BBC Radio In Our Time

The BBC’s latest edition of In Our Time this week looks at Archaeology and Imperialism. You can visit the site, or download an MP3 of the programme.

In 1842 a young English adventurer called Austen Henry Layard set out to excavate what he hoped were the remains of the biblical city of Nineveh in Mesopotamia. On arrival he discovered that the local French consul, Paul Emile Botta, was already hard at work. Across the Middle East and in Egypt, archaeologists, antiquarians and adventurers were exploring cities older than the Bible and shipping spectacular monuments down the Nile and the Tigris to burgeoning European museums.

What was it about the ancient cultures of Egypt and Mesopotamia that so gripped the 19th century imagination? How did nationalism and imperialism affect the search for the ancient past and how did archaeology evolve from its adventuresome, even reckless, origins into the science of artefacts we know today?

Contributors

Tim Champion, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Southampton

Richard Parkinson, Assistant Keeper in the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum

Eleanor Robson, Lecturer in the History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University and a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford

This edition is available for one week only.