124 ORDNANCE MAP INDEX 



for the presen-ation and intelligent exploration of the man}' hundreds of remains 

 and sites, of aj^j^roximately the same period, that are scattered nearly over the 

 whole of our islands. 



" Britain is not very extensive when compared with the domains of our 

 Continental neighbours. In Roman times it was regarded as very distant from 

 the centres of civilisation, and the very name spelt something like exile to the 

 luxurious Roman officer. But the Roman never thought, and we ourselves, 

 nearly twenty centuries later, are only beginning to realise, how many races 

 had peopled these distant misty islands, one race overcoming the other, inter- 

 marrying or supplanting each other, but in any case living their lives here, 

 building their houses, exercising their simple crafts, and finally laying their dead 

 to rest in tlie manner prescribed by their own peculiar customs. Of all these 

 primitive peoples who lived in Britain for many, many thousands of years before 

 the Roman invasion we have scarcely a word of history. One after another they 

 passed in succession, leaving no mark in the world's history and no trace in the 

 land beyond the humble tumulus for their burial-place or the sacred ring of 

 stones for tlieir temple. Practically until the Roman historians take up the 

 story of Britain there is nothing existing that can be called history. Britain 

 before the Christian era was regarded as a dangerous and entirely inhospitable 

 land whither no sane man M'ould willingly go, only valuable in fact for what could 

 be brought aM'ay from it. 



"By what means therefore are we of this twentieth century to realise the 

 conditions in which our pre-Roman forefathers lived ? How are we to construct 

 a. true history of their arts of life, their beliefs, their dwellnigs, or their handi- 

 crafts ? Unless we are far more careful in the future than we have been in the 

 past, the evidence now available will be swept away, and the story of the Britain 

 of the Britons can never be told. 



" Our only means of elucidating and making clear the prehistoric condition of 

 our country is by the careful and intelligent exploration of the sites of the 

 dwellings, camps, burial-places, or religious structures raised by the people of 

 those times. By no other method than this can we attain to the knowledge we 

 need, and it should be borne in mind by all avIio undertake exploration of this 

 character that they have in hand, as it were, a unique record ; a record, more- 

 over, that is destroyed in the reading ; and if the investigator cannot interpret it 

 iiright he destroys for ever a page, it may be, of human history, and no one 

 following him can write it afresh. No explorer, no matter how expeiienced, can 

 predicate what may be the evidence he will have put before him in the excavation 

 of a simple mound or stone circle, and the greatest care and attention are essential 

 if he desires his exploration to be moderately successful. 



" Here then we have, scattered in almost every parish in the United Kingdom, 

 the raw material, the original documents, from which it is the duty of the 

 archseologist to weave the story of prehistoric Britain. But what are the present 

 conditions of these precious documents ? What attention is given to the mounds 

 that cover our downs, to the less prominent stone circles that are to be found 

 scattered over our moors ? It is true that monuments of the imposing dignity of 

 Avebury, Stonehcnge, and others of great size, are not likely to suffer from wanton 

 damage because, like some human beings, their very size is their protection. It 

 is true also that in some localities of the more enlightened sort committees have 

 been formed and the local societies have been active, for the express purpose of 

 preserving these little noted relics. But vast areas remain, full of prehistoric sites, 



