226 ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE 



naming Hezekiah, a Greek vase with a scene of the 

 Odyssey, a coin with the Britannic triumph of Claudius 

 is felt to be so satisfactory to the reader who has 

 trusted all his life to a printed page, that this use of 

 material history has blocked the way to its real impor- 

 tance. These confirmations are the least important use 

 of material. 



The next use of material is to fill out and consolidate 

 the fragmentary statements or bare outlines ; such is 

 the use of the Anglo-Saxon jewellery and weapons ; 

 the burnt ruins of the Roman towns in Britain, and the 

 piteous cave-shelters in which their inhabitants took 

 refuge from the heathen flood of barbarians ; the primi- 

 tive Roman inscriptions on the buried pillar of the 

 Forum ; the Greek settlements on the Euxine ; and 

 the filling of the outlines of Egyptian history with a 

 living picture of the wealth, art, and civilization of the 

 thousands of years that passed. 



But the most valuable result from material history 

 is the extension of it to ages before the written record 

 of each country. So soon as man becomes a settler, and 

 acquires anything beyond the skin and wood vessels of 

 the nomad, he begins to lay by history ; so soon as he 

 disturbs the surface of the land by roads, entrenchments, 

 or fields, he leaves the proof of his industry to the 

 future ; so soon as he even breaks a stone by skill and 

 design he leaves an imperishable trace of his abilities. 

 There is no land in which civilized man has lived, in 

 which we cannot reconstruct his history entirely from his 

 material remains. 



At first sight any one accustomed solely to get ideas 

 from words may be at a loss to see how much can be 

 learned. The fact that certain towns, buildings, and 

 roads existed is easily obvious. The mental capacities 



