Within monumental archaeology a major distinction was made between the
archaeology of the Great Civilizations, that of other civilizations—in America
and Asia—and national archaeology. Despite these divisions which have deeply
marked the discipline, in the years under discussion in this chapter there were
commonalities in the way in which material culture was treated. The method of
typology was widely accepted during this period to the extent that for some it
became an end in itself. Seriation was recognized as one of the most useful tools
to establish chronology. Less widespread, the stratigraphic method timidly
started to be imposed as one of the common practices in excavation.
Histories of archaeology dealing with the early years of the twentieth
century have shown a quasi-obsession with theWgure of Gustaf Kossinna
(1858–1931). He supported the concept of national archaeology, and looked
for the geographical spread of the Germanic race, whom he thought was
superior to any other. The preceding pages have shown, however, not only
that there is much more to archaeology than prehistoric archaeology—
Kossinna’s mainWeld of research—but, more importantly, that many of the
revolutions supposedly started by him were very much present in the pre-
ceding period. If there was anything which characterized the archaeology of
the last four decades of the nineteenth century it was its emphasis on race and
national archaeology. The analysis of how this continued in the early decades
of the twentieth century has been partly impeded, in some countries, by an
unwillingness to accept that the belief in racism and its oVshoot, eugenics,
which was widespread at this time (Barkan 1992), could have aVected the
study of the past in other countries than Germany and, perhaps, Italy. Equally
needing analysis is the extent to which some early twentieth-century archae-
ologists may have become part of theWght against the manipulative and
speculative hypotheses that hadXourished in the name of science.
The example of Kossinna, however, illustrates an aspect that has not been
widely analysed in the history of archaeology: that of scientiWc networks.
Once the number of academics had grown to the extent it had at the end of
the nineteenth century, the relationship between nationalism and archaeology
became naturalized and, therefore, gradually less important. In its place there
were, increasingly, other considerations: one of them the establishment of
academic networks some of whose precedents have been mentioned in the
previous pages (mainly, the competing international congresses). It would not
make sense, therefore, for a book on twentieth-century archaeology to take as
the main focus of discussion nationalism and imperialism. These were
inXuential up to the Second World War and in the period following decol-
onization, but they were less part of the story than in the period this volume
has dealt with, the nineteenth century.
Evolutionism and Positivism 397