Philology, the study of documents in all their aspects, was the focus of the
school (Berce ́1997). Teaching about material culture produced in the past,
and then only that of medieval and post-medieval archaeology, would start in
1847 (Thirion 1997).
CONCLUSION: TOWARDS THE LIBERAL REVOLUTIONSThis chapter has explored how the national past was regarded during the
revolutionary period of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. As
indicated in Chapter 2, the concerns over the past had been key elements in
the emergence of eighteenth-century pre-Romanticism and continued at the
turn of the century at least until the 1820s. This is the reason why, in accounts
about the history of archaeology in Central Europe, authors such as Karel
Skena ́r include the early years of the nineteenth century in a chapter, dealing
with the Enlightenment. The connections between the Enlightenment and the
revolutionary age are indeed very strong. Issues discussed in this chapter, such
as patriotism and the search for the roots of what made each nation unique,
were already present in the eighteenth century (Chapter 2). Authors like Peter
Fritzsche (2004: 13) have also indicated that a diVerence between the Enlight-
enment and the years of the French Revolution was the wider spectrum of
people acquiring a historical consciousness; it was no longer restricted to an
elite class but was shared by people of modest means such as artisans, soldiers
and travellers.
The growing and widening antiquarian interest in the national past, there-
fore, must be considered as an exacerbation of previous trends. Connected
to this, it is important to note that in theWrst years of the nineteenth century it
would have been diYcult to establish a clear-cut division between those dealing
with the antiquities of the ancient Great Civilizations and those dealing with
the material remains of their own country. This had been the case of Bernard
de Montfauc ̧on (1655–1741) a century before, for whom the interest in the
classical civilizations led to his involvement in the study of French antiquities
(Chapter 2). This example can be mirrored by many more in the period under
analysis in this chapter, though two examples suYce to illustrate this point.
In Britain Sir Richard Colt Hoare (1758–1838), who studied classical antiqui-
ties while travelling the Grand Tour, later focused his attention on his
native Wessex (Marsden 1983: 15). In Russia, Count Nikolai Petrovich
Rumyantsev (1754–1826), who subsidized the excavation of Scythian
burials, then supported the investigation of Slavic antiquities. In other cases
the value of prehistoric antiquities was entirely based upon their supposed
The Early Search (1789–1820) 335