to a certain degree Sklena ́r (1983: 123–6), who think that nationalism con-
stituted a threat to cultural evolutionism and its eventual dismissal. This, they
think, took place when scholars moved towards the adoption of the culture-
historical perspective in theWrst decades of the twentieth century. The
following pages will reveal, however, that the belief in evolutionism was not
contrary to the nationalist cause. Late nineteenth-century archaeologists
believed in the evolutionary theories to a greater or lesser extent. Despite
this, they also became deeply implicated in the construction of their national
past, to a degree not seen in previous decades. Culture-history did not oppose
evolutionism; it accepted its tenets and moved beyond them.
Several caveats are needed at this point. To start with, it is important to
realize that not all of those who we would nowadays refer to as evolutionists
perceived themselves as such. In this light it may be worth establishing a
distinction between evolutionistssensu latuand evolutionistssensu strictu.
The former group had faith in positivism, believed in both progress and
decadence, and had conWdence in the superiority of the white race. Evolu-
tionistssensu strictuwent further and assumed that an inevitable linear
evolution of human cultural and physical development followed similar
stages everywhere. Unless the latter is mentioned, in this chapter the term
evolutionist will refer to the former. It should also be clear that evolutionism
did not equate with Darwinism, an evolutionary theory that stood for
the arbitrary character of natural selection to explain the transformation of
species through time. Another issue is that of positivism and its relation to
evolutionism and nationalism. The positivist philosophy held that scientists
should not theorize beyond the basic evolutionist parameters. The role of
the scientist was to develop the methods and analytical tools to study objects
scientiWcally and rationally through observation and logical comparison with
similar objects. Positivism began to aVect the way in which archaeology was
written. Personal accounts were largely abandoned and substituted at this
time by texts written in a more impersonal and distant style with a greater use
of passives. The majority of the scholarly community subscribed to positiv-
ism, to the idea of progress and, therefore, to a certain evolutionary under-
standing of the historical process. Yet, positivism did not oppose nationalism,
in the sense that nationalism deeply inXuenced the object and scope of
archaeological study. This could be a topic intimately involved in the national
cause such as the scientiWc search for a particular race in the past—the Goths,
Romans, Slavs, and so on. A main concern was the search for their geograph-
ical location, an issue that was rationally investigated in an area which very
frequently only covered the precise territory demarcated by the modern
frontiers of the researcher’s nation.
Evolutionism and Positivism 369