This is a well-crafted general introduction to the main characters, sites and issues in the history of Aegean archaeology. She presents a traditional ‘heroizing’ biographical account of Schliemann, Evans, Wace and Blegen, filling in information about other contemporary excavators and their finds, and adding details about later discoveries at these sites where it seems appropriate.
Lesley Fitton covers this ground in her account of the first eighty years of Greek Bronze Age archaeology, from Schliemann to Ventris, from 1870 to ca. Moreover, the development of Bronze Age Greek archaeology as a discipline (and Classical archaeology in general) is inextricably tied in with the Classical philological tradition, since at every step, the discoveries of the archaeologists were measured and judged by the literature and the latest trends in its analysis.
In no case does this seem more true than in the discovery of the pre-Classical Greek cultures from the 1870s to the 1950s, epitomized in the figures of Schliemann and Evans. And yet the archaeologist him or herself has a distinct cultural background, shaped by time and place of birth, educational background, attitude toward the world, that must be taken into account. When the archaeologist’s voice speaks for these mute people, archaeologist and discovery thus become one. The image of the archaeologist has always captured the imagination-a heroic figure finding unknown cultures paradoxically both ancient and new.
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