Medieval Studies welcomes you to a lecture, followed by an informal reception.

Lillian Datchev, Klarman Post-doctoral Fellow in the Cornell Department of History of Art and Visual Studies

"The First Explorations of Ancient Artifacts: Where, How, and Why"

Modern archaeology emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as major excavations were made and scientific techniques of dating and classification were developed. But how did the idea to study ancient artifacts form in the first place? It was not ex nihilo. In this lecture, I will present the first large-scale explorations. They were made largely by Italian figures, some of them well-known humanists--Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459), Ciriaco d'Ancona (1391-1452), and Biondo Flavio (1392-1463)--in the early fifteenth century. They set out in ships and on foot, with notebook in hand, scaling towering cliffs, rummaging through thorny shrubbery, all to make meticulous examinations and records of classical and early Christian remains that were scattered about the land (long before the development of museums): crumbling temples, theaters, gymnasia, early churches, statues, sculpted reliefs, inscriptions, and so on. Modern scholars have tended to see this newfound interest in antiquities as a result of the growing knowledge of history cultivated by humanists. However, a closer look at the precise places and objects that these early figures examined and recorded reveals that many individuals--not just learned humanists--took part in shaping this new surge of interest. In fact, the movement's roots were deeper, more medieval, and essentially dependent on the particular, commercial nature of Italian society at the time. I will bring this context to light--the merchants and the merchant colonies where the first explorations of ancient artifacts took place--and show how it shaped the rise of antiquarian scholarship, with consequences that lasted into modernity.

Bio:

Lillian Datchev is a Klarman postdoctoral fellow in the History of Art and Visual Studies at Cornell University. Her research focuses on medieval and early modern Europe, especially the histories of knowledge, material culture, and early capitalism in Italy. She completed her PhD in History at Princeton University in 2024.