144 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



a century and a half, into one of the finest archaeological collections in 

 Europe. The Earl of Buchan and his friends had builded better than they 

 knew. 



The story of our National Museum of Antiquities is a parable. It 

 reflects the process by which, in every European country, the dilettante 

 was transformed into the scholar, the antiquary into the archaeologist. 

 There are no general features which can be said to be peculiar to Scotland. 

 Honoris et pietatis causa, however, mention must be made of one con- 

 spicuous figure. In retrospect Dr. Joseph Anderson towers head and 

 shoulders above the whole of his contemporaries. Emphatically a strong 

 man, alike in intellect and in character, he was endowed with a rare power 

 of accurate observation, a keen sense of the value of evidence, a disciplined 

 imagination, and a singular gift of lucid exposition. It is a fortunate thing 

 for Scottish archaeology that its early footsteps should have been directed 

 by so competent a guide. He was in charge of the National Museum for 

 the long period of forty-three years, and the collections as you may see 

 them to-day are, in large measure, the fruit of his energy and discriminating 

 zeal. But he did much more than merely stimvdate their growth. He 

 used them as material for that invaluable compendium of Scottish 

 archaeology which he embodied in his successive series of Rhind Lectures. 

 The first of these was delivered as long ago as 1879. The intervening 

 period has added much to our knowledge, so that, in the light of the 

 fresh information now available, the details require to be corrected here 

 and there. More frequently they require to be supplemented. Anderson 

 lived to see the emergence of Azilian man at Oban' and on Oronsay, as 

 well as the first discovery of Tardenoisian flints on this side of the Tweed. 

 He died before we had any hint that human beings might have tenanted 

 the caves of Sutherland in palaeolithic times. But none of these new 

 factors affect in the slightest degree the principles which he enunciated 

 so cogently. The lines which he originally laid down have had to be 

 produced backwards. Otherwise they remain unchanged. Their perma- 

 nence is due to the method of treatment he adopted. To him archaeology 

 was an inductive science in the strictest sense of the term. If its 

 potentialities were to be fidly realised, it must cut itself ruthlessly adrift 

 from history. Here is one of his characteristic utterances : ' Archaeology 

 has no dates of its own — gives no periods that can be expressed in chrono- 

 logical terms. These belong exclusively to liistory ; and, in point of 

 fact, it is impossible to obtain such dates or periods except from record.' 

 There are modern writers to whom that may seem a hard saying. Yet, 

 on Anderson's view of what archaeology meant, it is fundamentally and 

 incontestably true. Listen to his summary of how the materials of his 

 science ought to be dealt with : ' (1) By arranging them in groups possessing 

 certain characteristics in common ; (2) By determining the special types 

 of which these groups are composed ; (3) By determining the geographical^ 

 range of each special group ; (4) By determining its relations to other types 

 within or beyond its own special area ; and (5) By determining the sequence 

 of the types within the geographical area which is the field of study. The 

 general outcome of the whole dealing of the archaeologist with his materials 

 is thus the contruction of a logical history of the human occupation of 

 the area which he subjects to investigation — that is, a history which is not 



