Robert Ranulph Marett (1866–1943) was a British ethnologist from Jersey.
Exponent of the British evolutionary school, he dealt with religious ethnology. In this field he modified the evolutionary scale of religion fixed by E. B. Tylor, which placed animism in the first place. Marett articulated the conception of (magical pre-animism) an impersonal force, identified with the Melanesian term of mana. The idea of the mana, mostly psychical than cultural product, was presented mainly in his work The Threshold of Religion (1909) with which he tried to establish the context of presupposed ideas of the religion, to Anthropology (1912) and Psychology and Folklore (1920). R. R. Marett succeeded Tylor as Reader in Anthropology at Oxford in 1910, and in 1914 established a Department of Social Anthropology.
Convinced that primitive man had not developed the intellectual ability to form even such simplistic explanations as Tylor proposed, Marett also criticized Tylor’s theories of animism, suggesting that early religion was more emotional and intuitional in origin. He believed that early man recognized some inanimate objects because of their specific characteristics; treated all animate objects as having a life, but never distinguished soul as separate from the body. Considering that early man's universal belief in mana is so self-evident, Marett found insignificant the question of how men and women developed the belief that a spirit or soul resides in all objects.
He worked on the palaeolithic site of La Cotte de St Brelade from 1910–1914, recovering some hominid teeth and other remains of habitation by Neanderthal man. He published "The Site, Fauna, and Industry of La Cotte de St. Brelade, Jersey" (Archaeologia LXVII, 1916).
He became Rector of Exeter College, Oxford.
His students included Marius Barbeau, Dorothy Garrod and Earnest Albert Hooten.
He was the only son of Sir Robert Pipon Marett, poet and Bailiff of Jersey, and Julia Anne Marett.
| Academic offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Lewis Richard Farnell |
Rector of Exeter College, Oxford 1928–1943 |
Succeeded by Eric Arthur Barber |