the consideration of social disciplines as products of history (Bourdieu 1993;
2000; 2004).
Perhaps historians and sociologists of science’s lack of enthusiasm to
engage with archaeology derives from its sheer lack of homogeneity. The
term comes from the Greek arkhaiologia, the study of what is ancient. It
most commonly encompasses the analysis of archaeological remains, but the
emphasis on what body of data lies within its remit has always diVered—and
still does—from country to country and within a country between groups of
scholars of the various academic traditions. For some it revolves around the
study of artistic objects, as well as of ancient inscriptions and coins, for others
it encompasses all manifestations of culture from every period of human
existence. In many parts of the world the teaching of archaeology is tightly
bound up with anthropology, in others with history, still in others with
geology. University departments in which archaeologists of all sorts of spe-
cializations have been put under the same roof are mainly restricted to the
English-speaking world, and they are the result of a development that timidly
started around the First World War, but diVerences still remain (see, for
example, the contrast between the meetings of the Society for American
Archaeology and the American Institute of Archaeology). In most countries
medieval archaeology is only taught in departments of history or the history
of art, and classical archaeology in those teaching classics and ancient history.
The study of the material remains of the past has also attracted historians,
philologists, historians of art, architects, doctors, botanists, geologists, palae-
ontologists, anthropologists, clerics, and members of many other professions.
A certain homogeneity has only appeared in the last few years under the
umbrella of public archaeology, which seems to have similar objectives every-
where in the world.
This diversity is certainly not new. In the eighteenth century, a distinction
was drawn between historians, who focused on rhetoric and grand narratives,
and antiquarians. Although both admired and made use of classical antiquity
as one of their main sources, the antiquarians believed that antiquities could
provide new information not contained in the texts written by the classical
authors (Sweet 2004: 3). Further subdivisions appeared in the 1870s and
1880s, when archaeologists became separated from antiquarians. The term
archaeologist came ‘to signify the trained and respected professional’ as
opposed to that of antiquarian (Levine 1986: 36, 39, 89). Referring to the
nineteenth century, Alain Schnapp (1991) distinguishes between philological
archaeology and natural archaeology. The Wrst type had emerged from
Winckelmann’s work on Greek and Roman sculpture and comprised all of
those who studied the monuments of classical antiquity assisted by data from
written documents. The second was based on typology and was closer to
2 Archaeology in the Nineteenth Century