| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Stephen L. Dyson. In Pursuit of Ancient Pasts: A History of Classical Archaeology in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. 2006. Pp. xv, 316. $45.00.
Over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, university and museum-based German scholars led the transformation of classical archaeology from an amateur pastime—often associated since the Renaissance with aristocrats—to a specialized profession. With varying degrees of speed and enthusiasm, Americans, Britons, and the French followed the German lead. In the decades before World War I, all four countries established archaeological institutes in Rome and Athens. The archaeological traditions of these four powers, and of the core classical countries of Italy and Greece, are the central focus of Stephen L. Dyson's book. Russian, Scandinavian, and Iberian classical archaeology, along with prehistoric, Minoan-Mycenaean, and Near Eastern archaeology, are mentioned only in passing. The chronological cutoff is the 1970s.	1
The international and national politics of archaeology receive careful scrutiny, with the Napoleonic, Franco-Prussian, and world wars all deeply affecting the field. Influential members of political and social elites, including a growing middle-class component, identified with classical antiquity as a means of enhancing legitimacy at home and imperial ventures overseas. Benito Mussolini posed as the new Augustus, sponsoring huge excavations in Rome, the port of Ostia, and Libya. Although no conqueror like his famous uncle, Napoleon III wrote a biography of Julius Caesar and emphasized Roman archaeology. Massive excavations in the Athenian agora reflected America's vision of itself as the greatest heir of ancient Greek democracy.	. . .

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