ABSTRACT
Historians of philanthropy need to think like geologists. Stop the clock at any time, say 1850 in Europe, and you will find strata or layers of philanthropic giving accumulated on top of each other. The philanthropy of the past leaves its material record, its buildings, its legal documents, its charitable gifts, its assumptions and practices, in layer after layer. The present adds a topsoil of the latest projects, but the lower layers continue to exercise their influence, sometimes in the form of outcrops from earlier ages of giving.
