The Historical Development of Italian Prehistoric Archaeology: A Brief Outline

Twenty-five years ago Marcel Desittere, a Belgian prehistorian who works and lives in northern Italy, published the first important monograph about the origins of Italian prehistoric archaeology (Desittere 1985). Beginning with the history of one of the main prehistory museums, Reggio Emilia, created in the second half of the nineteenth century, Desittere tried to reconstruct a socio-political and intellectual biography of the pioneers of the discipline. Over the following years since 1985, many scholars have dedicated monographs, articles, papers in congress proceedings and exhibition catalogues, to the subject of the history of Italian prehistoric archaeology (see, among others: Bernabò and Mutti 1994; Cuomo Di Caprio 1986; Desittere 1988, 1996; Del Lucchese 2008; Guidi 1987, 1988, 1996a, 1996b, 2000, 2008, forthcoming; Peroni 1992; Skeates 2000; Tarantini 1998–2000, 2000, 2000–2001, 2002a, 2002b, 2004, 2005). All of these works contributed to the profile of a discipline that, in our country, comprises some peculiar characteristics.