When excavating in the hill-fort of Cissbury a few years ago the writer found nothing by which to date a certain group of pits except a piece of a revolving handmill (FIG. 23). Even this could not supply the necessary chronological evidence, because the developmental history of the quern or hand-mill had not yet been worked out in sufficient detail to enable one to say that a certain form is characteristic of a certain period. Being thus impressed with the need for such a study the writer endeavoured to collect data, but was met at the outset with the difticulty that of all the hand-mills preserved in our Museums extremely few have been dated at all closely by associated finds of pottery—at least so far as records go—while it seems to be exceptional even for modern excavators to note such associations when querns are found. After all, it is, as Pitt Rivers said, the common objects that are often more important than the rare ones, just because they are common, and it is surely one of the prime objects of excavation to obtain data for the study of the evolution, not only of pottery, but of all common objects.

During the last fifty years prehistoric archaeology has developed with extraordinary rapidity into a firmly established branch of science. A system has been constructed, the frontiers of several cultural phenomena have been laid down, and the outlines of prehistoric chronology have been formed. Hypotheses and assertions have been made concerning the ethnographical groups of prehistoric times, and lengthy ‘prehistoric’ periods have literally been transformed into ‘historic’ ones. The inscription on the medal struck for Oscar Montelius– ‘Fifty years of research have mastered millennia of human culture ’ –may serve as a short motto summarizing the results of archaeology as a whole, not merely the achievements of one man.

The method which has led to this result is that of the empiric sciences, based on the theory of evolution, namely, that of typology. The starting-point of research has for the most part been morphology. When synthesis has been the objective, the student’s instruments of research have consisted primarily of forms or shapes of objects, or ornaments and tombs and so forth, and their comparison.

For natural reasons it is somewhat difficult to find remnants of prehistoric dwellings in Denmark. Our early forefathers utilized perishable materials in their house building, such as wood and straw. They made use also of clay and sod and, to a small extent, of natural stones. However, Denmark is one of the most intensely cultivated lands of Europe. The plough has been almost everywhere; and when the ploughshare has gone through the remnants of a hut of sod and clay the site is generally spoilt for the archaeologist. As a rule, we cannot expect to find any house-site intact unless it has been covered with a layer of soil, sufficient for protection against the plough.

While our knowledge of the prehistoric dwellings is, on the whole, very incomplete, we know something about the dwellings of the Iron Age for the cultural deposits are comparatively thick. It was probably not until the Early Iron Age—i.e. the La Tène and Roman periods—that agriculture reached such a stage of development that successive generations might dwell on the same site. Our best finds are from the northern part of Jutland. In Thy and Himmerland there are a number of deposits of Roman and the pre-Roman Iron Age with a depth of 1–2 m., containing several dwelling-sites above each other. Evidently, there existed in northern Jutland small village-sites, in the Roman period and probably somewhat earlier, of permanent habitation and occupied for several generations.

WE are often far too ready to apply to Egyptian art the same standards which we use in dealing with Greek, Roman, medieval and modern works. Thus, for example, we are apt to speak of Egyptian ‘masters’ or ‘master-hands’, expressions which constantly occur in connexion with Greek sculpture or Renaissance painting; or we assume that the identity of an Egyptian portrait can be established just as if it were a question of a definite Renaissance personality. Now one of the chief characteristics of Egyptian art is its impersonality. The Egyptians had no conception of a work of art produced, so to speak, from pietas, to perpetuate the features of some dear departed, or such as it would be pleasant to possess from sheer delight in artistry; in particular, the artistic contemplation and enjoyment of a work of art as we understand it could scarcely have been understood by an Egyptian.

‘Observation not guided by ideas, even hypothetical ideas’, says Professor Wolf, ‘is blind ; just as ideas not tested by observation are empty’. The student of megalithic monuments has as constantly to regret that early antiquaries were not more aware of the necessity of making accurate plans and of recording morphological and constructional details of the monuments—many alas, now ruined or vanished—which they visited, as he has to deplore their delight in formulating theories which they never tested by fieldsurvey ; but he has also to cope with evils more dangerous even than these, namely observation so dominated by false or imprudent hypotheses that it results in a distorted vision worse by far than mere blind observation or empty ideas. Some of these hypotheses—like the Druids, the Ancient Egyptians, the metal-working Prospectors, the megalithic race, solstitial and clock-star alignments,—to mention only a few, have been disproved by research and flourish today only among perverse and illogical archaeologists. Others—such as the concept of the Montelius dolmen here examined in its relation to southern Britains—while just as inadequate and inaccurate, are the comrnonplaces of modem text-books.