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EDITORIAL NOTE
THE objects for which this Review is
established are above all things practical. We believe that, as it
gets known and as its influence increases, it will become necessary
to every student. It occupies no ground held by other periodicals;
it seeks no ends for which there already exist adequate means of
accomplishment.
Almost every county or district in the United Kingdom is the centre
of archaeological enquiry by a local organisation. The Cambridge
Antiquarian Society, the Berwickshire Field Naturalists, Newcastle
Society of Antiquaries, Glasgow Archaeological Society, the Sussex,
Surrey, Kent, Shropshire, Somersetshire, Lancashire and Cheshire,
Wilts, Yorkshire, &c., county Archaeological Societies, the Essex
Field Club, the Powys Land Club, the Devonshire Association, the
Royal Institution of Cornwall, are among the most active of these
local organisations. As national organisations there are the Society
of Antiquaries, the Archaeological Institute, and the British
Archaeological Association in England, the Society of Antiquaries of
Scotland, the Cambrian Archaeological Association in Wales, and the
Archaeological Association of Ireland. Then for special departments
of arclue-ology, there are the Anthropological Institute, the
Geological Society, the Geographical Society, the Folklore Society,
the English Dialect Society, and such recently formed societies as
the Pipe Roll and the Selden. Nothing is clearer, therefore, that so
far as separate organisations are concerned there is considerable
activity in Great Britain in matters of archaeological interest. The
question is—is it well directed and concentrated ?
To this question there can be but one answer, and that a very
humiliating one—absolutely nothing is done to bring all this
excellent machinery into full working order. The Society of
Antiquaries of London is the oldest, wealthiest, and most important
of the central organisations, and we cannot conceive it doing more
useful work than that of mapping out a plan of archaeological
research and -seeing that it is carried out. So long ago as 1799,
for instance, the idea of compiling a plan of Roman Britain from the
remains of that period found all over the country was promulgated,
but nothing is yet done. Prehistoric, Celtic, and Saxon Britain, are
similarly neglected, and an archaeological survey which is carried
out so well and elaborately in India, is denied for the home
country. To refer to a special subject, that of Roman Roads, Dr.
Guest has given us a very excellent outline of the whole matter, and
his plan of traversing the roads themselves gives special value to
bis observations. But when a local society takes up the subject it
properly confines its work to its own district. Thus in the first
volume of the transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire
Antiquarian Society Mr. H. C. March gives a very adequate account,
accompanied by plans, of the Roman Road over the Blackstone Edge.
But no neighbouring society continues the good work in its own
borderland, and thus the subject is left in a fragmentary condition.
Now, local antiquities, explained and illustrated by local students,
are of much more than local value. In no branch of archaeological
science is this better exemplified than in that dealing with
institutions. National institutions are built up from local
institutions, and in these latter are often to be found germs of the
remotest antiquity, which have survived simply because they have
never been called upon to meet the requirements of later ages. To
illustrate this by an example there does not at first sight seem to
be much significance in the fact of a manorial court meeting on a
mound, under a tree, or by the side of a stream. Necessity, the
nature of the duties, other special causes might have originated
such a practice, and it would be kept up from the dislike of change.
When, however, we find that in many of our municipal towns the
citizens held their folkmoot, not in the Guildhall but in the open
air, as at London, Wycombe, Rochester, Preston, &c.; when we find
that the Hundred Courts and the Shire Courts adopted the same
practice ; when, finally,, at Kingston in England, at Scone in
Scotland, at Tara in Ireland, we find national ceremonies conducted
in the same primitive fashion, we know full well that the local
survival is a matter of deep historic interest. Turning to another
subject, the methods of agriculture, the local practice of dividing
the lands yearly into long narrow strips, of allotting to each owner
several of these strips at distances from each other, of throwing
the whole together again after the arable season is over, would only
seem curious so long as it was considered locally. But when it is
noted that all over Great Britain.such a practice obtained in some
shape or other, it is recognised that we have before us a custom of
considerable importance. These arc only two out of many instances
which crowd upon the mind, but they are sufficient to show that in
monumental archaeology and in archaeological custom, local research
is first of all required. But before the local enquirer can do his
work properly and efficiently it wants systematising and directing.
When at the hands of Professor E. B. Tylor, Mr. McLennan, Sir Henry
Maine, Mr. C. J. Elton, Sir John Lubbock, Professor Boyd Dawkins,
and other scholars, the science of comparative archaeology was
founded, the value of local antiquities increased a thousandfold. A
local survival was found to be perhaps the single thread indicating
the lines of progress along which national development has taken
place. Every such survival has a niche in the national building-up,
and its place when found and explained helps onward the record of
the history of our race.
If the want of systematic study and research in matters of national
antiquities is deplorable, there is even more to regret in the
neglect shown towards the antiquities of other lands in so far as
they illustrate those in this country. Special discoveries like
those in Babylon, Syria, Egypt, and in Greece and Rome, have
attracted attention, but they have not been sufficiently utilised
for comparative history, and the significant discoveries in northern
Europe have been much neglected. Comparative archaeology must make
gigantic strides before it can be reckoned as an advancing science.
One of its most important functions is to render help to the most
comprehensive of all historical sciences, namely, anthropology. If
local survivals take us back to the far-off periods of Celtic or
Teutonic history, they are capable of being illustrated by, and
illustrating, the customs and beliefs of the backward races of
modern times. To the materials obtained from local survivals must be
added those obtained from geological and monumental evidence, and we
have a field of enquiry which in extent and importance is second to
none.
It may perhaps be considered presumptuous to imagine that a
periodical can do what such organisations as we have above referred
to have failed to accomplish. But nevertheless that is our aim. By
indicating what is wanted, by directing and stimulating research in
all directions, we hope to establish clearly that archaeological
teaching is as much called for as any other branch of educational
work. In taking up then the history of man as our subject we bear in
mind that he alone of all creation is capable of looking back into
the past.
Some little explanation of our proposed methods is desirable. In
dividing the Archaeological Review into sections we do so for
convenience of study only, and we fully bear in mind that
archaeology, as a science, must be treated as a whole, and that its
branches dovetail into and oftentimes overlap each other. But the
first steps must be taken by specialists if we would arrive at
substantial results upon which to work; and we can promise that
specialists in the various sections of the Review will find a
welcome both from ourselves and our readers.
The first section will be devoted to what is more properly
considered Anthropological Archaeology, as it is studied by the
Anthropological Institute. It will include savage customs and
beliefs, ethnology, some departments of folklore, mythology, and
such studies in comparative archaeology as make a definite
contribution to the history of man, as distinct from that of any
particular nation. The second section, Archaeology, will include the
records of geology so far as they reveal the doings of man, the
remains of prehistoric man, the legends and traditions of the past,
dialects, and the monumental relics of historic times. The third
section, that of History, will chiefly treat of such antiquarian
subjects as illustrate domestic manners and customs, local
institutions, legal, court, and other ceremonies, economic history,
&c. The last section will be devoted to Literature. While welcoming
any contribution which throw light upon the history of literature,
we shall for the most part seek to make this section of use to the
study of archaeology by taking as our cue the observation of Lord
Rayleigh in his masterly address to the British Association, that “
by a fiction as remarkable as any to be found in law, what has once
been published, even though it be in the Russian language, is
usually spoken of as known, and it is often forgotten that the
rediscovery in the library may be a more difficult and uncertain
process than the first discovery in a laboratory.” If this be true
of physical science, how much more is it true of archaeological
science ? Many of our old writers record facts without knowing or
dreaming of their arch®-ological importance. Our old school of
antiquaries collected facts for the pure love of collecting, and
they went on measuring and describing without much thought that
their results would some day be utilised for the purpose oE science.
Many of us cannot, for various reasons, use shovel and spade, nor
even perhaps knapsack and staff1; but we can dig into books and
rediscover for scientific purposes what was once noted by the
curious student or by the political reformer.
Under each section a certain amount of space will be given to what
we propose to term Index-notes. The system of indexnoting has been
planned in order to concentrate and systematize such information as
properly comes within our domain. The idea will be to take in hand
some subject of importance which has not yet been dealt with
adequately, owing generally to its extent and vastness, and
contributions will be invited upon the plan laid down. No index will
ever be given complete at once under this arrangement, but if
completeness is waited for, we may still go on waiting for many
years. A complete index can be built up, bit by bit; and when once
the fragments are obtained, it will rest with those interested to
place the mosaics together and give the world the complete picture.
In each section correspondents are invited to communicate any
information on the topics under treatment, or new original matter
not sufficiently long to form the subject of an article.
The work accomplished by the various local archaeological societies
will be recorded in the shape of an index of the papers published in
the volumes of transactions issued during each year, commencing with
those of 1887. To make this record complete an index of the papers
published up to 1886 is needed. This has been compiled, and a
portion will be printed as an appendix to each issue of the Review.
This index will be arranged under authors’ names, and when completed
by the addition of such titles as may have been omitted, a
subject-index will be added. This appendix will be paged separately,
so that it may be bound up into one volume.
If the scheme here laid down can be carried out with some degree of
completeness, the editor and conductors of the Archaeological Review
will consider they have met one of the requirements of the Victorian
age.
G. Laurence Gomme.
Volume 1
Volume 2
Volume 3
Volume 4 |
