This was not in its use of the argument of the past—for this was already widely
accepted from Antiquity. 1 Rather, by turning the study of the past to the service
of the nation, and integrating it as one of the main elements of nationhood, the
study of the past became included in administrative reform, the result being its
social and institutional reorganization. Institutionalization brought a major
shift with respect to previous periods. In itsWrst decades as a successful
political ideology nationalism meant not only a deWnite rupture from previous
periods in the institutionalization of the study of the historical past (Burrow
1981; Cirujano Marı ́net al. 1985) but also subsequently of archaeology as well.
Only from the 1860s and 1870s, as will be argued in Chapter 13, would changes
in the character of nationalism—particularly the promotion of the essentialist
element into nationalism in what has been called ethnic nationalism (Hobs-
bawm 1990: 22; Smith 1976a: 74–5)—aVect archaeological practice and theory
to an extent previously unheard of. Nonetheless, with their theories, archae-
ologists also had an input—albeit somewhat modest—in the remodelling of
the practice of nationalism.
THE PAST IN THE PRE-NATIONALIST ERA: FROM THE
RENAISSANCE TO THE REFORMATION PERIODThe three centuries before the French Revolution are crucial in the under-
standing of two apparently independent issues: the rise of nationalism and the
promotion of archaeology as a professional discipline. Most scholars looking
for the reasons behind the emergence of nationalismWrst turn their eyes to the
eighteenth century, to the era of the Enlightenment and the beginnings of
industrialization. Others, however, go further back and draw attention to the
discovery of America and the rise of vernacular languages. 2 The latter, though,
would not have been possible without the revolutionary intellectual changes
which occurred during the transition from the medieval period to the Re-
naissance in Italy during the fourteenth andWfteenth centuries. From the
sixteenth century the eVect of these changes would then spread throughout
the Western world. It is from this point that this book starts with the search
for the roots of nationalism and its interest in the past. To a limited extent it
1 See Baines (1989); Finley (1975: 22); Lintott (1986); Schnapp (1993: ch. 1); Sparkes (1989);
Van Seters (1997). A few comments about this are made in Chapter 7.
2 Among those identifying the eighteenth century and the beginnings of industrialization we
Wnd Gellner (1983); Hobsbawm (1990); Kedourie (1966); Smith (1976b). Those looking back to
the lateWfteenth and sixteenth centuries are Breuilly (1982) and Anderson (1991). To the
medieval era go authors such as Tipton (1972); Bjørnet al. (1994); and Hastings (1997).
Antiquities and Political Prestige 31