Between antiquarians and archaeologists — continuities and ruptures

Abstract

The current renewal of interest in the history of archaeology can be explained in several ways, and notably in view of the extraordinary extension of the discipline's objects and methods. In the last decades, the most far-flung regions of the earth have been subjected to systematic exploration, radiometric dating techniques have continually improved, DNA studies have contributed to the transformations of biological anthropology, and indeed the very process of human evolution has heen cast in new light by the changing boundaries between humanity and animality. A natural science for many founding fathers of prehistory, a social science for those who emphasize its anthropological dimensions, archaeology has remained for others a historical discipline by virtue of its proximity to ancient languages and inscriptions. At one end of the spectrum, some archaeologists see themselves as specialists in material culture, able to deal with ohjects, both ancient and modern, as simultaneously technical and semiotic systems. At the other end, there are those who will only put their faith in the detailed approach of singular, particular cultures. To put the matter in extreme terms; it seems as if there existed a universalist archaeology standing in opposition to a plethora of incompatible and irreducible vernacular archaeologies.

The Scandinavian Connection: The Roots of Darwinian Archaeology in 19th-Century Scandinavian Archaeology

“…It might well be the case that they genuinely invented a range of interesting methods for the quasi-evolutionary analysis of artefact collections (especially seriation; see O'Brien 2003), but there is considerable circumstantial evidence indicating that they in fact imported the key concepts and methods from Europe. Many important developments in the fledgling European archaeology took place in Scandinavia (Daniel 1978;Klindt-Jensen 1975;Schnapp 1996;Trigger 1989), where a more general interest in the past and its remains has been long-standing (Klindt-Jensen 1975;Randsborg 1992Randsborg , 2000Schnapp 1996Schnapp , 2002: "archaeological research in Scandinavia was, for a large part of the nineteenth century, methodologically in advance of its time" (Gräslund 1987: 1). With a strong educated middle-class, relative prosperity and a strongly centralised system of national museums, the conditions were right for Danish and Swedish scholars to categorise and synthesize, much earlier than elsewhere, the plethora of finds that the expansion of agricultural activity brought to the various institutions (Gräslund 1987;KlindtJensen 1975;Kristiansen 1981).…”

Archaeologists, Treasure Hunters and Collectors: Heritage in the Spotlight

“…These approaches highlight the importance of collector characters in the collections assembling and socialization-which, in several cases, influenced the popular perception of nature and the past. It is also observed the displacement of these amateurs practices with the development of professional archaeology [13,32,[38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45]. This kind of researches assess the importance of collective and cooperative work in science and evaluate how the knowledge spaces are structured in the practice with a geographical differentiation: The outside field and the lab or the museum.…”

Coins to Flint: John Evans and the Numismatic Moment in the History of Archaeology

“…This, moreover, has tended to obscure the reciprocal methodological and interpretative circulations prevailing between natural history and human history at least since the latter half of the eighteenth century -with Cuvier's desiderata to launch palaeontology as an 'antiquarianism of a new kind' being only the most famous example (cf. Blanckaert 2011;Schlanger 2010;Schnapp 1994Schnapp , 2002. These revisionist prospects need, of course, to be further explored, as well as their implications for our understanding of the intellectual and institutional development of archaeology writ large.…”