Fig. 12.—One typical form of pottery of each period.
Pottery.
Pottery is, however, the greatest resource of the archaeologist. For variety of form and texture, for decoration, for rapid change, for its quick fall into oblivion, and for its incomparable abundance, it is in every respect the most important material for study ([Fig. 12]), and it constitutes the essential alphabet of archaeology in every land. Think for a moment how few people know the appearance of a common jug a century old, how the crocks of Georgian times have all vanished, and new forms are made. Even of decorated china not one piece in a thousand in England is before the last century, and not one in a million is three centuries old; so rapidly does breakable ware perish, and become unknown. This not only prevents its being handed on from earlier times, as ornaments or weapons may descend, but it prevents the copying of older forms, and gives a free scope to rapid variation. No doubt some standard forms may continue to be made, because they are so simple, and so adapted to common wants, that the same causes continue to produce them. But it is only the simplest and least characteristic types which thus continue; the more detailed and specialised the form, the more rapidly it changes, and gives way to new styles. In the prehistoric age of Egypt alone there are about a thousand different forms of pottery; and when the historic times shall be as fully recorded, probably two or three times as many will demand notice. In Italy and Greece there is apparently as great a variety, though—apart from painted vases—it is very far from being fully placed on paper. And when we come to know the archaeology of other lands, their pottery will doubtless prove as varied and distinctive in its styles. It is then in a thorough knowledge of pottery that any sound archaeology must be based; and there is no wider or more important field for discrimination. With the brief view of Palestinian pottery gained in a few weeks, on one site at Tell Hesy (Lachish), I found it possible to ride over mounds of ruins and see the age of them without even dismounting.
Style.
Beside the discrimination of broad physical differences there is the more subtle observation of style. This cannot be discussed, or even shown to exist, without a very wide collection of examples; yet in a trained observer a long series of experience should result in an unexpressed—almost intangible and incommunicable—sense of the style of each country and each age, such that a piece of work can at once be referred to its proper place, though not a single exact comparison can be quoted for it. Special motives, outlines, curves, tastes, belong to various sources so certainly and characteristically that they show their origin at a glance. A good example of this is seen in the bronzes of Minusinsk in Central Asia; this site is almost equidistant from the North Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the China Sea, and the style seems to recall by its details almost equally the taste of Northmen, Persians, and Chinese. A good practice for such discrimination is the analysis of common ornament around us: a rug or a wall pattern may be analysed into its sources—here a bit from Assyria, there from Egypt, here from Japan, there from Norway, all hashed together by the modern designer. And until the common and obviously distinctive patterns of each country can be named at sight, and separated into their various sources, the observer cannot hope to gain that far more essential sense of the national taste of each people, and the sympathetic feeling of the relationship of any form or curve that may chance to be seen,—that conviction of the family and source of each object, which is the illumination of an archaeologist, the guide to fresh suggestions and researches, the mental framework which holds all memories in place.
Visual Memory.
But beside this sublimated use of the permanent memory and discrimination, there is another very crude and transient discrimination which is also needed in actual work. A visual memory of the site and excavations should be constantly in mind; the master should be able to go over the whole site, and every man at work on it, entirely from memory; he should be able to realise at once, on seeing the place next day, exactly how every one of fifty different holes looked the day before; and know at once where the work stood, and what has been done since, so as to measure it up without depending on any statements by the workmen. If a boy comes with a message that Ibrahim or Mutwali needs direction, the master should be able to visualise the place, inquire what has been done, and how each part now stands, and then give sufficient temporary direction entirely from memory of the site, and memory of what he expected to do, or to prove, or to find, from that particular hole. The extent of this visual memory is never realised until one meets with some who are so unlucky as not to possess such an apparatus, and who are therefore unable to know what has been done, and have to begin each day’s work as if they were strangers to the place. Of all inherent mental qualifications there is perhaps none more essential to a digger than this permanent picture of a site in the mind. And the transient memory from day to day should include the appearance of every hole on all sides, the meaning of it and the purpose for which it is being dug.
CHAPTER III
THE LABOURERS
Quality.