Excavating the Nation: European Popular Nationalism and the Excavations of Delphi and Knossos, 1890–1914

Abstract

Greek archaeology at the turn of the twentieth century existed at the intersection of a modern positivistic practice of scientific study and a longer-standing European fascination with the ancient world. As the continent’s masses increasingly engaged with popular fin-de-siècle nationalisms, they also sought knowledge of the cultured refinement historically associated with the ancient world through empirically supported studies of the ancient past’s material remnants. This paper assesses the extent to which popular national identities conditioned European public perceptions of Greek archaeology in the decades the leading up to the First World War (1890–1914). Examining news-media coverage of the French excavation of Delphi and the British excavation of Knossos from nationally-prominent publications, this article identifies the influence which paradigms of national identity exerted over public perceptions of Europe’s ancient past. Concluding that these two excavations were exalted as evidential of national genius, this also posits that the particular finds associated with these sites were strongly coloured by the lens of national identity in popular periodical publications. Diffuse understandings of national heritage stretching back to the distant reaches of Europe’s ancient past thereby influenced popular perceptions of Greek archaeology as a discipline inherently linked to turn-of-the-century nationalist projects, with the archaeologist being increasingly relied upon to empirically entrench and legitimize the modern nation-state in a civilizational pedigree, coinciding with the national institutionalization of archaeological study.

Keywords

• national archaeology
• popular archaeology
• archaeology in the press
• knossos
• arthur evans
• la grande fouille
• théophile homolle