H.— ANTHROPOLOGY 157 



little satisfaction to the aesthete. Let us be perfectly clear-sighted and 

 frank about it. In itself archaeology has nothing to do with art — at most 

 it chronicles the history of art ; which is a very different thing, as every 

 artist knows, from genuine aesthetic appreciation. The art-critics are 

 perfectly justified in protesting, as they constantly protest, against the 

 confusion of art-history with art-criticism. The individual archaeologist 

 may by the grace of heaven chance to be endowed, as a very few men are, 

 with the real gift of aesthetic appreciation. But it is not directly evoked 

 by his work, and there will be little opportunity as a rule for exercising it 

 in the course of his work. The immense majority of the objects with 

 which he deals have very slight aesthetic worth ; in so far as a man is 

 purely archaeologist aesthetic values do not exist for him. The archaeo- 

 logist works like a naturalist — it is his business to trace evolution, patterns, 

 migration, and development ; and when he is tempted to discourse on 

 aesthetic values his opinions are very seldom worth hearing. Except in 

 very rare instances, therefore, the products of excavation and exploration 

 should be treated as natural history collections, and not as more or less 

 unsuccessful efforts at pure art. And we must remember that archaeology 

 has now happily become a popular subject. The man in the street is 

 greatly interested in it. He delights in the pictures and the brief accounts 

 which are published in the Illustrated London News ; he rushes to the 

 exhibitions of antiquities excavated at Ur of the Chaldees, or in Egypt, 

 or anywhere else. The reporters of the most up-to-date American news- 

 papers will assure you that archaeology is ' front-page news,' and it is 

 printed with two-inch headlines in columns next to the exploits of the 

 gangster and the gunman. This is fame — let us take advantage of it. 

 It would be exceedingly foolish not to welcome this popularity and 

 cultivate it by every possible means. Here is a study which does no harm 

 to anyone, which any intelligent being can share, and which can add 

 immensely to the amenity and happiness of the ordinary man's life. 



I have now dealt with two aspects of an archaeologist's work, the 

 collection of material and the exhibition of it in museums. The third is 

 the dissemination of knowledge by means of books. Some of these books 

 must necessarily be technical ; others should be addressed less to 

 specialists than to a cultivated public ; and a third class ought to be 

 directly and deliberately popular in their aim. 



First of all, the original scientific accounts of excavations can hardly 

 be popular works, and need not be. They are written for the professional 

 and make very dry reading. They are not essentially literary in form, 

 and if a writer inserts some chapters of literary character these are only 

 an added grace ; they are not essential at this first stage, but belong rather 

 to the second. Lists, plans, schedules, catalogues and indexes are the 

 fabric of which the excavator's reports ought to be composed. Their 

 aim is to give a precise account of every feature of the exploration, and 

 not until this has been done is there any occasion for general theories or 

 estimates of the historical bearing of the discoveries. Books of this stage 

 need be no more than mere chronicles ; it is probably best that they 

 should not attempt to be more. An excavator need not be a literary man. 

 If he has literary gifts he will have ample opportunity for using them in 



