21   . EUROPEAN ARCHAEOLOGY ABROAD: GLOBAL SETTINGS, COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES Nathan Schlanger*, Sjoerd J. van der Linde**, Monique H. van den Dries** and Corijanne G. Slappendel** * UMR 8215 Trajectoires / French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research, France ** Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, The Netherlands Encounters A range of European scholars and their patrons have aspired, at least since the Renaissance, to ‘travel back in time’. Unearthing the past has indeed served them well to ground the legitimacy of the prince, to flesh out narratives of common origins, to create material affinities through the reconstruction of remote ages, and also to contrive, demarcate and sometimes challenge territorial boundaries for the present and for the future. Granted all that, the question arises: why ‘travel back’ also in space? “Why roam far”, this wanderlust of which speaks Goethe (see Schücker, this volume)? Indeed, why take the trouble to go and investigate ancient vestiges in far-remote lands, lands where one is a foreigner, at best a visitor? The prevalence of specifically nationalist motivations is already open to caveats within the European contexts: would it not be lacking or all the more limited in scope in the antipodes, where what is at stake after all is only (as it were) the past of the ‘others’? 1 Alongside conquest and commerce, the lure of adventure and romance has certainly played a part, exemplified by such voyages as Marco Polo’s in the Far East, or later Lafitau’s comparison of the customs of Native American ‘savages’ with those of ancient times. Emerging out of antiquarian practices and expectations, European archaeology abroad has long been fascinated with great and/or ‘vanished’ civilizations, civilizations towards which could be construed affinities of an 1 On the general development of archaeology in Europe see Trigger 1989; Malina and Vasicek 1990; Schnapp 1993, as well as Biehl, Gramsch and Marciniak 2002. Global views of archaeology are provided by Trigger 1984; Gran-Aymerich 1998; Diaz-Andreu 2007, and see also Moro-Abadia 2006.