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The Greeks in history and prehistory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

R. A. McNeal
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Extract

Anyone who tries for long to penetrate the fascinating world of the prehistoric Aegean becomes aware very quickly of a certain malaise in the works of modern scholars. It is now a century since Schliemann first dug at Troy, and the mass of archaeological evidence continues to increase at an almost alarming rate. I say ‘alarming’ because the pace of excavation threatens to outrun our ability to assimilate and control the evidence.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 46 , Issue 181 , March 1972 , pp. 19 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 1972

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Footnotes

Professor R. A. McNeal, of the Department of Classics, University of California, Riverside, apologizes that his article is ‘largely negative since the message is a prohibition’. We think that it needs no apology and that his plea to scholars to unscramble the confusion that has arisen from unwarranted muddling of different kinds of evidence in the interpretation of Greek history and prehistory might well upset some received theories and bring a welcome breath of fresh air into the thinking of some of us. Professor McNeal prefaces his words with those of Goethe: ‘Das Höchste wäre zu begreifen, dass alles Faktische schon Theorie ist.’ (The most important thing to understand is that everything factual is already theory.)

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