About Antiquities

ZEYNEP ÇELIK is a distinguished professor of architecture at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and the Federated Department of History at the NJIT and Rutgers-Newark. Her award-winning publications include Empire, Architecture, and the City: French-Ottoman Encounters, 1830–1914 and The Remaking of Istanbul: Portrait of an Ottoman City in the Nineteenth Century.

About Antiquities is a valiant book that plumbs important new material in the history of Ottoman antiquities. It is not the last word so much as the start of a new discussion. That is a considerable accomplishment. (The Art Bulletin) [A] complex and wide-ranging book…[Çelik] provides a rewarding exploration of complexity in the rich history of archaeology and nation building, often from creative and unexpected angles, with acknowledgment of the echoes of these relationships in the fraught present. (caa.reviews) About Antiquities deepens our focus on the Ottoman engagement with archaeology in the field and strategies of display…Çelik, in deceptively neat categories, opens up new avenues of research for the next generation of scholars writing against the grain of canonical archaeological works and approaches. (Review of Middle East Studies) A valuable contribution to the history of archaeology in that it both presents a wealth of different kinds of material-from postcards to private journals-and models innovative methods to mine these resources for new information…essential reading for any scholar who is interested in the history of archaeology or museum and heritage politics as they formed in the late nineteenth century. (Journal of Modern Greek Studies) A highly instructive book that opens fresh perspectives through an examination of an original and eclectic range of primary sources…there can be little doubt that Çelik has made a significant contribution to our understanding of a crucial early chapter in the histories of archaeology and the museum. (Journal of Islamic Studies) [About Antiqiuities] forcefully [reveals] the power of archives and their capacity to fill spaces, produce knowledge, highlight personal recollections, and divulge holistic stories of archaeology, museums, objects, colonialism, and nation-building. (Journal of Near East Studies) About Antiquities addresses the roots of fundamental issues in the Ottoman past of the Turkish Republic that still dominate archaeology and heritage studies. Complemented by remarkable images, Çelik elegantly frames her inquiries with cross-cultural literary analyses to illustrate the impact of the growing field of archaeology on different aspects of Ottoman culture and society. Çelik's cross-cultural methodology stands as a contribution not only to the Ottoman and Republican history of Turkey but also to the historiography of archaeology and heritage studies in general, while providing insight into the subtle but powerful role antiquities have played in the construction of national identities. (Journal of the American Oriental Society)

• AcknowledgmentsAuthor's Note on Names, Dates, and MeasurementsIntroductionChapter 1. Beginnings: The Nineteenth-Century MuseumChapter 2. Scholarship and the Imperial MuseumChapter 3. The Imperial Museum and Its VisitorsChapter 4. The Ottoman Reading Public and AntiquitiesChapter 5. The Landscape of LaborChapter 6. Dual SettlementsEpilogue. Enduring DilemmasNotesBibliographyIndex