Note: this is part of an electronic companion that supplements Kevin Greene's book Archaeology: an introduction (1995); click on the title to start from the home page.
'Archaeologists today still tend to be divided into two categories - prehistorians or historical archaeologists. This division is not particularly helpful, but it does distinguish between the latter, who study people or places within periods during which written records were made, from the former, who are concerned with any period before the use of documents.' (p. 10)
Gods & Graves The Danish National Museum's Pilot Project for CultureNet Denmark
The Southeast Archeological Center (SEAC) Prehistoric and historical archaeology (with a link to Andersonville, Georgia, the site of the best known of all the American Civil War (1861-1865)
prisoner-of-war (POW) camps)
Not digging up the Globe A controversial document about Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, London; this issue gives a good insight into the workings of archaeology in a historical period (Andrew Gurr)
The Newcomen Society An organisation dedicated to a subject from the recent historical past - industrial archaeology
Virtual Museum for Industrial Culture German Society for Industrial Archaeology. There is an English summary page about this impressive WWW site (Dr. Wolfgang Ebert)
1.2 Human antiquity
'In some ways, the recognition of authentic associations between flint axes and the bones of extinct animals increased the problems of dating faced by geologists and historians: how long ago did these humans and animals live?' (p. 14)
Talk.origins a newsgroup devoted to the discussion of issues related to biological and physical origins
''Fluvialists' and 'catastrophists' both studied and interpreted sequences of rocks and fossils, and their methods offered a solution to the problem of early human tools and weapons. If the levels observed by Frere and Boucher de Perthes really had been laid down by slow erosion by wind and water, and gradual deposition by rivers and oceans, an immense length of time must be involved.' (p. 15)
Human Prehistory: An Exhibition 'The discovery of the evolution of man is attributed to two scientists of the 19th century: Sir Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin' (Demetris Loizos, Deree College, Athens)
'Some features of modern archaeology did exist in the Roman world. Collections of Greek sculpture and vases were popular, various stages of architectural development were appreciated and tourist visits to ancient monuments had already become common, not only in Italy and Greece but also in Egypt.' (p.16)
2.1 Medieval attitudes to antiquity
'The attitudes of Christian theologians help to explain the lack of significant progress in archaeological thinking before the nineteenth century. It took revolutionary developments in geology and biology to force a new scientific view of human origins upon the Christian world.' (p. 16)
Historicity of the Bible 'The Smithsonian's department of Anthropology has received numerous inquiries in recent years regarding the historicity of the Bible in general, and the Biblical account of Noah's flood in particular. The following statement has been prepared to answer these questions.'
2.2 Archaeology from the Renaissance to the 'Age of Reason'
'The Renaissance atmosphere of discovery and speculation gradually spread to the rest of Europe, including areas in the north whose connection with the Classical World had been either brief (like Britain) or non-existent (like much of Germany and Scandinavia). In these countries the same spirit of inquiry was also directed towards the non-Classical past, and the first steps began to be taken towards the methods of prehistoric archaeology.' (p. 17-18)
'The aims and concepts of research into the past that followed the diffusion of Renaissance thinking into Northern Europe may be illustrated by the work of a series of antiquarians who engaged in active field archaeology in Britain between the early sixteenth and mid-eighteenth centuries: Leland, Camden, Aubrey and Stukeley.' (p. 19)
Richard Nicholson, Antique Map Finder, Chester A well-illustrated commercial site; follow the link to Collecting British County Maps Part 1: 1579 to 1727. It includes maps from various editions of Camden's Britannia.
The Burial Cross of King Arthur The use of evidence from early antiquaries continues today: ' The burial cross ... was seen and illustrated by William Camden in the early seventeenth century...' (from Britannia web site)
John Aubrey (1626-97). 'Aubrey was not able to escape from the conundrum of dating ancient monuments.
Although he was right to place Stonehenge and Avebury in a ritual context of pre-Roman
date, he attributed Iron Age hillforts to Britons, Romans or Danes with wild inconsistency.' (p. 20)
William Stukeley (1687-1765). 'It is noteworthy that Stukeley was already aware of the role of fieldwork as part of rescue archaeology: he wanted to"perpetuates the vestiges of this celebrated wonder & of the barrows avenues cursus &c for I forsee that it will in a few years be universally plowed
over and consequently deface"d' (p. 23)
Ordnance Survey Background and Brief History, including part of an early (1811) hand engraved map of Dorchester, Dorset, showing prehistoric hillforts at Maiden Castle and Poundbury as well other antiquities. You can compare it with the modern OS map of the same area.
3.2 Fieldwork elsewhere
'Historians of ideas, science or archaeology can all point to similar phenomena taking place elsewhere in Europe at this time. In Scandinavia, Johan Bure and Ole Worm undertook antiquarian research - with royal patronage - in the early seventeenth century, and similar efforts were devoted to Roman and earlier antiquities in central Europe. A German pioneer of the systematic investigation of Roman art and architecture in Italy, Johann Winckelmann, was a near contemporary of William Stukeley. An indigenous archaeological tradition had also emerged in America by the nineteenth century. Inevitably it began with ethnographic accounts of the native Americans, but gradually extended to sites and artefacts. The literate civilizations of Central and South America attracted comment as early as the sixteenth century, for their architecture, sculpture and inscriptions offered the same kind of possibilities for study as those of Greece or Italy.' (p. 23)
DANGEROUS ARCHAEOLOGY:Francis Willey Kelsey and Armenia (1919-1920) (Kelsey Museum of Archaeology (Ann Arbor, Michigan))
Gertrude Bell 1868-1926 An on-line archive of stunning photographs taken by this adventurous woman in the Near East.
3.3 Touring and collecting
'The Renaissance revived the Roman penchant for visiting monuments and collecting works of art for aesthetic reasons, in contrast to the medieval church's concentration upon shrines and relics. The concept spread to northern Europe, and educated people of sufficient financial means began to visit the Mediterranean centres of classical civilization in Italy, Greece, Turkey and the Near East. Naturally, travellers purchased 'souvenirs' to adorn their northern residences, and the process was accelerated by agents sent to seek out further items and to arrange for their shipment to the new owners' homes.' (p. 22-3) '...the Renaissance fashion for collecting contributed to the establishment of public museums attached to centres of learning or to cities.' (p. 24)
BENDING CONTEXTS: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON RELIC COLLECTIONS David S. Rotenstein: 'Many studies of amateur archaeologists have been conducted in the past, yet none has viewed the behavior of relic collecting as traditional and culturally influenced.' An interesting paper on modern collecting with implications for its past.
'Sophisticated prehistoric objects made of cast bronze were commonly assigned to the Romans or Danes, because antiquarians lacked a clear idea of what to expect from prehistoric material culture. For these reasons the systematic study of objects began with simple stone tools from very early periods. Casual finds of finely worked flint arrowheads or polished axes must always have suggested human manufacture to anyone who actually thought about them, and it would not have been difficult to reach the idea that they might have been used before metals were known.' (p. 24-5)
Stone Age Reference Collection Institute of Archaeology, Art History and Numismatics (I.A.K.N.) at the University of Oslo, Norway. The text and graphics link to animated stacks illustrating processes such as flint knapping techniques (pressure flaking, burin technique etc.) and some 'games' (eg. naming the parts of a flint flake).
4.1 Scandinavia and the Three-Age System
'The archaeology of Scandinavia is particularly rich in finely made artefacts dating from the prehistoric to Viking periods, and many of them are found in good condition in graves. Fortunately, Scandinavia also had museums where objects could be preserved, studied and displayed.' (p. 26)
National Museum, Denmark 'The National Museum's collection of prehistoric finds is one of the oldest in Europe. It was established in the year 1807, when King Frederik VI (1768-1839) set up a royal commission for the preservation of antiquities...'
4.2 Typology
'Typology differs fundamentally from mere classification. It studies classes of artefacts from the point of view of developments and changes that may allow them to be placed into a hypothetical chronological order.' (p. 28)
'The Mediterranean civilizations of Greece and Rome formed an important background to European culture, and they received special attention during the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods. This degree of familiarity reduced the potential of classical archaeology for introducing new techniques and concepts, in contrast to more difficult questions such as Human Antiquity, or the exploration of Egypt or Mesopotamia.' (p. 30)
'The increasing interest in Near Eastern civilizations was not entirely beneficial, for it led to intensive plundering of sites for carvings and inscriptions to satisfy greater demands from museums and collectors. In Mesopotamia, even palaces and temples were largely built out of sun-dried mud-brick - unlike their stone counterparts in Egypt. Fragile structures and perishable or unimpressive artefacts were neglected for most of the rest of the nineteenth century, along with any earlier prehistoric levels underlying historical sites.' (p. 32)
DANGEROUS ARCHAEOLOGY:Francis Willey Kelsey and Armenia (1919-1920) (Kelsey Museum of Archaeology (Ann Arbor, Michigan)). If you are using a fairly powerful computer and a browser that copes with frames, see database of images taken during the expedition. Contextual information about the expedition and individual photographs is also provided.
'Although Schliemann's excavations and research around the Aegean were initially motivated by the desire to elucidate a specific literary text, they brought the Greek Bronze Age and its antecedents to light for the first time. He conducted his work as a conscious problem-oriented exercise, rather than simply to recover attractive finds from a known historical site; he also paid attention to the whole stratigraphic sequence at Troy, not just a single period.' (p. 33)
Troy, treasure and the truth 'After years of believing wholeheartedly in the archeologist's writings and discoveries, scholars in the 1970s and 1980s began questioning Schliemann's credibility. Among those who have researched his life and work is UC Davis classicist David Traill, whose book Schliemann of Troy: Treasure and Deceit (St. Martin's Press) has recently been published.'
5.3 Evans and Knossos
'As at Troy, earlier levels were found below the palace at Knossos; they extended back into the prehistoric period and emphasised the depth of time that preceded the literate stages of these early civilizations. Thus, archaeology alone had provided almost everything that was known about Minoan civilization, and this achievement paralleled the contribution made by prehistorians to the understanding of human antiquity.' (p. 34-5)
Evans and Knossos From Dilos Holiday World pages - an attractive illustrated adjunct to a commercial travel company
KAPATIJA A list of information retrieval sites for the Bronze Age and Classical Aegean worlds (John G. Younger)
5.4 Beyond Europe and the Near East
'After the discovery of Minoan Crete, the only other early European or Near Eastern civilization to remain unknown until the twentieth century was that of the Hittites in Turkey. Like the Mesopotamian civilizations, it was known from the Bible; it was illuminated in 1906-8 by the discovery of large numbers of inscribed tablets at the large fortified city of Hattusha (now Bogazkoy). Further East, fieldwork and excavation in the twentieth century in India and China produced evidence of urban civilizations, dating back to before 2000 and 1000 BC respectively. In the New World, Spanish colonists and churchmen had reported the existence of sophisticated urban civilizations since the fifteenth century, but the literate civilization of the Maya that flourished in Yucatan was first described by John Stephens and Frederick Catherwood in the 1840s...' (p. 35)
Caddoan Mounds 'People have lived in East Texas for about 12,000 years. During the past several decades archeologists have tried to identify and describe the lifeways of the prehistoric peoples who have lived in or passed through the region.' (Bob Skiles)
'The discovery of the 'lost' civilizations (other than Greece and Rome), the appearance of scientific excavation techniques, and the increasingly sophisticated interpretation of past societies, all belong to a phase of archaeology that had scarcely begun before the nineteenth century. However, the rapid developments of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries incorporated several of key factors established during the Renaissance and 'Age of Reason'. Pursuits that were considered respectable in intellectual circles happened to include the study, recording and collecting of ancient sites and artefacts, as part of a wider scientific interest in natural history. The efforts of individuals, usually amateurs and often eccentrics, established the methods of fieldwork, and led to the opening of museums that had to be staffed, displayed and catalogued. Others extended the existence of humans on Earth from a mere six thousand years back into an immeasurable period. As a result of all these achievements, greater efforts were made to collect human artefacts, and to organise them in more sophisticated ways to provide a new source for the documentation of human technical and social progress.' (p. 36)
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