Count Francesco Mancinelli Scotti, descendent of an Umbrian noble family fallen on hard times, was gripped at roughly age forty by an “insane passion” for archaeology and digs, leading him to devote his next forty years to “devastating” northern Lazio. A man of momentous impulses, such as his enlistment with Garibaldi’s forces at age twenty, Francesco Mancinelli Scotti went on to become a tireless, and quite successful, excavator, collector and merchant of antiquities, selling what he found in digs to American collections and museums, often based on altered information on the pieces’ origins. This side of Mancinelli Scotti’s approach is of particular interest, given that he was active in the same years in which the government established an initial framework for regulating digs, preventing the indiscriminate export of archaeological materials abroad and keeping the antiquities on the market from being dispersed. The dual goal of this volume, therefore, is to portray Francesco Mancinelli Scotti, and the impact of his frenetic exploration, while also promoting further reflection on how best to safeguard our cultural heritage.
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