With the shrine of St. Peter, venerable, still vital, going back to the two roots of western civilization, pagan Rome (itself the transmitter of Greek culture) and Christianity, it is fitting that we should end our survey of what archaeology has to tell us about the culture to which ours owes so much. The two complexes, the grandiose pagan villa and the humble Christian shrine, which we have discussed in this chapter, are interrelated. The villa is one of the last manifestations of a culture that is played out, the shrine marks the beginning of a new culture that will produce its own grandiose monuments and in its turn be threatened by decline. In a sense, with the simplicity of St. Peter’s shrine the historical cycle returns to the simplicity of primitive Rome. But it is not simply a matter of returning to beginnings and starting over again; the new culture stands upon the shoulders of the old. The Christian shrine has the look of a pagan tomb-monument in the Isola Sacra necropolis; Constantine’s church has the look of a pagan Roman basilica. The language of the Mass is still Latin; the Pope is Pontifex Maximus. The striking thing is the continuity, and this is the most important lesson that archaeology has to teach. Again beneath St. Peter’s, as at so many other ancient sites, what the archaeologist digs up is not things but people. The remains in the niche under the Red Wall are not dry bones; they are live history. The breathing of life into that history is a major and largely unsung triumph of the modern science of archaeology, patiently at work over the last eighty years. To come to know a fragment of our past is to recognize a piece of ourselves. Perhaps, as archaeology interprets history, making the mute stones speak, we may come to know our past so well that we shall not be condemned to repeat it. BIBLIOGRAPHY CHAPTER 1: _Prehistoric Italy_ R. J. C. Atkinson, _Field Archaeology_ (London, 1946) P. Barocelli, “Terremare, Palatino, orientazione dei _castra_ e delle città romane,” _Bulletino Communale_ 70 (1942), 131–144 John Bradford, “The Apulia Expedition: An Interim Report,” _Antiquity_ 24 (1950) 84–95 ----, _Ancient Landscapes_ (London, 1957), 85–110 F. von Duhn and F. Messerschmidt, _Italische Gräberkunde_, 2 vols. (Heidelberg, 1924–1939) C. F. C. Hawkes, _The Prehistoric Foundations of Europe_ (London, 1940) G. Kaschnitz-Weinberg, “Italien mit Sardinien, Sizilien, und Malta,” in W. Otto and R. Herbig, _Handbuch der Archäologie_, 2 (Munich, 1954), 311–397 G. Lilliu, “1000 Years of Prehistory: Sardinia, the _Nuraghe_ of Barumini and its Village--a Recent Large-scale Excavation,” _Illustrated London News_ 232 (1958), 388–391 H. L. Movius, Jr., “Age Determination by Radiocarbon Content,” _Antiquity_ 24 (1950), 99–101 T. J. Peet, _The Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy_ (Oxford, 1909)