Archaeologists from many different European countries here explore the very varied relationship between nationalistic ideas and archaeological activity through the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The resurgence of nationalism was one of the most prominent features of the European political scene in the 1990s, when this book was originally published. The past provides a large supply of ideas and images to support the claims of national identity deeply rooted in remote generations. The remote past revealed by archaeology also plays a part – heroes, heroines, golden ages long disappeared, objects to admire, and sites to provoke the memory, all called on to further the cause of nationalism.
Drawing on the authoritative insights of the indigenous contributors, this book examines the issues throughout modern Europe. All of the chapters share a concern to see archaeology and the study of the past as intimately related to contemporary social and political questions. The present shapes the way we think about the past but the past also provides us with evidence for thinking about the present. These issues are timeless and this comprehensive examination of a host of issues remains important for historians and those pursuing nationalistic politics.
Author(s): Margarita Díaz-Andreu, Timothy Champion
Series: Routledge Library Editions: Archaeology, 21
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2015
Language: English
Pages: vi+314
Nationalism and Archaeology in Europe
Table of Contents
1 Nationalism and archaeology in Europe: an introduction
Archaeology and nationalism
The development of the relationship
Archaeology and nationalism in Europe
The nationalist value of archaeology
Bibliography
2 The fall of a nation, the birth of a subject: the national use of archaeology in nineteenth-century Denmark
Introduction: archaeology and the search for identity
Archaeology and nationalism
The beginning of nationalism
Why does archaeology/the past become involved?
Archaeology and the Danish national virtues
The fall of a nation
From rarities to national heritage
What national identity was created?
Concluding remarks
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
3 French archaeology: between national identity and cultural identity
Archaeology, a dominated discipline
Revolution and the idea of the nation
The fog of Celtic origins and the flood
Birth of a conscience of patrimony
The Franco-German quarrel
The craftsmen of scientific reform
The neglect of national antiquities
Archaeology and the Vichy regime
The foundation of the CNRS and a scientific policy for archaeology
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
4 Islamic archaeology and the origin of the Spanish nation
Introduction
Islamic medievalism in the nineteenth century
Islamic versus Visigothic
Pro-Germanic fervour (1939-50)
The revival of Islamic archaeology
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
5 Archaeology and nationalism: the Portuguese case
Introduction
Archaeology and national identity
Megalithic Portugal
Lusitanians, Viriatus and the Portuguese
The painful birth of a national heritage list
What history for the nation?
Bibliography
6 Nationalism without a nation: the Italian case
Introduction
A general outline
The making of a nation
Fascist archaeology
Localism as post-nationalism
Postscript
Bibliography
7 Three nations or one? Britain and the national use of the past
From antiquarians to archaeologists
England
Scotland
Wales
The intervention of the state
National museums
Protecting the monuments
Recording the past
The university sector
The consequences of state intervention
Heritage and the democratization of the past
Towards the new Europe
Bibliography
8 Building the future on the past: archaeology and the construction of national identity in Ireland
Introduction
Nationalism and the past in Ireland
Archaeology and the construction of identity
The institutionalization of archaeology
Archaeology and national identity north and south
Archaeology and the Irish public
Bibliography
9 German archaeology and its relation to nationalism and racism
Introduction
Vaterländische Altertumskunde
The North: home of barbarians or heroes?
The “Nordic race” an anthropological ideal
The politicization of prehistory
Gustaf Kossinna: continuing national prehistory
The justification of German borders
The Third Reich - executing Germanic continuity?
The controversy surrounding Wirth’s research
The repression of “national” prehistory after 1945
Reasons for the development of national prehistory in Germany
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
10 “Drang nach Westen”?: Polish archaeology and national identity
Before archaeology, before the nation
A nation without a country or archaeology
The needs of an independent country
In the service of state policy
The Slavs and the Balts: more friendship than hatred?
Final remarks
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
11 The faces of nationalist archaeology in Russia
Introduction
Emergence of a nationalist-orientated archaeology in Imperial Russia
At the dawn of Soviet archaeology
The struggle for internationalism
From the Eastern Slavs to the Soviets
Ethnogenetic ideas on the eve of the disintegration of the USSR
Conclusions
Bibliography
12 Nationalism doubly oppressed: archaeology and nationalism in Lithuania
A brief historical introduction
The origins of archaeology in Lithuania
Different perspectives on the ethnogenesis of the Lithuanian nation in the nineteenth century
The twentieth century
Bibliography
13 Is there national archaeology without nationalism? Archaeological tradition in Slovenia
Introduction
Background: the antiquarian tradition
The clear light of (Slovene) reason
Illyria resurrected
On the fringes of the Empire
Brilliance and treason
The prudent absence
The national science of archaeology
Is there national archaeology without nationalism after all?
Bibliography
Epilogue
Index
