strong, prestigious national archaeology. The aim of this block of chapters is to
examine the reasons and processes by which prehistoric, medieval and even
Roman archaeology in Europe gained in status to the extent that the state
considered it important enough to pay for professionals to study, curate and
teach about it. AttentionWrst focuses on the French Revolution and its aftermath
(Chapter 11). In Western Europe, in contrast to the awe inspired by the classical
Great Civilizations, in theWrst half of the century the antiquities of the national
past did not arouse the same emotions in most learned individuals. As in the
eighteenth century (Chapter 2), most scholars saw their own national antiquities
as less appealing than the antiquities of the ancient Great Civilizations. Yet, it was
in the framework of the construction of a state machinery that the earliest state
museums for national antiquities—in countries such as France, Prussia and
Scandinavia—were opened as institutions aimed to educate. Nationalism is
based on the nation, but for nations to be believable a past for them is needed.
A past provides legitimacy to the very existence of the nation. While there was no
fear that anyone would dispute France’s right to be a nation—and this explains
the failure of the Museum of French Monuments which had to close in 1816—
pride in the nation was badly needed in other parts of Europe which had been
aVected by the Napoleonic upheaval. In Scandinavia great quantities of antiqui-
ties appeared following the devastation brought by agricultural development.
In the case of Denmark, the rapid transformation of rural areas was intensiWed
by new lands put to the plough by the moneyed classes of society. They looked
for alternative sources of income following the ruin of maritime trade after the
destruction of theXeet at the start of the century. This damage propelled
archaeology—especially the study of prehistoric mounds, particularly visible
because of theXat landscape—to centre-stage during the Romantic Movement.
An early nineteenth-century national song expressed the power of the past thus:
What the hand shapes is the evidence of the spirit. The ancient peasants built and
fought withXint. Every chip youWnd in Danish soil is from the soul of those who built
the kingdom. If you yourself want toWnd the roots of your existence, value the
treasure they left behind!
(in Kristiansen 1992: 19).A few decades later the curator of the archaeology collection in Copenhagen,
Jens Jacob Asmussen Worsaae (1821–85), connected knowledge about the
past with freedom, independence, progress, and race. Worsaae was one of the
Wrst professional archaeologists clearly to advocate antiquity as metaphor for
the nation. The ambiguity displayed by much of the archaeological evidence
made it possible, in Denmark and elsewhere in Europe, for interpretations to
be inspired by nationalism. This proved useful for the state and the appoint-
ments of archaeologists as state functionaries, with the remit of dealing with
20 Archaeology in the Nineteenth Century