ARCHAEOLOGY is at the same time a science and an art. It is or should be a scientifically ordered branch of knowledge professed by men of truly scientific training, of a certain subject, namely the remains of ancient human activity. It is or should be also the art that deals scientifically with these remains, that ex cavates them from the earth where they have been buried, con serves them and restores them (but only so far as to make them intelligible), and publishes them for the information of ourselves and posterity. It is a science that has some difficulty in keeping true to its ideal, because the human interest of the subject attracts to its study many persons of untrained minds. The general public realizes that expert work is necessary in order to conserve and set up antiquities in the way they are seen in a public museum. And it will probably realize in time that expert work is necessary in order to dig properly as well. Quite rightly, therefore, the laws of some countries in which archaeology is an important mat ter take cognizance of the damage that may be done by untrained seekers after antiquities : Egypt, for instance, allows no person, however well-known he may be from the scientific point of view, to dig except under the aegis of a museum, university, or some other scientific body, and the amateur is totally barred unless he has a scientific explorer, authenticated as such, with him to control his digging.
The methods of archaeology are exemplified in the study and in the field. The recent Glozel controversy showed that in France at any rate public opinion as reflected in the journals is still inclined to regard the archaeologist as the purely stay-at-home arm-chair "savant" of the old school, and that the modern field archaeologist is a conception new to it. It is perhaps a fact that the real old type of antiquarian scholar has survived untouched by new ideas longer in France than in England, where he is nearly extinct. The volume of work in the field that has been done by British archaeologists during the last half-century has impressed itself so deeply upon the minds of teachers and students here that the purely scholarly type hardly counts as an archaeologist at all in the modern sense of the word. Yet he has his uses still, and the most efficient all-round type is the man who is at once scholar, his torian and worker in the field. Work in the study has still to be done and indeed becomes more and more necessary. The purely "scientific" field-worker in Egypt or Mesopotamia cannot progress without the help of his student colleague who reads the hieroglyph ic or cuneiform inscriptions that he finds, or that of the historian and the anthropologist ; and obviously the most useful man is he who can combine all these f unctions. But it is difficult to find men who are equally competent in all these spheres, and the work now is being done by an intimate alliance of the men who are pri marily field-workers, but have a working knowledge of the lan guages and history of the ancient peoples whose relics they un earth, with those who are primarily scholars or historians but have a working knowledge of excavation and of conservation. Museum archaeologists should be of the latter type with a special knowledge of conservation. No excavator, whatever the excellence of his technique, can be really efficient unless he himself is also as much as possible a savant or he works in close association with savants on the "dig." If one merely brings things home for the scholars to appraise, efficiency is lost.
Thus the archaeologist's work is done in the study as well as in the field. The work of the student is obvious. When, as in the case of prehistoric Europe or America, there are no ancient lan guages to be known, it is much lightened. But in the case of Mi noan Greece their place is taken by the classical knowledge that is indispensable to all workers in that sphere and in Italy, without which the results of excavation cannot satisfactorily be inter preted. The work is greatest in Egypt and Mesopotamia, where the scholarly archaeologist has to know at least something of scripts as complicated and difficult as Japanese, and of various types and in various languages ! It is no wonder that the field worker often has no time for more than a smattering of these tongues, and when this is the case has all the more to associate himself with his more scholarly colleagues. Only in the prehistoric field can he work with anthropological knowledge merely in addi tion to his praxis of excavation.
In the field the excavator has to be more or less expert in many ways. He has to have some knowledge of elementary engineering and of lifting heavy weights. He should be a practical photog rapher. He should be able to improvise practical methods of at tacking any problem in digging and of conserving any object he may find : it is "up to him" to do this in the most efficient way possible with the means at his disposal; and the better he does it the better excavator he is ; but he must be used to making good bricks without straw. He must know how to manage men, and especially Orientals, without friction : he may have to deal sud denly with strikes, he may find himself "in a tight place" at any moment : he must be able to work tactfully with others. He must have an eye for the lie of the land : the man who cannot diagnose what he is likely to find from the appearance of the terrain is not likely to be so successful as the man who can. He must know whether there is "likely to be anything there" or not. The ran dom digger is not a scientific digger. And in a country like Egypt, where digging has gone on continuously for over fifty years, there is a corpus of experience to be drawn upon and to be learnt in a matter like this, where also the assistance of intelligent native helpers whose ancestors have dug for antikas for generations is by no means to be despised. This "eye for country" is one of the greatest assets of an excavator. And obviously the more he knows of the more studious side of his work, of the styles of art or of tomb-construction characteristic of the various periods of de velopment of the ancient civilization he is investigating, the better. Without such knowledge he remains but a hewer of wood or drawer of water for those who have it, despite all his field-tech nique, and despite the opinion of the market-place. So we see that the scientific excavator is indeed a labourer "worthy of his hire," which, by the way, is generally absurdly small.
The actual methods employed in excava tion vary of course with the nature of the soil. One does not work anywhere with steam navvies or pneumatic drills ! The work is far too delicate for that. It is much too delicate for the ordinary North-European or American labourer to undertake at all except under the strictest supervision. Picks and shovels wielded by British navvies would do more harm than good. In the East the slow native methods of hoe and basket are the most efficient, allowing the archaeologist to intervene when necessary to do the fine work with his pen-knife. There large numbers of men may be employed. In the West only a few intelligent and well-trained workers can be safely employed. The happy mean between the two is probably found in Greece, where the diggers combine the delicate touch of the Oriental with the intelligence of the Euro pean. Different styles of work are required in the wet clay of Britain, the dry stony soil or the crumbling kouskouras rock of Crete, the sand, the limestone rubbish, or the argillaceous shale of Egypt, the compact earth of `Iraq. As an instance of the care that is requisite, may be mentioned the' ancient Babylonian walls of mud-brick, which it needs a practised eye to distinguish from the surrounding indurated earth. Only a trained archaeologist with native workmen using their primitive tools would ever be able to trace and clear them accurately. British Tommies, hacking with their entrenching tools with all the good will in the world to help (as they did in the World War), would never even see them. In Upper Egypt, where it only rains once in five years, or in Chinese Turkistan, with its dry cold, things are easier, on account of the aridity of the earth; the soil is easily removed, and because of this dryness in these regions objects are found preserved in a manner unequalled elsewhere, save in the peat-bogs of the North. An old boot thrown out on to the Egyptian desert will remain there, if not removed, unaltered for centuries. Palaeolithic flint implements are found on the desert surface in the ateliers where they were made : where one has lain over another the upper is burnt black by the oxidizing effect of the sun of centuries, while the lower remains unpatinated. In Crete, with its rain in winter, conditions somewhat resemble those in `Iraq.
A very difficult piece of excavation and reconstruction—a classical example of archaeo logical method—was the digging out and rebuilding of the grand staircase, corridors and halls on the east slope of the palace-hill at Knossos by Sir Arthur Evans. The building, three or more stories high, was found collapsed, but with its arrangement still recogniz able. It has been re-erected as it was. ("It is indeed rarely that natural conditions allow an ancient building of three or four stories to be dug out, its charred beams carefully replaced by iron girders, and its calcined pillars replaced by new on the old lines, so that we can mount, as at Knossos, an ancient grand stairway of three flights on its original steps, and with the original steps above us as we mount, in their proper place as they were built.") And this is not the only part of the Knossian palace in which Sir Arthur Evans has carried out reconstruction work of the kind, all, be it re membered, at his own personal expense. It is an ideal way of doing things, when it can be done, as in the present case, with some certainty of accuracy. Otherwise of course it should not be permitted to be attempted, however convinced the archaeologist himself may be of the accuracy of his theory ; it is human to err.
An extension of the reconstruction method is exemplified at Knossos by Sir Arthur Evans's recent specimens of partially re stored Minoan buildings, such as the South-East House, and part of the Hall of the Procession Frescoes. Whether it is advisable to carry out such reconstructions as these must always be a matter on which opinions may differ. In the present case they serve to show what the actual buildings probably were like, and are shelters for the reproductions of the frescoes (the originals being of course preserved in the Candia Museum) which it is a good idea to exhibit on the actual spot where they were found.
Analogous to the conservation of buildings is the conservation of objects found, not only in the field, but also in the laboratory at home. Objects can only be brought home somewhat summarily preserved in a "first field dressing" so to speak (well exemplified by Mr. Woolley at al-`Ubaid and Ur), and must be treated ex pertly on their arrival by chemists, if they are to survive. Ex amples of such work are to be found in the treatment of the cop per and inlaid objects from Ur in the laboratory of the British Museum under Dr. Alexander Scott and Dr. Plenderleith, and the tissues and other objects from the tomb of Tut`ankhamun in the laboratory-tomb at Thebes by Dr. Scott and by Mr. A. Lucas.
A point of modern archaeological method is accurate recording. This was rare in early days, especially among French archaeologists, by whom les menus objets were not taken seriously. The ideal of anthropo logical science, to note everything, even the most insignificant mat ters, lest anything be ignored that present or future generations might consider important, was unknown to them. But a Scotsman, Rhind, working at Thebes in the 'sixties, had seen its importance, and made careful record of his work, though the absolute necessity for this was first emphasized by Prof. Sir Flinders Petrie, who astonished the old school of antiquaries in the early 'eighties by his insistence on the careful record of what seemed to them mere rubbish. What seemed rubbish to the elderly scholars of forty years ago does not always seem rubbish to us now. But this method may be too rigid. In many excavations now it is an im possibility to record and catalogue everything found, still less to publish everything found, to illustrate as well as describe every thing. Reisner has tried to do the latter ; Evans has not. Reisner's method of publication is that of the scientific catalogue. Evans writes a readable book. There is no doubt that with the first method we are in danger of not being able to see the wood for the trees, and money will not run to publication on a completely com prehensive scale. How could it be possible to publish Knossos on Reisner's method? And would it serve any good purpose to do so? Also in publication there is the question nowadays of references to literature. While the results of excavation were still manage able and the number of workers few it might fairly be expected of an archaeological writer that he should show himself to be acquainted with the whole literature of his subject and be able to quote in his footnotes authority for every statement he makes. But with the great extension of the subject-matter of late years and the increase of the literature dealing with it, it has become almost impossible to keep tally of everything written on the sub ject in all countries (for the scientific man, it must be remem bered, is international, and must have at least a working knowledge of many tongues). To give all references would make publications too lengthy and unreadable; and is unnecessary. So that it will soon be impossible, as it now is unjust, to criticize an archaeologi cal writer for not referring to everything published that is germane to his argument. He must be allowed to omit references without being accused of being ignorant of them, which indeed he may often be, so far as obscure papers, say in Russian or Magyar, are concerned, without his work being seriously affected thereby. An example of the fullest footnote references, as complete as they can possibly be made, is Sir Arthur Evans's book on Knossos (The Palace of Minos), already mentioned, which well exhibits the author's wonderful knowledge of the literature of the subject and unrivalled power of illustration and comparison. In publica tion the question of footnotes versus end-notes is a theme of dis cussion.
Without copious illustration of course scientific publication is impossible. And the preparation of these illustrations begins in the field. The excavator should be himself a capable photographer, or have an expert with him, though elaborate apparatus is not generally necessary, and native boys can be trained to develop negatives admirably. Photographs must be taken of all the suc cessive stages of the disinterment of an ancient burial, of the deblaiement of an ancient building. Here Reisner's example is to be followed generally, though the number of photographs that can be taken is limited by the expedition's purse, and of course only a selection can be published ; the rest kept for examination by students. As much as possible should be photographed on the ground. Photographs left to be done in the studio at home are rarely satisfactory, unless of course they are of objects the com plete restoration of which was only possible in an European labora tory. Illustrations should be mainly photographic, and when pos sible in collotype; but it is a mistake to suppose that everything can be illustrated by photography. Line drawing is of ten neces sary. Photography will not turn a corner satisfactorily nor will it reproduce faint indications. Neither will it satisfy as an illustrator of design. An ideal archaeological publication will then include illustrations not of everything, but of everything that is necessary to exhibit the results. The illustrations will be photographic (and in collotype) when possible : otherwise in line. Illustrations of the results should be as far as possible in plates at the end of the book. Illustrations in the text should be rigidly confined to purely "illustratory" pictures from other sources, designed to illustrate the finds further or to reinforce the argument of the text. Otherwise confusion with the plates and with the actual results of the "dig" is likely to occur. Every picture must have its scale given. And no book, however short, should be without an index.
It may be asked : what are the limits of the subject? what precisely is the material of archaeology? and how late a time does it concern itself with? or in other words when does the archaeologist become an antiquary? I take it that the material consists of what has been defined above as "the re mains of ancient human activity," and that it begins at the begin ning. The Palaeolithic period belongs to the sphere of the archae ologist, not the geologist ; the Piltdown skull and its successors are archaeological as well as craniological material. Archaeology takes cognizance of all of ancient Man and his works. The boundary between archaeology and antiquarianism is an unreal one, for the scientific antiquary is an archaeologist, even if he be dealing only with the relics of the 'sixties, or let us say "Middle Victorian IIa." But for practical purposes the line of division may be placed in England, France and Germany at the Renaissance : the middle ages belong to archaeology, whereas the sixteenth century is modern, and does not. In the Near East the division-line may be placed at the time of the taking of Constantinople : in Spain at that of the expulsion of the Moors : in Italy earlier, at the end of the trecento.
The actual nature of the material will of course differ according to the nature of the land; the objects are preserved well when the surrounding earth is dry, or if they are buried in such a pre servative medium as peat. So dry is the earth in Egypt that tombs are found, like that of Tut`ankhamun, intact with all their objects in them as they were left. In wetter lands like Babylonia and Crete tombs are usually found full of infiltrated earth which has more or less damaged the contents unless they are of pottery or, as at Mycenae and Ur, of gold. Pottery is indestructible, for after it has been smashed the fragments survive. Silver oxidizes as does bronze or copper, and perishes more quickly than they— gold is inoxidizable, and only the most ancient objects show a rud diness that is gold-rust. Leather and linen and cloth perish every where but in Egypt, in Chinese Turkistan, and in the bogs of the North. Dry cold in Greenland has preserved intact clothes of the fourteenth century. We have the actual garments that Egyptians wore in the days before Agamemnon ; the cloth coats and breeks of Danish men of the Bronze Age. We have food and bread placed in the Egyptian tombs of the XIth Dynasty (c. 2000 B.C.), and fancy pastry from Astara near Turfan in Turkistan of the eighth century A.D. In Egypt we have the actual mummified bodies of many of the kings and great men. So the material is greatest in Egypt. We have more of the actual objects used by the Egyptians, especially those made of delicate material, than of those used by the Greeks and Romans. This contributes the special interest of Egyptian archaeology.
The special conditions of archaeological work have already been touched upon. Work in the field, or a good knowledge of it by the ordinary stay-at-home archaeologist is the first requisite condition. One can no longer be an archaeolo gist by reading books, however intelligent one may be. There is always much that cannot be understood without actual experience of excavation. A regular and uniform development of archaeo logical knowledge all over the world is hampered by the fact that so much more is known from the literary side of some civiliza tions and peoples than of others. To classical Greece and Italy, and the countries described by the classical authors, and to Pal estine and Syria, we have for a century past been able to add Egypt as known not only from the classical writers but also from her own inscriptions and papyri, and for eighty years past the lands of the cuneiform script, Assyria, Babylonia, Elam and Persia, have also told us their story in their own words. We cannot yet add Minoan Crete and Greece, or the hieroglyphs of the Hittites of Anatolia to the list in spite of various efforts, though we can read Hittite when written in cuneiform, as it often is. Nay, nearer home, we have not yet been able to translate Etruscan, though, written as it is in Greek characters, we can read it. The same is the case with the fragments of the Eteocretan script, that no doubt enshrine words of the old Minoan tongue. The Cyprian syllabary, of Minoan origin, reads in Greek, so we understand the values of its signs, which would seem to point a way for the decipherment of Minoan. And we have the new "Indo-Sumerian" writing of Sind and the Punjab, recently discovered with remains of a culture contemporary with and connected with that of early Babylonia before 2500 B.C., by Sir John Marshall. When we cannot read the writing of a people our interpretation of its archaeology must necessarily remain one-sided. If we could not read Egyptian would our reconstitution of Egypt's history on archaeological grounds alone be likely to be anything near correct, however careful and scientific our method? The literary side of archaeology cannot be safely ignored if existent, while if non existent, owing to the language remaining a sealed book, we can only hope that decipherment will soon bring it into existence. It may be regarded as ancillary to the practical side (the scholar would put the matter the other way), but the two factors must work hand in hand if correct results are to be obtained. So that nothing is more to be desired than a decipherment of the Minoan writing, to take one instance, and perhaps the most important one in view of the special importance to the early history of European culture and knowledge of the origins of Greek legend of a correct cognizance of the history of Bronze Age Greece. Till then, Aegean archaeology must necessarily present a one sided and undeveloped character in comparison with that of Egypt or of Mesopotamia. To a less degree this is the case with the Hittites and even the Etruscans. Still more is it the case with the early peoples of Central Europe or South America. As in early Greece, what we know of the former is the history of the devel opment of their pottery and their stone and bronze weapons, and the hints of manners and customs and of convulsions or inva sions that study of their settlements may provide. We know of no historical events beyond those indicated by classical authors or by legend. Our information is merely better in the case of Greece, where also we have invaluable historical connections and synchronisms with Egypt, and even with Babylonia, to help us. We know more of the real history of the Maya in Yucatan, some of whose writing we can read, than of the Bronze Age Scandi navians. We know the names of Sumerian kings of 3200 B.C., though we do not know who the historical original of king Arthur was. The Swedes pride themselves on being the oldest constituted state in Europe, but we have no real historical knowledge of Sweden at any earlier date than we have of England : and Menes and the Thinites are more historical than are the Ynglingar. So archaeology, and with it ancient history, continues to develop in a somewhat lop-sided manner.
If archaeology is not to become a tenth Muse herself, she is at least one of the most important handmaids of Clio. Of all the sciences, it is to that of History that Archaeology bears the closest relation. No modern historian can neglect archaeology. History nowadays is not conceived as the record of wars and of the reigns of kings primarily, but as the organized knowledge of the development of human civilization. Religion and art, the progress of invention, the housing of the people, the changes of fashion in costume of men and women, the growth of luxury, and the economic questions that have been the real cause of wars in the past as in the present, the impinging of one people on another and the conflict of characteristics that arises therefrom, all these things are the subject-matter of history and in the correct delineation of them archaeology must bear her share. Then comes the relation to anthropology. No archaeolo gist can neglect what the anthropologists can tell him of the culture of various races in modern times, if he is to understand those of ancient days : every anthropologist must have some knowledge of archaeology, if he is to know anything of the origins and reasons of what he is observing. Of the relationship of the archaeologist to the engineer and the chemist we have already spoken. In this case we are mainly dealing with a tem porary indebtedness for a specified purpose, but archaeology does owe much both to engineering and to chemistry. With the art of architecture the connection of archaeology is close. With out trained architects and surveyors in the field we could not secure reliable plans of our finds. And the architects have learnt much of use to them in the practice of their art from the results of archaeological research. Modern plans, elevations and deco rations once more show the scholarly attention to fine ancient models that distinguished them at the end of the i8th cen tury : the archaeological leaven is working, and is working truly, whereas the unconsidering enthusiasm of the Romantic period for mediaeval architecture was not based on scientific investigation of its models, and only succeeded in giving a meretricious medi aeval exterior appearance to Victorian interiors. Enthusiasts for mediaevalism in church architecture and liturgy may nowadays, if they employ architects and sacristans with the requisite modern archaeological knowledge, have their churches built and their rites performed as they should be, without tasteless and ignorant modern accretions of the r 7th–i9th centuries. And artists and actors, if they are not going to paint the Crucifixion or act Julius Caesar in modern dress, must consult the archaeologists if they want to get things right.
The history of archaeology begins with the end of the period with which it deals, viz., with the Renaissance. It natu rally began in Italy in the fifteenth century when the minds of intelligent men began to concern themselves with the ruins of an tiquity that lay around them. The coming of the Greek scholars to Europe after the fall of Constantinople brought the first knowl edge of ancient Greece into the west, and in the sixteenth century the Humanists were the first real archaeologists. The great artists of the time studied the antique as the basis of their work, both in sculpture and architecture. The artistic Popes and Princes of Italy in the sixteenth century made the first collections of ancient sculptures, a taste which first the French and later the English acquired. In England in the seventeenth century an intelligent merchant like Tradescant collected antiquities, some of which still survive in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. We all know what the great nobles and landowners of England, the "Dilettanti," did in the eighteenth century to accumulate here the antiques that were admired by the taste of their day. Excavation began in Italy for the purpose of finding antique sculpture. At Naples in the eighteenth century Pompeii and Herculaneum were discov ered, and the regular excavation of Pompeii began. France, that has so often given the signal for new movements of culture, inau gurated Egyptian archaeology when Buonaparte took the savants with him to Egypt : the Description de l'Egypte was the first book on Egyptian archaeology, for the seventeenth century aberrations of the Jesuit Kircher can hardly be taken seriously. Then in the early nineteenth century improved taste led collectors and stu dents, under the influence of Winckelmann, to Greece, and when Lord Elgin brought back to London the marbles of the Parthe non, the foundations of modern Greek archaeology were laid. Roman and Etruscan accretions were sloughed off gradually, and by the 'sixties Greek art was fully appreciated for itself. The work of Champollion unlocked the key of Egyptian lore. The museums of Europe were filled with Egyptian sculpture and other objects, brought back by Salt, Belzoni and others. Champollion himself led the first really scientific Egyptological expedition : the work of Rosellini was followed by that of the great Prussian expedition of the 'forties under Lepsius, which contributed to make the Berlin Museum one of the most up-to-date in Egyptian matters at that time. Then came the work of Botta and Layard in Assyria, and the bulls of Nineveh and Khorsabad were set up in the halls of the new British Museum and under the vaults of the Louvre. This was the first modern excavation, to be soon followed by that of Mariette in Egypt, the results of which were to fill the new Viceregal Museum at Cairo. Mariette inaugurated a new system in Egypt, by which none was allowed to excavate but he. This monopoly persisted from the middle 'fifties to the early 'eighties, when after the British occupation a liberal policy allowed the Egypt Exploration Society to begin its work, under Naville and Petrie, which still successfully continues, though its activity seems likely to be hampered by the present restrictions, which though incorrectly described as a partial return to the system of Mariette, yet deprive the excavating societies of the full legitimate fruits of their labours, which for forty years had been divided amicably and justly on the half-and-half principle between them and the Cairo Museum. Mariette's system has not been completely imitated elsewhere, but Italy presents the nearest approach to it, for there no foreigner may dig : a curious piece of strictness. Greece has followed a different policy. There the help of learned and rich foreign societies has been welcomed, although the objects found by them have mostly been required to stay in the country. This is not felt to be such a grievance as is the present restrictive action of Egypt after ex perience of the more liberal Egyptian policy, which will always be associated with the honoured name of Maspero. `Iraq follows a sensible policy, which reserves to Baghdad all objects of real outstanding importance and value while liberally giving to the excavating museums or learned bodies duplicates and all objects the conservation of which is beyond the powers of the nascent Baghdad Museum.
The modern epoch of archaeology the world over begins with the inception of the work of the Egypt Exploration Fund in 1883. Its dawn had been heralded by the enthusiastic and brilliantly successful work of Schliemann at Mycenae in 1875, which re vealed—after Biliotti's tomb-digging at Rhodes (to the cost of which Ruskin contributed) in 1871—the first known relics of pre historic Greece, the first found remains of the Minoan civilization. But Schliemann was an unscientific digger, as he showed at Troy. It was reserved for Petrie in Egypt to inaugurate the new system of careful excavation, recording and speedy publication which has always been characteristic of his work, whether for the Egypt Exploration Fund or for his own later organization, the Egyptian Research Account, which he called the British School of Archae ology in Egypt, a name that has survived, though it is not a British School of Archaeology in the same official sense as the schools at Athens and at Rome. For forty years he has laboured, to find himself at the last unable to agree with the new regulations, obliged to dig just beyond the borders of Egypt, in Palestine. His way of work, which is simply the way of common-sense tinc tured by certain idiosyncracies, has inspired, with modifications and improvements, that of all other excavators since.
In Egypt during the forty-five years that have elapsed since 1883, de Morgan has discovered the predynastic age and Petrie has given it its chronology; and Petrie excavated the tombs of the earliest Egyptian kings scientifically; Naville has excavated Bubastis, the temples of Dair al-bahri and the Osireion at Abydos; and both he and Petrie considered that they had settled the ques tion of the route of the Israelites though this is by no means considered so certain now. A list of the names of all the other international workers in this field would be too long even if only the protagonists were enumerated. De Morgan was even more distinguished by his work in Persia, and in Babylonia de Sarzec was the first to take up for France the mantle of Botta with his discoveries at Telloh of the Sumerian antiquities that are now the glory of the Louvre. And now the Germans, Koldewey and Andrae, with their work at Babylon and Assur, and the English men Langdon and Woolley, for Oxford-Chicago and London-Phila delphia respectively at Kish and Ur, have made far-reaching discoveries. In Syria Hogarth inaugurated the excavation at Hit tite Carchemish for the British Museum of which political con ditions have prevented the continuance. Montet for France has revealed an astonishing Egyptian colonial settlement at Byblos (Jebail) in Phoenicia, dating back to 300o B.C. In Ana tolia, Hittite finds at Boghaz Kyoi and Cappadocian at Kill Tepe, Dorpfeld's work at Troy, the Americans at Sardis, Ramsay's journeys throughout Anatolia and Hogarth's excavation at Ephe sus have been outstanding events. And in Crete the great excava tion of Knossos by Sir Arthur Evans, and those of Phaistos and Hagia Triada by the Italians, have been epoch-making. In Greece itself the German work at Olympia and Tiryns, the French at Delos, the British at Sparta have been achievements of the great archaeological schools at Athens. In the other work done in Greece Americans have taken a leading part, and the Greeks have been by no means behindhand, especially in Crete (Xanthoudi des). In Sicily (Orsi) and Malta (Zammit), important work has been done, and in Italy the labours of Boni and Lanciani at Rome and the continued excavation of Pompeii are world famous. In Northern Africa the French have efficiently explored such mighty remains of Roman dominion as Timgad, and the Italians are undertaking the excavation of Leptis Magna. At Constanti nople the excavation of the Hippodrome has been started. All over Central Europe the labours of hundreds of archaeologists, German, Swiss, Austrian, Russian, Serbian, have revealed the Danubian, "Black Earth," Hallstatt and La Tene cultures; in Northern Europe those of men like Montelius in Sweden and Shetelig in Norway and many others have continued to tell us an enormous amount of the Stone, Bronze and Iron Age cultures of Scandinavia. In France prehistoric archaeology has taken the first place, and there the name of the Abbe Breuil is the most honoured. All know something of the story of the discovery and excavation of the caves of the Dordogne in France and those of Northern Spain, such as Altamira, which have given us such aston ishing revelations of the most primitive human civilization in the West. Of British excavation such work as that at Silchester on a Roman site, of Sarum on a mediaeval one, the discovery of the Traprain hoard of Roman plate in Scotland, the recent use of the aeroplane to discover ancient traces on Salisbury Plain, and many another important archaeological event might be mentioned.
Passing eastward, we have modern discoveries of the most important nature in the Caucasian region by Russian archaeolo gists. and Sir Aurel Stein's epoch-making campaigns in Chinese Turkistan, that have connected up Chinese with classical civiliza tion, followed by the German Lecoq; Prof. Pelliot's studies of Chinese archaeology; and the discoveries of the T'ang tombs (c. 700 A.D.) with their coloured pottery figures of guards, servants, horses and demons which are now such a feature of our museums. And the Swedes have now found the poetry of prehistoric China, while Japanese archaeologists (Umehara) have successfully exca vated the tombs of ancient Korean kings. Finally, and with the exception of the latest finds at Ur, the newest of all, and certainly by far the most surprising of all, is the discovery by Sir John Marshall of the early bronze age "Indo-Sumerian" culture of the Punjab and Sind, with its undeniable connection with early Baby Ionia c. 2500 B.C. The excavation of Taxila, interesting in itself, belongs to the historic period.
American archaeology is well illustrated by the work on the Maya cities of Yucatan and Guatemala, now followed by a British Museum expedition in British Honduras. And the discoveries of early culture on the coast of Ecuador and Peru show how much may yet be recovered from the land of the Inca.
Space fails in which to say more of the history of excavation. And it must be remembered that besides the publication of all this field-work, the study-work of the Egyptologists, the Assyriolo gists, the Sanskritists and the Sinologists has gone on, ever increas ing the sum-total of our knowledge of the ancient peoples of the world.
The Future.—If one asks to what end all this labour, it can be replied that no labour is in vain which teaches us what our forerunners and culture-ancestors did in the world. To know the past is to be better equipped to deal with the question of our civilization in the present and in the future. We have seen what additions to our knowledge have already been made : what of the future in archaeology ? New realms have opened to us undreamt of before in prehistoric Greece, in Egypt, in Turkestan, in Cen tral Europe and in America. New realms are opening in Anatolia, Syria, China, India and possibly even in Africa, where though Zimbabwe may be mediaeval, there are in the region east and north of the Great Lakes probable fields of far older human activity. The possibilities of Egypt may be nearly exhausted by the intensive work of half -a-century, though the tomb of Tut `ankhamun has shown us that she still has surprises for us. Meso potamia and India are comparatively untouched, and we are now going forward on the full tide of their new excavation with the modern methods practised long in Greece and Egypt but as yet poorly represented further east. It is there that the earliest revo lutionary discoveries may be expected. The other fields open out beyond them a vista of undreamt possibilities. "Regions Caesar never knew, our posterity shall sway." But much depends on the intelligent co-operation of governments. A narrow policy of mere acquisitiveness, nominally for the national museums, really be cause politicians and officials, especially in the newly enfranchised countries of the East, have a vague idea that these things are "valuable property," will defeat its own object. For the nations that have developed archaeological work such as Britain, France, Germany, Scandinavia, America, Greece and Italy, and have the money (especially America) with which to carry it out efficiently, cannot be expected to do so if they are not permitted to possess a fair share of the results, not only for study, but to keep, in return for their expenditure of money and toil. Italy does not permit foreign excavation on her soil, so that there is no question there of foreign workers being badly treated by not being per mitted to possess a fair proportion of their finds. Also in the past foreign museums have been well provided with the spoils of Italy. But work in the East will be seriously hampered unless the owner nations realize that the excavator-nations should be generously, not parsimoniously treated in this matter. After all, the past of Greece or of Egypt is not, as their schoolmasters and politicians seem to think, exclusively the concern of Greece and Egypt : it is the concern of the whole civilized world, which equally with modern Greece is the heir of ancient Greece, far more than mod ern Egypt is the heir of ancient Egypt.
In England and America the tradition is that work of this kind should be carried on almost exclusively by private subscription (whether of the universities or of societies of private persons), except in England in so far as it is the work of the national museums. The British Government also contributes a small sub sidy to the British Archaeological Schools at Rome and Athens. It is to be hoped that the newly founded school at Jerusalem (working now in collaboration with the old established Palestine Exploration Fund) will shortly justify a renewed official contri bution to its funds, if it receives sufficient private support. But the sum-total of this official help is very much less than that afforded by some other nations, and despite the pressure of taxa tion, it is devoutly to be hoped that it may be found possible in the future to increase it. For, after all, archaeological exploration is not very expensive work on the whole; and it is a sound invest ment for a great nation to show that it has enlightened views as to the educational value of work of this kind, and is desirous of showing that it has officially and as a nation an appreciation of aesthetic and historical as well as of mere mechanical knowledge, that, in fact, it is really civilized and not merely barbarous. BIBLIOGRAPHY.--A. Lucas, Ancient Egyptian Materials (London, 1926) ; Antiques, their Restoration and Preservation (ibid., 1924) ; W. M. F. Petrie, Art and Crafts of Ancient Egypt (ibid., 191o) ; Methods and Aims in Archaeology (ibid., 1904) ; Petrie, Hall and others, How to Observe in Archaeology (British Museum, 192o) ; A. Scott, H. J. Plenderleith, The Cleaning and Restoration of Museum Exhibits (Stationery Office, 1926) ; F. Rathgen, Die Konservirung von Alter tumsfunden (Berlin, 1898) .
' It is impossible to give even a selected list of principal archaeological works, so large is the literature of the subject: the chief are the pub lications of the various learned societies, such as the Hellenic Society, the Egypt Exploration Society, British Schools of Archaeology at Athens and in Egypt, and the Palestine Exploration Fund ; of the museums such as the British Museum and Philadelphia Museum (Excavations at Ur), the Service des Antiquites of Egypt and the Government of India Archaeological Service ; and of private or sub sidized investigators like Sir Arthur Evans or Sir Aurel Stein.
(H. R. H.)
