and verifiable, and not contain any sort of speculation. Knowledge was, therefore, based exclusively on observable or experiential phenomena. This is why observation, description, organization, and taxonomy or typology took the form of large catalogues which reported the old and new Wnds although they went much beyond their eighteenth-century precedents. Examples of this were, in Italy, the inquiries into Roman copies of Greek sculpture, and research into the Etruscan world, where Greek influences in particular were investigated (Gran-Aymerich 1998: 50; Michaelis 1908: ch. 4; Stiebing 1993: 158).