Methods & Aims in Archaeology

by W. M. Flinders Petrie

What is now urgently needed is for some scholars to each take one branch of work, to collect all that is known, especially of dated material; and then to publish all type examples, showing how the subject varied from century to century, and to attach a system of letters and numbers to every variety, so that any specimen can be denoted merely by its corpus number. This should be done at least for all implements of stone and of metal, all pottery, all stone and metal vases, all beads and personal ornaments, jewellery, clothing, domestic utensils, and all motives of design and ornamentation.

With such a definite notation once laid down, it would be possible to record discoveries, and especially groups of objects, rapidly and in a small compass. It would also be possible to compile results of excavations and the contents of museums in simple indices. In order to work systematically in archaeology we ought to be able to look in an index and find at once where, and of what epoch, is every instance of a particular object: say, of a key, type M 27, or of a vase, type D 64. Such indices should be continued by supplements issued every ten or twenty years. At present, if one would ascertain the parallels to a particular form, it is necessary to search through hundreds of volumes and to visit all the museums—a matter of months of work. Progress in archaeology, as an exact science, is practically impossible; it should be easy and rapid, were all the known material always to be found at once in a corpus and indices.

Example of corpus.

Only one corpus has yet been formed, and that is restricted to only one country, one period, and one material—the prehistoric pottery of Egypt (see Nagada and Diospolis Parva). An outline of the system there followed will serve to show the actual working of a corpus, though for each different subject the details will need separate consideration. The whole of this pottery comprises about a thousand varieties. Each class of pottery is denoted by its initial letter; P for polished, B for black-topped, etc. Each form in a class is numbered, from 1 to 99, and each sub-variety is lettered. Thus R 63 c means rough pottery, type 63, variety c; and this completely defines the example. The numbers are not always continuous, but gaps in the series are left where there is much difference between the forms. In this manner it is possible to add new forms without upsetting the system, and new sub-varieties can be brought in by using small letters. The forms are best classified by beginning with the most open and flat dishes, and proceeding to the most closed forms, with narrow necks ending. The point of reaching verticality in the sides is a well-defined middle point.

Utility.

The practical utility of such a corpus is found at once when excavating. Formerly it was needful to keep dozens of broken specimens, which were of no value except for the fact of being found along with other vases. Now the excavator merely needs to look over the corpus of plates, and writes down on the plan of the tomb, say, B 23, P 35 b, C 15, F 72, thus the whole record is made, and not a single piece need be kept unless it is a good specimen. How essential such a record is for future progress we shall see below.

The most obvious step now would be to corporate all the pottery of Italy. A corpus from Pompeii would be the best starting-point, as being all of one period and well dated; then a corpus of Constantinian forms, a corpus of Republican forms, and a corpus of each of the prehistoric periods. The early history of the Forum at Rome hangs now upon the safety of little groups of potsherds lying in a shed, yet unclassed and unstudied, and certain to be swept away some day by some one who does not value them. Instead of this we ought to have a corpus for reference, and then the contents of each of the archaic wells could be at once denoted and published by the numbers of the types; the historic material would be safe, and could be studied at any future time irrespective of the conservation of the heaps of sherds. Carry this out in Greece, and, instead of piles of pottery lying in the fields or on the terraces of a classical site from the prehistoric town levels, each piece could be noted by its number, and all could be published to make the history of the site accessible. Without a corpus such discoveries are but a pathetic destruction of material; with corpus notation they would form the basis of a thorough history of the site and of all its changes.

All that is needed to produce a corpus from a collection is a month or two of work by a draughtsman, who has an accurate eye for form, working to a uniform scale, and systematising the material conveniently for future reference. Some subjects would require collecting from many sources, but generally all the pottery of one period can be found together in one museum.

Successive ages.

We now turn to the second method for archaeological research. This is the synthetical arrangement of the material in the original order. The most obvious arrangement is that by contemporary dating, as by years named in a chronicle or on coins, or by successive reigns of kings. But outside of this method there yet lies the greater part of human history, which can only be reconstructed by some internal evidence of successive periods.