The History of Archaeology, Part 5

The real increases towards the techniques and methodology of what we think of as modern archaeology were primarily the work of Schliemann, Pitt-Rivers, and Petrie. Although Heinrich Schliemann is often considered not much better than a treasure-hunter, by the latter years of his work at Hissarlik, he took on a German assistant, Wilhelm Dorpfeld, who had worked at Olympia with Curtius. Dorpfeld's influence on Schliemann led to refinements in his technique and, by the end of his career, Schliemann carefully recorded his excavations, preserved the ordinary along with the extraordinary, and was prompt about publishing his reports.

A military man who spent a great deal of his early career studying the improvement of British fire-arms, Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers brought military precision and rigor to his archaeological excavations. In addition, he spent a not-inconsiderable inheritance building the first extensive comparative artifact collection, including contemporary ethnographic materials. His collection was decidedly not for beauty's sake; as he quoted T.H. Huxley: "The word importance ought to be struck out of scientific dictionaries; that which isimportant is that which is persistent."

William Matthew Flinders Petrie, known most for his invention of seriation or sequence dating, also held high standards of excavation technique. Petrie recognized the inherent problems with large excavations, and assiduously planned them out ahead of time. A generation younger than Schliemann and Pitt-Rivers, Petrie was able to apply the basics of stratigraphic excavation and comparative artifact analysis to his own work. He synchronized the occupation levels at Tell el-Hesi with Egyptian dynastic data, and was able to successfully develop an absolute chronology for sixty feet of occupational debris. Petrie, like Schliemann and Pitt-Rivers, published his excavation findings in detail.

While the revolutionary concepts of archaeological technique advocated by Schleimann and Pitt-Rivers and Petrie gained acceptance slowly around the world, there is no doubt that without them, it would have been a longer wait.