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Scottish or international archaeology and history. Office-bearers consist of a president, three vice-presidents, a treasurer, and an editor, and there is currently a professional staff of three, headed by the director of the society. The society celebrated its bicentenary in 1980 with special meetings and exhibitions, and a commemorative medal was struck in bronze for fellows and in silver as a presidential badge of office. A volume of essays about the society, the museum, and leading antiquarians was published to mark the bicentennial year (Bell 1981).
From the 1850s onward, reports of excavations featured strongly in the Proceedings, and the society sponsored its own excavations from the 1890s to the 1930s, including work on the Roman forts at Birrens, Ardoch, Inchtuthil, and Newstead; the native forts at Dunadd and Traprain; the broch at Gurness; and the Viking settlement at Jarlshof in the Shetland Islands. Although the society no longer conducts excavations today, it supports excavation and research through grants awarded from its research fund and through conferences.
A leading fellow of the mid-nineteenth century, A.H. Rhind, funded an annual lectureship that began in 1876–1878 with a series of lectures on Scottish ethnography by Sir Arthur Mitchell; these lectures were published as The Past in the Present (1880). The next series was given by Joseph Anderson, the keeper of the society’s museum from 1869 to 1913. His lectures represented a milestone in Scottish archaeology because of their scientific analysis of sites and artifacts, and they were published in two volumes as Scotland in Early Christian Times (1881) and in another two volumes as Scotland in Pagan Times (1883–1886). The prestigious Rhind Lectures still continue to provide a platform for scholars to present the most up-to-date research in a wide variety of archaeological, historical, architectural, and ethnographical fields.
Apart from the Proceedings, there have been occasional publications such as the great tome The Early Christian Monuments of Scotland (1903) by J. Romilly Allen and Joseph Anderson, and since 1982, the society has published its own series of monographs, mostly recording excavations in Scotland. From its inception, the society has been consulted on important developments relating to Scottish history and archaeology, and it continues to have a powerful voice on matters concerning Scotland’s heritage and the management of archaeology in Britain.
References
Bell, A. S., ed. 1981. The Scottish Antiquarian Tradition. Edinburgh: John Donald.
Graham, A. 1969–1970. “Records and Opinions: 1780–1930.” Proceedings of the society of antiquaries of scotland 102: 241–284.
Founded in 1734 in London by a group of gentlemen who had taken the grand tour of Europe, the primary purpose of the Society of Dilettanti was to promote the study of classical antiquities. The society gained great fame during its history by funding research, the most important being a survey of Athenian monuments by James Stuart (artist) and Nicholas Revett (architect), which took place between 1751 and 1754, and a highly detailed survey of the ruins of Ionia by Richard Chandler beginning in 1765. The society sealed its place in the history of archaeology by publishing both surveys. Stuart and Revett produced the four-volume Antiquities of Athens (1762–1816), and Chandler brought out The Antiquities of Ionia (1769–1797).
See also
References
Schnapp, A. 1996. The Discovery of the Past. London: British Museum Press.
Solutré, an open site in the Ardèche region of southeastern france, was selected in 1869 as the type site for the Solutrean industry. The site is located at the base of a cliff and dates from about 30,000 b.p. to 17,000 b.p. Solutré contains an excellent sequence of French Paleolithic industries from the Mousterian to the Magdalenian, but it is most famous for the presence of the distinctive laurel leaf points and shouldered points that are characteristic of
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