An antiquarian or antiquary is an aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient artifacts, archaeological and historic sites, or historic archives and manuscripts. The essence of antiquarianism is a focus on the empirical evidence of the past, and is perhaps best encapsulated in the motto adopted by the 18th-century antiquary Sir Richard Colt Hoare, "We speak from facts, not theory."
Ole Worm's cabinet of curiosities, from Museum Wormianum, 1655
"Antiquaries": portraits of 20 influential antiquaries and historians published in Crabb's Universal Historical Dictionary (1825). Featured are: Giraldus Cambrensis, John Leland, Guido Panciroli, John Stow, William Camden, Justus Lipsius, Joseph Justus Scaliger, Johannes Meursius, Hubert Goltzius, Henry Spelman, Charles Patin, Philipp Clüver, William Dugdale, Claudius Salmasius, Friedrich Spanheim, Johann Georg Graevius, Jakob Gronovius, Thomas Hearne,
William Camden (1551–1623), author of the Britannia, wearing the tabard and chain of office of Clarenceux King of Arms. Originally published in the 1695 edition of Britannia.
Pit Mead Roman villa mosaic, illustrations by Catherine Downes, engraved by James Basire and presented to the SAL by Daines Barrington
Antiquities are objects from antiquity, especially the civilizations of the Mediterranean: the Classical antiquity of Greece and Rome, Ancient Persia (Iran), Ancient Egypt and the other Ancient Near Eastern cultures. Artifacts from earlier periods such as the Mesolithic, and other civilizations from Asia and elsewhere may also be covered by the term. The phenomenon of giving a high value to ancient artifacts is found in other cultures, notably China, where Chinese ritual bronzes, three to two thousand years old, have been avidly collected and imitated for centuries, and the Pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica, where in particular the artifacts of the earliest Olmec civilization are found reburied in significant sites of later cultures up to the Spanish Conquest.
A centaur struggling with a Lapith on a metope from the Parthenon, in the British Museum (London), part of the Elgin Marbles
An Assyrian lamassu in the Louvre
Chinese ritual wine server (guang), circa 1100 BC
Allegories of five literatures of antiquity, relief at Cardiff Castle, by Thomas Nicholls circa 1870