Towards a Bureaucratic History of Archaeology

Abstract

This paper shows that the protocols for observing and recording employed by different bureaucratic departments of state administration were fortuitously incorporated into the practices of several disciplines, including archaeology. Circulars or questionnaires, inventories and records, the French model for post-mortem medical examinations, and the protocols used by topographers, pilots, and military engineers moved from bureaucracy to scientific practice. Thus, objects were brought into collections having been formatted by procedures inherited from diverse traditions of state administration, construction, or commercial procedures.

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