Histories of Archaeological Practices

Histories of Archaeological Practices 3 HISTORIES OF ARChaeOLOGICAL PRACTICES R E FL E C T I O N S O N M eth O D S , S T R ate GI E S A N D SOCIAL ORGANISatION IN paST FIELDWORK ED. OLA WOLFheCheL JENSEN THE NatIONAL HISTORICAL MUSEUM, StOCKHOLM. StUDIES 20 ISBN 978-91-89176-47-8 Histories of Archaeological Practices 4 National Historical Museum box 5428 114 84 Stockholm www.historiska.se Cover illustrations A geometrical map drawn in 1693 illustrating monuments in Tolg parish, Småland, Sweden. Source: Fm 53, The Royal Library, Stockholm. Two photos of archaeologists on their way to an excavation, taken by Berit Wallenberg in 1928. Source: Image database (nr. bwb12018 & bwb12019), Swedish National Heritage Board, Stockholm. © 2012, the authors English revised by Judith Crawford THE NATIONAL HISTORICAL MUSEUM, STOCKHOLM. STUDIES. Main editor: Fredrik Svanberg Graphic design: Thomas Hansson Printed by NRS tryckeri, Huskvarna, Sweden 2012 ISBN 978-91-89176-47-8 Histories of Archaeological Practices CONTENTS 5 PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT .....................................................................7 A THEMATIC AND THEORETICAL INTRODUCTION to histories of archaeological practices Ola Wolfhechel Jensen ........................................................................................................9 FOR THE SAKE OF MEMORY. Practicing archaeology in early modern Silesia Dietrich Hakelberg ............................................................................................................53 FROM AUBREY TO PITT-RIVERS. Establishing an archaeological survey standard for the British Isles C. Stephen Briggs ...............................................................................................................81 PRACTICE AND PROFESSIONALISATION. The role of field methods in the formation of the discipline of archaeology in Sweden Åsa Jensen & Ola Wolfhechel Jensen .......................................................................... 115 DIG THAT! How methodology emerged in German barrow excavations Gisela Eberhardt ............................................................................................................. 151 “TO RANSACK THE WALL WOULD GIVE TROUBLE AND WOULD WASTE TIME”. Hillfort archaeology in Saxony in the 19th century Susanne Grunwald .......................................................................................................... 175 EDUARD PAULUS THE ELDER (1803–1878) and the archaeological survey in Württemberg Frauke Kreienbrink ........................................................................................................ 191 EXCAVATING AN IDENTITY. British fieldwork in the first half of the 20th century Julia Roberts ..................................................................................................................... 211 THE SHAPE OF HISTORY. To give physical form to archaeological knowledge Jarl Nordbladh ................................................................................................................. 241 DECOLONISING PRACTICES? Some reflections based on the Swedish archaeological expedition to Rajstan in India 1952–1954 Elisabeth Arwill-Nordbladh .......................................................................................... 259 SWEDISH CONTRACT ARCHAEOLOGY in the 1950s and 1960s Björn Ambrosiani ............................................................................................................ 305 THE AUTHORS ............................................................................................................... 325 INDEX OF NAMES ........................................................................................................ 327 Dietrich Hakelberg FOR THE SAKE OF MEMORY 53 PRACTICING ARCHAEOLOGY IN EARLY MODERN SILESIA DIetRICH HAKELBERG INTRODUCTION Ransern (Rędzin) on the Oder (Odra) River was an estate that had belonged to the city of Breslau (Wrocław) since the 16th century. Its economic basis was the exploitation of the river and its floodplain. Cultivation of arable land, pas- tures and woodland required maintaining control over the meandering river and its annual floods (Wendt 1899:11–40; cf. Leonhard 1893). It was following a severe flood on 15 April 1614 that a hill near Ransern was levelled in order to build a higher dam. While labourers were digging up the sandy hill, a large quantity of pottery and sherds came to light (cf. for the findspot Demidziuk 1998:300, Nr. 2). It is unknown who recognised the curious finds as man-made artefacts worth preserving and that they might be of interest to certain scholars in the city. The news reached Breslau, probably through one of the administrators of the estate who also served as a city magistrate. What we do know is that a number of the Ransern urns were subsequently housed in the library of the St. Maria Magdalena Church in Breslau, which was also associated with a Latin school (Major 1692:24–25; Kundmann 1726:42). The Magdalenean library was located in a room with a Gothic ribbed vault above the church’s sacristy. The Silesian clergyman and historiographer Friedrich Lucae (1644–1708) from Brieg (Br- zeg) recounted in 1688 his impression of the interior of the library: Besides the great number of books, there are only few antiquities and rarities on display. Most remarkable are the ancient earthen pots in which paganism deposited the ashes of the dead and cremated bodies beneath the soil, and which were discov- ered and excavated in 1614 at the village of Ransern near Breslau, as well as at Treb- nitz near Oels, and are also kept here for the sake of memory. Some of them have a Histories of Archaeological Practices 54 narrow neck and a wide body, others a smaller one; some have only one handle, others two; in terms of hardness, however, they are all about the same1 (Lucae 1689:636; cf. Garber 2005:556–568. For the interior of the library, see Wiese 1924). By emphasising the collection of such pagan urns in a library for the sake of memory (“zum Gedächtnüß”), Lucae also refers to the ambiguous meaning of prehistoric pottery in the early modern period. Such artefacts established memory in two ways: by calling to mind the fleetingness of life and the om- nipresence of death, on the one hand, and by focusing attention on the pagan ancestors who were doomed to eternal perdition because of their idolatry, on the other. In this way, pagan urns served as an admonition for the Christian present. Archaeological practices in early modern Silesia have to be under- stood within the aspect of memory or “Gedächtnüß”. A ‘LANDSCAPE OF ERUDITION’ The lands of Silesia in the very east of the Holy Roman Empire of the Ger- man Nation were part of the Catholic Habsburg monarchy since 1526, and displayed an almost unequalled political, confessional and dynastical diversity. Reformation and confessionalisation split the political and cultural life. As a result of the Edict of Restitution from 1629, many scholars had to leave their homes for confessional reasons, and the Jesuits were intensifying their educational engagement. Following the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, all Protestant churches were closed, with the construction of three Protestant Friedenskir- chen being conceded. It was probably the conflict-laden coexistence of various dominions and confessions that resulted in a productive cultural life, because men of letters and scholars found a very diverse field for their activities within a limited geographical space and with support from various patrons. Cultural life, however, was inspired by humanism which was politically attractive to the principal sovereigns and spread by the urban Latin schools. The humanist perception of the country, of its history, wealth and erudition was informed by the moral values and representation culled from history and led to a very rich literary production. Regional studies flourished in Silesia and were mostly undertaken by Lutheran and Calvinist scholars with the aim of demonstrating the cohesion of the country under Catholic threat, and of maintaining regional as well as confessional identity through its intellectual layer (Garber 2004:294; Fleischer 1978). In this way, the five Silesian principal- ities represented a very typical ‘landscape of erudition’ (“Bildungslandschaft”) along the Oder River, with Breslau as its capital and cultural centre. There Dietrich Hakelberg 55 was no university in Silesia until 1702, when the Jesuits founded the Breslau university, but the Lutheran Latin schools in the cities, such as the gymnasia at the churches of St. Maria Magdalena and St. Elisabeth in Breslau, offered a curriculum nearly approaching that of a university (cf. Ludwig 2003:78–82). These Latin schools produced a number of extraordinary scholar-poets, in- cluding Martin Opitz (1597–1639), Andreas Gryphius (1616–1664) and his son Christian Gryphius (1649–1706), to mention only a few. Libraries were crucial for these educational institutions, or in the words of the time: “Books belong to schools, and libraries belong to scholars; otherwise these would be like a soldier without a rifle, or like a fortress without an armoury” (Kundmann 1741:327).2 The Breslau libraries, associated with the churches of St. Maria Magdalena, St. Elisabeth and St. Bernhardin, had grown through the donations and be- quests of influential citizens. They held a wealth of manuscripts and printed texts, many of them representing regional history and literature. The libraries were however not only textual resources for a humanist education,

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