Professor and History Dept. Head Bonnie Effros has published two new chapters: “Late Antique Cemeteries” in The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Late Antique Art and Archaeology and “Sacred Archaeology in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century” in the Oxford Handbook of the History of Archaeology.
Project Q&A
Q: What are your research interests?
A: My current research is focused on Christian archaeology in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and the ways in which ideas about early Christianity affected the conduct of archaeological exploration in Europe and European colonies in North Africa and the Middle East.
Q: What are the main goals of your publications?
A: These two chapters are offshoots of my current book project which investigates the career of Père Camille de la Croix (d.1911), a Jesuit archaeologist of Belgian nationality who was active in Poitiers (and the Vienne more generally). I am interested in how de la Croix’s excavations at the Hypogée des Dunes and the baptistère Saint-Jean in Poitiers contributed to disagreements over how to document and commemorate France’s early past. This archaeological activity was deeply entwined with ultramontane controversies related to the revitalization of Christian life in France after the French Revolution.
Q: What are some of the broader implications of your research?
A: My book project generally addresses the divisiveness of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the impact of the First Vatican Council on Christian activism. Because I found evidence of the publications of Édouard Drumont and Jacques de Biez among the papers of Père de la Croix, I am particularly interested in how antisemitism in the late nineteenth century influenced the publications of clerical scholars working on the early middle ages. My research thus puts medieval archaeological and hagiographical research conducted in southwestern France in its historical context and demonstrates how Christian archaeology helped promote dubious claims for the conversion of France to Christianity in the first century that are not supported by authentic primary sources for the period.
Q: What’s next?
A: Related to this project, supported by a SSHRC Insight Development grant (2023-2025), I am working on several articles on the exportation of catacomb martyrs from Rome to France and North Africa in the nineteenth century.