Science and Spectacle in the History of French Archaeology, 1890-1940

FAIN: FEL-257962-18

Daniel J. Sherman
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, NC 27599-1350)

A book-length study on the history of French archaeology from 1890 to 1940.

My project probes the intertwined histories of archaeology and French culture in the early twentieth century. It focuses on two controversies, over excavations at Carthage in the French Protectorate of Tunisia and about the authenticity of a supposed Neolithic site discovered in central France, as constitutive of a field suspended between scientific ambitions and media attention. Bringing together two sub-fields normally treated separately, classical archaeology and prehistory, the study offers a new ground-level view of the formation of archaeology as at once discipline and spectacle. I ask basic questions about the constitution of the archive and disciplines’ understandings of their own past that allow for reflection across history, my field of study, and archaeology, my object of study. The visual representation and display of archaeology, archaeological finds, and archaeologists receive particular emphasis as a connecting thread between discipline-formation and spectacle.

Associated Products

Staging Archaeology: Empire as Reality Effect at the 1906-07 fêtes de Carthage (Article)
Title: Staging Archaeology: Empire as Reality Effect at the 1906-07 fêtes de Carthage
Author: Daniel J. Sherman
Abstract: The fêtes de Carthage, organized by a private association and held at a newly excavated Roman theatre, promoted the contribution of archaeology to the French colonial enterprise to the Tunisian Protectorate established just a quarter century before. The hastily organized 1906 event comprised excerpts from classically-themed plays and operas, as well as a brief staged allegory of imperial rule in Carthage from the Punic to the contemporary French era. In 1907, however, the organizers commissioned two original one-act plays, one depicting the Roman conquest of Carthage and a second, situated at the site of ongoing excavations, an encounter between a Carthaginian priestess and a modern poet. In both their staging and the associated publicity, the fêtes made abundant and careful reference to contemporary archaeological work and its finds. Through such means, they constructed a framework in which supporting details – the “reality effect” as theorized by Roland Barthes – bolstered an underlying ideological framework casting the French as repositories of the knowledge and wisdom necessary for imperial rule.
Year: 2021
Primary URL: https://doi-org.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/10.1093/crj/claa024
Primary URL Description: Classical Receptions Journal, Volume 13, no. 3 (July 2021)
Access Model: Subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Classical Receptions Journal
Publisher: Oxford University Press

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