Roman and medieval archaeologyIn Parts I and II of the book it was pointed out that the image of the archaeology
of the Great Civilizations—and especially that of the Roman Empire—was used
to legitimize the modern European empires. This led to the creation all over
Europe of university chairs to research the antiquities of Italy, Greece, Turkey
and elsewhere. Yet, it is less clear how this aVected institutionalization of the
Roman antiquities found within national territory. Further analyses of the eVect
of the emphasis on Celtic, Slavic and Germanic archaeology in Roman archae-
ology are still needed. The data seem to indicate that Roman archaeology was
indeed supported by the state, perhaps pointing at several discourses about the
past running parallel to each other. An example of this is the admiration by the
French Emperor Napole ́on III (1808–73, r. 1848–70) for Caesar which led him to
promote excavations of the Roman sites connected to the siege of Ale ́sia (Mont
Auxois) besieged by Caesar in 52bce—the main reason behind its excavation
was not it being Vercingetorix’s hillfort (King 2001: 115). Also, Theodor
Mommsen, the writer of the inXuentialHistory of Romeof 1854–6 and the
Professor of Ancient History at the University of Berlin from 1858, had the idea
of the RLK or Reichslimeskommision (the Imperial Commission for the Study
of the Roman Frontier) in 1892. The debate that surrounded its creation
exempliWes the confusion over Roman archaeology in Europe. In the case of
the RLK, the question was whether it should be controlled by the German
Archaeological Institute—the body that managed excavations abroad, including
those in Italy—or be kept independent of it? In the end theWrst option
was chosen and the RGK or Ro ̈misch-Germanische Kommission was created
(Marchand 1996a: 173–4, 177–9).
The number of university chairs for the teaching on the Roman and medieval
antiquities went on growing in this period. Teaching on them already existed in
institutions such as the French E ́cole de Chartes and the Spanish Escuela
Superior de Diploma ́tica (Chapter 12). There were newly created chairs for
numismatics, epigraphy, and history of art. New chair holders were, for ex-
ample, the numismatist Giuseppe Fiorelli (1823–96) in Italy in 1861 (Barbanera
1998: 19) and Mihailo Valtrovic (1839–1915) in Belgrade in 1881 (Babic 2001:
172–3; Milinkovic 2006). In Britain, although the teaching of archaeology in
universities such as Cambridge and Oxford seems to have been more linked to
the study of the archaeology of the Great Civilizations (Beard 1999; Medwid
2000: passim), some of the professors spent some of their time on Roman
Britain. This was the case of Robert Carr Bosanquet (1871–1935), who was
the Director of the British School at Athens (1900–6) and later Professor of
Classical Archaeology in Liverpool (1906–20). While in Liverpool he
devoted his energies to the excavation of the Roman fort of Housesteads by
390 National Archaeology in Europe