is-j 



DISCOVHMY 



Past and Present 



By O. G. S. Crawford, H.A., F.S.A. 



AKCH.ii;oLOGY is the last subject to which one might 

 think of attributing any direct practical value ; yet 

 it has, I submit, two very real claims thereto. It 

 has a subjective value in producing a certain state 

 of mind in its students ; and it has an objective value 

 because it helps to explain the origin of certain " sub- 

 conscious " instincts which control our actions. 



Let me take the subjective value first. Archaeo- 

 logists deal primarily with time in large stretches ; they 

 use man's primitive tools and weapons as tallies for 

 measuring his progress, and they grow accustomed to 

 the vista of long ages with scarcely perceptible change. 

 Now, it is impossible to do this without being struck 

 by the immense power of conservatism which through- 

 out the past has kept the craftsman strictly to his 

 ancestral model, and which has ordained that the new 

 must disguise itself as the old if it is to survive. These 

 are commonplaces, but they are necessar}^ to my argu- 

 ment ; for I wish to make it clear that archaeology, 

 by revealing these processes of tool-development, does 

 so to expose their cumbrous and wasteful nature. 

 Tools — in the widest possible sense of that word — 

 are a means of attaining a certain end. Primitive 

 man was fully conscious of the ends he had in view 

 when he was making a stone axe or a sickle ; but 

 instead of conducting research experiments to deter- 

 mine the best kind of axe or sickle for his purpose, he 

 slavishh' followed the ancestral type. (WTiat was good 

 enough for his father was good enough for him. and 

 so forth, a dictum reinforced, doubtless, by the elders 

 of the tribe.) The survival of the fittest would, of 

 course, operate in favour of the axes best suited, in 

 shape or material, to achieve their purpose ; but the 

 natural law would operate infinitely slowly and in a 

 haphazard manner. Primitive man is not extinct ; 

 his voice is heard whenever the results of competition 

 in the open markets of the world are claimed to be 

 better than those achieved by deliberate, organised 

 scientific research. The " open market " policy was 

 the rule of the Stone Age. Its underlying assump- 

 tion was that men, though capable of selecting the 

 best axe for their purpose, when it was made, were 

 incapable of deliberately setting out to improve it 

 by rational collective effort.' I am not blaming the 

 men of the Stone Age for what was the necessary result 

 of their primitive social condition. But the lesson of 



» '• Research may be defined as the process of intentionally 

 looking for something new ; the value of some physical con- 

 stant, a new material, or a method of performing some opera- 

 tion." F. H. Norton on " The Conduction of Research," 

 Scientific Monthly, May 192 1. 



the last hundred years is that such collective effort, 

 even when despised and rejected by " practical " 

 men, is the only line of progress open to civilised 

 communities. 



There are only two types of men, conscr\'atives and 

 liberals, as Gilbert said. The conservative is ruled by 

 precedent ; he is seldom open to conviction and not 

 always rational ; the liberal, on the other hand, does 

 not shy at a new suggestion merely because it is new 

 and strange ; he accepts or rejects it on its merits. 

 During the earlier half of the first millennium before 

 Christ, Britain was inhabited by conservatives who 

 continued using bronze after iron was known and 

 used by their Continental neighbours. (This was due 

 to the vested interests of her copper and tin industry'.) 

 About the middle of this period some enterprising 

 merchant of radical tendencies appeared in Wales. 

 He knew about iron and could make tools of iron, 

 but he was unable to dispose of them to his conser- 

 vative customers. He therefore adopted an amusing 

 stratagem. With great labour he made iron spears 

 and sickles of exactly the same shape as the bronze 

 ones which his customers were in the habit of bu\^ng, 

 and to corrtplete the deception he dipped them in 

 molten bronze. He mixed up these counterfeits with 

 genuine objects of solid bronze and took them all 

 away with him on a journey. But his radical enter- 

 prise (to give it no worse a name) met with disaster, 

 for he dropped the whole bagful of tricks into a lake. 

 Had he not lost them, however, we should not have 

 known of his enlightened efforts, nor should we be 

 able to see them, as we now can, in a show-case at 

 the National Museum of Wales. 



Another subjective result of the study of archreology 

 is the attitude it produces towards current events. 

 One has to deal with the migration of peoples and with 

 their evolution throughout long periods of time. 

 One's outlook is, habitually and of necessity, a broad 

 one in both time and space. More particularly one 

 is constantly brought up against that strange, dis- 

 tressing phenomenon — the rise and fall of civilisation. 

 (I assume that the arch;eologist is also interested in 

 and familiar with the main outlines of historical 

 development.) History and archseology alone can 

 hope to explain this phenomenon ; and when it has 

 been explained, when its causes are discovered, we 

 shall be half-way towards its cure. There, at any 

 rate, is a fine practical problem to be faced ! The 

 present time is a most suitable one in w^hich to make a 

 start. Anyone who could find an explanation and a 

 solution of our present troubles would, I am sure, 

 earn the gratitude of Mr. Lloyd George, and might 

 even hope for a good word from Lord Northcliffe, Mr. 

 Horatio Bottomley, and other great leaders of thought. 

 It is generally assumed that civilisation is dechning 



