Western Ways

Western Ways is the first comparative study of its kind of foreign schools of archaeology in Rome and Athens. Through the foreign schools in the two cities, the book discusses the organisation of the study of classical archaeology, and offers new perspectives on research funding, national prestige and international collaboration in the period during which archaeology became a scientific area of study. It is a study in the failure of ideals, but also of success. The book focuses on the years spanning the Second World War, and shows how the foreign schools have interwoven prestige with scholarship, and how this dynamic was placed under pressure during the war years and in the immediate post-war period, in effect preserving a status quo: internationalisation was perceived as a means to safeguard the future of classical studies. The "classical", this book suggests, is not national, but the study of it has been. The potential specialist readership spans the fields of classical archaeology, classical studies, classical reception, the history of ideas, art history, as well as nineteenth and twentieth century European history. The book gives an analytical account of foreign schools in Rome and Athens in the interplay between national and international perspectives.