(Excerpt from Archaeology If any layman were to ask a num...)
Excerpt from Archaeology If any layman were to ask a number of archaeologists to give, on the spur of the moment, a definition of archaeology, I suspect that such a person might find the answers rather confusing. He would, perhaps, sympathize with Socrates who, when he hoped to learn from the poets and artisans something about the arts they practised, was forced to go away with the conviction that, though they might themselves be able to accomplish something, they certainly could give no clear account to others of what they were trying to do. If one considers some of the current definitions of archaeology, one finds them often so inclusive that the great subject of history seems forced into a subordinate position, or else history may seem to differ from archaeology only in the fact that it may treat of present events, while archaeology deals with the past. Thus one of the greatest classical archaeologists of the last generation, the late Sir Charles Newton, defines archaeology as the scientific study of the human past, and describes its three-fold subject matter as oral, written and monumental. Such a definition is of course enormously inclusive and, as might be expected, it has hardly found general acceptance. As archaeological study has advanced, the tendency has been to confine its subject matter to the material remains of man's past - material remains being thought of as a sort of antithesis to literary remains, or written documents, which fall specifically within the domain of history. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
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James Rignall Wheeler was born in Burlington, Vt. , the son of the Rev. John Wheeler, president of the University of Vermont from 1833 to 1849, and his second wife, Mary Constance Rignall. He was a descendant of Sergeant Thomas Wheeler who was in Concord, Massachussets, as early as 1642 and died there in 1704.
After he was graduated from the University of Vermont in 1880, James Wheeler went to Harvard University for further study in classical philology. In 1882, when the American School of Classical Studies at Athens was opened under the directorship of William W. Goodwin, he was one of eight young Americans who formed the student body. In 1883 he resumed his studies at Harvard, and received the Ph. D. degree in 1885. Two years of travel and study in Europe and a thorough training in both the literary and the archaeological branches of classical philology formed the best possible basis for the studies which he thereafter made his life-work.
In 1886 he lectured at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, Md. , in 1888-89, at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachussets, as instructor in Latin and Greek; from 1889-95 he was professor of Greek at the University of Vermont. He was called to Columbia University in 1895 and he remained there, teaching both Greek literature and Greek archaeology, until his death. When the faculty of fine arts was constituted in 1906 he was made at first acting dean, and later dean, filling this responsible post with distinction until the faculty was dissolved in 1911. His services in non-academic fields were many; he was a member of the Municipal Art Commission of the City of New York from 1916 until his death, and an alumni trustee of the University of Vermont. In 1907 he received, but declined, an urgent call to the directorship of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. For the last thirty-six years of his life he was identified more closely with the Athens School than probably any other individual. He was "annual professor" there in 1892-93, taking an active part in the excavations at the Argive Heraeum. In 1894 he was made secretary, and seven years later chairman, of the Managing Committee. For the remainder of his life he carried this heavy burden, with its many and often puzzling problems, without any relief from his academic duties. His grasp of the details of administration was sure, his tactfulness and firmness and patience were endless; and frequent visits to Athens kept him in close touch with the steadily increasing needs of the school. His annual reports as chairman of the Managing Committee from 1901 to 1918 are models of their kind. His publications, not very extensive, were chiefly of archaeological character, but they included various more strictly literary and philological articles, reviews, and occasional addresses. In joint authorship with Prof. Harold North Fowler, and with the collaboration of Gorham P. Stevens, he published a Handbook of Greek Archaeology (1909).
A lecture, "Greek Tragedy, " published in Greek Literature: A Series of Lectures Delivered at Columbia University (1912) is notable for its exact knowledge, its sanity and justness of view, and its beauty of form. Among his more technical articles may be mentioned two published in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology: "Coronelli's Maps of Athens" and "Notes on the So-Called Capuchin Plans of Athens", and his important contribution, in conjunction with Rufus B. Richardson to the elaborate work The Argive Heraeum, dealing with the inscriptions. From 1906 to 1911, Wheeler was an associate editor of the American Journal of Archaeology.
(Excerpt from Archaeology If any layman were to ask a num...)
On July 12, 1882, he was married to Jane Hunt Pease, of Burlington. There were no children.
