This article concerns the development of archaeology and museology, in the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, and Greece, through the life and career of Théodore Macridy. Macridy participated in knowledge transfer in more than one discipline and more than one country. Through his links with Western academic circles in archaeology and museology, he made a significant contribution to their development in the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, and Greece. Living between the Ottoman and Greek epistemic communities as an Ottoman citizen of Greek origin, he excavated numerous sites of the Ottoman Empire, worked at the Ottoman Imperial Museum, and contributed to the foundation of the Benaki Museum in Athens at the end of his career. This makes him a good example of an Ottoman Greek scholar whose liminal identity led to his relative neglect in both Greek and Turkish archaeology and museology.

The latter half of the nineteenth century witnessed the establishment of prehistoric archaeology as a scientific discipline in Italy, as well as the founding of the Italian nation state. Evolutionism, positivism, and a sense of national identity informed prehistoric research and the activities of individuals, such as Strobel, Pigorini, and Chierici, who are regarded today as the founding fathers of Italian prehistory. It is in this dynamic cultural and political climate that the civic museums of Reggio Emilia, Modena, and Bologna were created, both as a response to intense local archaeological activity and in reaction to the centralizing structure of the newly formed kingdom of Italy. These civic museums were among the first museums of prehistory in Italy and the products of the cultural and political climate of late nineteenth-century Europe. This article explores the circumstances surrounding the foundation of these museums and considers how the work of the first prehistorians and the museums' own histories, as civic and cultural institutions, continues to affect their role and management in the present.