CHAPTER 1: THE IDEA OF THE PAST
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.

CHAPTER 1: THE IDEA OF THE PAST

COPYRIGHT STATEMENT
  1. HUMAN ORIGINS
    1.1 Prehistory and history, 1.2 Human antiquity, 1.3 Catastrophists and Fluvialists
  2. AVENUES OF INVESTIGATION
    2.1 Medieval attitudes to antiquity, 2.2 Archaeology from the Renaissance to the 'Age of Reason'
  3. ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT
    3.1 Antiquarian fieldwork in Britain, 3.2 Fieldwork elsewhere, 3.3 Touring and collecting
  4. THE RECOGNITION OF HUMAN ARTEFACTS
    4.1 Scandinavia and the Three-Age System, 4.2 Typology
  5. THE DISCOVERY OF CIVILIZATIONS
    5.1 Egypt and Mesopotamia, 5.2 Schliemann and Troy, 5.3 Evans and Knossos, 5.4 Beyond Europe and the Near East
  6. ACHIEVEMENTS OF EARLY ANTIQUARIANS
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1 HUMAN ORIGINS

1.1 Prehistory and history; 1.2 Human antiquity; 1.3 Catastrophists and Fluvialists; Go back to chapter heading
1.1 Prehistory and history
'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)
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)
1.3 Catastrophists and Fluvialists
''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)

2 AVENUES OF INVESTIGATION

2.1 Medieval attitudes to antiquity; 2.2 Archaeology from the Renaissance to the 'Age of Reason'; Go back to chapter heading
'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)
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)

3 ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT

3.1 Antiquarian fieldwork in Britain; 3.2 Fieldwork elsewhere; 3.3 Touring and collecting; Go back to chapter heading
3.1 Antiquarian fieldwork in Britain
'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)
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)
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)

4 THE RECOGNITION OF HUMAN ARTEFACTS

4.1 Scandinavia and the Three-Age System; 4.2 Typology; Go back to chapter heading
'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)
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)
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)

5 THE DISCOVERY OF CIVILIZATIONS

5.1 Egypt and Mesopotamia; 5.2 Schliemann and Troy; 5.3 Evans and Knossos; 5.4 Beyond Europe and the Near East; Go back to chapter heading
'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)
5.1 Egypt and Mesopotamia
'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)
5.2 Schliemann and Troy
'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)
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)
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)

6 ACHIEVEMENTS OF EARLY ANTIQUARIANS

Go back to chapter heading
'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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