An encyclopedic depiction of the development of archaeology on the example of two general national encyclopedias

Abstract

Since archaeology is an academic discipline that began to develop in the modern sense in the final decades of the 19th century, this paper examines the two oldest national encyclopedias—The Croatian Encyclopedia edited by Ivan Zoch and Josip Mencin (1887–90) and the identically named encyclopedia edited by Mate Ujević (1941–45)—in order to determine how encyclopedics in Croatia kept pace with its then achievements and the interest of the professional and broader public, through the contents, presence, and breadth of archaeological topics as well as on the scientific and pedagogic level. As a young academic discipline, archaeology was not extensively covered in Zoch and Mencin’s encyclopedia. Regardless of many deficiencies and the fact that most entries were written by the editors themselves and without the help of pedagogues from various fields, the encyclopedia was a pioneering work that opened the way towards achieving later national encyclopedic projects. The encyclopedia of Mate Ujević, as opposed to Zoch and Mencin’s, was the product of the scientific thought of that time. Entries on archaeology, which had by then set much firmer foundations, are of high scholarly quality in terms of form and contents. Although unfinished, Ujević’s encyclopedia was the most systematic encyclopedic work in Croatia until the editions of the Institute of Lexicography, founded at the initiative of Miroslav Krleža in 1950, were published.