ABSTRACT
Archaeological and anthropological enquiry traversed the borders of discipline, discourse and genre with notable freedom throughout the nineteenth century. This chapter argues that scientific and literary writers engaged in a common endeavour to explore connections between past and present. It examines how literary and scientific writings on archaeology evoked the passage of time as a narrative of counterpoised loss and preservation. The chapter demonstrates that anthropology brought to the surface archaeology's partially submerged concern with empire, nation and 'race'. It also investigates the fraught preoccupation with civilization and savagery, with self and other, that ran through Victorian anthropology and literature. The burgeoning of interest in archaeology across the nineteenth century expressed the era's peculiarly urgent attention to the past. Professional archaeologists, popularizers and literary writers participated in mutually influential dialogue. Archaeological debate moved fluidly across the boundaries of fiction and non-fiction, as novelists, poets and travel writers played their part alongside archaeologists in sustaining the public appetite for archaeological narrative.
