{"product_id":"visions-of-antiquity-book-susan-pearce-9780854312870","title":"Visions of Antiquity","description":"This fascinating portrait of the Society of Antiquaries of  London, founded in 1707, assesses the impact that individual  Fellows and the Society as a whole have had in influencing the  way we visualise and understand the past. There are, for example,  essays on the Society's pioneering role in recording monuments  and antiquities for posterity, in establishing the scientific and  empirical basis of archaeological studies, in replacing  Biblically based timeframes with a clearer understanding of deep  time measured in millions of years, in drawing up the first  legislation protecting ancient monuments, and in funding and publishing the great excavations of the last one hundred years,  from Stonehenge, Maiden Castle, Richborough and Sutton Hoo to  Aksum (Ethiopia) and Mons Porphyrites (Egypt). All the papers  represent fresh and original scholarship and they tell us much  about the Society's achievements (and some of the accompanying  conflicts between personalities and ideas) over three hundred  years. They are based on diaries, letters, minute books and confidential government papers and on portraits that chart the  changing image of the antiquary from a figure of fun to heroic  seeker of forgotten people and civilizations.  Visions of Antiquity  reveals astonishing echoes across time - from the repeated and continuing attempts to record all ancient buildings  and monuments to the continuity of the title 'antiquary' to  describe scholars who build bridges between different branches of  knowledge based on the study of material remains of the past and  of a Fellowship whose numbers have included prime ministers, bishops, peers and parliamentarians, as well as radicals and free thinkers, such as William Morris and many of the founders of  modern conservation.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49578021323025,"sku":"GOR012923222","price":24.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50594424717585,"sku":"GOR014009644","price":45.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51288320475409,"sku":"GOR014218001","price":0.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0854312870.jpg?v=1751423421","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/products\/visions-of-antiquity-book-susan-pearce-9780854312870","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}