H— ANTHROPOLOGY 155 



the mistaken opinions launched seventy years ago would have been 

 stereotyped for ever. 



In some countries where the government is very weak it is unavoidable 

 that cemeteries should be completely cleared before they are abandoned, 

 otherwise the natives descend like vultures and sack whatever the archaeo- 

 logist has left. But in places where the police control can be more effective 

 a portion of a cemetery might sometimes be left ; and certainly a town, 

 palace, fort, or other site which does not contain remarkable treasures, 

 could be protected for a second generation to study. The new generation 

 will have new points of view and problems to solve which the earlier 

 explorers never suspected. 



The second aspect of an archaeologist's activities is museum work. 

 Sometimes the same man who has formed a collection in the field will 

 be placed in charge of it in a museum. This is a very happy arrangement 

 and ensures that the most minute and intelligent attention will be given 

 to everything that has been found. More often, however, the museum 

 curator is a person who stays at home, and acts as the recipient and 

 custodian of the collections that are brought to him. 



How he treats these collections must be to a great extent determined 

 by the circumstances and the accommodation at his disposal. Our greatest 

 museums in England and on the Continent are in many instances so over- 

 crowded, and so hampered by an excess of concentrated material, that it 

 is useless to lay down ideal rules for them. The only hope for a really 

 rational treatment of them is that they should be broken up into a number 

 of smaller units ; this may for the moment be impracticable, but should 

 certainly be borne in mind as the ideal at which any really systematic 

 policy would aim. 



In countries like Italy, with its traditional liberality towards science 

 and art, or America, which starts in at a later stage with great resources 

 and no hampering accumulation from past years, a genuinely systematic 

 arrangement is possible. From the point of view of an excavator many 

 of the Italian museums are ideally arranged. The results of any given 

 excavation are kept together in a single room , and each tomb and deposit 

 is placed in a separate division of a case, carefully marked off from its 

 neighbours. The effect of this is that a student can go into the museum 

 at Florence or Bologna with the excavator's report in his hand, and study 

 every paragraph with the objects in front of him. Even when the objects 

 have been incompletely published I have been able to make a fairly 

 systematic record of them from the mere contents of the cases thirty 

 years after the work had been done. In the Egyptian department of 

 the Metropolitan Museum at New York the deposits are not so rigidly 

 kept in series — which is, indeed, difficult unless the available space is almost 

 unlimited — but the same ideal has been borne in mind. The exhibition, 

 therefore, can be used as an illustration of the actual excavation. More- 

 over, New York has gone far beyond any other institution in popularising 

 its exhibition. Photographs illustrating the stages of the excavation, 

 abundant and detached labels and descriptions of the objects, and resumes 

 of periods and styles of work make the collection an illustrated picture- 

 book which has an immediate appeal for the public. 



