International Archaeology Day: Snapshots of a growing field

call for a prosopography from the margins considers some potential theoretical and methodological approaches to writing lives that do not fit within more common approaches, and are often erased even in finegrained historical studies: a counterbalance to what she describes as ‘prosopographies of the privileged’.

Several of the chapters in this volume focus on lives in Egyptian archaeology and Egyptology, reflecting in part a resurgence of interest in the history and historiography of these sub-disciplines. Like Abt, Meheuxand others in this volume, Lewis’s study of Egyptologist T. E. Peet’s wartime letters uses a specific and hitherto ignored or neglected set of primary sources, and uses them to shed new light on an otherwise wellknown figure in the discipline. In Lewis’ work these sources are personal letters from Peet, who was serving in the First World War, to his daughter Patricia, then aged just three. Lewis compares these letters to two other
documentary strands in Peet’s archives, noting the complex interplay of public and private lives, agency and self-representation. Gertzen’s chapter grapples with the challenges of writing histories of Egyptology, a field that he argues developed along markedly distinctive lines in German-speaking contexts. In surveying key works in this field to date, Gertzen observes the different forms and influences of history writers’ moral judgements, most notably in studies of scholars active during the Third Reich.

One of the strengths of this volume is its illumination of the variety of angles and perspectives on the history of archaeology that pertain, in often very different ways, to practices of life-writing. Abt’s study of philanthropy and the economic histories of the discipline is one such study, highlighting the particular value of appeals for funding as documents that demonstrate archaeologists’ abilities to write for, and appeal to, non-specialist audiences.
Abt focuses on the relationship between archaeologist James Henry Breasted and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, showing how the need to shape research to the interests of funders could profoundly shape the direction of research project, institutions and individual careers. To the plethora of specific forms of life-writing outlined by Smith and Watson, and discussed earlier, Wagemakers’ chapter adds another: ‘dig writing’ – that is,
histories of specific archaeological excavations told in biographical form and using the same types of sources as life-writing. To illustrate this, he collected a wide range of sources relating to Kenyon’s Jericho excavations including images, letters, film and a dig diary. The account that emerges from these and other sources illustrates the full richness of the ‘dig’ experience:

worries about funding, difficult labour relations, cross-cultural misunderstandings, ill-health, local politics, social relationships and romances, and fallings-out. Wagemakers presents dig writing as a distinct form of history writing, but like life-writing it shares features with related fields, such as microhistory and prosopography Following the more theoretically focused chapters in the first parts of this book, the chapters in the central section illuminate and embody a variety of different sources, aims and approaches to archaeological life-writing. Ansorge’s account of the pleasingly comprehensive Herbert Thompson archive blends description of the holdings – including a physical description of the material itself – with an account of his life and works. In outlining Thompson’s career in Egyptian language studies, Ansorge makes a case for the value of studying an individual scholar primarily through his or her own, singular archive: the wider contexts are present and acknowledged, but viewed from the ‘interior’ of one personal and professional life. The accounts of the movements of archives, personal libraries, ancient texts and artefacts further illustrate the networked nature of life-writing studies, with Cambridge University Library emerging as a notable nexus in the trajectories of so many of these
materials. The uses, limitations and absence or survival of personal letters as a source for life-writing is one of the recurring themes in this volume.
Moshenska’s chapter focuses on the correspondence between two scholars of ancient Egypt in the early nineteenth century: the British surgeon Thomas Pettigrew and the Dutch curator Conrad Leemans. The letters that Leemans sent over several years combine personal warmth and professional minutiae, and also shed light on the operation of intellectual networks:
Leemans asks Pettigrew’s assistance for several of his acquaintances passing through London, including the young archaeologist Karl Lepsius.

As we have discussed elsewhere in this chapter, much of the most valuable recent work in archaeological life-writing has focused on the hitherto marginalised. Stewart’s study of the scholar of Roman Britain Margerie Venables Taylor includes several of the mechanisms by which women’s contributions to the development of archaeology have been neglected, including under-representation in academic posts and overshadowing by prominent men – in this case Francis Haverfield.
In examining the entanglement of Haverfield and Taylor’s work and careers, Stewart highlights the gap left by Taylor’s deliberate disposal of her personal papers. She examines Taylor’s obituary of Haverfield – a significant piece of life-writing – to argue that Taylor’s subsequent labours at the Roman Society and its journal can be understood as the posthumous continuation of her longstanding collaborative work with Haverfield, in part alongside his other protégé R.G. Collingwood. 

Historical disputes are often intellectually stimulating topics for study, and Freed’s examination of Alfred-Louis Delattre and Paul Gauckler’s work in Tunisian archaeology provides detailed context for the two men as well as for their conflict: a French conflict, as she describes it, on Tunisian soil. This dispute developed over several years and encompassed the most powerful dimensions of French society including church, state and the École Normale. Freed demonstrates the longstanding impacts of this dispute in the contemporary reception of both men’s work, and argues for the importance of histories and life-histories in the practice of archaeology. Past controversies also shape Murray’s study of Hugh Falconer. This chapter and Falconer’s remarkable achievements are a reminder of the startling breadth of interests and achievements that characterised the intellectual lives of Victorian polymaths, ranging across medicine, botany and palaeontology as well as archaeology. It is also a reminder of the deep roots in Empire that enabled and shaped many of these interests. Murray outlines the intellectual disputes that coloured Falconer’s legacy even in the immediate aftermath of his death and shed light on a life’s work that has hitherto appeared in fragments, mostly as it relates to other, more prominent scholars of his era.

In his critical engagements with the methods of life-writing, Kaeser highlights the challenges of the archive, such as the illusory ‘reality effect’ of primary sources, and discusses the difficulties that biographers can face in engaging with earlier, less critical studies of their subjects. Few archaeologists have been so extensively studied since their death as Vere Gordon Childe, but Meheux’s chapter provides a novel perspective, drawing on the files accumulated by the UK Security Service over decades of surveillance and monitoring.