George Dennis’ The cities and cemeteries of Etruria, a massive two-volume work of over 1000 pages, was published towards the end of 1848, the British Museum’s copy (now the British Library’s) being received on 18 January 1849. It was quickly acclaimed as a literary and archaeological masterpiece (Rhodes 1973: 52–5; Pallottino 1955: 126, n. 1), which brought the then little-known Etruscans to life in the most vivid of ways. The fruit, in Dennis’ word, of extensive travelling in Etruria between 1842 and 1847, and of much work in the libraries of, in particular, Rome, it remains 150 years later an indispensable topographical source. Indeed, a 2nd, revised, edition appeared in 1878 (reprinted in 1883, but misleadingly entitled a 3rd edition), and a further version of the 1848 volume was published in J.M. Dent’s highly regarded ‘Everyman’ series in 1907.

The two most important 19th-century books on archaeology in the United States both dealt with earthworks. The earlier of these two, Ancient monuments of the Mississippi Valley by Ephraim G. Squier & Edwin H. Davis, was the first volume published by the fledgling Smithsonian Institution, and is 150 years old this year. It presented, with lavish illustrations, information about hundreds of earthworks. Its principal argument was that the mounds had been built by an American race distinct from the historically known indigenes, no less and perhaps considerably more than 1000 years ago. This volume in no small measure catalysed the development of archaeology in the United States. Without Squier & Davis’ extensive documentation of the vast number, size, complexity and variety of earthworks, the later book might never have been commissioned or might have been conceived in far less ambitious terms.