Higgs, Eric

(1908–1976)

Eric Higgs did not take up archaeology as a full-time career until the age of 47. He had a degree in agricultural economics from London University and had worked as a professional card player, builder, and farmer. In 1954 Higgs began a two-year postgraduate program in prehistory at Cambridge University, studying with grahame clark and charles mcburney, who fostered his interests in the Paleolithic and the economic approach to prehistory.

Higgs participated in the final season of excavations at the cave of haua fteah in Libya with McBurney in 1955, becoming a research assistant in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, senior assistant in 1963, and assistant director of research from 1968 until 1972, when he retired. Higgs founded the Cambridge “Bone Room,” which was the nearest that the university came to having archaeological laboratory facilities in the 1960s and 1970s. This provided the main focus for undergraduate teaching in practical work for many generations of students.

Between 1962 and 1967 Higgs carried out major fieldwork in the Epirus region of northwest greece that encouraged the development of paleo-geographic and paleo-economic approaches to the archaeological record. From 1967 to 1976 Higgs was director of the “Early History of Agriculture Project,” housed in the Department of Archaeology, which consumed most of the funds then available for what was later to become known in Britain as “science-based archaeology.” In his role as advocate of a more science-based methodology, he also edited jointly with Don Brothwell Science in Archaeology, one of the earliest comprehensive texts on the use of scientific methods in archaeology. Eric Higgs was a provocative and influential colleague and teacher, whose impact, despite only twenty years in archaeology, is still evident.

Geoff Bailey

References

For references, see Encyclopedia of Archaeology: The Great Archaeologists, Vol. 1, ed. Tim Murray (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1999), pp. 558–565.

Hildebrand, Bror Emil

(1806–1884)

Swedish numismatist Bror Emil Hildebrand was a graduate of Lund University, the center for scientific archaeology in sweden during the first half and middle of the nineteenth century. Hildebrand first worked on the collections in the museum at Lund, and then was appointed chief custodian of National Antiquities in Stockholm in 1837. His expansion of the national collection during the 1840s and 1850s was the result not only of both agricultural land reclamations and methodical excavations, but also of his intention to create a national and scientific archaeological collection. As early as 1850 Hildebrand consulted Danish archaeologist christian jürgensen thomsen and reorganized the archaeological collections at Lund and Stockholm based on Thomsen’s three-age system.

By the 1860s the Stockholm archaeological collection was remarkable for its quality and breadth—both of which were to influence the research of the next generation of Swedish archaeologists such as oscar montelius and B.E. Hildebrand’s son, hans hildebrand. Because Sweden did not have the Roman monuments that absorbed the archaeological interest of much of the rest of Europe, its attitude to, and care of, prehistoric material were exemplary. The homogeneity of prehistoric cultures in Sweden also meant that its collections provided an overall picture of source material and evidence of local variations. So both general and typical artifact features were easily traced, and were in fact were more accessible than ever before—as greater proportions of collections of artifacts were on exhibition during the nineteenth century than they ever have been since then.

Hildebrand’s achievements in museology were more than well matched by his abilities as an outstanding numismatist. In fact he may not have been as effective in his museum role had he not had a numismatic background. In this area, once again Hildebrand was influenced by Thomsen, classifying coins in Copenhagen under Thomsen’s personal supervision in 1830 and completing his doctoral thesis Numismata Anglo-Saxonica (Anglo Saxon Coins) based on work by one of Thomsen’s students. Hildebrand also realized the value of coins for dating native artifacts and ancient remains