Ralph Linton - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Linton was born into a family of Quaker restaurant entrepreneurs in Philadelphia in 1893 and entered Swarthmore College in 1911. He was an indifferent student and resisted his father's pressures to prepare himself for the life of a professional. He grew interested in archaeology after participating in a field school in the southwest and took a year off of his studies to participate in another archaeological excavation at Quiriguá in Guatemala. Having found a strong focus he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1915.

Although Linton became a prominent anthropologist, his graduate education took place largely at the periphery of the discipline. He attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned his masters degree studying with Frank Speck while undertaking additional archaeological field work in New Jersey and New Mexico.

He was admitted to a Ph.D. program at Columbia University thereafter, but did not become close to Franz Boas, the doyen of anthropology in that era. When America entered World War I, Linton enlisted and served in France in the 1917-1919 saw him serving in Battery D, 149th Field Artillery, 42nd2 (Rainbow) Division. Linton served as a corporal and saw battle at the trenches, experiencing first hand a German gas attack. Linton's military experience would be a major influence on his subsequent work. One of his first published articles was "Totemism and the A.E.F.” (Published in American Anthropologist vol. 26:294-300)", in which he argued that the way in which military units often identified with their symbols could be considered a kind of totemism.

His military fervor probably did not do anything to improve his relation with the pacifist Franz Boas, who abhorred all displays of nationalism or jingoism. An anecdote has it that Linton was rebuked by Boas when he appeared in class in his military uniform. Whatever the cause, shortly after his return to the United States, he transferred from Columbia to Harvard, where he studied with Earnest Hooton, Alfred Tozzer, and Roland Dixon.

After a year of classes at Harvard, Linton proceeded to do more fieldwork, first Mesa Verde and then as a member of a research team led by E.S.C. Handy under the auspices of the Bishop Museum to the Marquesas. While in the Pacific, his focus shifted from archaeology to cultural anthropology, although he would retain a keen interest in material culture and 'primitive' art throughout his life. He returned from the Marquesas in 1922 and eventually received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1925.