International Congress of Prehistoric Anthropology and Archaeology (CIAPP
in its French initials) held at Copenhagen in 1869. Two years later at the CIAPP
in Bologna the Polish archaeologist Count Aleksander Przezdziecki proposed
the creation of an international committee for type maps but, although set up,
no successful work came from it. A very diVerent story resulted from the
organization of a parallel working group at the meeting of the German
Anthropological Society in Swerin also in 1871. This was led by the keeper of
the Royal Cabinet of Naturalia (Ko ̈niglichen Naturalienkabinett) in Stuttgart
from 1855, Oscar Fraas (1824–97), with work by E. von Tro ̈ltsch. After only
two years the committee was working on 142 distribution maps that covered
the whole of Germany at a scale 1:200,000. However, onlyWfteen—those
related to Bavaria—wereWnished in the end and the committee was disbanded
in 1889 (Sklena ́r 1983: 112).
Although the transmission of ideas, as illustrated in the examples men-
tioned above, was common, it is also important to acknowledge that on many
occasions national rivalries led to a reluctance to accept theories coming from
other countries and this even led to the marginalization of those scholars
considered to be too sympathetic to other nations’ ideas. This had an eVect in
many areas: from archaeological practice and interpretation, to the organiza-
tion of congresses and museum displays (Massin 2001: 305–9). The rivalry
between France and Germany after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, for
example, led to two major international congresses of prehistory being devel-
oped in parallel. Central and Eastern European archaeologists met in the
congresses organized by the German and the Vienna anthropological societies
(Sklena ́r 1983: 107). 2 Western European archaeologists met in the Inter-
national Congresses of Prehistoric Anthropology and Archaeology (Congre`s
International d’anthropologie et d’arche ́ologie pre ́historique, CIAPP). 3 In
them the imperial overtones of French nationalism became clear. Despite
2 I am unaware of in-depth analysis of the participants in the German-speaking congresses. It
would be interesting to see whether the interest in the Aryans and the belief in the superiority of
the Nordic race encouraged Scandinavian and British archaeologists specializing in periods
from proto-history onwards to attend the German-speaking congresses. Yet, it may well be the
case that most of them attended other types of congresses than those organized under the
umbrella of anthropology.
3 There is some confusion about when and where theWrst congress took place and under
what name. The congress organized in La Spezia (Italy) in 1865 was that of the Italian Society of
Natural Sciences (Richard 1999: 105). In 1866 the congress in Neuchaˆtel (Switzerland) had the
title of International Palaeo-Ethnological Congress (Clermont and Smith 1990: 98). It is from
the following congress, held in Paris in 1867, that the meetings received the name of Inter-
national Congress of Anthropology and Prehistoric Archaeology. The meetings moved venue
from Italy (1865, 1871) to France (1867, 1889, 1900), England (1868), Denmark (1869),
Belgium (1872), Hungary (1876), Portugal (1880), Russia (1892) and Monaco (1906). Partici-
pants included scholars from most European countries and, exceptionally, from elsewhere in the
world such as Japan and Argentina (Richard 1992: 194).
380 National Archaeology in Europe