classes of society wanting to reinforce their position in society. The argument
of the past provided them with new devices to create a completely new
political framework in which to exercise their power. They subsidized anti-
quarians and historians to search for the idealized past they needed. Only
those willing to supply their sponsors with what they requested were able to
subsist and proceed with their own intellectual pursuits. Thus, in the process
of recovering the past its meaning was accommodated, tamed, to the interests
of the social and political elite. Outside Italy, and especially in areas far from
the centre of the ancient Roman world, once the past had acquired weight as a
political and social argument, it was possible for the monarchs, aristocrats,
and other well-oVmembers of the society—and therefore for the antiqua-
rians they sponsored—to assert the importance of their own non-classical
antiquity. This, the barbarian past, included both the medieval as well as the
prehistoric periods. Both the classical and the barbarian past evolved in
parallel ways, and changed just as the socio-political (and not only the
intellectual) context in which they were being studied was itself trans-
formed. This was not a unidirectional relationship. Intellectuals, with their
ideas, assisted in maintaining existing debates and also originated new ones.
However, at the same time, the constraints imposed by their benefactors
directed their research to a degree not suYciently acknowledged in most
histories of antiquarianism and archaeology.
At the start of the chapter mention was made about how the past is
experienced today. On the one hand, there is a physical and symbolic
encounter with ancient objects and imitations of past features in buildings,
paintings and the like. This type of experience has been in fashion for at least
Wve centuries. On the other hand, there is also a more professionalized
embodiment of the past institutionalized in museums, university depart-
ments, heritage bodies and the tourist industry, which has had a shorter
history. Institutionalization represented a dramatic shift in the study of the
past. It meant an important increase in the number of individuals working on
the past, a marked growth in the funding available for its study, its popular-
ization to a degree not known before and the spread of this type of Western
discourse beyond its former geographical limits. The circumstances within
which all these changes occurred are extremely revealing. In 1789 revolution
exploded in France. This was a civilian revolt which contested the previously
sacrosanct royal political power and the social order. The success of the ideas
behind the French Revolution only bore fruit in theWrst half of the nineteenth
century. Increasingly the monarchy lost power—to such an extent that even
its abolition became conceivable. Royal inheritance could no longer constitute
the basis on which states were formed, and a new legitimation was needed.
The concept of nation provided it. The very existence of the nation (and, as
58 Early Archaeology of Great Civilizations