Amidst the suite of the Austrian emperor Francis I. who visited Dalmatia in the Spring of 1818, there was the youg antiquarian Anton Steinbüchel von Rheinwall (1790-1883). The arrival of the emperor in that remote province, which had but recently had been annexed to Vienna, had certainly a political relevance, but also a cultural one, as it is proven by the publications of Steinbüchel in the Viennese periodicals in 1818 and 1820. In the perception of Dalmatian antiquities they represent a profound change. The foundation of institutions with the aim of conserving and developing archaeological research created the conditions for a new epistemological situation : From now on, the monuments of the Dalmatian Antiquity were subject of archaeological autopsy and constant scrutiny. At Steinbüchel’s instigation an iconographic conservation was developed, instead of a predominantly textual one. That archaeological material was eventually made available for scholars, just as it was the case in other provinces of the Monarchy, for instance in Northern Italy or Lower Austria.