ABSTRACT
The historian, the archaeologist and the student of language can co-operate in all periods for which there is historical evidence, archaeological remains and linguistic information. The archaeological approach to archaeological material has an important contribution to make to the study of all periods of history, even modern history. Archaeological evidence, by contrast, is direct evidence of practical skills, technological processes, aesthetic interests and physical sequences. If this is sometimes overlooked, it is largely because the abundance of historical evidence for, say, the nineteenth century leaves a comparatively smaller field for the student of material remains. It is also at least partly because most archaeologists in Britain devote themselves to prehistory, with the result that mediaeval archaeology is a recent growth and modern archaeology is still largely in the hands of collectors, dealers and littrateurs. In the world of economies and technologies, however, archaeology has a far greater contribution to offer than either place-names or the historical record.
