ORIGIN'S OF CIVILIZATION IN EUEOPE EVANS. 427 



religion, of politics and of economic conditions — have gone far to 

 supply the lacuna. 



Look, too, at the history of the Roman Empire — how defective and 

 misleading in many departments are the literary records. It has 

 been by methodical researches into evidence such as the above, nota- 

 bly in the epigraphic field, that the most trustworthy results have 

 been worked out. 



Take the case of Roman Britain. Had the lost books of Ammianus 

 relating to Britain been preserved we might have had, iii his rugged 

 stj'le, some partial sketch of the Province as it existed in the age of 

 its most complete Romanization. As it is, so far as historians are 

 concerned, we are left in almost complete darkness. Here, again, it is 

 through archeological research that light has penetrated, and thanks 

 to the thoroughness and persistence of our own investigators, town 

 sites such as Silchester in Roman Britain have been more completely 

 uncovered than those of any other Province.^ Nor has any part of 

 Britain supplied more important contributions in this field than the 

 region of the Roman wall, that great limitary work between the Sol- 

 way and the mouth of the Tyne that once marked the northernmost 

 European barrier of civilized dominion. 



Speaking here, on the site of Hadrian's bridge-head station that 

 formed its eastern key, it would be impossible for me not to pay a 

 passing tribute, however inadequate, to the continuous work of ex- 

 ploration and research carried out by the Society of Antiquaries of 

 Newcastle, now for over a hundred years in existence, worthily sec- 

 onded by its sister society on the Ciunbrian side, and of which the 

 volumes of the respective Proceedings and Transactions, Archaeolo- 

 gia, ^^liana, and last but not least the Lapidarium Septentrionale, 

 are abiding records. The basis of methodical study was here the 

 survey of the wall carried out, together with that of its main mili- 

 tary approach, the Watling Street, by MacLauchlan, under the auspi- 

 ces of Algernon, fourth Duke of Northumberland. And who, how- 

 ever lightly touching on such a theme, can overlook the services of 

 the late Dr. Collingwood Bruce, the " Grand old man," not only of the 

 wall itself, but of all pertaining to border antiquities, distinguished 

 as an investigator for his scholarship and learning, whose lifelong 

 devotion to his subject and contagious enthusiasm made the Roman 

 wall, as it had never been before, a household word? 



New points of view have arisen, a stricter method and a greater 

 subdivision of labor have become imperative in this as in other de- 

 partments of research. We must, therefore, rejoice that local ex- 

 plorers have more and more availed themselves of the cooperation, and 

 welcomed the guidance of those equipped with comparative knowl- 



1 See Haverfield, " Roman Britain in 1913," p. 86. 



