The Rotondo Y Nicolau Brothers, archaeological collectors of the end of XIX century and the beginning of the XX century

Abstract

Due to the confluence of different circumstances, at the end of the decade of 1860 an extraordinary interest in prehistory and protohistory and in archaeological remains of those historical periods as collecting objects aroused in Spain. The Rotondo y Nicolau brothers were also under this cultural influence and grew this hobby all their lives long. This drove them to disciplines as geology, archaeology or history, about which they also proposed other initiatives, apart from collecting. This paper is a biography of the brothers in relation to these activities, aspect scarcely studied before. Because of this reason, the investigation is mainly based in the analysis of unpublished documents.