top of it, but such work was exceptional for the time. In England, Britton and Rickman identified the major styles of architecture and placed them in chronological sequence.

An Antiquarian Structure

Two important parallel developments in the nineteenth century affected the development of the various strands of medieval archaeology. One was the establishment of national and local societies with an interest in archaeology, and the other was the development of legislation to protect monuments and (of special importance for later medieval archaeology) buildings such as abbeys and castles. Universities did not develop a great interest in medieval archaeology at this stage, although a chair in the archaeology and history of medieval art was established at the University of Cracow (in Poland) in 1866.

More national societies developed to enlarge the small number, such as the society of antiquaries of london, that had been founded in the later eighteenth century, and many of them included early and later medieval archaeology within their interests. Examples include the British Archaeological Association for the Encouragement and Prosecution of Researches into the Arts and Monuments of the Early Middle Ages, founded in 1843, which soon had 1,200 members. The following year, the Society for the Preservation of Norwegian Antiquities was established, marking the change in that country to a more organized attitude to medieval archaeology. The joint German historical and antiquarian societies agreed in 1852 to found two museums, an act that institutionalized the divide between early and late medieval archaeology. Early medieval archaeology was within the purview of the Central Roman and Germanic Museum in Mainz, which also dealt with prehistoric and Roman material, and late medieval evidence was the responsibility of the Germanic National Museum established in Nuremberg for Christian German material with an emphasis on high art linked to architecture.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, many regions across Europe had or were establishing local museums and antiquarian societies. Members of the landed gentry and minor aristocracy, professional classes, and the more intellectual of the merchant and industrial classes were able to share their interest in the past, of which the medieval was a part and often a very visible one. Much of the archaeology had direct links with the present ecclesiastical structures and the estates and castles of the elite; other elements related to earlier medieval evidence associated with ethnic groups that had migrated and established the precursors of the developing nation states. In Germany, local societies began to emerge in the 1820s, and the Christian Middle Ages became a popular subject of interest in antiquarian circles, following on from developing interests in classical and prehistoric archaeology. Local societies in Italy began to form in the later nineteenth century, though medieval material was of only marginal interest in that country.

Merovingian cemeteries were excavated across france, often because of accidental discoveries caused by building work, and the finds were recorded by local antiquarian societies and sometimes partially published in their proceedings. Despite the seventeenth-century Childeric find, there was much doubt as to the dates and cultural attributions of the graves until the middle of the century. Major row-grave cemeteries were excavated at Nordendorf and Oberflacht in Germany in the 1840s, and the dating of such graves was ascertained through associated coin finds at Selzen, near Mainz, published in 1848. In eastern Europe, most attention was also given to early medieval material, particularly from cemeteries.

Barrow digging continued as an antiquarian pursuit throughout the nineteenth century. In russia, barrow cemeteries of the ninth to thirteenth centuries a.d. were investigated, most notably at Gnezdovo near Smolensk. Bateman, Atkinson, and Mortimer worked extensively in northern England, and by this time Anglo-Saxon burials were being clearly distinguished from prehistoric ones. Finds in all countries were often reported at local and national meetings; some finds were put in local museums at this time while others remained in private hands either to be lost, sold on the antiquities market, or later deposited in an institution. Some burials