Antiquarianism in the 19th–21st Centuries

Claudius. These antiquarian writers were big on writing their interpretation of events in order to arrive at a conclusion at what had happened during their time, without a large regard to the actual truth. Many built their work on the works of even more ancient antiquarians. This would be similar to playing telephone tag, so that the truth might not be at all accurate.

Also in Rome, many medieval antiquarians had large collections of records and inscriptions, many of which were gathered haphazardly and without context. This continued into the Renaissance time period, when there were those who collected coins, archaeological artifacts, documents, and inscriptions. Again, these were often in cabinets of curiosities and kept as memorabilia.

Antiquarianism was related to genealogy at the time, with many using these objects to track their own genealogy. Genealogy was believed at the time to be a scientific discipline needing the evidence of artifacts and inscriptions to show lineage. In that sense, the artifacts were used to show the relationship between the people of that time and their families of the past.

ANTIQUARIANISM IN THE 19TH–21ST CENTURIES

In the late 1800s, antiquarianism had actually split into several different disciplines in academia. Some of these splits included art history, philology (which is the study of the development of languages), sigillography (which is the study of ancient seals), diplomatics (which is the study of old documents), and literary studies. In many cases, the term antiquarianism was negatively seen, even though there were many practicing antiquarians at the time. In the present time, this term is not used, but many of the other terms related to it are used and have less derogatory meanings.

There was a break between people who studied antiquarianism and those who considered themselves historians between the 1500s and 1900s. Antiquarians or antiquaries concerned themselves with relics and artifacts, while historians were much more interested in narratives that might come out of such artifacts. In other words, historians were interested in stories and narratives and much less interested in relics. In