other thanks not only to the diVusion of ideas by the printed word but also
through those who kept moving from the metropolis to the colony and vice
versa. In archaeology this mutual impact becomes clear when we observe that
the trends in the development of archaeology throughout the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries observed in Europe itself can also be seen in the
colonies. Thus, as well as in the metropolis, in the colonies classical culture
was considered as the origin of civilization. Racial studies grew in importance.
There was a search for golden ages, a growth of institutionalization through-
out the period, an increasing acceptance of prehistoric and post-classical
remains as periods worth studying, and greater links were established between
archaeology as a scientiWc discipline with other apparently very diVerentWelds
such as religion. Some of these trends had been fostered by interaction with
the colonial world. Experiments in archaeological heritageWrst established in
the colonies—as seen in North Africa with the state Inspection Ge ́ne ́rale des
Monuments Historiques et des Muse ́es Arche ́ologiques (the Service for
Monuments and Archaeological Museums) of 1847 and in British India in
1861 with the Archaeological Survey of India—would thenWnd an equivalent
in the metropolis. Many French intellectuals spent several years in the col-
onies and this would shape their understanding of the archaeological remains
found back in their own countries. This mutual interaction between the
metropolis and the colony becomes especially obvious in the case of prehis-
toric archaeology, an area towards which we will turn our attention in the
following chapter.
ANTIQUITY AND RELIGION IN COLONIAL RUSSIAIn the following pages the history of nineteenth and early twentieth-century
archaeology in the Russian colonies is analysed. This has not been an easy
section to write. Despite the existence of a few synopses on the relationship
between Slavic archaeology and nationalism during the period with which
this book deals (Curta 2001; Shnirelman 1996), nothing similar exists, at
least in a language other than Russian, regarding any of the other types of
archaeology with which Russian archaeologists engaged, with the exception,
perhaps, of the archaeology of the Silk Road covered in Chapter 7. The
survey undertaken in the course of our investigation on the major works
written on the history of archaeology has revealed that this is by no means a
novel situation. In 1908 Adolf Michaelis in hisA Century of Archaeological
Discoveriesdid not include information about Russia. More thanWfty years
later, in his famousA Hundred and Fifty Years of Archaeology, Glyn Daniel
Russian Empire and French North Africa 247