Reassembling the Network. Richard Christensen and the 1872–1873 Purchase of Antiquities in Athens for the Copenhagen Collections

Preview this chapter:

Reassembling the Network. Richard Christensen and the 1872–1873 Purchase of Antiquities in Athens for the Copenhagen Collections, Page 1 of 1

< Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/10.1484/M.ARC-EB.5.144099/M.ARC-EB.5.144482-1.gif

There is something of an oxymoron with archaeological archives. They are undeniably central to archaeological research, with excavation documents being ‘archival’ by nature, yet their use and interpretive power remain peripheral at best. This paper argues that archives are part of historiography — an integral component of any discipline’s critical re-evaluation. For this reason, they form valuable thinking tools for the social history and anthropology of archaeology. One such illustration is given here through the study of a series of letters by Richard Christensen relating to the purchase of ancient objects in Athens in 1872–1873 on behalf of the Ethnographic and Antiquities departments in Copenhagen (now part of the National Museum of Denmark). It is through such archival information that the networks regarding the sourcing and trafficking of ancient objects can be reassembled and their multidimensional impact on the disciplinary development of archaeology and on the formation of modern antiquities collections can be explicated.