the enormous storerooms of the Taranto Museum been thoroughly researched, with the objects from the early excavations appearing in a series of well-illustrated volumes.

As the confident new Italian state emerged, overseas expeditions could be contemplated. Federico Halbherr began working at Gortyn in Crete in 1884, and with the foundation of the Italian mission to Crete in 1899 and then the Italian School of Archaeology in Athens in 1909, a number of other sites were explored. Italian work in Greece has concentrated on Crete and the Aegean Islands; Rhodes and Cos, occupied by Italy from 1912 on, were particular focuses of activity. Further work was carried out in Turkey and in Libya, particularly after the occupation of that country by Italian forces in 1914. The outbreak of World War I saw the exit of many of the German and Austrian professors from Italian universities, and since then foreigners have played less prominent roles in the history of Italian archaeology. In the 1920s Nationalism started to become an important force in Italian archaeology, particularly in excavations in the new national capital (Roma Capitale) and also in the new colonial possessions in North Africa and in what one might call the “cult of Roman-ness” (Romanità), exploited with flair by the Fascist administration (1922–1944). The Second Roman Empire set considerable sums of money aside for archaeological excavation and research. The Imperial Fora were thoroughly explored, and Augustus’s famous Altar of Peace (Ara Pacis) was reconstructed, although in the wrong place and on the wrong axis. It has subsequently been demonstrated how this monument was a focal point of a symbolic landscape dominated by a huge sundial, the pointer of which was an Egyptian obelisk whose shadow penetrated the altar on the autumn equinox, Augustus’s birthday. The wishes of the Fascist political masters often led to destructive haste in excavation. Huge areas of Ostia, the ancient port of Rome, were cleared by G. Calza between 1938 and 1942 for an international exhibition in Rome; although the city had been exceptionally well preserved by silt from the Tiber, most of the potentially useful information was lost in the rush. Given the concentration on Rome, the study of Greek art and archaeology in these years could be an anti-Fascist statement, and the south Italian Società Magna Grecia, founded in 1920 and mainly interested in the Greek colonies of south Italy, became a focus of anti-Fascist activity. Its journal was closed down by the regime in 1932, and one of its leading members, Umberto Zanotti Bianco (doctor, sociologist, and southern statesman, as well as archaeologist) was confined by police to Paestum. This did, however, allow him to find and explore the great Sanctuary of Hera on the banks of the Sele River, together with Paola Zancani Montuoro. The methodologically rigorous excavation stood well apart from most of its Fascist-era contemporaries for its professionalism.

Classical archaeology had set down some solid positivist roots before the end of the nineteenth century, with figures such as Fiorelli, Boni, and Orsi prominent, but it moved instead in the direction of idealist, art-historical studies in the first half of the twentieth century. The importance in this trend to be attributed to the German Altertumswissenschaft, on the one hand, and the idealist thought of the philosopher Benedetto Croce, on the other, is still a matter of debate. Whatever the explanation, Italian classical archaeology and prehistory moved well apart in these years, and they have largely stayed apart since. The postwar years were dominated by the figure of Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, who must have been a reluctant guide for Adolf Hitler in Rome on his official visit in 1938 (Hitler was reported to have been hugely impressed). Bianchi Bandinelli joined the Communist Party immediately after the war, and although he remained principally interested in art history, many of his students, still major figures today (e.g., Andrea Carandini, Filippo Coarelli, Mario Torelli), pursued more archaeological topics, often with an explicitly Marxist focus on social and economic history. This group had as its mouthpiece the Dialoghi di Archeologia (Archaeological Dialogues), founded in 1967, and efforts were made to bridge the gap with pre- and particularly proto-history, in which the leading figures were S.M. Puglisi and Renato Peroni.

The number of Italian archaeologists whose