There can be no doubt, nevertheless, that the methods of the early excavators, judged from the modern point of view, were wasteful to a large degree of the things which we have learned to consider of supreme importance in the study of the past. In their search for the big game of excavation they overlooked, too often with fatal loss to the science of the future, the common things which would have made the indispensable background to their more imposing discoveries, and in many instances what they let slip will never be recovered. To-day the outlook is entirely changed, and the man who should excavate on the lines of Mariette or Layard would be a hopeless anachronism among explorers. The excavator goes to his work now, not with the hope of finding some great monument which will confirm some doubtful statement of history or disprove some theory of succession, not even with the hope of discovering some store of tablets which will let new light in on a dark period. Such things may of course be found, and are welcomed when they are found; and such discoveries as that of the tomb of Tutankhamen tell us that the romance of exploration is by no means a thing of the past. But the modern explorer has learned the infinite importance of little things, and the results for which he mainly hopes are such things as would be heartily despised by the casual and uninstructed beholder. Perhaps the change may be expressed most simply by saying that while the explorer of two generations back looked for colossi, his present-day successor looks for crockery.