The Work of a Dilettante or a Grand Amateur?

Abstract

Abstract From 1873 onwards, Scottish antiquarian James Miln (1819–1881) undertook an uninterrupted series of excavations in Carnac, for which he used his skills as a draughtsman and a photographer. The archives and printed sources conserving the traces of his activities thus contain an extensive array of images: sketches drawn in his excavation notebooks; watercolour landscapes; engraved illustrations for his books; models sculpted from his surveys of archaeological sites. Through this visual production, Miln embodied successive and overlaying types of amateurism, from a gentleman dilettante to a grand amateur, closely resembling a specialist while being able to establish working conditions comparable to those of the (few) contemporary professionals.