Description:
François Lenormant and the discovery of the Taranto terracottas In 1879, F. Lenormant, an hellenistic and orientalist scholar, started researches in Magna Graecia. In Taranto, he carried out private excavations, without any archeological concern, in a place where votive terracottas were stored, which, for 90% of them, represented banqueting people. He then made an esthetic choice, keeping only 700 pieces offered to the Louvre. Then he warned the Italian authorities in charge of official excavations, impeded in their work by people who destroyed sites by scattering archeological finds abroad. At that time when archeology was in complete change, F. Lenormant appears as an innovating scientist for people revering amateurs and collectors ; but for those who attempted to raise this discipline to the rank of a science, he was merely an opportunist, lacking in the accuracy necessary to real scientific work.