Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 8.djvu/18

4 notice of the Archaeologist, it is for the most part necessary that certain acts should be performed, or certain instruments employed with or without the recital of a set form of words; the custom may be commemorative or symbolic without reference to the past; the event of which it is the memorial may be real or mythical; the doctrine it typifies and embodies may be religious, political, or legal; its observance may be occasional, as in the case of a marriage ceremony, or periodical, as in the case of the great festivals with which most nations distinguish the course of the seasons. The Archaeologist, of course, directs his attention less to those customs which form a part of the established religion and legal code of a race than to those which, being the result of ideas once generally prevalent, still survive among the peasantry in remote districts, or of which dim traces may be still discerned in the institutions of modern society. It is thus that, in the customs of Calabria, we still trace the relics of the ancient heathen worship, and that the customs of Greece and Asia Minor remain a living commentary on the text of Homer.

The peasant's mind reflects what has been rather than what is. It revolves in the same circle as the more cultivated mind of the nation, but at a much slower rate. On the great dial-plate of time, one is the hourhand while the other is the minutehand.

When customs are only partially extant, the Archaeologist has not only to record and interpret the usage, but to preserve the instrument with which that usage was associated.

It is thus that the horns which once ratified the tenure of land, the sword or mace, once instruments of investiture and insignia of feudal or official power, vessels once consecrated to the service of religion, are gathered in, one by one, into national museums, the garners and treasuries of archaeology.

A custom may be not merely extinct, but buried. In the tombs of many races, such as the Celtic or Scandinavian, we find nearly all that is known of their sepulchral rites, and thus an examination of the places of sepulture of various countries enables us, with the aid of philology, to trace out many unsuspected national affinities, while at the same time it gives us the means of comparing a number of unwritten creeds. In an uncivilised age men do not define their religious belief in a set form of words, but express it by symbolic rites, by acts rather than by statements.