Where did archaeology originate?

Question

What country did archaeology originate in?

Answer 1

Italy.

From the Early Renaissance on, Humanists have been rooting around in Ancient Roman buildings and ruins out of curiousity, or to expand their collections of antiquities. Young painters from all over Europe came to Rome to scetch and paint Roman buildings and monuments as part of their training (and hence the origin of the "Prix de Rome"). Flavio Biondo, an Italian Renaissance humanist historian (who coined the term "Middle Ages"), created a systematic and documented guide to the ruins and topography of ancient Rome in the early 15th century, for which he has been called an early founder of archaeology. Another name later on was Giovanni Battista Piranesi (4 October 1720 - 9 November 1778), an Italian artist famous for his etchings of Roman ruins.

"It was only in the 19th century, however, that the systematic study of the past through its physical remains began to be carried out in a manner recognisable to modern students of archaeology. Prior to this, excavation had tended to be haphazard; the importance of concepts such as stratification and context was completely overlooked."

The British were early collectors, but not always without controversy. " In 1803, there was widespread criticism of Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin for removing the "Elgin Marbles" from [...] the Parthenon in Athens; but the marble sculptures themselves were valued by his critics only for their aesthetic qualities, not for the information they might supply about Greek civilisation."

There were the British vicars recording local barrows, "standing stones" and stone circles : John Leland, John Aubrey and William Stukeley.

"Thomas Jefferson, possibly inspired by his experiences in Europe, supervised the systematic excavation of an Native American burial mound on his land in Virginia in 1784."

And Napoleon ordered excavations to be carried out during his Egyptian campaign of 1798. "The emperor had taken with him a force of 500 civilian scientists, specialists in fields such as biology, chemistry and languages, in order to carry out a full study of the ancient civilisation. The work of Jean-François Champollion in deciphering the Rosetta stone to discover the hidden meaning of hieroglyphics proved the key to the study of Egyptology."

"History of archaeology", Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_archaeology

"Giovanni Battista Piranesi", Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Battista_Piranesi

Answer 2

Development of archaeology as a field of discipline, is a very long process. You can see some important dates of archaeological events here: http://archaeology-faq.blogspot.com/2007/02/how-did-archaeology-start-as-field-of.html

It goes back to 16th century. But for me, modern archaeology is much more than earlier "antiquities collection making". So, modern archaeology started at the end of the 19th century (1880-90s). At these times, many sites excavated and the aim of archaeological investigation changed. Before, people collected artifacts just for pleasure (or treasure !) but at the end of 19th century, people started to see archaeology as an answers to their questions about the past.

About this long process, we cannot say a certain country as a homeland of archaeology. It is the continent of Europe. But people in many countries individually developed ideas about archaeology. France is the home of Paleolithic archaeology, Germany is well known about old languages etc. Every European country had its own interests about archaeology. We must say, every country has its own archaeology tradition. So we cannot say a country as the origin of archaeology. But we can say western Europe is the origin.

Answer 3

For thousands of years, people everywhere have discovered artifacts from previous civilizations. However, it wasn't until relatively recent times that archaeology was established as a science.

Answer 4

probably Britain, because museums in the 1800s payed large sums of money for people who could recover ancient artifacts from foreign countries

Answer 5

Egypt AKA grave robbers which is what they amount to
can explain but not here