shuffled like a pack of cards. I believe one of the
essential characteristics of the archaeologist is a curiosity
about past arrangements of things and people. The other
driving force, perhaps a less worthy one, is a desire to get
away from an unsatisfactory or unsatisfying present, too
complex or uninteresting to be faced, into a supposedly
simpler world of the reconstructed past. This is an
escapism. But, of course, this simpler world is simpler to
the outsider; the more one gets to know of the past history
of mankind, the more complex it seems to be, so it's no
escape I I think there are intellectual satisfactions to be
got in the field from attempting to sort out the pattern of
evidence, and in the lab from the use of an ever-growing
battery of equipment to the same end. Both of these are
like the work of the detective and forensic scientist in
their investigations; indeed, the training for the one is a
good training for the other. Well, this is the intellectual
side. Then there's the emotional satisfaction of studying
human behaviour, civilizations and the past with all their
varied skills, some of them very beautiful. Those of us who
care for our own family histories, usually care also for the
wider story of mankind. That's what attracts me to
archaeology.
Masefield: Do you think we shall eventually know all
that is knowable about the past? What happens when all
ancient sites have been destroyed by excavation and there is
nothing left to find?
Harley: We can never get all the factual information
about the past; much has already gone beyond recall, as I
see it, even by the most subtle of scientific techniques.
For example, I can't see any possible way of discovering
what name your great-grandmother gave her cat, if it is not
recorded in any of her papers or was never told to your
parents. But I can imagine the possibility of discovering
her blood group if her bones became available. This raises
the question, not maybe important just now, but it may be
important someday, of just how much detail we want to know
about the past. Are we interested in Julius Caesar's dog?
We can go too far, of course, so when we have learned all
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