Reginald Allender Smith

Reginald A. (Allender) Smith (1873–1940) was an archaeologist, Keeper of British and Medieval Antiquities at the British Museum in the 1920s, and the author of several books.

He was on the side of the skeptics during the inquiry into the authenticity of the Piltdown man, known for having offered a single line of testimony concerning a "bone implement" purported to be a tool. He remarked simply, it was reported, on "the possibility of the bone having been found and whittled in recent times."^[1]

Selected publications

• A Guide to the Antiquities of Roman Britain in the Department of British and Mediaeval Antiquities. London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1922.
• British Museum Guide to Anglo-Saxon Antiquities. British Museum. Department of British and Mediaeval Antiquities, 1923. Reprinted: Ipswich, Suffolk: Anglia Pub., 1993.
• Flints: An Illustrated Manual of the Stone Age for Beginners. London: British Museum, 1928.

Notes

1. Quoted in Charles Dawson and A. Smith Woodward, "On a Bone Implement from Piltdown (Sussex)." Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society Vol 71 (1915, p. 144). See also Joseph Sidney Weiner and Chris Stringer's The Piltdown Forgery: The classic Account of the Most Famous and Successful Hoax in Science. Oxford University Press, 2003. p.50.