those disciplines made were primarily drawn from nonarchaeological data. The links with these disciplines therefore required that the generalizations be reformulated or translated into archaeological terms, a process that increased the reliance of archaeologists on interpretative theory that was itself ungrounded in archaeology, as it was in the other disciplines. Charles Newton’s “On the Study of Archaeology” (1851) was a case in point. The account opened with the claim that the subject matter of archaeology was oral, written, and monumental. Newton emphasized the oral, claiming that through this source of evidence archaeologists had the chance to reconstruct language, manners, and customs (a concern of the antiquaries since Camden and Speed had demolished geoffrey of monmouth’s “history,” which had been developed by Lhwyd): “These obsolete and rare forms of speech are to the philologist what the extinct Fauna and Floras of the primeval world are to the comparative anatomist and the botanist” (1851, 3). The conscious appeal to links between such classificatory sciences and archaeology was a feature of the period. Archaeology would become scientific by comparison.

Following the leaders of romantic philology, Walter Scott and Jacob Grimm, Newton appealed to the peasants (read Volk) as the true source of important themes with which to reconstruct the prehistoric past: “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” (1851, 4).

The prime determinant of archaeological interpretation was to be philological because mind was represented in the symbolic acts, manners, and customs that had survived from the deep past in the customs of the peasantry. This viewpoint clearly circumscribed the applicability of Amerindian ethnography. The object of reconstructing national prehistory was to emphasize the inhabitants of the nation itself, and national differences rather than broad similarities were stressed.

E. Oldfield’s “Introductory Address” of 1852 considered these issues as well but from the perspective of conservationism, a view more clearly linked with the traditional concerns of the RAI. A tension within the institute, rooted in the conflict between romantic and utilitarian philosophies, began to surface here, mirroring that within British society in general. Once again, there was a pause for self-congratulations: “Within no very distant period the study of antiquities has passed in popular esteem, from contempt to comparative honour” (Oldfield 1852, 1). This, according to Oldfield, had not been accomplished by means of the romantic approach of reverence for the past or its sensibility to the impressions of romance. Rather, the key was the practical and utilitarian nature of the discipline, brought about through an improvement in method:

Whilst the remains of former times were collected and treasured for their own sake, than for the illustration they afforded history, social manners, or art, the antiquary was considered a worshipper of what was essentially unreal, and therefore had little claim for the sympathy and support from others. His researches have risen in estimation, as they have been animated by a more comprehensive spirit, and directed a more instructive end: whilst the very effort which has elevated Archaeology to the dignity of a science, has at the same time, by exhibiting the past in a more lively relationship with the present, given to the study more general interest

(Oldfield 1852, 1).

In other words, for archaeology to continue to claim the public’s attention and provide a socially acceptable context of meaning and value for the archaeological information that the discipline’s scholars (or antiquaries) sought to preserve, the relevance of the past to the present had to be established. To be taken seriously, archaeology not only had to adopt the methods of other sciences but also had to contribute to the great issues of the day, just as ethnology and philology did. However, the discipline was not to be completely at the whim of contemporary concerns: “An honourable position has thus been gained. To maintain it, the student of antiquities must struggle,—not against the ‘spirit