OCTOBER, 5TH-6TH 2009 NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF HISTORY OF ART
(INHA), PARIS The discipline of Archeology was born in the
XVIIIth century under the impulsion of the famous excavations of
Pompei and Herculanum. By the XXth century it had slowly
developed into a truly scientific field for the study of
material remnants of past civilisations and their environments,
also able to shed new light on current societal questions.
Archeometric methods have contributed significantly to make
archeology a science of precision. But archaeology has also
always been a fabulous resource for the imagination of countless
artists, writer and scholars. From the Renaissance to
Romanticism, ruins were used first as a motif, then as a
pictorial genre. During the same period, the archeological model
blossomed in literature, notably with ThÃ©ophile Gauthierâ€™s
Arria Marcella and Jensen’s Gradiva. Thereafter, it was used by
Freud as a metaphor to translate the psychoanalytical method. As
of the 1960s, archaeology appeared frequently in the