Clarence Bicknell: archaeology and science in the 19th century

The Italian resort of Bordighera, on the Riviera close by the French border, still has a little to show from the time, a century ago, when its British population-at least in the winter ‘invalid season’- ran to more than 3,000 and outnumbered the native Italians. The Hotel T. Windsor (‘T’ stands for tennis; the Bordighera tennis club, founded by the British, is the oldest in Italy) flourishes; prim municipal notices-‘A polite behaviour will be enjoyable for everybody’ and ‘Free bathing, clean holidays’-assert Edwardian proprieties. And tucked away in a side-street among the villas, its pink-washed facade frothing with wisteria, stands the Museo Bicknell, built in 1886 by an English amateur botanist, Clarence Bicknell. His foundation continues as the regional research institute, the Istituto lnternazionale di Studi Liguri. Clarence Bicknell (1842-1918) appears in none of the histories of archaeology, but his work deserves to be remembered. His study of the bronze age rockengravings of Mont BCgo, in the Maritime Alps above Bordighera, was the first adequate work on an Alpine rock-art tradition, and the forerunner of the astonishing discoveries over the last 30 years in Valcamonica (Anati, 1961; 1980), at Sion (Gallay, 1972) and now in the Aosta valley (Daniel, 1983). Bicknell's life and work, beyond its intrinsic interest, is an illuminating case-study in the history of the discipline, during that crucial late 19thcentury period when antiquarianism was everywhere giving way to the new science-based archaeology. Finally, Bicknell-though not in the major league with Buckland or Petrie-in his quiet way deserves a place in the gallery of archaeological characters.