The archaeologist engineer (sixteenth to nineteenth centuries). University extension course (2025)

The Spanish National Distance University (UNED) has organised a course entitled El ingeniero arqueólogo (The archaeologist engineer). The course is sponsored by Fundación Juanelo Turriano as collaborating institution and is scheduled to be held at UNED’s associated facility in Segovia on 24 to 26 October.

The objective of this course, proposed by E. d’Orgeix and I. Warmoes, is to examine through case studies the role that civil and military engineers played in gradually shaping archaeology into a discipline and a scientific method from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century.

Studies of architects are not hard to find, but detailed research on “archaeologist engineers” are few indeed, and rarer in some countries than in others.

With their education in topography, the engineers who travelled with armies during military reconnaissance work and projects to build forts, roads and bridges carefully observed the land and architecture around them. Their role on the ground was key in the often-accidental discovery of many archaeological sites and in their identification. During the eighteenth century, it was engineers like the Spaniards Roque Joaquín de Alcubierre (1702-1780) and Francesco La Vega (1735-1804) in Pompeii and Herculaneum, the German Carl Humann (1839-1896) in Pergamon in 1896 and the Briton Charles Warren (1840-1927) in Jerusalem who directed digs and saw to the organisation and logistics of major archaeological projects. Their output, which included maps, plans, excavation logs, atlases, photographic missions and publications, not only testifies to the magnitude of the job they did, but also furnishes valuable documentary evidence, throwing a light on a series of individual and collective changes and thereby enabling us to create a precise timeline of the transition from antique collection to archaeology as a formal discipline and scientific method between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Course management:
Alicia Cámara Muñoz, emeritus chair of Art History, UNED

Associate directors:
Emilie d’Orgeix, chair in Cultural History of Technology. École Pratique des Hautes Études-Université PSL.
Bernardo Revuelta Pol.Architect. Fundación Juanelo Turriano Director.
Isabelle Warmoes, heritage curator, director of the Musée des Plans-reliefs. Paris.

Programme:

Friday, 24 october
Course presentation.Emilie d’Orgeix, chair in Cultural History of Technology. École Pratique des Hautes Études-Université PSL. Isabelle Warmoes, heritage curator, director of the Musée des Plans-reliefs. Paris.

Antique collecting or archaeology at the foundations of Phillip II’s forts? Alicia Cámara Muñoz, emeritus chair of Art History, UNED.

Military engineers’ work under Louis XIV and Louis XV. The dawn of scientific archaeology?. Isabelle Warmoes, heritage curator, director of the Musée des Plans-reliefs. Paris.

Saturday, 25 october
Roman Spain and Spanish Enlightenment engineers. Daniel Crespo Delgado, professor of art history. Complutense University. Fundación Juanelo Turriano.

Engineer or archaeologist? Roque Joaquín de Alcubierre’s contributions to the excavations of Herculaneum, Pompeii and Stabiae. María del Carmen Alonso Rodríguez, professor of fine art. Complutense University. Madrid

Engineers working amid the ruins after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake: between proto-urban archaeology and reuse (abstract and PowerPoint presentation in Spanish). Margarida Tavares da Conceição, professor of art history. Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Temples and scaffolding: Archaeology as an interactive space for architects and engineers in Napoleonic Rome. Adrián Fernández Almoguera, Ramón y Cajal Grant holder, art history. UNED.

Archaeologists in uniform: The training and legacy of military engineers in nineteenth-century France. Emilie d’Orgeix Catedrática de historia cultural de las técnicas. École pratique des hautes études-PSL université

Segovia Mint. Archaeology of an engineering milestone. Carlos Caballero Casado. Archaeologist

Sunday, 26 october
Mint Tour. Carlos Caballero Casado. Archaeologist


Programme and online registration (In Spanish)