The World's First Archaeologists and Their Role in Defining History

The roots of archaeology – “the study of human history and prehistory through the excavation of sites and the analysis of physical remains,” to quote the Oxford English Dictionary – can be traced back in their most basic form as late as the age of the last emperor of Babylon, Nabonidus, in the 6th century BC, and perhaps even further, to the ancient Egyptians.

In the thousands of years that have passed since, the discipline has become a highly professionalised pursuit, with a broad and firmly-established range of techniques and practices, a complex theoretical framework and a strong ethical code. But it hasn’t taken a direct route to get there.

The origins of archaeology as an actual science were only really established after the Enlightenment in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, when the likes of Englishmen John Aubrey (1627-1697) and William Stukeley (1687-1765), Italian Count Marcello Venuti (circa 1738) and German Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768), started conducting systematic, recorded studies of sites and artefacts using techniques recognisable to modern antiquarians.

These were the Founding Fathers of archaeology, who first broke ground in the discipline as we know it today.

The Earliest Practitioners

If archaeology at its most basic is considered as the simple art of attempting to uncover the remains of forgotten generations, then it’s almost as old as some of the sites and artefacts modern archaeologists labour over today. The ancient Egyptians – whose history, it should be remembered, was long indeed (over 3,000 years, from about 3150 BC to 31 BC) – dug into their past: in New Kingdom Egypt (circa 1550-1070 BC) pharaohs excavated and reconstructed the Great Sphinx, built during the 4th Dynasty (circa 2575-2134 BC).

The first recorded archaeological dig is generally considered to be that conducted by Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon, between 555 and 539 BC. Nabonidus unearthed the foundation stone of a building dedicated to 19th century BC Assyrian King Naram-Sin. He overestimated its age by 1500 years, but then he was working a cool two-and-a-half millennia ahead of the invention of techniques such as radiocarbon dating, and also mentally deranged, so we’ll let him off.

Much later, medieval Muslim scholars developed a keen interest in the ancient Near East. Intellectuals Dhul-Nun al-Misri and Ibn Wahshiyya working in the 9th century AD, for instance, tried deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs (without much success). In Song Dynasty-era China (960-1279 AD), the educated gentry were interested in antiquarianism for the purpose of collecting art, while Neo-Confucian scholars saw it as a means of reviving the use of ancient relics in state rituals.

These were generally all ad hoc investigations, however, conducted purely for the purpose of treasure hunting, or in order to back-up pre-conceived notions about history. The figures in question gathered no empirical evidence, or attempted to develop rational, open-minded theories about civilizations past from their discoveries. There was no systematic recordings made of the results. And so they made no lasting, valuable additions to the database of human history.

Archaeology in the Age of Reason

Like so many other disciplines – philosophy, mathematics and economics included – archaeology was only able to flourish when the shadow cast for centuries by religion began to lift to some extent across Europe. Only then was allowed to develop in a way that didn’t necessarily have to comply with fanatical theological codes and tally with the church’s skewed and selected reading of history (until as late as 250 years ago most people genuinely believed that God put Adam and Eve on earth one day in 4004 BC, and that man descended directly from them).

The sea-change came with the Enlightenment, when rationalism began to be considered as the supreme human reason. All kinds of new sciences developed, archaeology among them. The first archaeologists were pretty much making the job up as they went along, and definitely weren’t always right in their conclusions – far from it at times. But they were on the right track at least, and they established a strong platform upon which their peers and successors were able to build.

First Meaningful Studies

Some of the earliest proper archaeological studies were made in England. John Aubrey, working in the mid 17th-century, carried out an extensive survey of Stonehenge for Charles II. The Aubrey Holes – a ring of pits which he observed surrounding the monument – are named in his honour. He still thought the world was only 4000 years old though, so many of his dates were wrong, but his notes and drawings were detailed, and he made useful efforts to determine the purpose and origin of some of the artefacts he discovered.

Working almost a century later, antiquarian William Stukeley – a friend and biographer of Isaac Newton – built on Aubrey’s work by becoming the first scholar to attempt to date Stonehenge. He produced an elaborate account of the monument – and another on Avebury – and concluded that Stonehenge was finished by around 460 BC (he was a few thousand years late there) and built in alignment with magnetic north (also inaccurate). He newly-identified some new elements of the site, and was the first to excavate some of the nearby barrows in the surrounding area.

Meanwhile, in Italy in 1738, Charles of Bourbon, King of the Two Sicilies, hired antiquarian Marcello Venuti to open the shafts at Herculaneum. They’d been investigated before, but unscrupulously by treasure hunters, who had destroyed many valuable remains. Venuti meticulously supervised the excavations, translated inscriptions, and proved beyond doubt that this was indeed the ruins of an ancient Roman town destroyed by a volcanic eruption in 79 AD. Pompeii was found nearby not long afterwards, and archaeological interest in ancient Rome ignited.

Towards a Theoretical Framework

Perhaps the daddy among the Founding Fathers of archaeology is Johann Joachim Winckelmann – a German art historian described as the “prophet and founding hero of modern archaeology” by American historian Daniel J. Boorstin.

He was the first person to establish the difference between Greek, Greco-Roman and Roman art, and to systematically apply categories of style to his research, in his tour-de-force History of the Art of Antiquity, written in 1764. Winckelmann was also the first person to realise that classical texts were not the only source of information on ancient times – physical remains could be just as valuable – and to usher in the idea of archaeology as a humane science.

Not satisfied with just being one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, Thomas Jefferson also took a stab at becoming a patriarch of archaeology too. His excavation of a Native American burial mound on his Virginia estate in 1784 have seen him over-generously referred to by some as the “father of archaeology” – even though he was probably inspired to undertake his study after a visit to Europe.

Setbacks

Jefferson was systematic in his work, and his motives were well-intentioned – unlike those of some. Across the world, as archaeology gradually became a craze among the upper-classes, many important ancient world sites were damaged irrevocably as amateurs hacked away at them with little understanding of what they were doing, or even why in some cases.

Sir Thomas Bruce – the 7th Earl of Elgin – infamously tore down and swiped a number of classical Greek marble statues (known today as the Elgin Marbles) from the Parthenon in Athens. He was heavily criticized for it, and inadvertently sparked an international dispute that still rages today.

Some heads of state weren’t averse to harnessing archaeology for military and political gain. During his Egyptian campaign, Napoleon I of France took hundreds of scientists, including many archaeologists, with him on his foreign adventure. While the Rosetta Stone, which his army plundered in 1799, would later prove instrumental in the deciphering of the principles of hieroglyphics, there’s reason to believe his academic interest was just a master propaganda stroke to put a positive spin on a blatant act of imperialism. Whatever his motives, fighting a major battle not far from the pyramids was definitely plain irresponsible.

Archaeology on the World Stage

Despite setbacks, the course of archaeology still continued to surge forwards. Some of the terminology used by archaeologists today was established in the 19th century.

In the 1840s, two successive curators of the National Museum of Denmark – Christian J. Thomsen and Jens Jacob Asmussen Worsaae – argued down the prevailing theory that in prehistoric times, iron tools were for poor people and bronze for rich, and established the concept of the Three Age System in Europe (Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages). Later, Egyptologist William Flinders Petrie (1853-1942) pioneered “seriation” – an effective early chronological system linking styles of pottery to certain periods from history – during his investigation of sites such as Tanis, Abydos and Amarna.

Major discoveries were by this point coming thick and fast. German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann led an insatiable hunt for Troy of the Odyssey and the Iliad, and in the early 1870s dug through nine levels of occupation at Hisarlik in Turkey, making many impressive finds including Priam’s Treasure. In the early 1900s, British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans unearthed the palace of Knossos on Crete and subsequently developed the concept of “Minoan civilization.” In 1911, Hiram Bingham located the spectacular Inca city of Machu Picchu in Peru.

Just a few years later, the most famous archeological discovery of them all was made in Egypt, when in 1921 the Tomb of Tutankhamun was located and opened by Howard Carter. The “wonderful things” inside would become headline news across the world, and finally see archaeologists rise – from humble and uncertain beginnings – to becoming recognised on the world stage.

Read or leave comments