158 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



books of what I would call the second stage in the dissemination of 

 archasological knowledge. 



For if it is the absolute duty of the excavator to produce a perfectly dry, 

 passionless record of his work for the sake of his professional brethren, 

 this is only the first stage in the process of bringing knowledge into general 

 currency. When the seed has been thus gathered and sown it has to be 

 watered and cultivated. This is a task which may be undertaken by 

 the original explorer or by others. Unquestionably the best results are 

 obtained when the explorer himself, if he has any literary ability, under- 

 takes the popularisation and exploitation of his own field work. No one 

 else can so exactly estimate the finer values and all the different aspects 

 of the discoveries which he has made. Indeed, any outside person will 

 inevitably miss a great deal, and will probably view many details in a false 

 perspective. Many of our best archaeologists have achieved as much 

 success in semi-popular writing as in exploration ; I need only mention 

 Sir Aurel Stein as a conspicuous example. 



I wish strongly to emphasise that such semi-popular works are a 

 necessity if we are to have a wholesome circulation of general archaeo- 

 logical knowledge. The multiplication of material has become so great 

 that it is no longer possible for even the hardest working professional to 

 master everything that is published in its primary form. It is doubly 

 impossible if he is simultaneously doing any original work of his own. 

 And yet, if he is to be anything better than a narrow specialist, he ought 

 to know at least the outlines of what is being done for every period in 

 every part of the world. Narrow specialisation is naturally and properly 

 abhorrent to the British mind ; but it is not merely ungracious and 

 undesirable in itself, it is positively damaging to the efficacy of an archaeo- 

 logist's own work. If he is shut up in a small compartment he becomes 

 not merely a duller person, but a less efficient worker even in his own 

 limited field. Cross-fertilisation and the production of new hybrids are 

 indispensable conditions of a wholesome intellectual life. 



In the chain which forms our organised knowledge of archaeology I have 

 spoken in order of the explorer, the museum worker, the author of tech- 

 nical books on exploration, and the author of semi-popular expositions 

 of these technical books. All these aspects may be combined in one person, 

 though generally the museum curator and the explorer will be distinct. 



Separate from these, and with an extremely important function to 

 fulfil in our Platonic state, is the writer of general synthetic works. He 

 will probably be the occupant of some professorial chair, or a museum 

 curator holding a post which allows sufficient leisure for writing, or 

 occasionally an unofficial author who works in his own library and on his 

 own resources. It is writers of this class who have manufactured our 

 fine fabrics out of the raw material. It is they who have constructed 

 those far-reaching syntheses which have made archaeology a coherent 

 science instead of a group of isolated and disparate phenomena. It would 

 be invidious to enumerate the names of a long list of writers which begins 

 with the great pioneers of the last generation. Sir Edward Tylor, Sir John 

 Evans, Lord Avebury, and culminates in a perfect galaxy in our own 

 generation. As I compare the archaeology of even forty years ago with 



