Italian Archeologists

In the 1800s archaelogy was still almost exclusively in the hands of elites and aristocracy. At the same time, the number of professors and professionals in archaelogy throughout Italy was relatively small and de facto it were local amateurs, doctors, priests and schoolmasters who made some of the major contributions to the field of archeology in Italy. An example of such an autodidact archaelogist was great sense of professionalism and patriotism was Isidoro Falchi (1838-1914) who identified the site of the Etruscan city of Vetulonia.

Other important archaelogists include:

Mariano Armellini (1852-1896)
Mariano Armellini was an Italian archaeologist and historian. He is the author of Gli antichi cimiteri cristiani di Roma e d'Italia (The Ancient Christian Cemeteries of Rome and Italy) and Le catacombe romane (The Roman Catacombs), but became famous chiefly for Le chiese di Roma dal secolo IV al XIX (The Churches of Rome from the 4th to the 19th Centuries), a major work in which he records a great many of the city's churches, including those no longer extant. He is one of the foundersw of the Pontifical Academy of Martyrs.

Giovanni Battista Belzoni (1778 - 1824)
Giovanni Battista Belzoni, sometimes known as The Great Belzoni, was a prolific Venetian explorer of Egyptian antiquities.

Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli (1900 - 1975)
Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli was an Italian archaeologist and art historian.

Giovanni Battista de Rossi (1822 - 1894)
Giovanni Battista (Carlo) de Rossi was an Italian archaeologist, famous outside his field for his rediscovery of early Christian catacombs.

Giacomo Boni (1859 - 1925)
Giacomo Boni was an Italian archaeologist specializing in Roman architecture.
His excavations led to many important discoveries, including the Iron Age necropolis near the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, the Lapis Niger, the Regia, Galleria Cesaree, Horrea Agrippiana and other monuments. In 1907 Boni also worked on the slope of the Palatine Hill where he discovered the Mundus (tholos-cistern), a complex of tunnels leading to the Casa dei Grifi, the so-called Aula Isiaca, the so-called Baths of Tiberius and the base of a hut under the peristilio of the Domus Flavia.

Andrea De Jorio (1769 - 1851)
Andrea De Jorio was an Italian antiquarian and a respected archaeologist under the pre-modern conditions of his times, and a curator at the predecessor to the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples. He is remembered today among ethnographers as the first ethnographer of body language, in his work La mimica degli antichi investigata nel gestire napoletano, 1832 ("The mime of the Ancients investigated through Neapolitan gesture"). The work has been mined, refined and criticized. The book stressed the continuity from Classical times to the present by showing the similarity between hand gestures depicted on ancient Greek vases found near Naples and the gestures of modern Neapolitans.

Isidoro Falchi (1838-1914)
See also: Isidoro Falchi

Rodolfo Lanciani (1845 - 1929)
Rodolfo Amedeo Lanciani was an Italian archaeologist, a pioneering student of ancient Roman topography, and among his many excavations was that of the House of the Vestals in the Roman Forum.

References and further reading:
Dyson, Stephen L., In Pursuit of Ancient Pasts: A history of classical archaelogy in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. New Haven: Yale University, 2006.