The Creation of Societies for the Study of Prehistory and Their Role in the Formation of Prehistoric Archaeology as a Discipline, 1867–1929

Abstract

By the closing decades of the nineteenth century the study of human prehistory had achieved considerable prominence throughout Europe as archaeologists, paleontologists, and geologists made even more remarkable discoveries about the earliest periods of human history, and the reading public was presented with a hitherto unimaginable portrait of their earliest ancestors. Archaeology itself had undergone significant transformations, and the antiquarian research of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had developed into the modern science of archaeology by the early nineteenth century. But the rise of prehistoric archaeology as a distinct discipline within archaeology, with its own particular research problems and methods, is all the more interesting, since the very idea of a period of human prehistory was only recognized during the first half of the century. Historians of archaeology have explored the development of prehistoric archaeology during the nineteenth century through its primary investigators, their discoveries, and their research methods (Daniel 1962; Grayson 1983; Coye 1997; Rowley-Conwy 2007). In general, while the professionalization and institutionalization of archaeology has been examined by a number of scholars (Levine 1986; Chapman 1989; Emmerichs and Kehoe 1990), the professionalization and institutionalization of prehistoric archaeology as a distinct discipline has been given less attention (although see Richard 1992; Kaeser 2001). The formation of scientific societies devoted specifically to the study of prehistory was an important step in the process of the formation of prehistoric archaeology as a discipline with a unique professional identity. These organizations marked prehistoric archaeology as a field of study with its own particular objectives, methods, and interests that set it apart from other areas of archaeological research. Prehistory societies of various kinds began to be founded in the 1870s, and during the following half-century numerous societies appeared throughout Europe. Prehistory societies were established at a time when other institutions, such as museums and chairs in universities, were also being created. The construction of institutions devoted specifically to prehistoric research reflects the significant increase in the interest in human prehistory among scientists as well as among the public, beginning in the 1860s. The dramatic discoveries of Ice Age flint artifacts, and the delineation of the Paleolithic, Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron Ages during the middle decades of the nineteenth century sparked considerable interest in the further exploration of prehistory among scientists. They recognized that specialized institutions, devoted to prehistoric research, would be valuable not only for the promotion of further discoveries, but also as vehicles for the collaboration and the dissemination of new ideas about prehistory, through meetings and publications sponsored by these institutions. Such institutions often