Captain Nemo/Lt-General Pitt Rivers and Cleopatra’s Needle — A Story of Flagships
Recently re-reading Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea for our children I was struck by the marked similarities between the novel’s elusive protagonist, Captain Nemo, and the renowned later 19th century British archaeologist, Lt.-General Pitt Rivers. Could the...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Ubiquity Press
2005-11-01
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| Series: | Bulletin of the History of Archaeology |
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| Online Access: | http://www.archaeologybulletin.org/article/view/145 |
| Summary: | Recently re-reading Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea for our
children I was struck by the marked similarities between the novel’s elusive
protagonist, Captain Nemo, and the renowned later 19th century British archaeologist,
Lt.-General Pitt Rivers. Could they have been the same person? How could something so
seemingly blatant have gone unnoticed? These questions are, of course, only raised in a
spirit of academic tongue-in-check. Yet, in an ethos of ‘learning through amusement’
(itself directly relevant to the themes of this study), exploring the parallels between
these two ‘heroic’ individuals provides insights into the nature of 19th century
science, Victorian edification and disciplinary institutionalisation (e.g. Levine 1986).
This eclectic contribution will, moreover, be introduced with the third component of its
headline title – Cleopatra’s Needle – as this provides an appropriately quasinautical
parable on the project of 19th century archaeology and the problem of ‘deep time’
(Murray 1993). |
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| ISSN: | 1062-4740 2047-6930 |