In 1764, the German art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann published a work that not only would profoundly influence art history, but also the development of archaeology as we recognize it today. Even though many of his assessments were based on copies or medals, and much was based on personal feeling rather than hard scholarship, Winckelmann's attempts to draw reasoned conclusions about the stylistic development of ancient art from empirical observations lay the groundwork for modern archaeological methodology. (The first edition of Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums [History of Ancient Art] is depicted below left; a modern reprint, below right):
While noted antiquarians of previous centuries -- think John Leland and William Stukeley -- had often included in their surveys of specific geographic areas any ancient ruins they encountered, their excavations were primitive by today's standards, and they rarely understood the true significance of what they had found. Winckelmann's more scientific approach was similar to one utilized a few decades later by Richard Colt Hoare, who recorded a number of neolithic barrows he encountered in surveys he made of the Stourhead estate he had inherited from his grandfather in 1785. Hoare, along with William Cunnington, made the first recorded excavation at Stonehenge, eventually excavating almost 400 barrows on the Salisbury Plain. But he was unable to date his finds, a proposed solution still a couple of decades away. (The image below is from his 1812 publication Ancient Historie of Wiltshire:)
History is littered with great archaeological finds that were not made through the systematic application of archaeological methodology. Aside from the discoveries made by treasure hunters (see yesterday's post) and various antiquarians, many such discoveries were made entirely by accident. The Rosetta Stone, for example, was discovered in 1799 during Napoleon's invasion of Egypt (his soldiers found it while digging foundations for a fort):
The Dead Sea Scrolls were first discovered in 1946 by the Bedouin shepherd Muhammad Ahmed al-Hamed, who accidentally fell into one of the caves where the scrolls had been buried for almost two millenia:
X'ian's Terracotta Warriors were discovered by a group of seven farmers digging a well on their communal farm in 1974:
Such serendipitous finds might be the norm even today were it not for three books published around the middle of the 19th century....
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