Reconfiguring the use of photography in archaeology

Stefanie Klamm

Visual recording is one of the key tasks and tools of archaeology. The discipline relies on visual tools for the formation of its knowledge. In particular, the situation on an excavation itself cannot be preserved; excavation implies (at least partial) destruction. At the same time, it is by excavating that archaeology retrieves its objects of inquiry. At the site, which permanently changes during excavation, visual techniques are essential to documenting artifacts and structures, as well as to cataloging and arranging them.¹ Not only did the emergence of photography in the mid-nineteenth century coincide with then likewise nascent academic discipline of archaeology, but it also quickly became evident that the latter would require a variety of visual techniques in order to cope with its various tasks: to process the topography of an excavation site or the archaeological Befund (findings), for example; or to classify artifacts by the image and in the image. Besides photography, graphic forms or casting techniques were used to accomplish different tasks in archaeological practice. Each of these media— photography, drawing, and casting—pursued its own strategy to produce visual evidence that archaeologists in turn embedded discursively in various forms.

Against that background, this chapter focuses on two aspects of the hybridization of photography. First, it was not photographic representation alone that allowed the excavators an adequate and archaeologically utilizable picture at the excavation field. In fact, drawing and photography, and not least the cast, complemented each other in a number of instances. Second, photographic (and graphic) images were based mostly on preparations and stagings during (on-site) pre- or post-production of the actual image, supposedly to inscribe additional evidence therein. Further narratives were added by means of captions and inscriptions in the image. In processing photographs for publication, for instance, other layers of meaning were added.

To support my argument I use examples of different archaeological excavation sites. A pivotal example is the German excavations in Olympia, Greece, from 1875 to 1881, but I also draw on case studies from other excavation sites, such as the Roman military camp in Haltern, Westphalia, in northwestern Germany, and a Bronze Age settlement close to Berlin. All of these excavations were undertaken by German archaeologists who were each time faced with an unprecedented archaeological situation that required them to reflect anew on the retrieval of archaeological information. Olympia was one of the first major excavations at which the structure and division of the labor entailed therein were established. At Olympia, visual representation of the site took on new significance given that the finds were not transferred to the excavators’ home country. Haltern and the excavation at Berlin-Buch are equally relevant to the issue of visual representation, as hardly any stone remains were available there,

Use of photography in archaeology 115 and it was only with the aid of discolorations and soil analysis that antique life on the site could be reconstructed. Both may be considered exemplary of the archaeological challenges posed by the study of prehistoric settlements. The Haltern site raised the question of how to present relatively large-scale structures and the soil properties of prehistoric residues. The settlement in Berlin-Buch, one of the first ever systematically excavated prehistoric habitations, became a benchmark for characteristic features and structures of this typology (whereas its identification and interpretation had hitherto essentially relied on graves and burial sites).

Drawing and photography complement each other

One crucial medium of representation for structuring an archaeological excavation site was the panorama. Panoramic views were a very popular—and hence still prevalent—means to display complex excavation areas as well arranged. A panoramic view on two folio sheets gives a general overview of the excavation field at the ancient site of Olympia in the year 1887, six years after conclusion of the German archaeologists’ excavations (Figure 9.1). From 1875 to 1881, under the direction of the historian and archaeologist Ernst Curtius (1814-1896) and the architect Friedrich Adler (1827-1908), archaeologists had dug at Olympia in an undertaking to find one of the most legendary sanctuaries of ancient Greece.² The excavation was set up at the highest level of German society, declared a German Imperial project, and funded by the Reichstag (German parliament) as well as by the Prussian court. It was an enterprise of terrific national prestige at a time of strong competition between European nations in all fields of science, industry, and culture.³

With the help of panoramas (see Figure 9.1), seemingly inaccessible and complex excavation areas could be displayed and, above all, made scientifically ascertainable. By emphasizing the vast size of the site and all its rich detail the panorama appeared to be an all-encompassing, representative view. A photographic record of this sort was possible only because Olympia was one of the first excavations to expose such large areas: for the purpose not only of making spectacular finds, but also of restoring the original layout of the ancient sanctuary site in its entirety.⁴ The archaeologists wanted to record the site in terms of its structures and historical development as a concrete historical place and also to gain new insights into the history of architecture and

Figure 9.1 General survey of the excavation site in Olympia seen from southeast, 1887. Source: Friedrich Adler, ed., Topographie und Geschichte von Olympia: Tafelband -Karten und Pläne, (Berlin: Asher, 1897), plate 7a-b.

topography. ' But how best to present the viewer with a comprehensible image of the excavation field? The wealth of information in the photograph had to be accompanied by annotations: the inscription beneath the heliograph—a photomechanical printing process for obtaining high-quality prints taken from photographs—served identification of the buildings. The panorama taken from an elevated position also offered a classifying view of the site. It had hence proved an extremely popular device since the early nineteenth century, one able to immerse the viewer in a representative and ideal urban setting or scenic landscape, or especially in an architectural form, for popular amusement.⁶ Panoramas allowed the viewer a new and different standpoint and hence a clearer overview of any complex excavation. They simulated the presence of a place by a long shot whose richness of detail could be discerned only in fragments. Hence the panoramic views of the excavation sites may be read as an attempt at visual translation of the excavated area into a representative and pictorially convincing view.

The panoramic gaze was part of a new practice of scientific observation too. Mountain panoramas, for instance, were an instrument of geographic recording and knowledge and thus directly connected to scientific registration of a landscape from the image itself. But geologic-geographical knowledge could often be obtained only by combining photographic panoramas and cartographic records.⁷ Such combination of images, photographic and cartographic, was constitutive likewise of the archaeological site.

A topographical map always accompanied the panoramic image, for it alone could synthesize different phases of an excavation in a single illustration and enrich it with insights gained by the excavators. One example of this kind of map is the site plan drawn after the Olympian excavation (Figure 9.2) by the architect Wilhelm Dórpfeld (1853-1940), who as head of excavation in Olympia—along with the archaeologist Georg Treu (1843-1921)—was responsible as of 1878 both for the architectural remains and for the actual dig.⁸ The comprehensive site plan records ground plans of all the excavated buildings and infrastructures. Plans of an excavated area offer orientation in space; they structure it by detailing its archaeological significance with the help of various graphic marks and colorings that indicate which historical period various buildings or other features belong to. In contrast to photography, the plan provides a synthesis of all the meaningful structures in a field excavated at different times. It in this case presents remnants of walls and foundations in juxtaposition with the spots at which pedimental sculptures of the Temple of Zeus were discovered.⁹ It was created in a composite process, in which different information, originating in part from various persons, was transferred into one image.¹⁰

Site plans connected knowledge gained through excavation with imagined reconstructions and statements about still unexplored terrain. Several temporal levels could be united, thus intensifying its synthetic character: it brought together different periods of the past, Roman Olympia along with Greek Olympia, and visualized both imagined and existing remains.¹ It therefore offered at a single glance a concise summary of different situations on the excavation site, which could otherwise be depicted only separately, in several photographs. Hence, it was frequently not photographic representation alone that supplied an adequate image of the complex three-dimensional spatial situation at the excavation field, but rather photography and graphic methods used in combination. This proved especially crucial with ephemeral structures such as soil stains and discolorations at the excavation field, where remains of stone were not available. Around 1900, for example, the existence of Roman military camps close to

Use of photography in archaeology 117

Figure 9.2 Wilhelm Dörpfeld, map of the excavated architectural remains at Olympia, ca.

1881. Source: Friedrich Adler, ed., Topographie und Geschichte von Olympia: Tafelband - Karten und Pläne (Berlin: Asher, 1897), plate 6a.

the town of Haltern, Westphalia, at the time the northwestern reaches of the German Empire, could be established only by identifying such traces in the soil—stains resulting from subsequent backfilling of the pits, so-called post holes, left by decayed wooden posts—as well as other pits, trenches, and mounds.¹² Visual renderings in both graphic and photographic form were thereby crucial.

The plan of the excavation site on the former banks of the river Lippe (Figure 9.3) shows on a small scale the actual excavated area along with the changes in the soil observed there, all marked on an ordnance survey map. These changes in the soil were noted in black or, in the case of the superposed structures, in white. As the excavator and later director of the Romano-Germanic Commission in Frankfurt/ Main, Friedrich Koepp (1860-1944) commented, it was only in combination with photographs of an excavated site that a plan could assure clarity.¹ ’ Therefore, the position and direction of the camera used to take the photographs, indicated also in the image itself by an arrow, and the plate number (in Roman numerals) of the respective photograph were recorded in the plan. The photograph and the plan were designed to be consulted in juxtaposition. Plate 11, a photographic view of the semicircular embankment of the Roman fort (Figure 9.4), thus features on the plan (see point XI in Figure 9.3).

Here, the plan and photographic image mutually explained each other and thus comprised two overlapping aspects of spatial representation: the plan helped clarify

Figure 9.3 P. Wilski, map of the excavation site of a Roman fort at the river Lippe, ca. 1902. Source: Mitteilungen der Altertums-Kommission für Westfalen, vol. 3 (Münster: Aschen-dorffsche Buchhandlung, 1903), plate 2.

Figure 9.4 View onto the semicircular embankment of the Roman fort at the river Lippe, 1902. Source: Mitteilungen der Altertums-Kommission für Westfalen, vol. 3 (Münster: Aschendorffscne Buchhandlung, 1903), plate 11.

Use of photography in archaeology 119 both the structure of the excavated area and the orientation of any photographs made of it, while the photograph itself provided vividness and rendered visible the methods of excavation. The two imaging techniques, (cartographic) drawing¹⁴ and photography, complement each other in archaeological practice. Thus, the appearance of photography in the mid-nineteenth century did not exactly imply a sudden departure from the imaging techniques used hitherto in the archaeological disciplines but, rather, that the ensemble of visual media available to them was extended and reconfigured. The complementary relationship of different media to one another proved essential to the development of archaeology.¹⁵

Visualization and visibility

At the same time, the introduction of photography transformed the relationship between that which was visible and that which could be projected (i.e., imagined and visualized). Mid-nineteenth century accounts of photography already characterized the technique as one able to represent an abundance of detail to great perfection, even details of whose existence the creator of the photographs had yet no idea.¹⁶ Its “excessive” documentation was emphasized in the very first accounts of the new medium, also with regard to archaeology.¹' Photography often quite unexpectedly made visible objects and structures that had not been observed on site. Its abundance of documentation, i.e., its ability to represent a great quantity of details at a glance, proved very helpful: photography froze a certain situation or state at an excavation (as in the case of Haltern, in Figure 9.4), halting its process in a still picture.

Photography could accordingly depict unclear structures that had yet to be explained and an ideal view of which had yet to be established, such as the uncertain dimensions of soil stains. The mere fact that it was not clear in advance exactly what a photograph would depict might eventually prove productive.¹⁸ But photography clearly had limitations when it came to recording changes in the soil, especially at multiple intersections and overlapping sites. Although the color values of the soil layers could be partially translated into photography by variations in tone, photography could not reproduce the consistency of soil material. For instance, one photograph (Figure 9.5) shows a cross section of a smooth, semicircular structure, a section of

Figure 9.5 Section of a backfilled ditch with soil stain in photography and drawing, ca. 1901-1904. Source: Hans Dragendorff, Friedrich Koepp, E. Krüger and Carl Schuchhardt, “Ausgrabungen bei Haltern: Das große Lager 1901-1904”, in Mitteilungen der Altertums-Kommission für Westfalen, vol. 4 (Münster: Aschendorffsche Buchhandlung, 1905), 15.

ditch that was filled with other material at a later point in time. It is accompanied, however, “for clarification”, by a drawing in which the structure’s different colors and its backfill are rendered visible by hatching—things that the photograph could not so accurately show.

The evidential efficacy of photography depended likewise on efforts to visualize the excavation field directly. Visual images of the site (such as Figure 9.4) were based on numerous preparations and staging: exposed areas were leveled and patted so as to better reveal soil stains and variations of color in the soil layers, and the “find spots” were marked with sticks, plugs, or incised lines for enhanced visibility. These auxiliary means for clarifying the image were often crucial in photography, since photographic “excess” posed the risk of indifference and disorientation.

This overabundance of countless details in the medium exacerbated endeavors to distill the essence of archaeologically relevant objects and structures, and represent it comprehensibly. Excavators who worked with photographs in order to process the results of an excavation therefore additionally annotated these visual records of the excavation field: their inscriptions and captions on photographic prints aid comprehension and highlight relevant remains and find spots. For instance, a pointed line distinguishes between different soil layers (Figure 9.6) in a section of the excavation site at Berlin-Buch. This, one of the largest ever excavations of Bronze Age settlements in central Europe,¹⁹ was directed on the eve of World War I, 1910-1914, by the Berlin archaeologist Albert Kiekebusch (1870-1935), later departmental head at the Märkisches Museum (City of Berlin Museum), and an honorary professor at Berlin University.²⁰ The additional graphic line enhances the differences in gray scale in the photograph, by which the different layers—first, topsoil; second, the stratum of the settlement; third, the natural ground—could be distinguished. The

Figure 9.6 Section at trench 1 of the Bronze Age Settlement at Berlin-Buch, ca. 1910.

Source: Albert Kiekebusch, Die Ausgrabung des bronzezeitlichen Dorfes Buch bei Berlin (Berlin: Reimer, 1923), plates 2 and 3.

Use of photography in archaeology 121 graphic intervention in the photographic print emphasizes the strata boundaries and secures the characteristic stratigraphy of the site which is indicative of a prehistoric settlement.

A second example of the strategy used to obviate indifference and disorientation in photography is the record of a specific feature of the excavation at Olympia, namely, one of the remaining Byzantine walls. These walls were erected by Byzantine inhabitants of the area at the site with the help of different ancient relics. The photograph, held together with other remains of the Olympian excavation in the Antikensammlung in Berlin (Figure 9.7), depicts, namely, that which the archaeologists mainly blanked out in their final publications in favor of the Greek classical past: remains of a Byzantine period.²¹ Photographs such as this numbered among the archaeologists’ working tools: the prints are annotated. As mentioned above, photographic prints were often marked with inscriptions (and captions, as in the case of Figure 9.6), so as to aid comprehension and highlight relevant remains and find spots, e.g., the Byzantine wall and a plinth for sculpture. For this purpose, archaeologists featured themselves (in contemporary clothing) and some of the Greek laborers in contemporary dress in such images, as markers of scale and of certain spots.

These strategies alone ensured that photographs could be used for further archaeological research, especially since it was far from clear, particularly in the early days, what exactly an archaeological photograph should or could be, and what purposes it might serve.²² The outcome was that graphic properties were transferred to the photograph, which gave rise in turn to a hybrid of both methods. Photographic images of

Figure 9.7 N. Pantzopulos (probably), view of Byzantine eastern wall, 1878. Albumen print. Zentralarchiv der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, Rep. 1 Abt. B Ausgrabungen der Berliner Museen, Olympia, SMB-ZA, I/ANT, Oly 56.

an excavation site therefore often required further explanations. Visual interventions and narratives helped both clarify the archaeological situation in an image and highlight its importance. It was only in taking all of these elements together that the space of an excavation could be projected and a view of a site constituted.

Media and montage

The preparation and isolation of archaeologically important information with the help of various media is constitutive also of the re-creation of the archaeological artifact. In due course, as a result of the process of excavation, archaeologists distinguished archaeological finds from topographical space by also using different media. Through a process of de- and re-contextualization in several stages, objects and structures were detached from their exposure context and then transferred, in the form of visual representations of them, into new collections according to their genre, e.g., sculpture, coins, etc. In the case of the final publication on the outcomes of the excavation at Olympia, for example, we find that artifacts, such as sculptural fragments or bronze finds, are addressed not only separately from one another, and separately from topographical space, but also in separate, unrelated volumes.²³ By recording them visually, archaeological remains were clearly apprehended as “working objects”—or tools—for the discipline of archaeology.²⁴ Visual representations made them not only transferable and comparable, but also substantially altered—during these sequential transformations—that which had originally been extracted from the ground.²⁵

De- and re-contextualizations took place also with regard to the image itself: arrangements of photographs or drawings of artifacts taken out of the discovery context were cut out (Figure 9.8), while some of their components were used individually,

Figure 9.8 Sculptural fragments from Olympia, 1886/1887. Albumen prints, cut into pieces. Archive of the Antikensammlung Berlin, Rep. 1 Abt. B Ausgrabungen der Berliner Museen, Oly 91, Olympia, Photo archive.

Use of photography in archaeology 123 or possibly re-used in new combinations in further publications. Many such cutout photographs are preserved in the Olympian excavation archive.²⁶ They were not directly reproduced in the published results of the excavation, but served the archaeologists rather as internal working material. Georg Treu, leading archaeologist at the Olympia excavation as of circa 1877-1878, and later editor of the sculptural finds, noted important information for subsequent processing—such as inventory numbers, the scale of the reproduction, the date and place of discovery, etc.—either next to or on the back of individual items.

It was by bringing together photography and/or drawings that archaeologists produced interpretations of the retrieved artifacts that they hoped would convince their scholarly community. By masking and extracting artifacts from their background, certain finds—such as the archaic bronzes from Olympia recomposed and subsequently edited by Adolf Furtwängler (1853-1907), who worked on the excavation there in 1878-1879—appear almost to be floating ensembles (Figure 9.9).²⁷ Their symmetrical arrangement and careful composition in the photograph already indicates their unity and comparability. Aesthetically upgraded, they anticipate later museum installations. Similar arrangements were common, for instance, in portfolios of models for architects and craftsmen, as well as in pattern books, first in engravings but soon also in photographs and, in turn, in displays in the arts and crafts museums then emerging.²“

XXII.

«.■CMTOHUCM

ARCHAISCHE GERÄTHEFIGUREN. BRONZEN.

Figure 9.9 Photographers Rhomai'dis, archaic bronze figures, 1879. Source: Ernst Cur-tius, Friedrich Adler and Georg Treu, eds., Die Ausgrabungen zu Olympia IV: Übersicht der Arbeiten und Funde vom Winter und Frühjahr 1878-1879, vol. 4 (Berlin: Wasmuth, 1880), plate 22.

124 Stefanie Klamm

Conclusion

The research object of archaeologists in Olympia, Haltern, and Buch, such as I have discussed here, consisted therefore in the interplay of different forms of representation that each remained vital to its analytic efficacy. Different media helped appropriate ancient remains; as vehicles of thought they articulated additional knowledge about the past. Archaeology’s dependence on visualization was addressed very early on by the archaeologists of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. In the last third of the nineteenth century, documenting an excavation primarily and almost solely by means of visual representation—namely, by images, which to this day are a core component of archaeological publications (and archives)—developed as an essential idea.²⁹ The situation at an excavation could not be preserved long-term and therefore required means of recording and reproduction. Dependence on these means reduced the complexity of the set of discoveries at any given site. Determining archaeological relevance meant disregarding the ostensibly irrelevant. Only that which could be visualized was in this way—archaeological!)'—conceivable.³⁰ This is what Robert Koldewey (1855-1925), the excavator of Babylon in the early twentieth century, made clear:

No one can convince me... that he understands an ancient building completely, if he has not measured and drawn it... when immediately in front of said building. The paper is the plate [glass plate for photographic exposure], the eye a lens, but a thinking lens. If compelled, when drawing a wall or a work piece, to always turn one’s gaze on it, one becomes aware of things that would otherwise escape one, things that often are decisive. Again and again one must ask oneself, why that which one sees is as it is.³¹

It becomes clear in this statement by Koldewey, which refers of course to the study of historical architecture but in my opinion can be applied also to the analysis of any other artifact, that photography and drawing were used here in a comparative way. The photograph with its promise of absolute and authentic mechanical reproduction was a reference point for the documentary qualities of the drawing. The drawing enabled by manual means an understanding of historical forms and structures: an appropriating approach. Photography was not simply an objective medium; nor was drawing simply a subjective one. Both were to be used comparatively and therefore demanded the careful judgment of the archaeologists obliged to intervene in formation of the final image. Photography took up an exceptional position among the range of possible visual techniques. But it is only in relation to, and in intermingling with, them that the meaning of photography for archaeology can be read and, likewise, our understanding of the development of knowledge about antiquity.

Notes

1 See Stephanie Moser and Sam Smiles, “Introduction: the Image in Question”, in Envisioning the Past: Archaeology and the Image, eds. Sam Smiles and Stephanie Moser (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005), 1-12; Michael Shanks, “Photography and Archaeology”, in The Cultural Life of Images: Visual Representation in Archaeology, ed. Brian Leigh Molyneaux (London: Routledge, 1997), 73-107; Frederick N. Bohrer, Photography and Archaeology (London: Reaktion Books, 2011), esp. 27-68; Mirjam Brusius, Fotografie und museales

Wissen: William Henry Fox Talbot, das Altertum und die Absenz der Fotogrape, Studies in Theory and History of Photography 6 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), esp. 121-158; and Erik Straub, Ein Bild der Zerstörung: Archäologische Ausgrabungen im Spiegel ihrer Bildmedien (Berlin: Lukas, 2008).

For Curtius, see Henning Wrede, "Olympia, Ernst Curtius und die kulturgeschichtliche Leistung des Philhellenismus”, in Die modernen Väter der Antike: die Entwicklung der Altertumswissenschaften an Akademie und Universität im Berlin des 19. Jahrhunderts, eds. Annette M. Baertschi and Colin G. King, Transformationen der Antike 3 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009), 165-208; for Adler, see Peter Lemburg, “Friedrich Adler, 1827-1908: Zum 100. Todestag des gelehrten Architekten und Bauforschers”, Der Bär von Berlin: Jahrbuch des Vereins für die Geschichte Berlins 57 (2008): 81-112.

For a history of the excavation, see Suzanne L. Marchand, Down from Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750-1970 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 77-91; Olympia 1875-2000: 125 Jahre Deutsche Ausgrabungen, ed. Helmut Kyrieleis (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2002); and Wrede, “Olympia”; see also Stefanie Klamm, Bilder des Vergangenen: Visualisierung in der Archäologie im 19. Jahrhundert: Fotografie—Zeichnung—Abguss, humboldt-schriften zur kunst-und bildgeschichte 20 (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2017).

Ernst Curtius, “Die Ausgrabungen zu Olympia: XXXXIV. Bericht”, Deutscher Reichsanzeiger und Preußischer Staatsanzeiger, no. 113 (May 15, 1880), n.p.

Adolf H. Borbein, “Olympia als Experimentierfeld archäologischer Methoden”, in Kyrieleis, Olympia 1875-20 00, 163-176, here, 170-171; Gisela Eberhardt, Deutsche Ausgrabungen im “langen” 19. Jahrhundert: eine problemorientierte Untersuchung zur archäologischen Praxis (Darmstadt: WBG, 2011), 193-195, 211-212.

For the panorama as medium of the nineteenth century, see Stephan Oettermann, Das Panorama: die Geschichte eines Massenmediums (Frankfurt am Main: Syndikat, 1980); Sehsucht: Das Panorama als Massenunterhaltung im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Marie-Louise Plessen (Basel: Stroemfeld/Roter Stern, 1993); and Jonathan Crary, “Géricault, the Panorama, and Sites of Reality in the Early Nineteenth Century”, Grey Room 9 (2002): 5-25, here, 17-22. For the panorama as a specific practice of the scientific observation of landscapes in connection with the emergence of the new scientific discipline of geography in the early nineteenth century see Charlotte Bigg, “Das Panorama, oder La Nature ä coup d’oeil”, Nach Feierabend: Zürcher Jahrbuch für Wissensgeschichte 1 (2005): 35-43; for the geographic gaze, see Daniel Speich, “Wissenschaftlicher und touristischer Blick: Zur Geschichte der ‘Aussicht’ im 19. Jahrhundert”, Traverse: Zeitschrift für Geschichte 3 (1999), 83-99, here, 87-88.

Klaus Herrmann, “Bauforscher und Bauforschung in Olympia”, in Kyrieleis, Olympia 1875-2000, 109-130, here: 112-115.

Topographie und Geschichte von Olympia: Tafelband—Karten und Pläne, ed. Friedrich Adler, Olympia 1 (Berlin: Asher, 1897), plate 6a-f; Wilhelm Dörpfeld, “Lageplan der antiken Bauwerke”, in ibid., 69-88. For a history of the topographical map and its convention of representation see Max Eckert, Die Kartenwissenschaft: Forschungen und Grundlagen zu einer Kartographie als Wissenschaft, vol. 1 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1921), esp. 410-539. For instance, Dörpfeld, “Lageplan”, 69.

See also Die Ausgrabungen zu Olympia V. Übersicht der Arbeiten und Funde vom Winter und Frühjahr 1879-1880 und 1880-1881, eds. Ernst Curtius, Friedrich Adler, Georg Treu and Wilhelm Dörpfeld (Berlin: Wasmuth, 1881), 20, plates 31 and 32; and Wilhelm Dörpfeld, “Olympia in griechischer Zeit” and “Olympia in römischer Zeit”, in Adler, Topographie und Geschichte, 88-89, 90.

For the excavations in Haltern, which started in 1899, and its photographs see also Straub, Bild der Zerstörung, 81-105.

Friedrich Koepp, “Ausgrabungen bei Haltern: das Uferkastell”, in Mitteilungen der Altertums-Kommission für Westfalen, vol. 3 (Münster: Aschendorffsche Buchhandlung, 1903), 1-50, here, 6, 17.

Also in other areas drawings were in no way obsolete at the excavation—architects, who were the main protagonists in excavating, generally used graphic forms such as elevations, cross sections, and profiles of the entablature for their investigations. See Klamm, Bilder des Vergangenen, 194-220.

I have examined the complementarity of this relationship in great detail in Bilder des Vergangenen. For plaster casts in relation to photography see also Stefanie Klamm, “Neue Originale: Medienpluralität in der Klassischen Archäologie des 19. Jahrhunderts”, in Das Originale der Kopie: Kopien als Produkte und Medien der Transformation von Antike, eds. Tatjana Bartsch, Marcus Becker, Horst Bredekamp and Charlotte Schreiter, Transformationen der Antike 17 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), 47-67.

For examples of those accounts, see Bernd Stiegler, Theoriegeschichte der Photographie (Munich: Fink, 2006), 18-45, 101-106.

See François D. Arago, “Le Daguerréotype”, Comptes rendus de ¡Académie des Sciences 9, no. 8 (August 19, 1839), 250-257; for this argument, see also Frederick N. Bohrer, “Photography and Archaeology: The Image as Object”, in Smiles and Moser, Envisioning the Past, 180-191, here, 183-184.

Jan von Brevern has called this characteristic of photography with regard to panorama views of mountains as exploratory. Jan von Brevern, “Counting on the Unexpected: Aimé Civiale’s Mountain Photography”, Science in Context 22, no. 3 (2009): 409-437, here, 424-431. For photography as a medium reflecting on itself, see also Peter Geimer, Bilder aus Versehen: Eine Geschichte fotografischer Erscheinungen (Hamburg: Philo Fine Arts, 2010), 88-92, 99-111.

Albert Kiekebusch, Die Ausgrabung des bronzezeitlichen Dorfes Buch bei Berlin (Berlin: Reimer, 1923), 13-14, 22-24.

Eberhardt, Ausgrabungen, 172-180; Achim Leube, Prähistorie zwischen Kaiserreich und wiedervereinigtem Deutschland, 100 Jahre Ur- und Frühgeschichte an der Berliner Universität Unter den Linden, Studien zur Archäologie EuropaslO (Bonn: Habelt, 2010), 56-59. For the excavation in Berlin-Buch, see Burger Wanzek, Die bronzezeitliche Siedlung in Berlin-Buch: Geschichte einer Ausgrabung und Ausstellung, Berliner Beiträge zur Vor- und Frühgeschichte Neue Folge 10 (Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin—Preußischer Kulturbesitz, 2001); see also Stefanie Klamm, “Rekonstruktion”, in Werkzeuge des Entwerfens, ed. Barbara Wittmann (Zurich: Diaphanes, 2017), 221-239.

Eberhardt, Ausgrabungen, 198-202.

For the unclear function of photography, see Brusius, Fotografie, 121-138, 144-158, on the example of the early archaeology of Mesopotamia.

Olympia: Die Ergebnisse der von dem Deutschen Reich veranstalteten Ausgrabung im Auftrage des Königlich Preussischen Ministers der Geistlichen Unterrichts- und Medicinal-Angelegenheiten, eds. Ernst Curtius and Friedrich Adler (Berlin: Asher, 1890-1897).

For the Constitution of working objects in the sciences, see Lorraine Daston and Peter Gal-ison, Objectivity (New York: Zone Books, 2007), 19-27, 53.

See Bruno Latour’s analysis of the chain of transformations with which the Brazilian jungle is transformed into scientific knowledge. Bruno Latour, “Circulating Reference: Sampling the Soil in the Amazon Forest”, in Bruno Latour, Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 24-79.

Unsorted cutout photographs of bronze finds, mostly albumen prints, are kept in a box in the photo archive of the Antikensammlung Berlin.

For Furtwängler in Olympia, see Suzanne L. Marchand, “Adolf Furtwängler in Olympia”, in Kyrieleis, Olympia 1875-2000, 147-162.

A model collection in photographs as well as artifacts is Freiherr Alexander von Minutoli’s assemblage of objects such as Greek vases in Silesian Liegnitz. See Bernd Vogelsang, “Das Museum im Kästchen oder die Erfindung des Kunstgewerbemuseums als Photosammlung durch den Freiherrn von Minutoli (1806-1887)”, in Silber und Salz: zur Frühzeit der Photographie im deutschen Sprachraum 1839-1860, eds. Bodo von Dewitz and Reinhard Matz (Cologne: Edition Braus, 1989), 522-547.

Especially in the understanding of Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers and William Flinders Petrie, see Gavin Lucas, Critical Approaches to Fieldwork: Contemporary and Historical Archaeological Practice (London: Routledge, 2001), 211-212.

Stefan Altekamp, “Das archäologische Gedächtnis”, in Die Aktualität des Archäologischen in Wissenschaft, Medien und Künsten, eds. Stefan Altekamp and Knut Ebeling (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer, 2004), 216-217, 225-227, esp. 225: “Die graphische Dokumentation vollzieht die gravierende Reduktion der räumlich komplexen Befunde um eine auf lediglich zwei Dimensionen”.

31 “Niemand kann mir weismachen, [...] dass er ein antikes Bauwerk ganz versteht, wenn er es nicht gemessen und gezeichnet hat [...] unmittelbar vor dem Objekt. Das Papier ist die Platte, das Auge das Objektiv, aber ein denkendes Objektiv. Wenn man beim Zeichnen einer Mauer oder eines Werkstücks gezwungen ist, immer wieder den Blick darauf zu richten, wird man Dinge gewahr, die einem sonst entgehen, Dinge, die oft ausschlaggebend sind. Immer wieder muss man sich fragen, warum das so ist, was man sieht”. Written record of Oscar Reuther, Robert Koldewey’s assistant in Babylon, quoted after Uta Hassler, “Zur polytechnischen Tradition der Bauforschung”, in Bauforschung. Zur Rekonstruktion des Wissens, eine Publikation des Instituts für Denkmalpflege und Bauforschung (IDB) der ETH Zürich anlässlich des Freitagskolloquiums Bauforschung: Zur Rekonstruktion des Wissens im Wintersemester 2006/07 an der ETH Zürich, ed. Uta Hassler (Zurich: vdf, Hochsch.-Verl. an der ETH, 2010), 80-131, here, 102; for Robert Koldewey, see Ralf B. Wartke, ed., Auf dem Weg nach Babylon: Robert Koldewey: ein Archäologenleben (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2008).

Part 3