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Founded by act of the British Parliament in 1753, the British Museum is widely regarded as having one of the greatest collection of antiquities anywhere in the world. As is true for many great museums, such as the ashmolean in Oxford and the louvre in Paris, the British Museum was founded on the private collections of individuals, in this case Sir Hans Sloane and Sir Robert Bruce Cotton. In its early years, the British Museum was favored by monarchy. In 1757, King George II presented the Royal Library to the museum, and the library of George III was transferred there in 1828.
Notwithstanding the very great importance of the British Museum as a library, the fortunes of its collections of antiquities are of perhaps greater importance. These were also supplemented by royal patronage. For example, George III presented the Rosetta Stone after its capture from the French in Egypt (1799). Parliament has also been a benefactor, especially in the celebrated case of the Parthenon marbles purchased from lord elgin in 1816.
The British Museum has since acquired antiquities from all parts of the world, but it is especially strong in British antiquities and those derived from Egypt, western Asia, Greece, and Rome. Major pieces such as the material from nimrud, nineveh, and Khorsabad (building on the collections and excavations of sir austen henry layard), the magnificent artifacts excavated by sir leonard woolley at ur, and elements of the mausoleum of Halicarnassus and the Temple of Artemis at ephesus were acquired through the efforts of private collectors. The egypt exploration society was also a major source of Egyptian antiquities from the late-nineteenth century until the beginning of the World War II.
Notwithstanding the mechanics of assembling such great collections, the British Museum has also played a major role in pure archaeological research. Throughout the twentieth century, research by British Museum staff members has added considerably to our knowledge of archaeology on the global scale.
See also
Belzoni, Giovanni Battista; Egypt, Dynastic; Hamilton, William; Mesopotamia
Located on the Devonshire coast of England, Brixham Cave was discovered in 1858. The story of its excavation and the role the discoveries made there played in the history of archaeology is an enduring one. Owing to the great skills and energy of early archaeologists hugh falconer and william pengelly, it was possible to raise funds and the support of some of the most eminent British scientists of the day (such as charles lyell, Richard Owen, and joseph prestwich) to undertake a systematic excavation of the cave. Falconer understood clearly that maintaining tight stratigraphic control was crucial to securing plausible evidence of the coexistence of ancient human beings and extinct animals, and such control was achieved thanks to innovations in excavation techniques made by Pengelly and Prestwich.
The site was excavated between 1858 and 1859, and a body of evidence was produced that, although initially convincing only Falconer and Pengelly (along with a few others), when viewed along with the evidence from French archaeologist jacques boucher de perthes’s excavations in the Somme Valley became the first widely accepted evidence of an even greater human antiquity.
See also
Britain, Prehistoric Archaeology
References
van Riper, A. Bowdoin. 1995. Men among the Mammoths: Victorian Science and the Discovery of Human Prehistory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
A pioneer of Paleolithic archaeology in slovenia, Srecko Brodar first studied natural sciences in Vienna. He graduated from the University of Zagreb in 1920, and received his Ph.D. from Ljubljana University in 1939. In 1946 he became a professor at Ljubljana University, director of the Institute of Archaeology at the Slovenian Academy of Arts and Sciences, and member
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