​AT: How would you define history of archaeology?

AP: The history of archaeology is a different kind of digging than what you do in an ancient site. Historians of archaeology are after the links between the material remains of distant pasts and population groups that lived in comparatively less distant pasts, be they nations, elites, ordinary people, excavation workers, women, trained and amateur archaeologists, etc., or even institutions, such as museums or the League of Nations. They study archival documents, publications, photographs, videos and other mostly written or audiovisual primary sources in order to decipher the reception of antiquities by such people and institutions, the meanings and values that these ascribed to ancient finds, the uses they made out of antiquities, and the purposes of such uses. It is a particularly diverse field that brings together many different sources, techniques, theoretical approaches, even disciplines.   

AT: What is your area of research in the history of archaeology?

AP: I specialize in the history of archaeology, heritage and the classical reception in the Ottoman long 19th century. I look extensively into primary sources in Ottoman Turkish and Greek, and this allows me a close-up both to the Ottoman state and Ottomans writing in the official language of the state on the one hand and (Ottoman) Greeks in all their diversity on the other hand. This means that I can also read Karamanlidika, that is, Turkish written with the Greek alphabet, a linguistic hybrid used mostly by the Turkish-speaking Greek Orthodox in Cappadocia. Moreover, I speak French, the lingua franca of the long 19th century, and this too opens up new vistas in my research. In my work I make sure to study mainstream actors and topics as well as lesser known aspects in the history of archaeology, such as the reception of antiquities by ordinary (i. e. non-elite) Ottoman Greeks.

​AT: How did you become interested in the history of archaeology?

​AP: I had questions and I couldn’t get satisfactory answers! So, I had to look for answers myself. This applies primarily to Ottoman history, which is my broader field of expertise. But then, once into Ottoman studies, I had to decide among a few topics of special interest for my PhD.

I had always been fascinated by antiquities. As a child growing up in Greece, Antiquity and its material remains formed part of my daily life. Roads were named after ancient or medieval locations, I was aware that the Athenian suburb where I lived was where Euripides had his house in ancient times, and the local newspaper covered archaeological discoveries made during the construction of houses in our area. Also, the Near and Middle East, which I hold dear in my heart, is not simply rich in antiquities. Antiquities are central to understanding important aspects of the cultures and identities formed in the region. For example, look at the Ottoman Greeks and their interest in the classical and Byzantine past. Or the Lebanese and the Phoenicians. The importance of Islamic monuments for Arabs. Or the value that Turks ascribe to prehistoric finds, among other. And at the same time, this region became a hotspot for Europeans and Americans looking for the roots of their culture. To me, the history of archaeology has been a unique gateway to understanding the Ottoman Empire in its last phase as a multi-layered crossroads of peoples, identities, ideas and practices.    

AT: Are you working on anything in particular related to the history of archaeology right now?

AP: Until recently, as post-doctoral research fellow at the Research Centre for Anatolian Civilizations (ANAMED, Koç University), I worked on a project on the reception of antiquities by ordinary Ottoman Greeks in the last decades of the Ottoman Empire in Anatolia. In the history of archaeology, we still seem to privilege the educated elites over ordinary people, and for this reason this project has been of special importance to me. Moreover, as the archive I worked on is a collection of testimonies by Ottoman Greeks after they settled in Greece as refugees, trauma permeates what they convey to us. This adds some very interesting layers of analysis in the history of archaeology, and actually turns the history of archaeology into a vehicle for understanding broader questions besides the reception of antiquities stricto sensu.

In the academic year 2023-2024, I dedicate some time to the study of the reception of Byzantium by Ottoman Muslims. My starting point is a book in Ottoman Turkish on Kariye Mosque, that is, the Chora Monastery in Constantinople published in 1910. The book in question is an art historical treatise dating from a very interesting period for Byzantine monuments in the Ottoman capital. My main project however is the reception of Alexander the Great by the Turkish-speaking Greek Orthodox in Cappadocia in the 19th century. This is more of a classical reception project, but the classical reception informed the interest of local people on antiquities back then. Although we know a lot about Alexander the Great in western traditions and in the persianate world, we know close to nothing about how his legend affected the Turkish-speaking but Greek Orthodox Cappadocians, a minority that by means of its language (Turkish) and religion (Greek Orthodox) stood between two worlds, the Ottoman Turkish and the Greek ones.    
   
AT: What, from your experience, is the most meaningful thing you've come across in history of archaeology research and why?

AP: There are so many… But one of the things that I enjoy the most and in which I find meaning is the host of voices that have been developed over the years in history of archaeology research. History of archaeology is a field that invites research work not only by historians but also by experts originating in other disciplines, including archaeologists, art historians, conservators, and architects. It thus becomes a ground for extraordinary cross-fertilizations and dialogue. 

AT: Do you have any favourite books (academic or popular) related to the history of archaeology? Titles and authors would be great, and a few thoughts as to why.

AP: One of my favourite books in the history of archaeology is “Scramble for the Past” (Bahrani et.al. (eds.), SALT, 2011). It brings together many aspects related to archaeology in the Ottoman domains in the long 19th century, and when it first came out it broke new ground in the way we approach Ottoman archaeological history. Even more than 10 years after its publication, it remains relevant. 

AT: Is there a key object/ image/ text from an archive that inspires you or that you keep revisiting?

AP: I very much like the logo of the Imperial Museum, that is, the Ottoman archaeological museum in Constantinople. It is in Ottoman Turkish and reads as “Müze-i Hümayun” in what seems to me to be Gothic fonts. I can spend a long time just looking at its two words and trying to think of how it might have been created in the first place: the discussions about having a logo, the choice of font, any changes requested and the final approval, its first ever use. It survives as letterhead in the official correspondence of the Museum and in its period publications. Perhaps elsewhere too…

​​AT: Any advice for those interested in starting research on the history of archaeology?

AP: Always be aware that what you will work on is but a minuscule part of a vast area of past human activity. Be open to the new and the unexpected, and ready to challenge your very own assumptions.

AT: From your perspective, what are the key issues in the history of archaeology right now?

AP: I believe that we need to continue working on the elites, because formal archaeology was after all an elite activity, but at the same time systematically provide more space to ordinary people, women, and locals who engaged with antiquities within or without a formal archaeological context. Their views are no less valuable and consequential than the ones of those who happened to be privileged at a specific time in history. 

Also, provenance research is important and can help tackle issues that go beyond the strictly academic type of inquiry. It is a bridge between the study of culture and the actual formation of culture. Provenance research can help us decide in what kind of a society we want to live, and what kind of relations we want to have we the rest of the world. This is valid not only for former colonialist powers that collected antiquities from other countries oftentimes by taking advantage of their superior might, but also for countries of origin that have largely shaped their identity as being sole guardians of heritage in their lands.    

AT: How can people learn more about your research (personal blog, twitter, etc)?

​AP: You can follow me on academia.edu or ResearchGate:
https://harvard.academia.edu/ArtemisPapatheodorou 
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Artemis-Papatheodorou

Dr William Carruthers recently finished a Leverhulme Trust funded project at the University of East Anglia, where he is an Honorary Lecturer in the School of Art, Media and American Studies. 

Among other things, Will and I discuss sources, decolonisation, and most of all his new book, Flooded Pasts: UNESCO, Nubia and the Recolonisation of Archaeology (Cornell University Press, 2022). Listen to our conversation here.

Link to Will's book, Flooded Pasts https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501766442/flooded-pasts/#bookTabs=1
 
Other books mentioned:
​Lucia Allais: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo28907758.html
 
Ann Laura Stoler: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691146362/along-the-archival-grain
 
Menna Agha: https://architecture.carleton.ca/archives/people/menna-agha

​AT: Tell us a bit about Nina Layard.
 
SRW: Nina Frances Layard was born in 1853 in Essex. Her interests in archaeology was publicised when she moved to Ipswich in 1889. Here, Layard was responsible for unearthing instrumental archaeological discoveries that would gain her reputation as one of the  leading archaeologists during her time. 
 
Layard’s discoveries at Foxhall Road between 1902-1905 where she unearthed a Palaeolithic brickearth is one of her most cited legacies in discourses about her archaeological career. Though, Layard’s excavations expanded beyond provincial spaces and gained her recognition in prestigious scientific institutions. Her excavations of an Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Hadleigh Road in 1906 led to her Fellowship at the Anthropological Institute and later the Linnean Society (1906). 
 
In 1921, Layard was one of the first elected woman Fellows at the Society of Antiquaries.  She was also Editor of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology& Natural History journal. As a devout Evangelical Anglican, Layard’s theological beliefs were never separated from her scientific thinking. Her interest in Evolutionary Theory in 1890 led to a wave of debates and a newfound audience due to her challenging of Darwin’s theory of ‘Reversions.’ Here, we see the intellectual rigour of Layard’s ideas in reckoning with the authority of religion in the scientific debates during her time. Layard presented these ideas by speaking at a range of institutions across the country including the British Association and the Victoria Institute. 
 
She was also a regular scientific writer for the Science-Gossip Magazine and was an acquaintance with the editor at the time Dr John Ellor Taylor. Apart from her scientific and archaeological interests, Layard had a unique poetic identity. Citing influences like Robert Browning, Layard adopted complex poetic verses to draw links between her scientific and religious ideologies. As a woman navigating her role as an archaeologist and scientist within institutions which were dominated by men, Layard confronted the discriminations she faced by affirming her authority and presence within masculinised, heteronormative scientific spaces. 
 
Although Layard’s relationship with Mary Frances Outram was not publicised during her time, the portrayal of their relationship and the expressions of their desire is important to integrate in writing about Nina Layard.   
 
For full biographical details see Steven Plunkett: Miss Layard Excavated: a Palaeolithic site at Foxhall Road, Ipswich, 1903-1905  (2004)
 
AT: What drew you to researching Nina Layard?
 
SRW: I first encountered Nina Layard’s work during my MA when I was researching the receptions of Austen Henry Layard in the popular press for my MA dissertation. A large part of Austen Henry Layard’s archival records are held at the National Library in Scotland and it was through looking at letters and correspondences there that I learnt about Nina Layard’s archaeological contributions in Ipswich. I came across an interview with Dr Sarah Irving and she describes how she encounters the most exciting finds by accident and I really resonate with this in reflecting about how I came to research Nina Layard.
 
In the early stages of my research of Nina Layard I looked first at how she was represented in the press. There still isn’t much secondary criticism or engagement with Layard’s work so a lot about her work and life is contained within her archival material and press reports of her. I noticed how common it was to find newspapers describing Nina Layard as the niece of Austen Henry Layard as a way of establishing her relevance. 
 
By the late-nineteenth century, Austen Henry Layard was known nationally for his excavations at Nineveh but Nina Layard’s work wasn’t popularised on the same scale so newspaper editors introduced her by her association to Austen Henry Layard. From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, the national press and indeed provincial papers were captured by archaeological excavations and expeditions at sites in the Near East and Egypt. In response, this profile of the archaeologist as the heroic, authoritative figure, problematically linked to the imperial legacies of these excavations were featured more prominently in the press and in turn, archaeological work that didn’t engage with these excavations were not represented on the same scale and therefore remained less accessible. 
 
What interests me about Layard is that the press is how Layard self-fashions her identity as an archaeologist - through her relationship with the printing press. From 1898 onwards, she begin writing a regular column for the East Anglian Daily Times and in these columns, Layard wrote about the excavations she led and sometimes published historical insights of Ipswich.  In taking up this space in the press, Layard’s writing is in itself a kind of resistance to the colonial, imperial narratives that were publicised in this period. My research begins by looking at the relationship between Layard and the provincial press and how she shapes her legacy through this space.
 
AT: What in your opinion makes Nina Layard a significant figure?
 
SRW: Nina Layard’s contributions to areas of prehistoric archaeology, Evolutionary Theory, botany and literature suggests the breadth of Layard’s intellectual pursuits. While she was by no means the first woman to hold multiple interests, Layard pursued her academic interests independently and was persistent in her commitments to articulating and publicising her ideas alongside well-known scientists during her time. Her multifaceted and often intertwining interests makes her work complicated to synthesize independently; instead it’s important to recognise how her literary, activist and religious ideologies are interwoven in her archaeological thinking.
 
One of the areas where this is particularly prominent is in her poetry where Layard’s Evangelical Anglican background informs the ways in which she reads and reconciles with the past. While Layard cites poets like Robert Browning whose poetic style is echoed in the construction of her poetic verses, situating Layard’s thinking and writing amongst her contemporaries highlights her unique way of drawing together a multiple ideas and concepts to reassess the past calls to an interdisciplinary approach to deconstructing her work. 
 
 
AT: How have you integrated Layard's literary and archaeological work in writing up your research?
 
SRW: Although Layard’s poetry has not gained sustained engagement in recent scholarship, her poems received critical acclaim and public recognition during her time. Encouraged by the critic and poet Andrew Lang, Layard’s poems were published in prestigious platforms such as Longman’s and Harper’s magazine. Like the rest of her oeuvre, Layard’s poetry is not defined by a single theme, instead her poetic verses are reflective of the rich depth of her curiosities: ranging from archaeological reckonings to other scientific dwellings including her interest in botany and natural selection as well as her preoccupations with issues concerning religion and romantic desire. 
 
Taking into consideration the broad themes that are imbued in her poetry, my second chapter places Layard’s scientific thinking within the context of the relationship between literature and science. Here, I’m thinking more specifically of Michael Shanks’s theory of the archaeological imagination and how Layard’s poems which explore archaeological and antiquarian themes rely on the literary verse to access narratives of the past.
 
AT: What, from your experience, is the most meaningful thing you've come across in researching Nina Layard?
 
SRW: Spending a large part of this PhD in Nina Layard’s archives which is located at the Hold in Ipswich has been tremendously rewarding. Her archival material - from her unpublished writings, photographs, letters of correspondence with leading scientists and curators of the time shows us Layard’s scientific and creative authority she held in all stages of her career from her excavation work to the curatorial representations of her work. 
 
Alongside my research on Nina Layard, I have particularly enjoyed researching and writing about Layard’s partner, Mary Frances Outram who was hugely integral to Layard’s professional success. In regards to Layard’s archaeological pursuits alone, Outram frequently accompanied Layard to excavation sites and utilised her painting and watercolour skills to provide illustrations for Layard’s archaeological sketches. In incorporating a queer reading here, I am interested in how the expression of their queerness in the archaeological site instigates expansive and non-normative ways of thinking about archaeological practices and how this was presented to the public. 
 
AT: In your opinion, what is Layard's legacy and in what ways would you present Layard's life and legacy to the public?  
 
SRW: Layard’s legacy is quite multifaceted. Her contributions to archaeology, poetry and evolutionary theory were challenged traditional beliefs during her time. I think it would be useful to interrogate her rich archival resources and exhibit them in some way. These materials not only give an insight into Layard’s work but also demonstrates the communities she helped and worked with, the political debates she was engaged in and the social issues she cared about. Additionally, I think a biopic on Layard’s life will also be quite extraordinary! 
 
AT: Do you have any favourite books (academic or popular) that you've found particularly useful for your research on Layard?
 
SRW: Amara Thornton’s Archaeologies in Print (2018) is a crucial book in thinking about how influential publishing was for publicising and accessing women’s archaeological writing. 
Clare Stainthorp’s Constance Naden; Scientist, Philosopher, Poet (2019) offers a critical and comprehensive approach to researching an individual who was overlooked in the Victorian period. Stainthorp’s theoretical underpinnings offer critical insights into how to structure research on a single individual and their multiple legacies.
 
Andrew Hobbs’s article on ‘How local newspapers came to dominate Victorian poetry publishing’ (2014) has been really useful in thinking about how the provincial press was instrumental to shaping local readerships and literary communities in local towns.
Alice Procter’s The Whole Picture: The colonial story of the art in our museums (2020) is also a really important and crucial book to read.
 
AT: Do you have any advice for researchers embarking on research about an individual related to archaeology?
 
SRW: Researching Layard’s work demonstrates really clearly that an individual’s contributions to archaeology can be wholly understood if we take into consideration the communities they were part of, who they were in conversation with and how these influences impacted their thinking. To access this information, engaging with archival work and historical records of the individual’s relationship with these networks and institutions allows us to contextualise their contributions to archaeology more truthfully. 
 
Looking into the reception of an individual’s archaeological work also highlights how their discourse travelled and how forms of this archaeological knowledge were reconstructed based on the spaces they occupied. One way of looking into this is whether the individual engaged with spaces beyond the metropolitan, where perhaps access to scientific and archaeological institutions were less prominent. Also important to explore how non-scientific networks were equally as important to formalising an individual's archaeological works
 
AT: From your perspective, what are the key issues to reflect on in how we research and write about individual women who were notable in the past?
 
SRW: In regards to Layard, I found it useful to start by looking for current discourse about her work and how/if scholars were writing about Layard and in what context. It's useful to look into the gaps of knowledge that exist and to interrogate why specific histories are omitted from current discourses.  This of course then brings us to thinking about the shifts in the political and cultural context over time and how scholars have reconsidered the representation of women in the past. In this regard, a historiographical and biographical approach offers a more nuanced approach into how women navigated archaeological institutions and spaces that were not always accessible to women. I think it's also helpful to look at how women were represented beyond scholarly contexts and how other forms of media are more transparent about women’s lives and contributions to the discipline. 
 
AT: How can people learn more about your research (personal blog, twitter, etc)?
 
SRW: I am currently writing about Nina Layard’s articles in the East Anglian Daily Times for the Journal of Victorian Culture which I am hoping will be out later this year.

Sarah is Lecturer in modern Middle Eastern history at Staffordshire University. Interview with Dr Amara Thornton, IoA History of Archaeology Network Coordinator.

AT: How would you define history of archaeology?
 
SI: I’m not sure I’m properly a historian of archaeology – I’m more of an interloper who uses historical records of archaeology to look at social and gender history – so I’m not sure it’s entirely my place to define it. But from my perspective it’s the history of how archaeological and the search for material remains of human activity is carried out, not just by professionals in the field but also in terms of its relationships with the people surrounding it – labourers, farmers on archaeological land, guards and museum attendants, people who read about and watch films of archaeology, interact with it in exhibitions and in discussions… and so on.
 
AT What is your area of research in the history of archaeology?
 
SI: I primarily look at the role of ordinary Palestinians and other people from the Levant region in the conduct of archaeology in Late Ottoman and Mandate Palestine. This ranges from educated Christian Lebanese who worked at supervisors on excavations for the Palestine Excavation Fund for many years and who became quite significant figures in how the archaeology of their period was enacted and interpreted, to women and men from nearby villages who were manual labourers on excavations, perhaps only for a total of a few months, or to some of the (usually but not always) nameless guards and other workers who were employed by the Department of Antiquities of the British Mandate administration in Palestine, or the lower-level dealers and go-between from the Palestinian Syriac Orthodox community who were the conduit by which various museums acquired the Dead Sea Scrolls.
 
AT: How did you become interested in the history of archaeology?
 
SI: In a parallel universe I went to university nearly 30 years ago and stuck with the archaeology I started then. In actual fact the course at Cambridge bored me so badly that I switched to anthropology – I should have stood up to my school better and gone to Sheffield, but who makes good decisions at 18? I went back to university to do a PhD in my late 30s and became a social historian of Palestine, but by various roundabout routes (involving looking for something completely different in the archives of the PEF) I’ve ended up combining the two in a lot of my work.
 
AT: Are you working on anything in particular related to the history of archaeology right now?
 
SI: Although my main research project at the moment isn’t history of archaeology – it’s on the 1927 earthquake in Palestine, so it does still have overlaps with the material environment and how that affects history – I am working on a couple of papers in HoA. One is for a conference next spring run by Michael Press at Agder University, for which I’ll be looking at the sale of antiquities, including Dead Sea Scrolls jars, by the Department of Antiquities/Palestine Archaeological Museum in the Mandate and Jordanian periods. I also have an article coming out in Jerusalem Quarterly taking a long-view look at the lives and working conditions of guards on archaeological sites in the Mandate period, especially at Athlit and Jericho, and how those intersect with the broader political situation in the country, and I’ll be speaking on the same broad subject at a Bade Museum/PEF online talk later this month.
 
AT: What, from your experience, is the most meaningful thing you've come across in history of archaeology research and why?
 
SI: The archives from the pre-WWI Harvard University excavations at Sebastia, which are at the Harvard Semitic Museum, include the fortnightly pay lists, which means they have long lists of the names of every worker on the site, men and women, how many days they worked during that period, and how much they were paid. Given how little we know about the lives of ordinary Palestinians over a century ago, how much information has been lost in the wars since, and how many Palestinians have been displaced as refugees, to able to get that snapshot of what such a large group of people were doing is amazing. Archaeological records aren’t often on the radar of social historians but sometimes they can be amazingly rich sources.
 
AT: Do you have any favourite books (academic or popular) related to the history of archaeology? Titles and authors would be great, and a few thoughts as to why.
 
SI: Given my subject area, the main ones would be other explorations of workers on archaeological sites, so Stephen Quirke’s Hidden Hands: Egyptian Workforces in Petrie Excavation Archives, 1880–1924, parts of Elliott Colla’s Conflicted Antiquities: Egyptology, Egyptomania, Egyptian Modernity and Donald Malcolm Reid’s books Contested Antiquities in Egypt: Archaeologies, Museums and the Struggle for Identities from WWI to Nasser and Whose Pharaohs? Archaeology, Museums, and Egyptian National Identity from Napoleon to WWI, and of course Amara Thornton’s investigations of archaeology in Palestine during the Mandate period. Going beyond books, I’d also like to flag up Unsilencing the Archives[https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/9eb391c6f57f4399a58ecf9b818e6762], an online exhibition curated by Melissa Cradic and Samuel Pfister, which is an amazing look at the workers at Tel en-Nasbeh during the Mandate period and which includes video footage from the late 1920s of archaeological labourers at work.
 
AT: Is there a key object/ image/ text from an archive that inspires you or that you keep revisiting?
 
SI: There is a photograph in the PEF archives of two Palestinian women at the Tel Jezar site, I think during R.A.S. Macalister’s excavations there, sieving for small finds. One of them is looking straight into the camera. She’s mid-work, sitting on the earth, staring at us with a really no-bullshit look on her face. She’s just as much part of the history of archaeology as a guy in a pith helmet and puttees whose name is on all the publications about Gezer, and I want to know as much as I can about her life.

​AT: Any advice for those interested in starting research on the history of archaeology?
 
SI: The best information is never where you expect to find it. To amend a well-known saying, the best way to make the Gods laugh is to tell them your (research) plans – my most exciting finds have always been accidents, usually when I’m looking for something completely different.
 
AT: From your perspective, what are the key issues in the history of archaeology right now?
 
SI: I would say that getting away from the Indiana Jones/dead white men view of archaeology is one of the biggest things – especially decolonisation, but also finding the female, black, Muslim, gay, Arab, Asian, indigenous, non-literate, working-class etc etc people who contributed to archaeology but whose names aren’t in the published records. And moving on from that, communicating this so that the public view of archaeology (and perhaps even more the view of TV producers) evolves away from treasure and ‘exploration’ to some more nuanced understandings of who does/did archaeology, why, and what its impacts were for their lives and communities.
 
AT: How can people learn more about your research (personal blog, twitter, etc)?
 
SI: I rant a lot on twitter at @DrTermagant, and am less ranty on my project twitter handle at @JerichoQuake27. Otherwise, my profile page on the Staffordshire University website (when that goes up) should list publications and have access to those which are open access, and have information on my current research.

​James Donaldson is Manager and Curator of the RD Milns Antiquities Museum at the University of Queensland in Australia. Interview with Dr Amara Thornton, IoA History of Archaeology Network Coordinator.  ​

AT: How would you define history of archaeology?
 
JD: I see the history of archaeology as a reflective discipline, examining all aspects of archaeological and quasi-archaeological practice over the past several centuries (and perhaps even longer). It has to do with how archaeology used to be done, and how modern archaeology developed, but also with understanding the people who did archaeology and the social, historical and theoretical contexts in which they worked. I’m also interested in the history of formal and informal excavation at particular sites, what happened to the resulting finds, and what we can learn from re-examining those finds and the associated records. 

AT: What is your area of research in the history of archaeology?
 
JD: I research the history of antiquities collecting and collections in Australia, with a particular focus on antiquities collected by Australians during the First World War. My aim is to understand why antiquities were appealing souvenirs for soldiers to bring back to Australia, what kinds of material they were acquiring, and where it is now. Australian service personnel took artefacts from every theatre where they served, from Mesopotamia to the UK, and there is evidence for a diverse range of collecting practices that had a big impact on the way public and private collections of ancient material developed in Australia. ​

There is also the ethical aspect of collecting ancient cultural material during wartime: it is important to consider the relationship between antiquities as souvenirs and their status as items of foreign cultural heritage. A central part of my work is therefore to investigate how artefacts were collected during the war, how these practices relate to the broader context of colonial collecting and antiquarianism in the 19th and 20th centuries, and to promote transparency and dialogue about historical collecting activities and the ethics of antiquities collecting more broadly.
 
The current repository for this work is the First World War Antiquities Project.

AT: How did you become interested in the history of archaeology?
 
JD: My undergraduate degree was in Archaeology, but I then studied Classics for my Masters, while working as the manager of our Antiquities Museum at the University of Queensland. I became interested in the history of archaeology through provenance research, and research into the history of the UQ collection. This led to a further interest in how these archaeological collections developed around Australia, and some of the similarities in the way University and other collections were founded and used. 

​AT: Are you working on anything in particular related to the history of archaeology right now?
 
I’m in the final stages of “Phase One” of the First World War Antiquities Project which has focused on collections from Queensland, including over 60 artefacts from 10 service personnel held by the Queensland Museum in Brisbane. 
 
An ongoing project is a biography of JH Iliffe, the first director of the Palestine Archaeological Museum in Jerusalem (now the Rockefeller Museum). Through a strange twist of fate, Iliffe’s archive of personal papers, three antiquities, and over 400 photographs came to be in Queensland and were donated to the University of Queensland’s Fryer Library in 2013. The Antiquities Museum received the artefacts and I curated an exhibition in 2019 on Iliffe’s archive. He spent almost 2 decades in Mandate Palestine in a position of considerable privilege as part of the British administration, and his archive and associated papers present a unique insight into the way Jerusalem was changing at this time, and the role of archaeology and the archaeological museum in these changes. 
 
A new project in my role with the RD Milns Antiquities Museum is to start documenting the modern marks on our antiquities collection, inspired by the Artefacts of Excavation project. It promises to be a surprising take on more traditional provenance research and the sources of antiquities held in Australian collections. 

AT: What, from your experience, is the most meaningful thing you've come across in history of archaeology research and why?
 
JD: I really enjoyed the challenge of contributing to the first detailed listing of the JH Iliffe collection (based on the UQ Library’s initial accession listing) as part of our recent exhibition. It was a chance to get to grips with a sparsely documented collection, and start to sort out how it all fit together. 
 
The collection consists of over 400 photographs, alongside diaries, maps, notebooks and other ephemera, documenting a period of about 40-50 years of Iliffe’s life. It had some structure, but apart from a couple of brief obituaries and a few notes on the backs of photographs, there was very little to go on in terms of bringing order to the collection. It all came down to detective work, both within the collection and outside of it. It was exciting to see the narrative of Iliffe’s life emerge from texts, photographs and diaries, and to find important links to other archives around the world. 

AT: Do you have any favourite books (academic or popular) related to the history of archaeology? Titles and authors would be great, and a few thoughts as to why.
 
JD: I think my favourite book on the topic is David Lowenthal’s The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge University Press, 1985). It discusses the way the past (including archaeological sites and research) are used, interpreted, preserved, changed and challenged. It is “good to think with” when trying to understand how archaeological finds, sites, evidence and the resulting thing we call “history” has been interpreted, and misused, by all areas of (western) society. Donald Malcolm Reid’s Whose Pharaohs? (University of California Press, 2002) and Contesting Antiquity in Egypt (American University in Cairo Press, 2015) are important syntheses of archaeology, museums, and modern identity in Egypt that bring together a lot of amazing archival material and ephemera that sits outside of “traditional” archaeology but is more in the realm of archaeological reception.
 
I also enjoyed Susan Stewart’s work on collecting and the past in On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Duke University Press, 1993) and am looking forward to reading The Ruins Lesson: Meaning and Material in Western Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2020).

AT: Is there a key object/ image/ text from an archive that inspires you or that you keep revisiting?
 
JD: The English poet Francis Brett Young (1884-1954) wrote a poem called “Song of the Dark Ages” in about 1916 while training on Salisbury Plain. He describes digging trenches in the chalk and finding “…calcined human bone: Poor relic of that Age of Stone, Whose ossuary was our spoil.” It goes on to reflect on the passage of time and the futility of the war, ending with the lines “And they will leave us both alone: Poor savages who wrought in stone – Poor savages who fought in France.” 
 
I keep coming back to this poem. There is something about this wretched reflection on the futility of the digging, the war, and the passing of time all concentrated on the discovery of ancient human remains that is so striking. Thousands of service personnel passed through Salisbury Plain for training during the war, saw the monuments, and speculated about them. Often this speculation was based on misunderstandings and out-of-date history (one soldier talks about Stonehenge being made by the Romans), but there is something very human about the intersection of archaeology/collecting/souveniring/remembering that I think speaks to why the history of archaeology is an important thing to study.

AT: Any advice for those interested in starting research on the history of archaeology?
 
JD: I would encourage them not to be afraid to branch out from the established disciplines of archaeology or history or classics. There is so much work in interdisciplinary spaces, like the history of archaeology, but it is sometimes unclear how to get into these areas in standard university programs. Try to cultivate a wide interest in the past and different approaches to it.  

AT: From your perspective, what are the key issues in the history of archaeology right now?
 
JD: History of archaeology is an emerging discipline in Australia and there is still a lot of foundational work to be done on understanding themes like the development of our old-world archaeological collections, and the history of Australian archaeological missions. There are great untapped archives of materials are universities and museums all around Australia, with links to other work happening around the world. A number of my colleagues are starting to undertake this research so it is an exciting time to be working in this area in Australia. There are also big questions to be asked about how and why “classical” and other forms of archaeology have been done in Australian and how they have contributed to museum collections and our collective understanding of the past.

AT: How can people learn more about your research (personal blog, twitter, etc)?
 
JD: I’m mainly active on my Twitter account where I share things related to First World War Antiquities and my work with UQ’s RD Milns Antiquities Museum. You can find me at @CairoJim. My work is also available on my ORDIC profile.

AT: How would you define history of archaeology?
 
GM: I think there’s different ways of approaching this question. There’s no single history of archaeology, just as there is no one best approach to its study. I’m particularly fascinated by biographical approaches – individual, group, and object-focused biographies. History of archaeology can rise up from the grassroots – sites, artefacts, archives, balance sheets, individuals, institutions – or it can descend from the clouds of theory, and trace concepts and models onto the crooked timber of archaeological humanity. I like the diversity of it, even if I’m rather unimpressed with quite a lot of the work that takes place within that diversity.
 
AT: What is your area of research in the history of archaeology?
 
GM: Primarily, I’m engaged in a biographical study of Thomas Pettigrew, the surgeon-antiquarian who became well known for holding public unrollings of Egyptian mummies. I’m assembling his intellectual biography in fragments, and currently looking at his work as librarian to the Duke of Sussex, and the liberal political milieus that this brought him into contact with.
 
I have other strands of interest as well – perhaps too many – including the history of archaeology in London, from Charles Roach Smith through to the present. Through my Pettigrew work I’ve become very interested in the early history of the British Archaeological Association, and the rise of archaeology as a bourgeois pastime in the mid-nineteenth century. Most recently I did some work looking at the history of protest movements at archaeological excavations, and the nature of public ‘save the heritage’ campaigns, that often come to regard archaeologists as their enemies.

AT: How did you become interested in the history of archaeology?
 
GM: During my PhD I became very interested in the epistemological significance of eye-witnessing in archaeology, and the role of expert and amateur audiences at excavations. This led me into historical studies of public archaeology, including Pettigrew’s mummy unrollings. Then I started working on archived correspondence of archaeologists and antiquarians, and there was no going back.
 
AT: Are you working on anything in particular related to the history of archaeology right now?
 
A long-overdue book! I’m also wrangling with the late Peter Gathercole’s research notes on Gordon Childe, which contain a wealth of fascinating material. Related to this, lately I’ve been enjoying Katie Meheux’s penetrating and illuminating work on Childe.  
 
AT: What, from your experience, is the most exciting thing you've come across in history of archaeology research and why?
 
Correspondence between two antiquarians – Robert Lemon and Thomas Pettigrew – from 1826. Lemon reported to Pettigrew that he’d discovered a long-lost theological work by John Milton in the State Paper Office. Knowing sod-all about Milton, and having no wifi in the British Library manuscript room at that point, my first thought was blimey, what a discovery! Does anybody know about this? Fortunately the existence of De Doctrina Christiana is well known, but I was able to add a few details to the history of its rediscovery and attempts to variously authenticate and debunk it, and publish a short paper in Milton Quarterly.
 
AT: Do you have any favourite books (academic or popular) related to the history of archaeology? 
 
GM: I very much enjoyed From Genesis to Prehistory, Peter Rowley-Conwy’s book on the contested reception of the three age system, it struck a lovely balance between the big ideas and the people behind them, and it was very well written.
 
Philippa Levine’s The Amateur and the Professional is a book I return to again and again in my work, with ever growing appreciation for its breadth of understanding of Victorian antiquarianism.
 
In terms of fascinating subject matter and superlative prose, The Master Plan, Heather Pringle’s study of Nazi archaeology, is unmatched. I highly recommend it to all archaeologists, particularly those naïve fantasists who cling to the idea of an ideology-free science of archaeology.
 
AT: Is there a key object/ image/ text from an archive that inspires you or that you keep revisiting?
 
GM: One of the strangest episodes in Thomas Pettigrew’s career was his mummification of the tenth Duke of Hamilton in 1852. Pettigrew carried out the embalming in the traditional Ancient Egyptian manner, and conducted a full faux-Egyptian funeral service, after which the Duke’s remains were interred in a genuine Egyptian sarcophagus. I read a letter from the Duke’s valet to Pettigrew in the Beinecke Library that said (I’m paraphrasing obviously) ‘The Duke just died, please come and bring the embalming spices’. I was and remain fascinated by the disparity between the outlandish strangeness of the event, and the banal matter-of-factness of the letter that heralded it. Thinking about this helps me keep the sense of wonder in my research, and a reminder not to feel too familiar or comfortable with the people and events that I’m studying.
 
AT: Any advice for those interested in starting research on the history of archaeology?
 
GM: There is so much still to do, so much incredible material lying untouched in archives. Don’t stick too closely to what’s been done before – blaze a new train through the sources and the ideas. And for god’s sake, read deeply in the historiography of science so you don’t make a fool of yourself.
 
AT: From your perspective, what are the key issues in the history of archaeology right now?
 
GM: The poverty of historiography. The huge amount of published research which is sub-antiquarian dross, boot-licking hagiography, or unoriginal piffles-about in stale secondary sources.
 
We often talk about archaeology as a tool of European imperialism, but I think there’s a great deal more to be done looking at the details and operations of this mechanism. For example, I would love to know more about the roles of British archaeologists in colonial expeditions, invasions, and punitive raids.
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 Follow Gabe on twitter at @GabeMoshenska or email him and ask for pdfs.