ABSTRACT
When he visited the Roman fort at Papcastle, William Stukeley indulged in a nostalgic and romantic evocation of ancient ritual. He poured a libation into a spring, an act which has left us no tangible remains. This emphasises the fact that the archaeologist is always hampered in his study of the past by the fact that he can only find objects, not ideas. Animal bones and smashed pottery can be the material remnants of ritual-or just rubbish. Objects can be items of daily use or-by virtue of their abandonment or means of deposition-may have been dedicated to the gods.
