This appears to me the most scientific attitude. Time is the great revealer. But Dr. Munro, as we saw, prefers not to suspend his judgment, and says plainly and pluckily that the disputed objects in the Clyde controversy are “spurious”; are what the world calls “fakes,” though from a delicate sense of the proprieties of language, he will not call them “forgeries.” They are reckoned by him among “false antiquities,” while, for my
part, I know not of what age they are, but incline I believe that many of them are not of the nineteenth century. This is the extent of our difference. On the other hand I heartily concur with Dr. Munro in regretting that his advice,—to subject the disputed objects at the earliest possible stage of the proceedings, to a jury of experts,—was not accepted. [11a]
One observation must be made on Dr. Munro’s logical method, as announced by himself. “My role, on the present occasion, is to advocate the correctness of my own views on purely archaeological grounds, without any special effort to refute those of my opponents.” [11b] As my view is that the methods of Dr. Munro are perhaps,—and I say it with due deference, and with doubt,—capable of modification, I shall defend my opinions as best I may. Moreover, my views, in the course of seven long years (1898-1905) have necessarily undergone some change, partly in deference to the arguments of Dr. Munro, partly because much new information has come to my knowledge since 1898-99. Moreover, on one occasion, I misstated my own view, and, though I later made my real opinion perfectly dear, some confusion was generated.
III—THE CLYDE CONTROVERSY
It is necessary, after these prefatory remarks, to give an account of the rise of the Clyde controversy, and I may be pardoned for following the example of Dr. Munro, who adds, and cannot but add, a pretty copious narrative of his own share in the discussion. In 1896, the hill fort of Dunbuie, “about a mile-and-a-half to the east of Dumbarton Castle, and three miles to the west of the Roman Wall,” [12] was discovered by Mr. W. A. Donnelly: that is to say, Mr. Donnelly suggested that the turf might conceal something worth excavating, and the work was undertaken, under his auspices, by the Helensburgh Antiquarian Society.
As Mr. Donnelly’s name constantly occurs in the discussion, it may be as well to state that, by profession, he is an artist,—a painter and designer in black and white,—and that, while keenly
interested in the pre-historic or proto-historic relics of Clydesdale, he makes no claim to be regarded as a trained archaeologist, or widely-read student. Thus, after Mr. Donnelly found a submarine structure at Dumbuck in the estuary of the Clyde, Dr. Munro writes: “I sent Mr. Donnelly some literature on crannogs.” [13a] So Mr. Donnelly, it appears, had little book lore as to crannogs. He is, in fact, a field worker in archaeology, rather than an archaeologist of the study and of books. He is a member of a local archaeological Society at Helensburgh on the Clyde, and, before he found the hill fort of Dunbuie, he had discovered an interesting set of “cup and ring” marked rocks at Auchentorlie, “only a short distance from Dunbuie.” [13b]
Mr. Donnelly’s position, then, as regards archaeological research, was, in 1896-1898, very like that of Dr. Schliemann when he explored Troy. Like Dr. Schliemann he was no erudite savant, but an enthusiast with an eye for likely sites. Like Dr. Schliemann he discovered certain objects hitherto unknown to Science, (at least to Scottish science,) and, like Dr. Schliemann, he has had to take “the consequences of being found in such a situation.”
It must be added that, again like Dr. Schliemann he was not an excavator of trained experience. I gather that he kept no minute and hourly-dated log-book of his explorations, with full details as to the precise positions of the objects discovered, while, again like Dr. Schliemann, he had theories of his own, with some of which I do not concur.
Dr. Munro justly insists on “the absolute necessity of correctly recording the facts and relics brought to light by excavations.” [14a] An excavator should be an engineer, or be accompanied by a specialist who can assign exact measurements for the position of every object discovered. Thus Dr. Munro mentions the case of a man who, while digging a drain in his garden in Scotland, found an adze of jade and a pre-historic urn. Dr. Munro declares, with another expert, that the jade adze is “a modern Australian implement,” which is the more amazing as I am not aware that the Australians possess any jade. The point is that the modern Australian adze was not, as falsely reported, in the pre-historic urn. [14b]