I begin by presenting a very brief overview of historiographic analysis in archaeology, noting that the past two decades have seen a significant expansion in the range and scope of histories of archaeology. An important aspect of this growing interest has been the expanding diversity in accounts of what have long been thought to be the core features of the evolution of the discipline. I then seek to ground the themes identified there through a short and highly partial longitudinal study of the history of British prehistoric archaeology.
The American archaeologist Edgar James Banks (1866-1945) left behind a multifaceted image as an academic, a public scholar, a film producer, and an antiquities dealer. Reading about Banks in the words of others and in his own gives the impression of someone who carefully crafted his image and sought to connect himself to high-profile actors and institutions to promote himself in the eyes of the public. Due to his dealings on the antiquities market, Banks was never fully welcomed into the fold of academic archaeologists, but he sought public recognition through selling cuneiform objects to some of the United States' most prominent people and giving public lectures, the advertisements for which provide insight into how Banks wanted to be seen. In both of these endeavors, Banks reiterated professional appointments that were no longer active and sought out institutions that were recognizable and wellknown. Banks later turned to the film industry, attempting to forge a connection with the glamor of Hollywood and its stars, where, as he did in his justification of importing antiquities, he claimed he was protecting the study of the Bible and of the ancient world from those who would rather see it disappear. Always self-promoting, Banks was a master manipulator of his image, leaving us today with a fractured image of the man and more investigation to do to better understand the depths of the man who is responsible for so many of the cuneiform tablets Americans interact with today.
Austria-Hungary ruled Bosnia and Herzegovina, which had previously been under the Ottomans, from 1878 to 1918, under circumstances often described as 'colonial.' Austro-Hungarian rule was accompanied by extensive archaeological activities. This paper investigates how that archaeology was colonial in its purpose and practice. The Austro-Hungarians regarded Bosnia-Herzegovina as an archaeological 'El Dorado,' largely inaccessible in Ottoman times. While their occupation opened it up, archaeological remains now had to be saved from modernisation works as well as the 'ignorance' and 'vandalism' of local inhabitants. The new government emphatically supported the collection and excavation of archaeological objects across Bosnia-Herzegovina. It decreed their protection, while encouraging subordinate authorities and private citizens to make and report discoveries. Moreover, it established a Provincial Museum in the capital of Sarajevo, which exhibited and published prehistoric and Roman remains, and medieval tombstones. The objects were to teach the population their supposed Bosnian, pro-Habsburg identity, legitimise the Austro-Hungarian rulers as the new Romans, and demonstrate to Europe and the world the success of Austria-Hungary's 'civilising mission' in an 'oriental' country. This 'civilising mission' under military occupation was the strongest indicator of an Austro-Hungarian colonialism. The individual archaeologists, most of whom came from other parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, worked in that colonial situation, whether they supported it or not. Although their finds were not exported to the imperial capital of Vienna, and their archaeology openly relied on local assistance, the science of archaeology served the government as one of the non-violent tools for its soft-power style of rule.
Ethiopia is known to have immense archaeological resources. The central highlands of Ethiopia were one of the regions known to be home to diverse archaeological sites. The area served as a hub for religious and political dynamics during the medieval period, which attracted travelers since the 15th century. Nevertheless, archaeological research began very recently in the 1990s. Since then, most archaeological research has been multi-disciplinary undertakings. This paper aims to synthesize the major archaeological research undertaken so far to define trends and identify aspects left unexplored that are worth future consideration. Over a decade of research engagement of the author in the region, coupled with an understanding of the state of the field from previous works, provides the data set for this paper. The genesis of archaeological research in the region is presented in three major phases: Travelers and early archaeological plotting, major archaeological projects, and the current developments. The cases presented in phase two particularly focus on a cross-cultural reconstruction of the three cultural groups that occupied the region during the medieval period. The findings from one of these projects served as a foundation for the others. Nevertheless, the case of the Shay culture, identified for the first time as a pre-Christian tradition, remains far from complete and warrants further archaeological research. Thus, this article provides an overview of the archaeological resources in the region and research works so far undertaken, while reflecting on the need for further research, conservation, and valorization.
This article explores the entanglement of archaeology and the antiquities trade in Egypt and Sudan during the antiquities rush of the British colonial period. I argue that the buying and selling of archaeological objects played a central role in the business of archaeology, which relied on the cyclical extraction and transfer of financial and archaeological capital. This cycle operated through distinct production stages of funding, acquisition, export, and distribution, each essential to sustaining the business. Archival evidence highlighted here demonstrates that archaeology in Egypt and Sudan was shaped by the economy of supply and demand, and the monetisation of archaeological objects. The article focuses on the roles and transactions of three excavator-suppliers who were involved in British-led excavations: Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, John Garstang and Charles Trick Currelly.
This article explores the entanglement of archaeology and the antiquities trade in Egypt and Sudan during the antiquities rush of the British colonial period. I argue that the buying and selling of archaeological objects played a central role in the business of archaeology, which relied on the cyclical extraction and transfer of financial and archaeological capital. This cycle operated through distinct production stages of funding, acquisition, export, and distribution, each essential to sustaining the business. Archival evidence highlighted here demonstrates that archaeology in Egypt and Sudan was shaped by the economy of supply and demand, and the monetisation of archaeological objects. The article focuses on the roles and transactions of three excavator-suppliers who were involved in British-led excavations: Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, John Garstang and Charles Trick Currelly.
In 1984, archaeologist Bruce Trigger published his tripartite framework for understanding the history of archaeology, citing three main research modes: colonialist, imperialist and nationalist. This article uses Trigger's framework to examine the history of archaeology in Jamaica, as an example of a recently independent former slave colony. The author finds that while archaeology on the island worked to reinforce first colonialist, and later imperialist epistemologies until at least the mid-twentieth century, the development of a nationalist archaeology in Jamaica has faltered since then, in favor of foreign-backed research. Furthermore, the legacy of the hierarchical British racial system in Jamaica, together with the exceptional marginalization of Indigenous Ta & iacute;no culture on the island (compared to other nearby islands in the Caribbean), has resulted in relatively little domestic investment into the island's precolonial archaeology. Instead, much of the highest-profile domestic archeology in Jamaica in the six decades since the country's independence has tended to focus on the origins of the island's maroon communities.
The nineteenth century was a pivotal time for archaeology which aimed to distance itself from its antiquarian roots through the establishment of national bodies, its own methodology and by striving for academic credibility. This was also the time when Britain experienced an explosion of print, with about 125,000 newspaper and periodical titles being published.1 In response, the review journal became a popular and pervasive genre. Although reviews have been used in single-author studies, they have received little attention outside of the literary fields. A recent issue of the Victorian Periodicals Review has, however, demonstrated the potential of reviews as a source for the history of other disciplines.2 This paper will focus on reviews of books on Romano-British archaeology published between 1840 and 1860 to show how they can illuminate the development of archaeology during this formative period. It will reveal that book reviews played a crucial role in shaping and maintaining the scholarly community, helping to determine membership, aims and objectives. Reviews also affected subject methodology, by promoting how to conduct research and disseminate findings. Reviewers found themselves in a powerful position, with a platform to reach and influence the general public and the ability to support or undermine authors and their projects.
This study examines radio and television broadcasts made by prehistorian Vere Gordon Childe. Although the focus is on the BBC, Childe’s work with other global broadcasters is also examined. Childe was one of the first archaeologists to engage with broadcasting, working to ensure that reputable, academic views dominated. He was involved in children’s education, the promotion of regional British identities, the education of military personnel, scientific advocacy, and broadcasting internationalism. Childe combined his radical, left-leaning political interests with his expertise in archaeology and the history of science on air. He used radio to promote both control of public archaeological narratives by a new generation of archaeologists and left-wing ideas about science in society. Examination of these broadcasting activities both expands our knowledge of Childe’s work and reveals the role that mass media played in the global communication of archaeological knowledge during the twentieth century.
Excavation at Nokalakevi in west Georgia has been undertaken as an Anglo-Georgian collaboration since 2001, building on the success of the S. Janashia Museum expedition which started in 1973. In the winter of 1930-31 the very first formal excavation of the site was also a collaborative venture, bringing together specialists from the German Reich, known as the Weimar Republic, and the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. As the Anglo-Georgian Expedition to Nokalakevi marks the 50 th anniversary of the commencement of large-scale excavations, the recent discovery of archive material relating to the excavation led by Dr Alfons Maria Schneider provides a timely opportunity to reflect on the first collaboration at Nokalakevi.
Julie Stein’s professional work was vital to the emergence and development of geoarchaeology as both a discipline and specialized community of practice among archaeologists, especially in North America. On the occasion of her retirement we interviewed Stein to document her reflections on the development of geoarchaeology. Her reflections present unique insights in the practical and intellectual challenges faced by a pioneering geoarchaeologist, especially as a woman in a field dominated by men. This interview helps to document the history of geoarchaeology from one of the preeminent leaders in the field. We present a brief summary of her education and career, including a summary of her key scholarly contributions spanning the development of geoarchaeology as a field. We present an edited transcript of our interview with Stein that includes questions about how she became a geoarchaeologist, her work with other notable geoarchaeologists, and her views on the role of geoarchaeology in archaeology today.
This visual essay focuses on the visual documentation of the reconstruction of the archaeological site of Tajín from the late 1930s to the 1970s. During this period, the Mexican post-revolutionary state, motivated by the desire to forge a coherent nationality and boost mass tourism, actively supported and funded the monumental reconstruction of the Tajín pyramid and other pre-Hispanic structures across Mexico. Although the workers involved in the reconstruction of the pyramid appear in several on-site photographs, their labor remained ‘underexposed:’ their presence is rarely acknowledged in image labels, they are depicted in subordinated positions vis-à-vis the figure of the archaeologist or used as human scales or ethnic markers. Finally, these photographs, once consigned and buried in the archives, have rarely come into view. As a result, labor-related images are missing from the prevailing visual economy, which tends to prioritize and celebrate grandiose representations of pre-Hispanic ruins while overlooking the monumental process of their physical reconstruction. To counter this ‘underexposure’ of workers and labor, I unearth a selection of images from the archives and altered them by adding my own captions and descriptions, drawing from limited yet valuable information found in technical reports that shed light on the labor conditions at the site. This approach serves a dual purpose. Firstly, it aims to emphasize the significant role that Totonac workers played in the nation-building process by physically constructing Mexico’s ancient heritage. Secondly, it aims to bring attention to the persistent inequalities perpetuated, reinforced, and concealed by the field of archaeology throughout the construction process.
This article takes its departure from the authors’ ethnobiographical accounts of labour relations between local and foreign archaeologists collaborating on fieldwork projects in Türkiye, where native speakers undertake a double burden of becoming mediators in order to facilitate the professional, educational, and day-to-day activities of their foreign counterparts. While the need for interpreters is often an inevitable and legitimate aspect of fieldwork conducted outside one’s own linguistic and cultural milieu, the ubiquitously informal reliance on native-speakers to take on interlocutors’ tasks as favours or side-jobs conceals the extent of time, labour, and resources being extracted. This can interfere with the agency of local archaeologists as trained experts in their own right, pushing them to the periphery of professional research activity and reinforcing colonial notions of archaeological knowledge as the prerogative of Western ‘experts’ assisted by local ‘facilitators’. Taking a historical view, the paper highlights the encounters between Western excavators and Theodore Macridy Bey, one the first Ottoman archaeologists. Macridy was able to pursue his archaeological ambitions within the constraints of his duties as representative of the Imperial Museum, while these duties also placed him at odds with his foreign counterparts. In his correspondences as well as field notes, Theodore Macridy makes frequent references to being subjected to an explicitly Orientalist gaze instead of being treated professional colleagues on equal footing. The analysis will also draw from Western accounts in which Macridy is regarded with mixed feelings.
From 1930 to 1939 the University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology sponsored archaeological work at the ancient Maya site of Piedras Negras, Guatemala. American archaeologists contracted Indigenous workers with previous experience working in the chicle and mahogany industries. These workers provide an avenue for ‘epistemic disobedience’1 or privileging the experience of colonized peoples to see how they, as Indigenous archaeological workers, were uniting technologies, techniques, knowledge, and industries in ways that influenced the practice of archaeology. Viewing the site as a community of practice2 in which its products are extracted and interpreted through ‘braided knowledges’3 this paper explores Piedras Negras as a node of intellectual and industrial syncretism. We challenge extant scholarship about Piedras Negras that presents the research as the result of Western knowledge production, contending that site boundaries are fictive, and the epistemes of archaeological knowledge limited. Beyond them lies a thus far overlooked and more complete narrative about how archaeological knowledge is produced — and who produces it. Through archive research we argue that reading not just the results, but also how results were created, constructed, and braided with industries, machineries, and local knowledge offers windows into the intellectual groundwork of the project and re-writes the protagonists of data construction.
Women workers were a common sight on archaeological excavations in Palestine in the Late Ottoman and Mandate periods, their presence appearing in the historical record through anecdotal and ethnographic descriptions, wage lists or photographic archives. Recently, scholars have begun to explore this fact, highlighting the extent to which rural women undertook manual and waged labour, and the need to scrutinise and challenge stereotypes of archaeological labour which foreground elite white men, not only through examples of educated Western females but also of indigenous women workers. At present, most such histories focus on single archaeological sites. This paper instead brings together several examples to sketch some broader conclusions and to begin to develop a wider account of the experiences and places of women in early Palestinian archaeology. Expanding a focus only on women workers, I also consider what assumptions underlay the place of male workers on archaeological digs, asking how gendered social practices shaped the experiences of all archaeological workers. In attempting some answers, this article draws on the archives of excavations by Europeans and North Americans, informed by a broader literature on women’s labour in the Levant, seeing female archaeological workers in the context of other forms of paid work done by women. As such, it endeavours to transcend ‘archaeological exceptionalism’, viewing archaeological labour as a type of paid work, embedded in broader experiences of rural labour and the changing work and economic environment under Ottoman and British rule.
This paper focuses on the intersection between archaeological labor and local communities’ cultural heritage and social memory. More specifically, it examines how archaeological projects in Tres Zapotes and local people participation as workforce have shaped the perception of archaeological remains as well as the multiple narratives originated about them. The village of Tres Zapotes, located in the Gulf lowlands of southern Veracruz, constitutes the humble beginnings of the history of Olmec archaeology, as it was there where the very first Olmec monument was reported in 1869. This unprecedented monolith put Tres Zapotes on the map and changed the course of its sociocultural development. During the twentieth century, the village has experienced at least three major events in terms of archaeological labor: 1) in 1938 Matthew Stirling began the first systematic archaeological project at Tres Zapotes; 2) in 1975 an archaeological museum was founded in the village; and 3) in the 1990s Christopher Pool conducted a second major archaeological project at the site. These events have led to the emergence of at least four types of economy activities related to archaeology in Tres Zapotes: archaeological project workers, museum staff, tour guides, and craftspeople. Based on ethnographic research conducted in Tres Zapotes in 2022, I present life stories of individuals from each category to explore how engaging in archaeological labor contributes to the creation of local narratives about the ancient past, and to the reformulation of cultural identity.
This paper examines the historical role of women in German archaeology spanning the early nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries. Our investigation delves into the breadth of their activities and the multifaceted nature of archaeological practice. While conventional perceptions often associate archaeology primarily with fieldwork and a select group of male excavators, archaeological work, encompassing various approaches and tools, was actually significantly more diverse. This diversity extended to the settings and contexts in which these practices unfolded. Our aim is not only to illuminate the varied facets of archaeological endeavours but also to underscore the substantial contributions made by women to the processes of knowledge generation and dissemination. Beyond the traditional focus on fieldwork, our analysis encompasses the myriad tasks and roles associated with administration, knowledge management, publishing, and science communication. We emphasize the overarching goal of bringing visibility to the often-overlooked contributions of female archaeologists.
In this paper, we examine the context of archaeological labor in American cultural resource management (CRM) that led to the creation of the United Archaeological Field Technicians (UAFT) in the mid-1990s. In particular, we focus on The Underground, a zine/newsletter that was widely circulated among compliance archaeologists primarily working east of the Mississippi River between 1993 to 1995. The Underground functioned as a community space in a pre-internet age by facilitating an open discussion of the positive and negative aspects of the CRM industry. Due to the nature of zines as a collaborative, grassroots media, The Underground presents a unique opportunity to examine labor conditions not just through traditionally published quantitative datasets, but through the lived experiences of the archaeological workers and organizers themselves. Furthermore, the material constraints of a zine as physical media allowed for its distribution to be more closely controlled and thus provided a level of security which facilitated more open discussion of labor conditions. The Underground’s position as a trusted venue amongst the archaeological workers was essential for its eventual role in the labor movement as a way to spread information about the UAFT and distribute an organizing survey on hourly pay rates and benefits. The Underground is an invaluable archive of both labor conditions and a major attempt at unionization in archaeology. Together, these historical data can contribute to an understanding of the changing CRM industry and provide an opportunity to see if the futures of archaeology imagined by the zine and the union can offer us a path to addressing our shared struggles.
In this Introduction, we present a special issue on Histories of Labor in Archaeology. We begin by reviewing past work on archaeological labor and advocating for a broad definition of the term. Contributors to this issue address, among other themes, divisions of labor, worker specialization, and new methodologies for the study of archaeological labor across time and space. We then introduce each of the ten contributions, which address varieties of labor involved in the archaeological process from Türkiye, Germany, Palestine, Egypt, Mexico, Guatemala, and the United States, from the nineteenth century through the 1990s. We conclude by arguing for the study of work in the past as a means of imagining labor solidarity in archaeology for the future.
