eighteenth century, but it rose to importance in the nineteenth. A nice example in this regard involved the forgeries of allegedly early-medieval manuscripts written in Czech that were “discovered” in 1817 and 1819. Being well written, they influenced one part of Czech archaeology until the beginning of the twentieth century, as many influential historians and archaeologists accepted them as facts (e.g., P.J. Šafařík in 1836 and later F. Palacký, J.L. Píč, and others).

The romantic paradigm of archaeology faced a crisis when it became clear that it was unable to answer its own questions, in spite of the fact that the number of finds substantially increased. This development, however, did not take place in a vacuum: it was stimulated by changing ideologies reflecting changing social structure. It is often believed that the rise of the middle class and the beginning of the industrialization of the country can be held responsible for the development. Details of the complicated processes that took place within the society of the nineteenth century have not yet been sufficiently studied.

The Beginning of Formalism

The beginning of archaeology has often been identified with the creation of the first formal system of archaeological finds (the three-age system). It may not be chance that this attitude toward the “beginning” of archaeology came from modern archaeologists who themselves were proponents of formal (typological) archaeology. The romantic period seemed to them to be unscientific, apparently because it relied so heavily on models derived from outside (from history). There is no obvious reason, however, why the beginning of archaeology should be set as late as the introduction of the three ages.

The three-age system was well known and adopted in Czech lands soon after it was proposed in denmark. J.E. Vocel, the first Prague professor of archaeology, was its partisan, and J.V. Hellich, a custodian of the archaeological collection at the National Museum in Prague, used it in a handbook on Czech archaeology, written in 1943. The opposition of German specialists to the three-age system, however, could not be entirely dismissed and resulted in a conditional adoption of the ideas of the three ages by some Czech archaeologists.

It is worth noting that Vocel tried to subdivide the Bronze Age on the basis of the chemical composition of bronze artifacts. This is an example of how early formal archaeologists were still looking for chronologically sensitive attributes of artifacts before finding them in terms of shape and decoration. The romantic paradigm did not end abruptly with the three-age system, as it was permanently regenerated by the nationalism of the nineteenth century, which was especially active in central Europe. It was only at the end of the century that the national ambitions of at least some nations of the central European states (including those of the Czechs) were satisfied and they became more or less politically stable. This created the necessary conditions for an almost complete (but temporary) abandonment of romantic and nationalist concepts.

Developed Formal Archaeology

The three-age system was not entirely satisfactory, not only because of persisting nationalism but also because some countries had many archaeological finds that showed a good deal of formal variability that could not be explained by means of the three basic periods. By the end of the nineteenth century Bohemian and Moravian archaeology had its basic classificatory framework, going far beyond the three-age system, and this framework did not change substantially afterward.

This achievement was the logical consequence of the greatly enlarged effort of many Czech archaeologists in the second half of the nineteenth century who excavated new sites and tried to classify their finds into more detailed subdivisions. The final form of the achievement is connected with the names of Lubor Niederle, Karel Buchtela, Inocenc L. červinka, and Jaroslav Palliardi (mainly for the Neolithic period). The first two archaeologists based their classification on the monumental collections of the National Museum in Prague, which were greatly enriched by Josef L. Píč and his friends. Píč, an unusually active curator of