The plant required by an excavation will, of course, vary with the conditions, but a list of the things that it would seem advisable to lay in may have some interest.

The main tools to be used by the men are picks, spades, knives, and baskets. In Greece a round rush basket is obtainable, being used in the mines at Laurium, which is not too large, so that when full of earth it is easily carried. It is good to have a large supply as they wear out and are useful moreover for holding small finds such as pottery, as well as for shifting the earth, and even as packing cases for the smaller finds if the journey is short, the method being to sew two together with string. The picks used should be very light and spare shafts should not be forgotten unless there is a local supply. Besides these, a crowbar or two, a sledge hammer, a few sieves and some rope are indispensable.

Indispensable also are a dumpy level, and a prismatic compass, of which the use is chiefly to take one bearing for any plan to find magnetic. I do not agree with the view that the archaeologist should trouble himself with true north unless he wants to fit his plan on to an existing map, a rare event.

Digging

General principles it is easy enough to state, but the matter is not so simple when it comes to the particular question, By what means are objects best found and made to yield up their story? The answer comes in the form of another principle nearly as general as its predecessors. An excavation should be so conducted that it would be possible in theory to build up the site again with every object replaced exactly in its original position. For it is not until after excavation has disclosed fully what may be called the geological nature of the site, the original contours of the virgin soil, and the source and order of the subsequent accumulations, that reasoned conclusions can be formed as to the history of the objects found; and these conclusions cannot be formed, or at least cannot be formed with the same certainty, if the relations of the individual finds either with one another or with the geological conditions are not accurately known. Should the objects have been taken out in a higgledy-piggledy manner no subsequent knowledge of the history of the accumulations will be of much avail, and instead of having evidence from stratification the student will be reduced to evidence from style. And this may mean that all that he can say with certainty about the site will be the fruit of his previous knowledge.

By way of epilogue I may perhaps venture a short word on the question much discussed in certain quarters, whether in the work of excavation it is a good thing to have co-operation between men and women. I have no intention of discussing whether or no women possess the qualities best suited for such work; opinions, I believe, vary on the point, but I have never seen a trained lady excavator at work, so that my view if expressed would be valueless. Of a mixed dig however I have seen something, and it is an experiment that I would be reluctant to try again; I would grant if need be that women are admirably fitted for the work, yet I would uphold that they should undertake it by themselves.

My reasons are two-fold and chiefly personal. In the first place there are the proprieties; I have never had a very reverent care for these abstractions, but I think it is not everywhere sufficiently realised that the proprieties that have to be considered are not only those that rule in England or America, but those of the lands where it is proposed to dig; the view to be considered is the view of the inhabitants, Greek, Turk, or Egyptian. My chief reasons, I said, were personal, but I hasten to add that they have nothing to do with the particular ladies with whom I was associated; should these lines meet their eyes I hope they will believe me when I say that before and after the excavation I thought them charming; during it however because they, or we, were in the wrong place their charm was not seen.

Meticulous care directed by common sense along the lines laid down by past experience, that is the essence of good digging; yet the ideal man to have charge of an excavation would be a very versatile person.

He should be very patient, able to hold in check any natural human desire for undue haste to seize his spoil until his sober judgment tells him that the right moment has come. He should have the power of smooth organisation; and the power of delegating to others, which does not mean going away and letting the others do his work.

He should have a good power of judging the value of evidence, and enough strength of mind to give it its full weight, even when it tells against his most cherished theory; indeed he should be able to divest his mind of all theory while engaged in extracting the facts from his evidence.

He should have enough power over words to write concisely a rigidly accurate yet lucid report.

He should have a vigorous faith, and perseverance enough to carry on a while after his faith is dead.

He should have that touch of imagination that will often illuminate the true meaning of his facts, and in an archaeologist is genius.

He should be well versed in the practical side of his work, which implies skill in a good many directions, though here I have only put down the most obvious.

ON THE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY AMONG WORKMEN

One great difference between Greece and Egypt in the conditions of excavation is the prevailing dishonesty among the Egyptian workmen. Stealing in Greece and Italy is an evil rarely met with, in Egypt it is a matter of course against which the excavator must guard himself as best he can. He is between the devil and the deep sea; he may choose to insure that he gets what he finds by paying the workmen the full market value of the object; that is a snare of the devil, for so he runs a good risk of getting also what he has not found, as, from what I have seen of the conditions of digging in Egypt, particularly of tomb digging, I think it would be very hard to detect the salting of the site with objects genuine enough but coming from other excavations where “backshish” is not given. To my mind the risk of such salting is not to be borne, cutting as it does at the root of all scientific work; yet if the more scientific course is taken and the excavator trusts only to ceaseless surveillance, though he is certain about what he does get, he knows that the deep sea of Oriental subtlety will swallow half of his legitimate spoil.

The causes of this fundamental difference are not obscure. They are to be found not so much in the difference between European and Oriental ideas on the right methods of acquiring property, though the laxer notions of the East may be a contributory cause, as in the European's freedom from temptation.

Excavation like any other pursuit has its own special morality and it is possible to frame a new decalogue for the use of the fraternity.

1. Knowledge ascertained by proof is the only thing that really matters.

2. Do not introduce theories into your excavation work, more than is absolutely necessary. If you want to spend your time pursuing fascinating but elusive theories, well and good; but let it be your leisure time, not that devoted to your high calling.

3. Since knowledge ascertained by proof is the only thing that matters, do not let its name be taken in vain by allowing an unproved theory to take its place as a premiss in a serious argument: it is one of the subtlest temptations that beset the primrose path of theory spinning to use a conclusion that to the most sanguine eye is only probable as an ostensibly firm basis for a further edifice of speculation.

4. Work very slowly, remembering that an overtaxed staff is an inefficient staff.

5. Remember that if you once attack a site you are bound to do the best you can by its potential store of knowledge: you must not abandon it for a caprice, because you are tired of it.

6. Do not destroy any ancient remains.

7. Do not mix your labels, or allow confusion among your finds; for evil so wrought has no remedy.

8. Do not “hog”; that is, do not dig for your treasure so quickly as to risk missing half its story.

9. […]

The excavation is over, all possible subdivisions and all necessary notes, drawings and photographs have been made; over, too, is the period of study in the museum, and what now lies before the excavator is the publication of the results. Somewhere the complete record of the work done should be kept for reference in case subsequent work should reveal interests in the material unsuspected at the time, but it is not advisable to lay all the details open in a publication. For my labour has been vain if I have not made it clear that to do his work properly the excavator must note down all possible observations whether their interest is apparent at the time or not; many of these, probably the greater number, will in the end prove valueless, and it would be like giving a thirsty man salt water to drink to serve them up to a public hungry for knowledge. There is too great a tendency in modern archaeological work to swamp the interest of the results with a flood of detailed evidence, that makes the dreariest reading, and often is its own undoing, for only those conclusions that reach the highest point of interest can survive. To take an instance: an excavation of quite moderate extent might easily embrace a hundred and fifty sections more or less productive, each of which might have six or seven vertical sections; at headquarters there should be a record of the contents of these thousand subdivisions, but to print page after page of these details would be nauseating.

THE time has perhaps gone by when it was necessary, if it ever were, to put forward a defence of the pleasant practice of digging, a defence of it, that is to say, not as a harmless recreation of the idle rich, but as a serious business for a reasonable man. In all ages the maker of history and the recorder of history have alike received due honour. To-day a place is found, not equal, of course, in glory but in the same hierarchy, for the reverent discoverer of the dry bones of history; and on Clio's roll of honour next to Homer and Agamemnon there is now a place for Schliemann.

In the last forty years excavation has been carried on very extensively in Italy, in Greece, and in Egypt, to say nothing of the work that has been done in the more northern countries of Europe, or in fields further to the east; and the time has come when it may be of some interest to set forth the principles that have been, or at least should have been, the basis of the work.

The reservation must be made; for in Greece, at least, and in Egypt it was unavoidably, but none the less deplorably, the case that the great men of the past lacked the experience that is now ours. Excavation, like surgery, is an art, but, unlike the surgeon, the excavator has no unlimited supply of new subjects ready to benefit by his growing skill.

The archaeologist's general aim on approaching a new site should be to draw from it all the knowledge that he can, to unearth as complete a skeleton as possible of the history of that particular spot during the period when it was a human habitation. Unless that period belongs to times when men wrote what can now be read, he can hardly hope to uncover perfect history, but the more complete the dry bones that he lays bare the better the chance that they will rise again as history when imagination shall have prophesied to them.

Therefore the excavator's sympathies should be as wide as possible, and nothing that he finds should meet with his neglect because it is not just what he is looking for. This sounds obvious and most unnecessary to be said, yet, to take but one instance of a breach of this rule, there are to-day archaeologists with well-known names who will dig a site only for its inscriptions, paying no attention to other and in their eyes lesser finds. This is a double crime, a crime against the actual neglected finds and a crime against the site and its possible treasures yet unfound. It should always be remembered that in general a site cannot be touched and left without irreparable damage, and that there can hardly be a worse sin for an excavator than having attacked a site to leave the part begun unfinished. Yet this is likely to be the result of an interest that is insufficiently catholic.

THE USE OF THE DUMPY LEVEL

The Dumpy Level is a revolving telescope with an attached spirit level set up on a tripod and made perfectly horizontal by means of screws. A board marked in metres is held vertically on the spot of which the height is to be ascertained, and the reading is taken through the telescope, the figure read being that cut by the hair stretched horizontally across the eyepiece, which for some reason unknown to me has no reverser so that the figures are read upside down, a trick however to which the eye soon becomes accustomed. The figure thus obtained is the difference in height between the chosen spot and the telescope in that position. Clearly before the reading can have any value the height of the telescope must be found by taking a reading with the board placed on a known fixed mark within range of the operations, to which mark it is best to give an arbitrary height of say ioo m. Then a simple sum in subtraction is all that is necessary: say the reading on the mark A, as in Fig. 4, is 3 m. and the readings on the chosen spots C and D are 4 m. and 4.25 m. respectively, C and D are 1 m. and 1·25 m. respectively below A, and have therefore the arbitrary heights of 99 m. and 98·75 m.