Series in Progress: Antiquities of Nature, Numismatics and Stone Implements in the Emergence of Prehistoric Archaeology

Abstract

What links medals and fossils, series of coins and series of stones? What are the possible connections between the practical, visual constructions of natural history and of human history? At stake here is a conception of human and natural history that can be accepted intuitively, or further documented and theorized: not only was human history a resource for the conceptualization of nature's history, whether to substantiate or deny accounts of its divine creation, but at key moments some of the devices and methodologies specifically employed to make sense of human productions may also have served as models of inquiry and good practice. They served as metonyms and blueprints for further identification, description and eventual interpretation of natural phenomena. Furthermore, the reverse also holds: some of these practices of inquiry, transformed, amplified, indeed naturalized, found their way back into the methods of human history. This was the case with mid-nineteenth-century human sciences, including anthropology, ethnology and, of particular concern here, the nascent discipline of prehistoric archaeology. The recursive methodology to be highlighted is that of the series: the notion according to which, beyond any haphazard accumulation, listing or enumeration, some intelligibility may be derived from putting things together and in relation to each other, a certain order or sequence that confers on the sum an additional weight or impact, able to carry and also to display conviction. The things put together in such an exemplary way are, perhaps unexpectedly, coins, whose study proves particularly rich in hidden facets and exemplary procedures. Focusing on the decisive contribution of John Evans, numismatist, antiquarian and geologist, this paper identifies the crucial role played by his numismatic practices in the establishment of high human antiquity around 1859. It also shows how his serial approach to coins provided his follower Pitt Rivers with a prototype for the developmental sequences that so characterize the triumphant evolutionism of the later nineteenth century. nature's antiquarians This broad overview must start a century or so earlier, when an increasingly recognizable body of scholars, the antiquarians, deployed a range of field practices and interpretative techniques directed both at textual and at material sources. With their unbridled and highly localized passion for evocative curiosities, antiquarians had been busy enriching official records of past historical deeds, collecting and displaying

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