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Problems and Policies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Extract

Perhaps at no time more than the present have British archaeological studies had such need of a stocktaking'. An occasional stocktaking of knowledge and techniques is essential to the successful advancement of any study, and the Council for British Archaeology has undoubtedly stimulated archaeological studies by the publication of the first part of the Survey and Policy of Field Research. Under the joint-editorship of Professor Hawkes and Professor Piggott many of Britain's archaeologists have co-operated to review the present position and the future development of British archaeological studies. The volume is divided into two chapters; the first surveys our archaeological knowledge, and the second indicates how the major problems may best be tackled. Its span in time appals the mere historian. It ranges from the Palaeolithic Age to the 7th century of the Christian Era, from the so-called ' eoliths ' to the so-called ' Kentish jewelry '. No single scholar would have been competent to discuss all the problems raised, and no single scholar is competent to criticize the work of this team of specialists.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1949

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References

1 Survey and Policy of Field Research in the Archaeology of Great Britain, Part I, p. 9 (published by the Council for British Archaeology, London, 1948).

2 Stuart Piggott, ‘Archaeology and the Amateur’ (The Archaeological Newsletter, No. i, April 1948).

3 See subsequent issues of the Archaeological Newsletter.

4 Something of this nature was attempted for place-name studies about twenty-five years ago, i.e. Introduction to the Survey of English Place-names (English Place-name Society Publications, Vol. I, Part 1). In this series of chapters, which cover the various aspects of place-name study, the authors set out ‘to state the present state of our knowledge and indicate the lines along which the possibilities of future progress lie’.

5 See, for example, Miss F. E. Harmer, ‘Anglo-Saxon Charters and the Historian’ (Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Vol. 22, No. 2, October 1938).