6 



BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 



[bull. 60 



unwritten can be lestored to the realm of the known only through 

 the agency of this science. Objects lost to sight but yesterday and 

 unrecorded can be restored to the realm of the known only by archeo- 

 logical research. 



The wide range of the field of Archeology may be made more 



fully api)arent by a consideration of the accompany- 

 HisSrT''^^""'^" ing' diagrams, in which the field of human history, 



represented by the space between two diverging lines, 

 is assumed to begin at the bottom with the birth of the race, to 

 widen with the ages, and to end at the top with the present time. 

 On this field is laid down (fig. 3) a theoretical scheme of the rela- 

 tion of the wholly unrecorded (J.) to the whole body of recorded 



p/fsse/vr TIME 



p/?£S£/vr T/Me 



Fig. 



Relation ot recorded to un- 

 rocordod history. 



si^aiNfiiNS 



Fig. \. Relation of the unrecordoil 

 liistory to the purposely and 

 fortuitoiislv recorded history. 



history (/>). It is clear that in the earlier stages the wholly un- 

 recorded must occupy a large part of the historical field, but records 

 of a fortuitous kind, consisting of the physical remains of man and 

 the sim}>ler forms of his works, have been preserved under certain 

 favorable conditions from the earliest times, as indicated at C. With 

 the passing ages this ai'ea increases in importance, and new forms 

 of record arise, gradually occupying a considerable part of the field. 

 It is assumed that purposeful records began perhaps during the 

 early stages of savageiy (fig. 4, Z>), the point in intellectual evolu- 

 tion at which the suggestion of keeping in memory past events and 

 of fixing dates of present and future events dawned upon the mind. 

 The five forms of purposeful record which arose — pictorial, minor 



