II. RESOURCES AND AGENCIES OF ARCHEOLOGIC 



SCIENCE 



THE nature and extent of the wide field from which the stu- 

 dent may gather the scattered records of human history 

 have been suggested in the preceding section. Although the 

 field of archeological research is generally understood to be limited 

 to ancient or old things, and it is with these that the 

 sdenc7^^ ° ^ archeologist has more directly to deal, yet it appears, 

 as already indicated, that all phenomena, natural and 

 artificial, material and inmiaterial, mundane and celestial, by the 

 study of which the history of man may become better known, are, 

 with the cooperation of auxiliary sciences, drawn upon and made to 

 contribute to the result. 



The principal sources to which the archeologist may directly ap- 

 peal regarding the history of the peoples of the western world may 

 be thought of as eightfold, as follows: (1) The living peoples, the 

 ten or more million members of the American race distributed in 

 numberless grouj^s between the Arctic and the Antarctic, and pre- 

 senting physical and mental traits of great interest, traits which, well 

 understood, must assist materially in interpreting the peoples of 

 antiquity; (2) the remains of the dead of past generations preserved 

 in graves, tombs, and caverns, and found fossil in geological forma- 

 tions; and in addition the osseous remains of such genetically related 

 forms, assuming their existence, as may have occupied the continent 

 in past periods, from all of which sources facts of value may be 

 gathered ; (3) the various activities of the living people, which afford 

 a key to the activities of the past; (4) the great body of material 

 products of the arts and industries of the present aborigines, the 

 study of which in regard to manufacture, form, use, significance, and 

 genesis is of the utmost importance to the student of the past; (5) the 

 vast body of monumental works (mounds, temples, fortifications, 

 tombs, etc.) and industrial remains (mines, quarries, aqueducts, 

 reservoirs, roads, bridges, etc.) of anti(iuity and the innumerable 

 minor relics of the handicrafts obtained from graves, tombs, and 

 caverns, scattered at random over the surface of the land, and embed- 

 ded in superficial formations, upon which main reliance must be 

 placed for a knowledge of what man has accomplished in past times 

 and the manner of its accomplishment; (6) the literature of 400 

 years — a treasury of fact and a pitfall of error from which the stu- 



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