The Organizational Context in the History of Archaeology: Pitt Rivers and Other British Archaeologists in the 1860s

Abstract

The importance of professional affiliations in the history of archaeology has tended to be underplayed. There have been a number of histories of individual professional societies and especially of museums, both of which had significant roles in the institutional development and acceptance of the field during the nineteenth century (e.g. Clark 1925; Evans 1949a, 1949b, 1956; Hawkes 1962; Hinsley 1981). Also, both museums and professional organizations have been generally touched upon in the course of biographies of individual archaeologists—primarily as background information (e.g. Evans 1943; Woodbury 1973; Green 1981; Hawkes 1982). What has not been considered sufficiently is the pervasive character of professional connections and the institutions or societies that made them possible (Trigger 1985; cf. Levine 1986). Organizations, together with accompanying journals, charters, meetings, statements of policy, special committees and so on, form the very basis of a discipline. This was particularly true in the nineteenth century when many sciences or other fields of interest—including archaeology—had yet to find a place in the academic world (Woodruff 1923).