14 



extremely fascinating work as the collection increases and the results are 

 compared. ' 



This comparison, if the subjects have been selected with judgment, 

 and accurately measured and photographed, should enable us to determine 

 in what proportions the blood of the various races which have from time 

 to time invaded and occupied our soil has been transmitted to the present 

 population of different parts of the United Kingdom. From the ancient 

 remains in barrows and other sepulchral monuments, and from the study 

 of the living peoples of AVestern Europe, the characteristics of the races 

 in question are known with more or less certainty, and every year adds 

 to our information concerning them. A much more complex problem, 

 and one wherein archaeologists have a more direct interest, is how far the 

 culture of the races in question has descended to us, and how far it has 

 been affected by intruding arts, faiths, and inventions. To solve this, 

 appeal is made first to the historic and prehistoric monuments and other 

 material remains, and secondly to the traditions of many kinds that 

 linger among the peasantry. Here the first business, and that with 

 which the practical work of the survey is immediately concerned, is the 

 work of collection. To photograph, sketch, and accurately describe the 

 material remains ; to note and report the descriptions and drawings 

 already made, and where they are preserved ; to gather and put into 

 handy form the folklore of each country already printed ; and to collect 

 from the surviving depositaries of tradition that which may still be 

 found — namely, tales, sayings, customs, medical prescriptions, songs, 

 games, riddles, superstitions, and all those scraps of traditional lore stored 

 in rustic memories, impervious and strange to the newer lore of to-day — 

 these are the necessary preliminaries to the study of the civilisation of our 

 ancestors. 



Archaeologists have paid too exclusive attention to the material 

 remains. They have forgotten to inquire what light may be thrown 

 upon them by tradition. By the term tradition I do not mean simply 

 what the people say about the monuments. Antiquaries soon found out 

 that that was always inaccurate, and often utterly false and misleading. 

 Hence thay have been too much inclined to despise all traditions. But 

 tradition in the wide sense of the whole body of the lore of the uneducated, 

 their customs as well as their beliefs, their doings as well as their sayings, 

 has proved, when scientifically studied, of the greatest value for the 

 explanation of much that we must fail to understand in the material 

 remains of antiquity. To take a very simple instance : when we find in 

 Gloucestershire barrows, cups, or bowls of rough pottery buried with the 

 dead, we call them food-vessels, because we know that it is the custom 

 among savage and barbarous nations to bury food with the dead and to 

 make offerings at the tomb, and that this custom rests on a persuasion 

 that the dead continue to need food and that they will be propitiated by 

 gifts ; and we further infer that the races who buried food-vessels with 

 their dead in this country held a similar opinion. Or, to take another 

 burial custom : General Pitt- Rivers reported last year to the British As- 



' The Ethnographical Survey Committee has a few sets of instruments for taking 

 the measurements, which can be placed temporarily at the disposal of the local 

 committee. Perhaps I may here also express the opinion that if the personal 

 photographs and measurements called for expenditure beyond what could be met by 

 local enthusiasm, the Committee might not be indisposed to contribute by way of a 

 small payment for each photograph and set of measurements. 



