Archaeologists in Print

Thornton, Amara

doi:10.2307/j.ctv3hvc9k

Cited by 13 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Emphasizing the distinctly public orientation of early twentieth-century archaeology, Thornton notes the dependence of the field on popular interest -and funding -to sustain excavations. 12 Similar studies of famed excavator Heinrich Schliemann reveal an early exponent of mediatized archaeology, who capitalized upon popular romanticization of the ancient Greek past to garner widespread fascination with his finds (which he shrewdly calculated would recoup the costs of his excavations) through news stories, which made the world of Greek myth uncovered at Hissarlik and Mycenae accessible to Europe's masses. 13 Popular print media representation (or a lack thereof) was a constant concern for turn-of-the-century archaeologists, who depended upon garnering popular interest in some form to further their studies.…”

Section: Literature Review and Methodologymentioning

confidence: 97%

Excavating the Nation: European Popular Nationalism and the Excavations of Delphi and Knossos, 1890–1914

Cavanagh

2024

Bulletin of the History of Archaeology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Greek archaeology at the turn of the twentieth century existed at the intersection of a modern positivistic practice of scientific study and a longer-standing European fascination with the ancient world. As the continent's masses increasingly engaged with popular fin-de-siècle nationalisms, they also sought knowledge of the cultured refinement historically associated with the ancient world through empirically supported studies of the ancient past's material remnants. This paper assesses the extent to which popular national identities conditioned European public perceptions of Greek archaeology in the decades the leading up to the First World War (1890War ( -1914. Examining news-media coverage of the French excavation of Delphi and the British excavation of Knossos from nationally-prominent publications, this article identifies the influence which paradigms of national identity exerted over public perceptions of Europe's ancient past. Concluding that these two excavations were exalted as evidential of national genius, this also posits that the particular finds associated with these sites were strongly coloured by the lens of national identity in popular periodical publications. Diffuse understandings of national heritage stretching back to the distant reaches of Europe's ancient past thereby influenced popular perceptions of Greek archaeology as a discipline inherently linked to turn-of-the-century nationalist projects, with the archaeologist being increasingly relied upon to empirically entrench and legitimize the modern nation-state in a civilizational pedigree, coinciding with the national institutionalization of archaeological study.

show abstract

Section: Literature Review and Methodologymentioning

confidence: 97%

Excavating the Nation: European Popular Nationalism and the Excavations of Delphi and Knossos, 1890–1914

Cavanagh

2024

Bulletin of the History of Archaeology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Before the establishment of the Institute of Archaeology at the University of London in 1937, formal training programmes for excavation were almost non-existent, and students of Aegean Archaeology from British institutions were taught these skills through active participation in fieldwork projects, facilitated by the British School (French 2006, 260–1; Thornton 2018, 23–4, 27). Therefore, before the 1939 season commenced, Wace encouraged his three postgraduate students to travel to Greece to carry out their own research projects and gather experience.…”

Section: The 1939 Excavation Seasonmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Impact of Archaeological Recording on the Study of Metal Artefacts. Mycenae 1939: A Case Study

Aulsebrook

2022

Annu. Br. Sch. Athens

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Aegean Archaeology is one of the oldest branches of prehistoric archaeological scholarship, and many important settlements and cemeteries, such as those at Mycenae, were excavated before the development of more advanced recording techniques that we take for granted today. Nevertheless, the significance of these legacy data as a source of knowledge means we must still find ways to integrate them into our interpretations, despite their limitations. To derive the most robust results possible, it is important to understand exactly what types of impact these earlier recording strategies may have had on our perception of their findings. Yet this type of investigation is rare, meaning that in many cases we know more about the repercussions of taphonomy and the social practices of past societies on the archaeological record than those caused by the actions of our own predecessors. In preparation for a holistic study of all aspects of the use of metals at the Late Bronze Age site of Mycenae, this paper details the exploration of the recording processes in place during the 1939 excavation season. This has been identified as an ideal case study for examining recording strategies because its organisational structure gave each trench supervisor a great deal of individual freedom. Concentrating on their consequences for metal artefacts in particular, each stage of the recording process, in the field, in the museum and in publications, is discussed, as is the aftermath of the Second World War.

show abstract

“…Although archaeologists such as Gordon Childe and Mortimer Wheeler were once part of more or less explicitly political but very vibrant public debates about history, civilization, and culture (see e.g. Moshenska & Zuanni, 2018; Thornton, 2018), today relatively few of us direct our work at popular audiences. Of those who do, many are professional television presenters rather than active researchers, or they are (frequently early career) academics active in science communication on social media (e.g.…”

Section: Bright New Futuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Forum: Populism, Identity Politics, and the Archaeology of Europe

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The kind of liberal and open-minded society on which most academics rely to freely conduct their research is increasingly under threat, even within democratic societies of long standing. The past is by no means neutral in this, whether this be the then American president threatening to attack the antiquities of Iran in early 2020 (a war crime if carried out), or a right-ofcentre UK politician using a prehistoric henge monument to argue that Britain's future should lie outside the European Union (Brophy, 2019). These kinds of developments are generally described as 'populist', a term that refers to the simplification of complex problems and appeals to broad sectors of the population. Here, we follow Müller (2016: 3-4) in arguing that 'populism' also implies exclusionary and polarizing identity politics in which difference and dissent are treated as moral failings rather than questions for compromise.

show abstract

Archaeologists in Print

Cited by 13 publications

References 0 publications

Excavating the Nation: European Popular Nationalism and the Excavations of Delphi and Knossos, 1890–1914

Excavating the Nation: European Popular Nationalism and the Excavations of Delphi and Knossos, 1890–1914

The Impact of Archaeological Recording on the Study of Metal Artefacts. Mycenae 1939: A Case Study

Forum: Populism, Identity Politics, and the Archaeology of Europe

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About