General Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers

Even as a General in the British Army during the mid 19th Century, Pitt Rivers was interested in the budding discipline of archaeology. After retirement, he began excavating several sites on his extensive estates, establishing a new, revolutionary methodology for archaeological fieldwork in the 1880's through his highly organized and systematic methodology (partly borrowed from his military career). He was extraordinary for his time in insisting on saving and analysing everything, even the mundane, at a time when most archaeologists focused on spectacular finds and ignored the everyday remains of ancient life.

William Matthew Flinders Petrie

Petrie came from a more modest background than Pitt Rivers, beginning his career as a surveyor, but was fascinated by the great pyramids of ancient Egypt. He travelled to Egypt in 1880 making the first modern survey documenting the pyramids and other monuments on the Giza Plateau. In the process, he refuted the ideas of fringe theorists like Charles Smyth, who thought that the measurments of the pyramids had some esoteric significance. He was appalled by the destruction of archaeological sites that was characteristic of the era, remarking: "But still there continues the plundering of sites in the interests of show museums, where display is thought of before knowledge...  To secure an attractive specimen, a tomb will be wrecked, a wall destroyed, a temple dragged to pieces and its history lost, a cemetery cleared out with no record of its burials." He went on to excavate all across Egypt, and like Pitt Rivers, believed strongly in a systematic excavation and recording, including the detailed documentation of every object, however humble. His innovative technique had a profound impact on archaeology both inside and outside of Egypt. In particular, he invented the basic method of seriaton, which is still an essential means of ordering archaeological contexts in space and time. He said of archaeology: "The man who knows and dwells in history adds a new dimension to his existence; he no longer lives in that one plane of present ways and thoughts, he lives in the whole space of life, past, present, and dimly future."