessment made of the work which Lukis carried out. This work, although carried out without the scientific basis that modern day studies would involve, still forms the basis for any serious study of Guernsey’s prehistoric past.

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