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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2015
It is hardly necessary to remind readers of ANTIQUITY of the importance which environmental studies have assumed in archaeology. Since the pioneer work of Crawford and Williams-Freeman in 1912–15 we have become increasingly aware of environment. As a body we are (at least in theory) clay-land-and-damp-oakwood-conscious; we approach no problem of field archaeology without a hopeful eye on the geological map and our idea of its implications.
If sometimes we have held our beliefs in too simple faith, that in the beginning was an excusable fault. In the early days generalizations which saw things in their least complicated form were—and for that matter still are—valuable. Heavy clay-land=damp oakwood and marsh unsuited for settlement and therefore avoided; light soils=open land much sought after by early man. The jargon comes readily to us, and remains no less true, for those whose purpose is generalization, for the facility with which it is uttered.
1 ANTIQUITY, IX (1935) 429–33.
2 Hughes and Walters, Soil Survey of Wales, Progress Report, 1931–4, Welsh Journal of Agriculture, 1935, 188.
3 My totals are a modification of the Commission’s in two respects. First I have separated megalithic chambered round cairns and normal Bronze Age barrows with cists, which on the Commission’s maps are shown by the same symbol and title; and secondly, I have distinguished between actually existing and reputed megalithic burial chambers, except where the evidence for the latter seems to be above reproach. Some of these reputed sites can now be recognized as natural, and it seems better therefore to treat the whole class with reserve; but they are included in the bracketed totals in the table.
4 A soil-map of East Anglia, prepared by the School of Agriculture of the University of Cambridge was published in 1931 (Report 19, Farm Economics Branch, School of Agriculture, University of Cambridge); it would be interesting to see the already existing archaeological distributions plotted against it. I have tried to do this tentatively from the published maps, but gave the attempt up as impracticable with the material at my command. The archaeological distributions would need to be plotted anew on a soil-map of a much larger scale than is available in the published version.
