ABSTRACT

The main task of the historian and the archaeologist is the collection and examination of evidence, the careful weighing and sifting of every scrap, to be quite sure it is accurate, or as near to the truth as possible. If not, then the precise degree of validity must be gauged. Some of the scraps have to be rejected, for although they may be genuine, they are irrelevant to the particular problem under study. Sometimes one has only a few tiny pieces, and it is difficult to establish their relationship or relevance to the problem under consideration, but at other times, there is a confused mass of material which has to be sorted, graded and fitted into a coherent pattern. This is perhaps the most difficult task of all, and it imposes a serious mental discipline. It is all too easy to select or distort the evidence to make it fit one’s current ideas, and to pass over all the inconvenient details which could undermine them. This constant struggle to preserve a freshness of outlook which accepts the possibility of new interpretations is a losing battle as we grow older, for the more we think we know and understand, the more fixed and inhibited our minds become. We are reluctant to abandon theories arrived at by much toil and hard thinking. It becomes an affront to our established position when our authority is challenged, and we tend to fight back. But the true scholar and scientist is a humble person, quick to admit that he was wrong, or that his reasoning was faulty. In some professions one can fight for a lost cause for a long time, and still be respected by one’s contemporaries, but there is little chance of this in archaeology, where the problem is that of keeping pace with the rapid expansion of knowledge.