Sensations : French Archaeology between Science and Spectacle, 1890–1940 / Daniel J. Sherman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sherman, Daniel J., Author.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (288 p.) : 8 color plates, 40 halftones

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2025]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Delves into two controversies from the French archaeological world to illuminate the tension between the discipline’s scientific ambitions and its hunger for media attention. For well over a century, from Heinrich Schliemann’s sensational discoveries at Troy in the 1880s, through the Tutankhamun excavations of the 1920s, to the recent LIDAR-aided uncovering of lost Maya cities, archaeology has made headlines. In this new history of archaeology and its archival traces, Daniel J. Sherman treats the friction between science and spectacle as constitutive of the field. By exploring two long-running controversies that roiled the French archaeological world and its wider public in the first third of the twentieth century, he gives the science/media relationship a unique place in the history of archaeology—and its present. The first controversy involves a dispute over the conduct of excavations at Carthage in Tunisia, then under French colonial rule. In the second, accusations of forgery clouded what seemed to be a stunning Neolithic find at a hamlet called Glozel, in the Auvergne region in central France. The affair divided the scholarly community and attracted enormous media attention across Europe and North America. Both controversies occurred at a transitional moment between what has been called the heroic age of archaeology, dominated by explorers and adventurers with little specialized training, and the beginnings of its professionalization. As Sherman shows, the two affairs put the methods, procedures, and networks of archaeology in the spotlight and profoundly shaped its history.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgmen

Introduction

1 "FOR CARTHAGE"

2 THE NEWS FROM GLOZEL

3 BODIES AND MINDS

4 REALITY EFFECTS

5 PICTURING THINGS

Epilogue

Notes

Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 20. Mar 2025)

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9780226835389

0226835383

OCLC:

1515461741