Pathways to World Prehistory Presidential Address 1994

Abstract

Several previous Presidents, most notably Professor Sir Grahame Clark, have stressed in their presidential addresses the worldwide scope of our subject; but so far only one, my distinguished predecessor, Thurstan Shaw, has chosen to speak mainly about the prehistory of a non-European part of the world, in his case Africa (Shaw 1990). My aim today is to develop this theme by exploring three pathways to world prehistory: first, the pathway followed by the Society itself; second, the pathway that led humanity to people the world's continents; and third, the pathway that links prehistoric archaeology to the concerns of the modern world. This agenda may appear unrealistically ambitious for a short address, but, by briefly considering these three inter-twined pathways, I hope to show that the study of prehistory is not only worthwhile for its own sake, but that it also has direct relevance to the social and political problems of our late 20th century world.On the occasion of our 50th Anniversary Conference, held in Norwich in March 1985, Grahame Clark described the eventful history of the Society, and that of its predecessor, the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia. He analyzed the trend in membership and publication that signalled the Society's transformation, from a local band of mainly amateur enthusiasts to a national society of professional and amateur prehistorians, with, increasingly, an international view of their subject (Clark 1985). The sub-title of Professor Clark's paper — From East Anglia to the World — neatly encapsulated this theme, which he illustrated by analyzing the geographical coverage of articles published in the Proceedings between 1911 and 1982: an analysis that brought up-to-date the earlier examination of publication trends that he had included in his own Presidential Address in 1959 (Clark 1959).