454 

Archeological History. 
(1) Die Franken und Westgoten in der Volker- 
wanderungszeit. By Nils Aberg. (Arbeten utgifna 
med understéd af Vilhelm Ekmans Universitets- 
fond, Uppsala, 28.) Pp. vilit282+9 kartes. 
(Uppsala : A.-B. Akademiska Bokhandeln ; Leipzig : 
Otto Harrassowitz ; Paris: Libr. Honoré Champion, 
1922.) | os Ka, 
(2) The Bronze Age and the Celtic World. By Harold 
Peake. Pp. 201+14 plates. (London: Benn 
Bros., Ltd., 1922.) 42s. net. 
RCHAOLOGICAL method has made three 
principal advances hitherto. Early attempts 
to explain similarities and diversities of form and 
style in human handiwork were put on a scientific 
basis in Germany by Klemm (whose “ Allgemeine 
Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit ” appeared in 1843) 
and were re-interpreted on Darwinian lines by Pitt 
Rivers’s “ Principles of Classification” published in 
1874; Kapp’s “Grundlinien einer Philosophie der 
Technik,” Semper’s “ Der Stil,’ and Hoernes’ “ Ur- 
geschichte der Kunst” marking later refinements 
of this morphological criticism. Stratigraphical cor- 
roboration of evolutionary sequences thus indicated 
begins with examination of the Swiss lake-dwellings 
by Keller, Troyon, and others, the word Kudtur- 
schicht first appearing in an excavation report of 1855. 
The spade-work of Ramsauer at Hallstatt from 1862, 
of Warren and Wilson at Jerusalem from 1867, and of 
Schliemann at Troy from 1871, are notable early dis- 
sections of long-inhabited ground ; and the developed 
technique of this kind of stratigraphy may be studied 
in Petrie’s ““ Methods and Aims in Archeology.” 
The two books now under review approach archzo- 
logical problems from yet another point of view. Even 
casual finds are at all events found somewhere. They 
can be plotted on a map; and when these plottings 
are sufficiently numerous, and their geographical dis- 
tribution begins to be apparent, regions of occupation 
by this or that phase of culture may be defined, and 
the spread or shrinkage may be inferred of the people 
who practised each kind of handiwork which the 
finds reveal, and felt the needs which the craftsmen 
of each generation were there to satisfy. Thus, as 
Rostovtseff says of his own study of “ Iranians and 
Greeks in South Russia” (Oxford, 1922), “ we are 
gradually learning how to write history with the help 
of archeology.” The method is precisely that of the 
staff-officer who establishes an enemy’s order of battle 
from cap-badges and scraps of local newspaper, and 
estimates its artillery value from the splinters of his 
shells; and the value of archzological training was 
demonstrated on every front in the recent war. 
NO. 2788, voL, 111] 
NATURE 

[APRIL 7, 1923 
Obviously this kind of antiquarian geography has 
had to wait until the finds themselves were sufficiently 
numerous ; until they had been sufficiently announced, 
in museum catalogues and publications in detail ; still 
more, until geographers (and, Jet us add, geologists) 
had accustomed their archeological colleagues to 
regard their proper “ fossils” from the new point of 
view, looking not only “ to the hole of the pit whence 
they were digged” but also “to the rock whence 
they were hewn.” ; 
(t) Dr. Aberg’s work on the stone age culture of 
northern Europe, and on the first age of metal in the 
Iberian peninsula, is sufficient guarantee for scientific 
scholarship of the first order ; his book on “ East Prussia _ 
in the Migration Period ” is an original contribution to 
one of the darkest phases of European history ; and 
his present monograph on the “ Franks and Visigoths 
in the Migration Period” is of the same fine quality. 
Naturally, his treatment of the material varies. Visi- 
gothic handiwork must be won by travel and research 
in local museums and private collections, and we are 
here still among the pioneers. But Frankish antiqui-- 
ties have been copiously published and studied, and 
the casual finds have been supplemented by systematic 
investigation of whole burial grounds, so that “‘ sequence- 
dating” supplements the comparison and affiliation 
of types, and facilitates interpretation of regional 
surveys. As most of the work has been done hitherto 
by French archeologists, and from the point of view 
of the invaded regions, the principal need was now 
to look at the whole matter from the other side. 
As Rostovtseff puts it, in a parallel case, “I do not 
regard South Russia as one of the provinces of the 
Greek world . . .” but “as always an Oriental land,” 
so Dr. Aberg might say that he does not regard the 
Franks as one of the peoples who intruded upon 
Gallo-Roman civilisation, but as always a Teutonic — 
people. The result is an interpretation not only of 
the Frankish finds of the west, but also of all the 
congruous material east of the Rhine, north of the 
Alps, and so far afield as Hungary and Scandinavia, 
and also in Lombardy and beyond, as contributions 
to the narrative of a progressive Frankification (so 
to speak) of indigenous Teutonic culture through the 
instrumentality of those peoples of Teuton origin who 
had most completely appropriated the west-land 
civilisation which they mastered politically. 
Thus, in a sense which will be a revelation to many, 
Gallia victa victorum cepit: or as Dr. Aberg puts it 
(p. 15), “the Franks in Gaul were influenced indeed, 
like the Goths in Italy, by Roman culture, but in 
contrast with them, they retained their power in spite 
of their loss of Teutonic quality, thanks to the main- 
tenance of intercourse along the lines of communication 

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