Antiquarianisms: Contact, Conflict, Comparison

by Benjamin Anderson (Editor), Felipe Rojas (Editor)

Overview

Antiquarianism and collecting have been associated intimately with European imperial and colonial enterprises, although both existed long before the early modern period and both were (and continue to be) practiced in places other than Europe. Scholars have made significant progress in the documentation and analysis of indigenous antiquarian traditions, but the clear-cut distinction between “indigenous” and “colonial” archaeologies has obscured the intense and dynamic interaction between these seemingly different endeavours. This book concerns the divide between local and foreign antiquarianisms focusing on case studies drawn primarily from the Mediterranean and the Americas. Both regions host robust pre-modern antiquarian traditions that have continued to develop during periods of colonialism. In both regions, moreover, colonial encounters have been mediated by the antiquarian practices and preferences of European elites. The two regions also exhibit salient differences. For example, Europeans claimed the “antiquities” of the eastern Mediterranean as part of their own, “classical,” heritage, whereas they perceived those of the Americas as essentially alien, even as they attempted to understand them by analogy to the classical world. These basic points of comparison and contrast provide a framework for conjoint analysis of the emergence of hybrid or cross-bred antiquarianisms. Rather than assuming that interest in antiquity is a human universal, this book explores the circumstances under which the past itself is produced and transformed through encounters between antiquarian traditions over common objects of interpretation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781785706851
Publisher:	Oxbow Books
Publication date:	05/31/2017
Series:	Joukowsky Institute Publication , #8
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	232
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

Benjamin Anderson (Assistant Professor of History of Art and Visual Studies, Cornell University) studies the visual and material cultures of the eastern Mediterranean, with a focus on late antiquity and Byzantium. A monograph, Cosmos and Community in Early Medieval Art is forthcoming from Yale University Press in 2017.
Felipe Rojas (Assistant Professor of Archaeology, Brown University) has conducted archaeological fieldwork in the Eastern Mediterranean at various sites including Aphrodisias, Sardis, and Petra. He is currently finishing a monograph about Greek, Roman and Byzantine interaction with the Bronze and Iron Age material culture of Anatolia.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

List of Figures viii

Notes on Contributors xi

Contributor Addresses xiii

1 Introduction: For a More Capacious History of Archaeology Benjamin Anderson Felipe Rojas 1

Part I Comparison and Its Limits

2 Archaeophilia: A Diagnosis and Ancient Case Studies Felipe Rojas 8

3 The Virtues of Oblivion: Africa and the People without Antiquarianism Alfredo González-Ruibal 31

Part II Contact in the Americas

4 Las Relaciones Mediterratlánticas: Comparative Antiquarianism and Everyday Archaeology in Castile and Spanish America, 1575-1586 Byron Ellsworth Hamann 49

5 Ancient Artifice: The Production of Antiquity and the Social Roles of Ruins in the Heartland of the Inca Empire Steve Kosiba 72

6 Inventing the Antiquities of New Spain: Motolinía and the Mexican Antiquarian Traditions Giuseppe Marcocci 109

Part III Contact in Ottoman Lands

7 Rivaling Elgin: Ottoman Governors and Archaeological Agency in the Morea Emily Neumeier 134

8 "… That "We Trusted Not to Arab Notions of Archaeology": Reading the Grand Narrative Against the Grain Eva-Maria Troelenberg 161

9 Forgetting Athens Benjamin Anderson 184

10 Coda: Not for Lumpers Only Peter N. Miller 210

Index 220

Editorial Reviews

"[W]ell-presented and enjoyable collection of essays... This book is a central contribution to the study of antiquarianism and contributes to the histories of naturalists, the history of archaeology as an emerging discipline, and the pedigrees of museum collections."

Volume 5.2 (Fall 2020) History of Humanities

"Antiquarianisms: Contact, Conflict, Comparison is an important contribution to the study of antiquarianism. It seeks to challenge and expand our understanding of the word, exploring and comparing antiquarian traditions at various points of time in different parts of the world. In addition to challenging what antiquarianism is, several essays also explore the role of anti-antiquarianism in certain societies. Primarily composed of papers from a symposium at Brown University in 2015 (“Antiquarianisms Across the Atlantic”), this volume is exceptionally organized..."

Bryn Mawr Classical Review - Katherine A. P. Iselin

"[…] a collection of ten papers that approach the complex question of antiquarianism in a variety of ways."

Antiquity

"...a demonstration of the historical dynamism within two discrete locales of antiquarian endeavour is very welcome, particularly as it underscores an important truth: that antiquarianism can provide a more conducive space to explore, in concert with people who are not specialists, the diverse connections between past and present."

European Journal of Archaeology