Archaeology in Antiquity. Tourism, Profit, and Discoveries.
Beautiful Letters| N° d'inventaire | 18659 |
| Format | 16 x 24 |
| Détails | 224 p., paperback. |
| Publication | Paris, 2014 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | 9782251445021 |
In the evolution of humanity, the feeling of having changed eras in times of crisis and the notion of a bygone past have always aroused the singular concern to better understand vanished worlds. Among the Greeks, it was in the Hellenistic period, that is to say, during the decline of the ancient city, that an archaeology was able to emerge from historiography. The Ancients were therefore interested in the material remains of their antiquity. Certain "places of memory" already encouraged prosperous tourism. People dreamed of the ruins of Troy or elsewhere. But such unexpected finds raised pertinent questions, although it was often believed that mythology should be taken advantage of. For the gods sometimes inspired discoveries. Profit was also too often the motivation for prospecting, and our modern "treasure" detectors (much better equipped than the ancient looters) have no other motives. However, the texts also show us that, if necessary, people knew how to reason about the life that people had known in the past. It seems that, in Antiquity as in our own day, the taste for archaeology implies an ambiguous relationship with the past, alternately lamented or idealized, but whose evocation appears above all as an opportunity to relive another time, in another world.
In the evolution of humanity, the feeling of having changed eras in times of crisis and the notion of a bygone past have always aroused the singular concern to better understand vanished worlds. Among the Greeks, it was in the Hellenistic period, that is to say, during the decline of the ancient city, that an archaeology was able to emerge from historiography. The Ancients were therefore interested in the material remains of their antiquity. Certain "places of memory" already encouraged prosperous tourism. People dreamed of the ruins of Troy or elsewhere. But such unexpected finds raised pertinent questions, although it was often believed that mythology should be taken advantage of. For the gods sometimes inspired discoveries. Profit was also too often the motivation for prospecting, and our modern "treasure" detectors (much better equipped than the ancient looters) have no other motives. However, the texts also show us that, if necessary, people knew how to reason about the life that people had known in the past. It seems that, in Antiquity as in our own day, the taste for archaeology implies an ambiguous relationship with the past, alternately lamented or idealized, but whose evocation appears above all as an opportunity to relive another time, in another world.