Field, sites and finds

Field, sites and finds

[SHS:HIST] Humanities and Social Sciences/History

Rome

archaeology

antiquarians

In 18th century Rome, the “field” of the antiquarians, if conceived as the complex of questions, datas and methods which their practice was embracing, has but very loose relations with the “field” understood as the “site”. Many people were interested by the discovery of antiques, but for very different reasons: rich collectors in search of works of art, artists looking for models, landowners hoping to find hidden treasuries, and naturally all kinds of merchants. The erudite antiquarians had to defend their own approach, their own way of dealing with discoveries, by cooperating and simultaneously competing with all these people, and their challenge in that context was to find and promote an adequate expression and diffusion of their knowledge. As long as this challenge had not been met, as long as the science of artifacts had not created its own system of references, the interpretation and presentation of finds was too big a problem to leave space to a more accurate study of sites. Archaeology as field-work, as a science of sites, with its proper representations, could not emerge before the science of artifacts had been elaborated.

De Polignac, François

2002-09

ENG

preprint

http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00177814

http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/17/78/14/PDF/Field_sites.pdf