Maureen MacGlashan and

It’s always a great pleasure (partly because such a rare event) to welcome a new cumulative index to a periodical, especially an important national journal like this one on Welsh archaeology. It follows the pattern of its two predecessors under the same editorship; their difficult genesis was documented by Moore (2003).The run of indexed volumes now covers, impressively, the years 1846–1980. Both Moore and Ms Davies are SI members, and Moore’s introduction explains the indexing practices used. I found many things to like in this index, not least the ‘extras’ in the shape of lists of the contents of the annual volumes by year (sometimes handy) and of the annual tour programme booklets, the lists of meetings held and special publications issued. Such things are normally left unfindable. The horrid old volume numbers in Roman numerals have been summarily dealt with by simply ignoring them in favour of year of issue, much friendlier. Moore’s introduction (p. xxxv) explains the principles used in the index, covering scope (persons, places, objects, topics etc), the thorny and nightmarish problems of Welsh place names (spellings, county-name changes etc) and personal names (where necessary with useful further identification – e.g. Evans, Walter; of Bristol, pipemaker). The Association’s president provides a foreword which explains the compilation method: handwritten slips pasted into pages, photocopied, edited, and passed to the typesetter. The consequent onerous task of proofreading involved several hands. Unfortunately archaeologists do not seem to like hunting through old published work, however necessary, so sales are often poor. Hence it is explained that hefty subventions were needed on top of the Association’s own ‘prudently maintained’ Index Fund. The resultant amazingly low prices of the printed volumes thus conceal the real costs in labour and print. Now to the content. The layout is clear, with attention paid to indents and page turnovers on long entries. (I only spotted one place where the indents had gone badly wrong.) The alphabetical sequence runs straight through, with no cumbersome separation into authors/topics. Place names are entered direct, but not also cross-referenced from county as many people would like (so entries under Cardiganshire are only for the whole-county topics, not the individually named places). Admittedly adding these cross-references by hand would have been very burdensome, but do I spy the need for digitization here? Generics are mostly helpful, although under abbeys ‘see under name of site’ is normally less useful than actually listing the named ones found in the alphabetical sequence, as has been done for abbots and saints. Under chambered tombs, however, the listing of general topics is followed by named sites complete with locators. So the index is not quite consistent, which is always a danger with cumulations made over a long period, during which views of the whole task can change. Often one starts bravely with too much detail. The subject references are largely treated under period, e.g. Bronze Age or Roman, which results in very long but generally divided subentries such as awls, axes, beads and so on. This should work well. Some of the see cross-references are run on, others set out rather wastefully, though clearly: for instance the entry Roman potters takes up 100 lines instead of maybe 20 if run on. Similarly for the saints and abbots. From experience I know the most difficult decisions in archaeology relate to names for types of site and artefact. As Moore says in his 2003 article (p. 190), ‘If an antiquity has alternative names the indexer will have to choose one of them as the main guideword’, and he goes on to cite the various names for prehistoric chamber tomb, earthwork and the like. Surprisingly he makes no reference to the various official thesauri which give valuable help on this problem, that produced by RCHME (1988) being the most obvious way to avoid a lot of anguished cogitation. Checking the index against one of the annual volumes reveals a few minor niggles (e.g. Trefgarn Owen not cross-referenced to manor; a slip in pagination for Grimes’s presidential address). Some more cross-references would have tidied up loose ends. As one would expect, the cumulated index is more detailed than that for the annual volume, simply because of the greater number of references per entry. From bitter experience I know how hard it is to maintain consistency over the years, so I have great sympathy with all the workers on this volume. What I do find surprising, however, is that in Moore’s 2003 article he gives no hint that he investigated the available literature on either indexing in general, or archaeological indexing in particular (Lavell, 1981). If he was a novice it was brave to work it out from scratch, but perhaps not best advised. Moore has fought his way through to a good conclusion, no doubt encouraged by the fact that the second cumulative volume he worked on, that for 1901–60, won a Wheatley Medal for its then compiler, T. Rowland Powel. Moore (2003) says he came to realize (as we all should) that ‘the making of any index was a creative contribution to literature’. My strong hope for any future Cambrians’ indexing is that they embrace computer technology (e.g. MACREX, CINDEX, SKY) which would so strikingly and efficiently speed the process, and also assist with checking. So: away with those horrible handwritten slips and the presumably associated shoeboxes!