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ORDNANCE MAP INDEX
for the preservation and intelligent exploration of the many hundreds of remains
and sites, of approximately the same period, that are scattered nearly over the
whole of our islands.
" Britain is not very extensive when compared with the domains of our
Continental neighbours. In Roman times it was regarded as very distant from
the centres of civilisation, and the very name spelt something like exile to the
luxurious Roman officer. But the Roman never thought, and we ourselves,
nearly twenty centuries later, are only beginning to realise, how many races
had peopled these distant misty islands, one race overcoming the other, inter-
marrying or supplanting each other, but in any case living their lives here,
building their houses, exercising their simple crafts, and finally laying their dead
to rest in the manner prescribed by their own peculiar customs. Of all these
primitive peoples who lived in Britain for many, many thousands of years before
the Roman invasion we have scarcely a word of history. One after another they
passed in succession, leaving no mark in the world's history and no trace in the
land beyond the humble tumulus for their burial-place or the sacred ring of
stones for their temple. Practically until the Roman historians take up the
story of Britain there is nothing existing that can be called history. Britain
before the Christian era was regarded as a dangerous and entirely inhospitable
land whither no sane man would willingly go, only valuable in fact for what could
be brought away from it.
" By what means therefore are we of this twentieth century to realise the
conditions in which our pre-Roman forefathers lived? How are we to construct
a true history of their arts of life, their beliefs, their dwellings, or their handi-
crafts? Unless we are far more careful in the future than we have been in the
past, the evidence now available will be swept away, and the story of the Britain
of the Britons can never be told.
" Our only means of elucidating and making clear the prehistoric condition of
our country is by the careful and intelligent exploration of the sites of the
dwellings, camps, burial-places, or religious structures raised by the people of
those times. By no other method than this can we attain to the knowledge we
need, and it should be borne in mind by all who undertake exploration of this
character that they have in hand, as it were, a unique record; a record, more-
over, that is destroyed in the reading; and if the investigator cannot interpret it
aright he destroys for ever a page, it may be, of human history, and no one
following him can write it afresh. No explorer, no matter how experienced, can
predicate what may be the evidence he will have put before him in the excavation
of a simple mound or stone circle, and the greatest care and attention are essential
if he desires his exploration to be moderately successful.
"Here then we have, scattered in almost every parish in the United Kingdom,
the raw material, the original documents, from which it is the duty of the
archaeologist to weave the story of prehistoric Britain. But what are the present
conditions of these precious documents? What attention is given to the mounds
that cover our downs, to the less prominent stone circles that are to be found
scattered over our moors? It is true that monuments of the imposing dignity of
Avebury, Stonehenge, and others of great size, are not likely to suffer from wanton
damage because, like some human beings, their very size is their protection. It
is true also that in some localities of the more enlightened sort committees have
been formed and the local societies have been active, for the express purpose of
preserving these little noted relics. But vast areas remain, full of prehistoric sites,