13
Evolutionism and Positivism (c. 1860–1900)
INTRODUCTIONIt is not least in the great art auctions that a phenomenon has become visible that has
hitherto been conWned to the sphere of politics. The trade in antiquities has become
aVected by a national movement insofar as every country endeavours to buy their
own pieces of art. Whereas in the past the English or French used to buy anything
they liked in other countries, irrespective of the origin of an object, there has been a
clear shift in both England and France towards [national] antiquities, even in those
cases where these are undoubtedly of a lower artistic value than available
foreign ones. The Englishmen tend to buy the English, the Frenchmen the
French, the Germans the German, and the Belgians and Dutchmen the Dutch old
works of art. This is not true merely of historical museums but applies to private
collectors.
(Zimmer 2003a: 197).This was the way that one of the executive members of the Swiss National
Museum phrased, at the end of the nineteenth century, the changes that had
taken place in the previous decades: the interest in the national past was
replacing the former emphasis on the Great Civilizations. Another transform-
ation that had occurred was that the study of prehistory, rather than the
history of the Roman and medieval periods, was deWnitively on the agenda.
This change of emphasis, which took place between the 1860s and 1880s, had
been in motion throughout the century but hadWnally crystallized in the last
two decades of the century. By then, nationalism had transformed its char-
acter into a predominantly conservative doctrine. Another adjustment was
also apparent. The acceptance of evolutionism had emerged as a major
scientiWc theory to explain change. Issues of nationalism, regionalism, and
imperialism became intertwined with scientiWc theory and further nourished
the interest in the remote past. The development of methods to study
evolution in the natural sciences promoted a scientiWc approach to the
prehistoric period. At the same time, this aVected attitudes towards the
Roman and the medieval past. In this chapter, therefore, I reject the view
expressed by other historians of archaeology such as Trigger (1989: 148) and