9781800084513
9781800084520
A study of life-writing as a vital part of the history of archaeology and a growing field of scholarship within the discipline.
Travels and adventures of the “great archaeologists” have generated centuries worth of bestselling books that, in turn, have shaped the public perception of archaeology. The lives of archaeologists are entangled with histories of museums and collections, developments in science and scholarship, and narratives of nationalism and colonialism into the present. In recent years, life-writing has played an important role in the surge of new research in the history of archaeology, including ground-breaking studies of discipline formation, institutionalization, and social and intellectual networks. Sources such as diaries, wills, film, and the growing body of digital records are powerful tools for highlighting the contributions of hitherto marginalized archaeological lives including many pioneering women, hired laborers, and other “hidden hands.”
This book brings together critical perspectives on life-writing in the history of archaeology from leading figures in the field. These include studies of archive formation and use, the concept of “dig-writing” as a distinctive genre of archaeological creativity, and reviews of new sources for already well-known lives. Several chapters reflect on the experience of life-writing, review the historiography of the field, and assess the intellectual value and significance of life-writing as a genre. Together, they work to problematize underlying assumptions about this genre, foregrounding methodology, social theory, ethics, and other practice-focused frameworks in conscious tension with previous practices.
Travels and adventures of the “great archaeologists” have generated centuries worth of bestselling books that, in turn, have shaped the public perception of archaeology. The lives of archaeologists are entangled with histories of museums and collections, developments in science and scholarship, and narratives of nationalism and colonialism into the present. In recent years, life-writing has played an important role in the surge of new research in the history of archaeology, including ground-breaking studies of discipline formation, institutionalization, and social and intellectual networks. Sources such as diaries, wills, film, and the growing body of digital records are powerful tools for highlighting the contributions of hitherto marginalized archaeological lives including many pioneering women, hired laborers, and other “hidden hands.”
This book brings together critical perspectives on life-writing in the history of archaeology from leading figures in the field. These include studies of archive formation and use, the concept of “dig-writing” as a distinctive genre of archaeological creativity, and reviews of new sources for already well-known lives. Several chapters reflect on the experience of life-writing, review the historiography of the field, and assess the intellectual value and significance of life-writing as a genre. Together, they work to problematize underlying assumptions about this genre, foregrounding methodology, social theory, ethics, and other practice-focused frameworks in conscious tension with previous practices.
Table of Contents
List of figures and tables List of contributors Acknowledgements Introduction Gabriel Moshenska and Clare Lewis Part I: Critical perspectives 1 Biography in science studies and the historiography of archaeology: Some methodological guidelines Marc-Antoine Kaiser 2 A plea for ’higher criticism’ in disciplinary history: Life-writing sources in the history of German-speaking Egyptology Thomas L. Gertzen 3 Toward a prosopography of archaeology from the margins Thea De Armond 4 Crafting an institution, reshaping a discipline: Intellectual biography, the archive and philanthropic culture Jeffrey Abt 5 An epistolary corpus: Beyond the margins of ‘official’ archives, T.E. Peet’s First World War correspondence Clare Lewis 6 Archaeology, social networks and lives: ‘Dig writing’ and the history of archaeology Bart Wagemakers Part II: Sources and networks 7 The accidental linguist: Herbert Thompson’s contribution to Egyptian language studies traced through his archive Catherine Ansorge 8 Margerie Venables Taylor (1881-1963): An unsung heroine of Roman Britain? Martha Lovell Stewart 9 Father Alfred-Louis Delattre (1850-1932) versus Paul Gauckler (1866-1911): The struggle to control archaeology at Carthage at the turn of the twentieth century Joann Freed 10 Hugh Falconer: botanist, palaeontologist, controversialist Tim Murray 11 Personal and professional networks in early nineteenth-century Egyptology: The letters of Conrad Leemans to Thomas Pettigrew Gabriel Moshenska 12 Life-writing Vere Gordon Childe from secret surveillance files Katie Meheux Part III: Reflections on practice 13 Alternative narratives in the history of archaeology: Exploring diaries as a form of reflexivity Oscar Moro Abadía 14 Archaeologists, curators, collectors and donors: reflecting on the past through archaeological lives David Gill 15 The ghosts of Mary Ann Severn Newton: Grief, an imagined life and (auto)biography Debbie Challis Index