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works portrayed the aztec and inca as civilized peoples and remain the standard authorities on the Spanish conquistadores in the New World. Both works brought Prescott widespread recognition in Europe.
See also
(1812–1896)
Born in London and educated at University College, London, Joseph Prestwich abandoned a career in chemistry to work in his father’s wine merchant business. He took up geology and became particularly interested in stratigraphical analysis. His papers on the Tertiary geology of southeastern England and on Quaternary geology published in the mid-1840s and 1850s established his reputation and his place among the elite of British science. In 1874, Prestwich finally retired from business and took up the chair of geology at Oxford University.
In 1858, Prestwich was a member of the committee of the Geological Society of London that presided over the excavation of brixham cave by william pengelly, but Prestwich agreed with Richard Owen and geologist sir charles lyell that the evidence was not enough to establish greater human antiquity. In 1859, hugh falconer insisted that Prestwich visit French archaeologist jacques boucher de perthes in France and examine the evidence of human antiquity that he had found in the Somme River gravels. Prestwich was persuaded of the validity of this evidence, and from then on he supported the notion of a high human antiquity and the value of the discoveries at Brixham Cave.
Prestwich was elected fellow of the Royal Geological Society in 1833 and fellow of the Royal Society in 1853. He was knighted in 1896.
References
van Riper, A Bowdoin. 1993. Men among the Mammoths. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
(1799–1840)
If any person in addition to alexander cunningham can be called a founding father of Indian archaeology, the honor should go to James Prinsep. He was the assay master of the East India Company mints and was posted first to Varanasi and then to Calcutta. Prinsep initiated the tradition of field investigations by members of the company and other European officials in various parts of the country where they traveled in their private capacities. Prinsep became the secretary of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in the 1830s and began the new and regular publication of the society, which continues even today: the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal first appeared under his editorship in 1832. His stimulation and encouragement of the antiquarian interests of his European contemporaries in India has been well expressed by Abu Imam (1966, 21–22): “A new breed of officers arose who interested themselves in the mysterious remains of the country’s past, although preoccupied with their official duties.… On their various rounds in the four corners of India, these officers began to shower on Prinsep coins, inscriptions and rubbings in profuse numbers.… Soon both the collectors and the interpreters were acting in a spirit of friendly competition.”
Prinsep’s own special fields of study lay in coins and inscriptions. He studied and cataloged a large series of north Indian coins, beginning with Roman coins in “upper India” (Prinsep 1832). His study of Greek coins in the possession of the Asiatic Society (Prinsep 1833) was the first study of the Indo-Greek phase of history in the northwestern part of the subcontinent. He was also astute enough to realize the significance of the nameless early historic coins of northern India, and in the Indian area he was certainly the first to appreciate the dating value of coins in archaeological contexts (Prinsep 1834).
It is, however, principally for his decipherment of the ancient Brahmi script of the Asokan inscriptions of the third century b.c. and of the similarly dated Kharoshti script (confined principally to the northwest) that Prinsep is most famous. The study of the late form of Brahmi script began in the late eighteenth century on the basis of its resemblance with the script form
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