220 ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE 



kind of evidence is enough to hang a man, solely from 

 presumption. 



Now let us look at these kinds of evidence about the 

 past of man. 



1. Witnesses, the documents, which give a clear and 

 connected statement. They may be either primary, as 

 a stone inscription or an autograph letter ; or secondary, 

 as compiled histories or subsequent copies. No other 

 kind of evidence is so easy to follow ; yet this is a proof 

 in which we are entirely at the mercy of the prejudices, 

 the ill-will, the frauds, and the blunders of others, and 

 it is hence the least dependable kind of evidence in 

 some cases. The speeches of Thucydides, the bias of 

 Suetonius, the wonders of Livy, the romances of William 

 of Malmesbury, and the forgery called Richard of Ciren- 

 cester, each plunge us deeper and deeper into the 

 doubtfulness of written documents; to say nothing of 

 the Casket Letters or Ossian. 



2. Material facts, when rightly understood, are the 

 most conclusive evidence. They may be in a single 

 object, as a palaeolithic flint re-chipped over and over 

 in later ages ; or a foreign ornament used on an object 

 of dated style, as a Maori tatued head in a daguerreo- 

 type would prove the tatuing to be known between 1840 

 and 1860; or a restruck coin with one type over another, 

 as Barchocheb over Hadrian ; or an added inscription, 

 so familiar on Egyptian statues. Or the evidence may 

 consist in a collocation of objects, such as a group of 

 things found together in a tomb ; or the superposition 

 of strata of ruins in a town. In the case of a single 

 object there are few possibilities of misunderstanding 

 the evidence ; but in strata or tomb-groups there is 

 a chance of older things being re-used. Such chances 

 of error are, however, extinguished by the recurrence 



