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Sermons in Stones

Professor MacKendrick has yet to pluck a book from a running brook but he has proved to have a shrewd ear for sermons in stones. This is the sixth, and for scholars probably the most eye-opening, volume in his series. The aim, as before, is to 'use archaeology to write the cultural history of the world of antiquity'. That he, or indeed anyone else, could realize this aim satisfactorily, one may doubt. But that he has achieved something unusual, peculiar to himself, is clear. The scale is as usual breathtaking. In eight chapters, strewn with some 160 photographs, drawings, and plans, he moves confidently from the Neolithic Age (3000 B.C.) to the fall of Histria in the seventh century A.D. The geographical area covered, including as it does the Dobrudja, south of the Danube mouth, is also large, bigger in fact than either the native kingdom or the Roman province of Dacia itself. Granted that all this is to be dealt with in less than 250 pages of text it is not difficult to find questionable statements, for example, the assertion (p. 187) that Christianity was persecuted 'because its votaries refused even token worship of the emperors' statues'. More worrying than individual blemishes are general questions concerning MacKendrick's methods. In the text of Chapter I 'Romania in Prehistory' there is no frank admission of the controversy over chronology in this period. All we get is a cryptic allusion to the difficulties on p. 215 and the statement that MacKendrick has followed the dates given in the excavation reports, or accepted by the Museum of National History in Bucharest. A false impression of clarity and certainty is also created throughout the book by MacKendrick's device of describing in some detail certain sites, and allowing the unwary reader to assume that they must be typical of their period or their area. Despite these criticisms there is still room for admiration. MacKendrick is now a master at providing a mass of information—facts, statistics, measurements, together with tit-bits about the history of the excavations—in readable form. Moreover although preoccupied with Greek and Roman achievements he views them realistically within the native geographical and cultural context. What gives this book its special place in the series is that MacKendrick has moved into an area more often referred to than really known about, even by scholars. Particularly in Chapters 3,5, and 7 he has performed a valuable service in making available the results of Romanian archaeology for general discussion in the English-speaking world. The work of Romanian scholars has been extensive (compare for example, the detailed map of Roman Dacia in MacKendrick p. 106 with CAHxi.554) but too little known, and too rarely discussed. It may well be that after such discussion later writers will be more cautious than MacKendrick and more profound in their analysis. It may also be that 'research in Romanian archaeology requires a reading knowledge of Romanian, which, fortunately, can be acquired in six weeks by anyone conversant with Latin or another Romance language' (p.223), and that we could all have gone there and done such research. The fact remains that it was MacKendrick with commendable energy and initiative who did it.