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Relic hunters : archaeology and the public in nineteenth-century America
- Author / Creator
- Available as
- Physical
- Summary
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Relic Hunters is a study of the complex relationship between the people of 19th century America with the material antiquities of North America's indigenous past. As scholars struggled to explain th...
Relic Hunters is a study of the complex relationship between the people of 19th century America with the material antiquities of North America's indigenous past. As scholars struggled to explain their existence, farmers in Ohio were plowing up arrowheads, building their houses atop burial mounds, and developing their own ideas about antiquity. They experienced the new country as a "place with history" reflected in material traces that became important touch points for scientific knowledge, but for American cultural identity as well.
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- Creator
- James E. Snead
- Other Title
-
- Relic hunters : archaeology and the public in 19th-century America
- Format
- Books
- Language
- English
- Publication
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- First edition
- Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2018
- ©2018
- Physical Details
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- xvii, 301 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm
- ISBNs
- 9780198736271, 0198736274, 9780191055898
- OCLC
- on1005107362
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 253-292) and index.
- Machine generated contents note: 1. Kentucky Mummy: Encountering the American Past -- "Astonished the philosophical world" -- "Mouldering relics": Pondering American Antiquities -- Notes -- 2. Antiquarian Dreams: Collections and Competition in the Early Republic -- "A horde of troglodytes" -- "Enamoured of the face of time": Antiquarian Practice in the Early Republic -- "For the cabinet in Worcester" -- "We are founding a Museum" -- "The swarthy savage, in her willow shroud" -- "Yankee Trick" -- "This dried up article" -- 3. "Too Poetical a Theory": Antiquarian Ambition, East and West -- "This vast field of antiquities" -- "I could not make facts": Atwater's Mound Survey -- "The Wiley Italian" -- Promoting Archaeologia Americana -- "Deified Monkeys" -- 4. Antiquarian Entrepreneurs: Mounds and Meaning in the Jacksonian Era -- "Time for reverie" -- "Spade and eyes together": Investigation and Display on the Frontier -- "The tumult of their dance" -- "Particulars of great consequence" -- "To gratify travellers, and hasty visitors" -- "A mysterious hieroglyphic of power": Investigating the Natchez Mounds -- "The prey of some itinerant curiosity monger" -- "Among dry bones" -- 5. "These places know him no more": Surveys, Panoramas, and the Landscape of Ancient America -- This "dark mansion of the murdered" -- "Careful measurements and triangulation": Mapping American Antiquities -- "Sic transit gloria Moundi" -- "Glow and excitement": Panoramas and American Antiquity -- "When the Novelty of Discovery Subsides": The Dickeson Panorama -- 6. Idol Pursuits: Artifacts and Authority after the Civil War -- "Siste viator" -- "The spirit of antiquarian research" -- "Ruined Rebels": The Jones Brothers and Confederate Archaeology -- "The spade of a utilitarian age" -- "The best terms possible for a Southern man" -- Scrambling for Beads: American Archaeology in the Postwar Era -- 7. "Mementos of the Prehistoric Races": Antiquarians and Archaeologists in the Centennial Decade -- "Forward the body by express" -- "Skeleton Sharps": Local Antiquarians and National Ambitions -- "A relic-hunter in every county" -- Philadelphia "Revolution" -- "The Insurmountable Pride of Locality" -- Circular 316: "In Reference to American Archaeology" -- "I must decline to send the relics" -- 8. "Lost by Being Found": The Public and the Material Past in the Nineteenth-Century United States -- "The works, are now entirely obliterated" -- "Contradictions and absurdities" -- Conclusion -- Notes