DISCRIMINATION
The observing of resemblances and differences, and the memory of
physical appearances required for this, are absolute requisites for
carrying on the duties of excavating. Here we deal with the appearances
in a land of sun-dried brickwork, where the accumulations are great,
as in Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia. In a rocky land, such as Greece,
there is not the same sheltering mud, and the appearances are therefore
very different.
[Sidenote: Temples.]
The nature of a site can be guessed pretty closely from its aspect.
A wide open space with mounds around it is almost certainly a temple
site; and if there are stone chips strewn over it, no doubt remains
as to its nature (Figs. 6, 7). The temples being of stone from the
XIIth Dynasty onwards, they were ruined by the removal of the material
in each age of disruption; but the houses of the towns, being always
of mud brick, continually crumbled and decayed, and so filled up the
ground with rubbish. In Egypt mud-brick towns accumulate at about 20
inches in a century; or in the rainy Syrian climate at about 50 inches.
Herodotus describes walking on the roofs of the houses and seeing
down into the temple precincts; and in every great site in Egypt, such
as Tanis, Buto, Bubastis, Memphis, or Koptos, the plain of temple
ruins had the house mounds far above it on all sides. The temples
were ruined both for building-stone and for lime-burning. It is rare
to get any portions of a limestone building left; sandstone is often
found, and all the great temples which remain are of sandstone; granite
generally has lasted, except where it has been split up in Roman times
for millstones. The search for limestone has led to whole buildings
being upset in order to extract the limestone foundations. The basalt
pavement of Khufu, the granite pylon of Crocodilopolis, and probably
the granite temple of Iseum, have been overthrown thus. Especially in
the Delta, where no limestone hills are accessible, this destructive
search for lime has been unrelenting in all ages; and it is seldom that
ancient limestone is now met with. Hence all that can generally be
seen of a temple site is a plain of dust with a few tumbled blocks of
granite, the exposed tops of which are entirely weathered as rounded
masses. Five or ten feet down there may be a rich harvest of carvings
and inscriptions.
[Illustration: Fig. 8. Mounds of fort, Defeneh.]
[Illustration: Fig. 9. Sarcophagi at Zuweleyn.]
[Sidenote: Towns.]
A town site is always recognised (Fig. 8) by its mounds of crumbling
mud brick, strewn with potsherds if in Upper Egypt, or with burnt red
bricks on the later mounds of the Delta. Whenever a native begins to
describe a site in Lower Egypt, one inquires if there is red brick, and
if so there is no need to listen further. Generally it is possible to
date the latest age of a town by the potsherds lying on the surface;
and to allow a rate of growth of 20 inches a century down to the
visible level; if that gives a long period we may further carry down
the certainly artificial level by 4 inches in a century for the Nile
deposits when in the cultivated ground. For instance, there are mounds
in the Delta about 40 feet high, ending about 500 A.D.; this gives
about 40 feet of rise, equal to about 2400 years, or say 2000 B.C., for
the age at the present ground level. But the visible base was about
5 feet lower at 500 A.D.; and the human deposit rising at 20 inches
a century has been overlaid at the rate of 4 inches a century by the
Nile deposit. Hence the age may be reckoned by a depth of 45 feet
accumulated at 16 inches a century before 500 A.D. or about 2900 B.C.
No exact conclusion could be based on this; but it is a valuable clue
to the age to which the yet unseen foundation of a town may most likely
belong. Town mounds and ruins of buildings have generally symmetrical
forms, weathered away uniformly on all sides. But around towns are
often heaps of rubbish thrown out, the best-known example of this being
the immense heaps behind Cairo; and such accumulations usually show
their nature by the two slopes, the gradual walk-up slope, and the
steep thrown-down slope.
[Sidenote: Cemeteries.]
The cemetery sites on the desert have always been more or less
plundered anciently. A prehistoric site may have no external trace, as
the blown sand may cover it so evenly that there is no suspicion of
anything lying beneath. But on a gravel surface there are generally
some indications left of the hollows of the graves, and scraps of
broken pottery left about by the plunderers (Fig. 9). The historic
cemeteries are generally easier to see, as they are in rising ground,
and the holes of the tomb pits show on the surface. The difficulty is
not to find the site of a cemetery, but to find a grave in it which
still contains anything. As a rule, any tomb pit which appears still
undisturbed has been left either because it belongs to an unfinished
tomb with nothing in it, or because the tomb has already been reached
from elsewhere. At Medum an untouched walling up of a chamber had been
left, because the plunderers had tunnelled under the mass of the tomb
and broken through the floor of the chamber. At Dendereh the floor of
the chamber was entire, with the lid of the sarcophagus sunk in it, yet
untouched; it had been left so because the plunderers had mined through
from the outside under the floor to the sarcophagus, and broken through
the side of it without touching the chamber. Some untouched tombs were
left because the burials in them were known to be so poor that they
were not worth opening. All this points to the plundering being mostly
done during the lifetime of those who saw the burial. Usually only
one tomb in ten contains anything noticeable; and it is only one in a
hundred that repays the digging of the other ninety-nine.
[Sidenote: Indications.]
In general, on looking over a site every indication must be observed.
Sometimes there may be a slight difference in vegetation, showing the
positions of walls or of pits. In colder climates differences are shown
by the melting of hoar frost or snow; as in the square of S. Domenico
at Bologna, where some large patches--probably of ashes--show through
the cobble paving during a thaw. A shower of rain will show much in
drying; and, after a rare storm in Egypt, there are two or three
precious hours when the buried walls show clearly on the ground, and
should be hurriedly scored down before the hot sun removes the traces.
A driving wind will bare the ground so that the harder walls show
through the sand; or even a crowd of people passing will tramp into
the softer filling and show the constructions. At sunrise or sunset
ground should be carefully looked over to pick out the variations of
level and slope, which will often show then, though quite invisible in
full light. Prehistoric camp sites are noticed by the difference of
tone of the ground in walking over them; the ashes holding so much air
that the reverberation to the foot-step is quite different from that
on ordinary desert. The appearance of the surface of disturbed desert
differs much from the undisturbed: there may be slight hollows filled
with sand, which are the traces of deep pits; there may be pebbles from
deep beds thrown up, or fragments of limestone; or--best of all--chips
of worked stone or of hard rocks may tell the tale of a building whose
ruins lie beneath. The mastabas of the XIIth Dynasty at Dahshur left
scarcely any surface trace, as the stone walls had been removed, and
the gravel filling had spread out and denuded down to a level surface.
The great wall of the camp at Daphnae 40 feet thick, had been ploughed
by denudation until it was even lower than the desert on either side of
it, and the lines of it were only visible by the absence of potsherds
upon the site of the wall.
[Illustration:
Mid, Late, Ist, IIIrd, VIth, XIIth, XVIIIth Dyn.
Prehistoric.
FIG. 10.--Development of copper and bronze adzes. 1:6.]
[Sidenote: Productions.]
Besides the discrimination of sites there is a vast subject in
the discrimination of objects and of styles. The first requisite
acquirement of a digger--his archaeological experience--consists in
discriminating and distinguishing the differences between products of
various dates. An Egyptian copper adze (Fig. 10) of the ages of middle
prehistoric, late prehistoric, early dynastic, IIIrd, VIth, XIIth, or
XVIIIth Dynasties can be told at a glance, and we only need more dated
examples to be able to separate them still more finely. A cutting-out
knife (Fig. 11), a pair of tweezers, a comb, can be dated almost as
certainly. But it is when we can look not only to differences of form,
but also to variations of colour and texture, that we have the widest
scope for discrimination. The great variety of beads in each country,
the hundreds of details of form, materials, and colour in Egypt alone,
give them an importance archaeologically above most other things. In
the prehistoric age there are a dozen materials, and many different
forms, not one of which can be confounded with later products. In the
Old Kingdom new and distinctive styles are met with, and a profusion of
small amulets on necklaces. In the XIth and XIIth Dynasties magnificent
beads of amethyst, green felspar, and carnelian outshine those of
every other age. In the XVIIIth Dynasty the immense variety of glass
and glazed beads defy enumeration, and yet are sharply characteristic
of different reigns of that age. The later times of degradation also
produce new and distinctive forms and colours; and when we reach the
Roman period a flood of glass work imitates the fashionable beryl,
amethyst, rock crystal, and other stones, with the mimicry of a forger.
[Illustration: FIG. 11.--Development of cutting-out knives. XIIth–XIXth
Dynasties. A-A and B-B cutting edges.]
[Illustration: FIG. 12.--One typical form of pottery of each period.]
[Sidenote: Pottery.]
Pottery is, however, the greatest resource of the archaeologist. For
variety of form and texture, for decoration, for rapid change, for its
quick fall into oblivion, and for its incomparable abundance, it is
in every respect the most important material for study (Fig. 12), and
it constitutes the essential alphabet of archaeology in every land.
Think for a moment how few people know the appearance of a common jug
a century old, how the crocks of Georgian times have all vanished, and
new forms are made. Even of decorated china not one piece in a thousand
in England is before the last century, and not one in a million is
three centuries old; so rapidly does breakable ware perish, and become
unknown. This not only prevents its being handed on from earlier times,
as ornaments or weapons may descend, but it prevents the copying of
older forms, and gives a free scope to rapid variation. No doubt some
standard forms may continue to be made, because they are so simple, and
so adapted to common wants, that the same causes continue to produce
them. But it is only the simplest and least characteristic types which
thus continue; the more detailed and specialised the form, the more
rapidly it changes, and gives way to new styles. In the prehistoric age
of Egypt alone there are about a thousand different forms of pottery;
and when the historic times shall be as fully recorded, probably two
or three times as many will demand notice. In Italy and Greece there
is apparently as great a variety, though--apart from painted vases--it
is very far from being fully placed on paper. And when we come to know
the archaeology of other lands, their pottery will doubtless prove
as varied and distinctive in its styles. It is then in a thorough
knowledge of pottery that any sound archaeology must be based; and
there is no wider or more important field for discrimination. With the
brief view of Palestinian pottery gained in a few weeks, on one site at
Tell Hesy (Lachish), I found it possible to ride over mounds of ruins
and see the age of them without even dismounting.
[Sidenote: Style.]
Beside the discrimination of broad physical differences there is the
more subtle observation of style. This cannot be discussed, or even
shown to exist, without a very wide collection of examples; yet in
a trained observer a long series of experience should result in an
unexpressed--almost intangible and incommunicable--sense of the style
of each country and each age, such that a piece of work can at once be
referred to its proper place, though not a single exact comparison can
be quoted for it. Special motives, outlines, curves, tastes, belong
to various sources so certainly and characteristically that they
show their origin at a glance. A good example of this is seen in the
bronzes of Minusinsk in Central Asia; this site is almost equidistant
from the North Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the China Sea, and the style
seems to recall by its details almost equally the taste of Northmen,
Persians, and Chinese. A good practice for such discrimination is the
analysis of common ornament around us: a rug or a wall pattern may be
analysed into its sources--here a bit from Assyria, there from Egypt,
here from Japan, there from Norway, all hashed together by the modern
designer. And until the common and obviously distinctive patterns of
each country can be named at sight, and separated into their various
sources, the observer cannot hope to gain that far more essential sense
of the national taste of each people, and the sympathetic feeling of
the relationship of any form or curve that may chance to be seen,--that
conviction of the family and source of each object, which is the
illumination of an archaeologist, the guide to fresh suggestions and
researches, the mental framework which holds all memories in place.
[Sidenote: Visual Memory.]
But beside this sublimated use of the permanent memory and
discrimination, there is another very crude and transient
discrimination which is also needed in actual work. A visual memory
of the site and excavations should be constantly in mind; the master
should be able to go over the whole site, and every man at work on it,
entirely from memory; he should be able to realise at once, on seeing
the place next day, exactly how every one of fifty different holes
looked the day before; and know at once where the work stood, and what
has been done since, so as to measure it up without depending on any
statements by the workmen. If a boy comes with a message that Ibrahim
or Mutwali needs direction, the master should be able to visualise the
place, inquire what has been done, and how each part now stands, and
then give sufficient temporary direction entirely from memory of the
site, and memory of what he expected to do, or to prove, or to find,
from that particular hole. The extent of this visual memory is never
realised until one meets with some who are so unlucky as not to possess
such an apparatus, and who are therefore unable to know what has been
done, and have to begin each day’s work as if they were strangers to
the place. Of all inherent mental qualifications there is perhaps
none more essential to a digger than this permanent picture of a site
in the mind. And the transient memory from day to day should include
the appearance of every hole on all sides, the meaning of it and the
purpose for which it is being dug.