96 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



past, when history and writing were unknown, we are, I think, 

 approaching the boundaries of scientific archaeology. 



Every reader of Virgil knows that the Greeks were not merely 

 orators, but that with a pair of compasses they could describe the 

 movements of the heavens and fix the rising of the stars; but when 

 by modern astronomy we can determine the heliacal rising of some 

 well-known star, with which the worship in some given ancient 

 temple is known to have been connected, and can fix its position on 

 the horizon at some particular spot, say, three thousand years ago, 

 and then find that the axis of the temple is directed exactly toward 

 that spot, we have some trustworthy scientific evidence that the 

 temple in question must have been erected at a date approximately 

 1100 years b. c. If on or close to the same site we find that more 

 than one temple was erected, each having a different orientation, 

 these variations, following, as they may fairly be presumed to do, 

 the changing position of the rising of the dominant star, will also 

 afford a guide as to the chronological order of the different founda- 

 tions. The researches of Mr. Penrose seem to show that in certain 

 Greek temples, of which the date of foundation is known from his- 

 tory, the actual orientation corresponds with that theoretically de- 

 duced from astronomical data. Sir J. Gorman Lockyer has shown 

 that what holds good for Greek temples applies to many of far earlier 

 date in Egypt, though up to the present time hardly a sufficient 

 number of accurate observations have been made to justify us in 

 foreseeing all the instructive results that may be expected to arise 

 from astronomy coming to the aid of archaeology. The intimate 

 connection of archaeology with other sciences is in no case so evident 

 as with respect to geology, for when considering subjects such as 

 those I shall presently discuss it is almost impossible to say where 

 the one science ends and the other begins. 



By the application of geological methods many archaeological 

 questions relating even to subjects on the borders of the historical 

 period have been satisfactorily solved. A careful examination of 

 the limits of the area over which its smaller coins are found has 

 led to the position of many an ancient Greek city being accurately 

 ascertained; while in England it has only been by treating the 

 coins of the ancient Britons, belonging to a period before the Roman 

 occupation, as if they were actual fossils that the territories under 

 the dominion of the various kings and princes who struck them 

 have been approximately determined. In arranging the chrono- 

 logical sequence of these coins, the evolution of their types — a 

 process almost as remarkable, and certainly as well defined, as any 

 to be found in Nature — has served as an efficient guide. I may 

 venture to add that the results obtained from the study of the 



