First Excavations

the late 1800s, this split was less significant and it was recognized that the work of antiquarians could be helpful in understanding history.

FIRST EXCAVATIONS

Some of the first true archaeological rations happened in the early 1600s, when Gilbert North and William Harvey excavated Stonehenge. There were other early archaeologists who followed, such as John Aubrey. Aubrey was considered one of the first archaeologists of the time. He is best known for recording information about Stonehenge and similar monuments in southern England. While he was considered an antiquarian, he was mostly interested in documenting the things he found at some of these large monuments. He actually wrote a book on a survey he did of the Avebury henge monument. Figure 1 shows the Avebury monuments.

Figure 1: Avebury monuments.

There were other major excavations in the regions of Herculaneum and Pompeii. These had been completely covered by ashes when Mount Vesuvius erupted in seventy-nine A.D. The first excavations of Pompeii began in 1748 in the first and Herculaneum began to be excavated in 1738. King Charles VII of Naples was king at the time and authorized these excavations. Several areas of Herculaneum were uncovered, including things like utensils, human shapes, and many structures. These were seen throughout all of Europe during that time.

Johann Joachim Winkelmann was one of the founders of true scientific archaeology. He was a German archaeologist in the mid-1700s who was able to study Greek and Roman art. He was the first to differentiate between Greek, Greco-Roman, and true Roman art

and architecture. He was able to draw upon many artifacts in order to create his conclusions about these pieces of art and the people who created them.

Thomas Jefferson was very famous for many things, including his interest in archaeology. While he was raised in Europe, he began to understand archaeology and its importance while in the US. In America, he supervised the excavation of one particular burial mound that was created by Native Americans and that happened to be on his land. He had very advanced excavation methods for his time.

Around 1800, Napoleon's army became interested in archaeology in Europe. They spent time in Egypt, taking with them a small army of civilian scientists and other specialists so that they could have a full study of Egypt and Egyptian artifacts. It was during this time that Jean-François Champollion was able to decipher the meaning of the Rosetta Stone. This opened the field of archaeology to a much greater degree.

The Rosetta Stone was famous for having a decree that was first issued in Memphis, Egypt at approximately 196 BC, when King Ptolemy V Epiphanes was in power. The text was done using ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, demotic script, and ancient Greek. In actuality, it was not very important at the time it was inscribed, so much so that it was used as building material later in time. This was where it was discovered in 1799. There was great interest in the stone at the time, and when British defeated the French, they were able to take the stone back to London where it has been displayed since 1802 at the British Museum. Again, its importance was that it was a stone that could help researchers decode ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics using texts they already knew. Since then, other decrees have been found, which further indicates that the Rosetta Stone, while famous, was not unique at the time.

You need to remember that these were times where modern techniques now used in archaeology were unknown. You will learn about stratification later; for now, you need to know that none of these things were done in many early excavations. Thomas Bruce, for example, unearthed the Elgin marbles of the Parthenon located in Athens in 1803. He was criticized for doing this without proper archaeological technique. At the time, however, the sculptures themselves were considered more important than what they could say about ancient Greek civilization.