Abstract
IT is indeed excellent that the University of Oxford has created a chair of European archæology, and that Christopher Hawkes has been selected as its first occupant. The University will gain lustre from his learning, and he will have scope to work out in practice the very definite ideas about the orientation of his subject which he sets forth in this lecture. It is indeed well that the various universities interested in archæology should not all place it in the same setting or look at it from the same point of view. Prof. Hawkes says, for example, that archæology "is not a subject in its own right, as are History, Philosophy, or, say, the Biological Sciences". As a Cambridge archæologist, I can only ask, "Why not?" Biochemistry is considered as a separate subject, and yet it only recently hived off from its parent sciences. Prehistory and archæology have similarly hived off from geology and early history, but surely can by now be classed together as a single subject worthy of an honours school.
Archæology and the History of Europe
An Inaugural Lecture delivered before the University of Oxford on 28 November, 1947. By Prof. C. F. C. Hawkes. Pp. 24. (Oxford : Clarendon Press; London : Oxford University Press, 1948.) 2s. net.
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BURKITT, M. Archæology and the History of Europe. Nature 161, 459 (1948). https://doi.org/10.1038/161459b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/161459b0