The analysis of the connections between the political context of research and
the archaeology of the Greek and Roman civilizations in this period needs also
to consider the reasons behind the emphasis placed on language and race. As
had happened in the archaeological studies of the northern and central Euro-
pean nations (Chapter 12 and others), the archaeology of Italy and Greece also
became increasingly inspired by these topics. Together with liberal ideologies
held by scholars such as Theodor Mommsen, the same authors often proposed
the importance of the study of race and language in antiquity. For the latter, for
example, philology provided the data needed to reconstruct its ancient history,
which would in fact be read as a direct equivalent to the race history of Greeks
and Romans. Racial discussions on Greek archaeology revolved around Aryan-
ism. The belief of the existence of an Aryan race came from language studies,
and in particular, the discovery made at the turn of the century of the linkage of
most languages in Europe with Sanskrit in India, a linkage which could only be
explained by the existence of a proto-language (Chapter 8). The spread of
Indo-European languages from a primeval homeland could only be explained
as the result of an ancient migration of a people—the Aryans. These were
argued to have been the invaders of Greek lands who had created the prehis-
toric civilizations uncovered in Mycenae by Heinrich Schliemann and, from
1900, Knossos by Arthur Evans (McDonald & Thomas 1990; Quinn 1996;
Whitley 2000: 37). The Aryan race was judged superior to any other. The
perfection of the Greek body displayed in classical sculpture was interpreted as
the ideal representation of the Aryan physique (Leoussi 1998: 16–19). Classical
Greeks personiWed, therefore, the epitome of Aryanness, that was also found in
their modern heirs, the Germanic nations, including Britain (Leoussi 1998;
Poliakov 1996 (1971); Turner 1981). Initially, there were no such claims of
purity regarding the ancient Romans. Yet, the Villanova cemetery, discovered
in 1853, was interpreted as that of a population who had arrived from the
north—the Indo-Europeans—responsible in the long term for creating the
Latin civilization. Later, however, racial purity became an issue.
THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE SUBLIME PORTEThe Tanzimat years (1839–76)The nineteenth century was a period of extreme change for Turkey. As the
centre of the Ottoman Empire, it endured a profound crisis in which Con-
stantinople (today’s Istanbul), the capital of lands in Europe, Asia and Africa,
saw its territorial power diminish dramatically until theWnal collapse of the
110 Archaeology of Informal Imperialism