The nineteenth century

The nineteenth century had seen a great deal uncovered, but its excavators had by and large lacked the skill or the understanding for a full interpretation of what was found. Excavations had begun in the Roman forum in the early nineteenth century, but presentation of their results through publication was to lag substantially behind the digging for many years. A new concept, that of recording Roman and other remains in advance of their destruction by building work or other disturbance, was already starting to gain ground in the course of the nineteenth century. The spectacle of thousands of the inhabitants of the city of London visiting the site of the Queen Victoria Street mosaic in 1869 shows the extent to which Roman archaeology had by then, as it were, arrived on people's doorsteps. The first congress of the German historical and antiquarian societies was held in Mainz in 1852.