ABSTRACT
Archaeologists could be diverted from the study of the archaeological record by matters political and ideological would cast doubts on their 'sturdy moral fabric', and would be incompatible with 'history in its monumental mode'; or so one might propose. It might be applied to McDonald's Progress or Fitton's Discovery; it says nothing, however, about Myres' resistance to engaging with ideological contexts in his 'Retrospect'. The chapter proposes a different and much simpler explanation, one holds good for all three cases. Myres, McDonald and Fitton thought of the writing of the Aegean prehistory's history as an archaeological project, closely comparable to the publication of an excavation: a kind of publication, that is, meant to be wholly devoted to the archaeologist's object, the archaeological record, and has consequently no place for the subject, the archaeologist's reflections on the self. In the historiographic endeavours, Myres, McDonald and Fitton emulated and reproduced the pattern of their archaeological ones.
