Dear Geoff,
I'm not sure that many would recognise the idea that 'MoLAS had a bit of
reflexivity included in their context sheets since way back (at least the
early 90s'. After all, it is the separation of 'description'
from 'interpretation' on standard British context sheets, which were of
course pioneered by the Museum of London in the mid 1970s, that has been
problematised by Hodder, Chadwick and others.
Chadwick's paper from the Summer 2003 edition of the excellent journal
Archaeological Dialogues -
http://journals.cambridge.org/journal_ArchaeologicalDialogues - is notable
for its presentation of a redesigned context sheet (his Figure 4) that
aims to integrate interpretation and description. It's a thoughtful and
serious contribution with this subject, and is part of a growing and
diverse literature on rethinking archaeological practices which ranges
from Gavin Lucas on fieldwork (eg 2001 Critical Approaches to Fieldwork.
Lindon/New York Routledge) to Rosemary Joyce on writing (eg 2002 The
Languages of Archaeology. Oxford: Blackwell) or Shanks and McGuire on
the 'craft of archeology' (American Antiquity 1996).
This ongoing rethinking of archaeological practices is very exciting,
perhaps especially for historical archaeology as we have such a wide range
of practices (which can include oral history, documentary research,
standing buildings recording, etc., etc. as well as excavation). As Mitch
Allen has already eloquently stated in this thread, such work is aiming to
make transparent the messy, political, contingent aspects of
archaeological practice. It's trying to imagine alternatives to just more
grey literature and description.
There are two ongoing, high-profile applied experiments in this field -
Hodder's Catalhoyuk project, and the Framework Archaeology project at
Heathrow Terminal 5. But while these massive projects are in progress,
there is much else to read - like Thomas Yarrow's recent paper (2003.
Artefactual Persons: The relational capacities of persons and things in
the practice of
excavation. Norwegian Archaeological Review, 36(1): 65-73) or Matt
Edgeworth's highly enjoyable 'Acts of Discovery: An Ethnography of
Archaeological Practice' (Oxford: BAR/Archaeopress 2003).
Let's not knock this kind of brave and innovative work in both the
academic and professional spheres, but support it and see where it leads.
Dan
.................
Dr Dan Hicks MIFA
University of Bristol
http://www.bris.ac.uk/archanth/
On Tue, 19 Apr 2005 21:08:00 +0000, Geoff Carver <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> it's been done before (Museum of London and University of Durham context
sheets
> most of my workers are long-term unemployed (sometimes with good reason,
i.e. no one you would ever want to employ for much of anything), sent from
the welfare agency...
>
>"Mitch Allen" <[log in to unmask]> schrieb:
> All the reflexive archaeologists
>> have done is made this very human,very subjective, sometimes political,
>> often flawed decisionmaking process transparent.
> MoLAS had a bit of reflexivity included in their context sheets since
way back (at least the early 90s
> MoLAS had a bit of reflexivity included in their context sheets since
> > way back (at least the early 90s) and the Durham University unit has
> some great stuff there in its icons -
> hodder should at least have done a better job of giving credit to those
> who put it into practice first
> the usual apologies for cross-posting
> does anyone have any thoughts about the workability/practicality >
of "reflexive archaeology"?
> hodder wrote about it in a couple of articles in "antiquity" and then
> in "the archaeological process" and "towards relexive method in
> archaeology," but i found his descriptions/explanations more or less the
> same as what they write for the museum of london context sheets, for
> example, where you are supposed to explain the reasons for your
> interpretations, and discuss how confident you are with them, etc. -
> so i don't think they're anything qualitatively, revolutionarily new...
> i've just read an article by adrian chadwick (archaeological dialogues
> 10 [1]) where - among other things - he laments the fact that post-
> processualism seems to have infiltrated the armchairs but not fieldwork -
> among other things i think this may be true in UK & parts of US
> academia, but a lot of the rest of the world hasn't even caught on to
> the processualist agenda, let alone progressed to post-pro...
> so: is anyone doing (or even thinking about) post-pro/reflexive
> fieldwork? how about worrying about "underming existing hierarchies of
> power within commercial archaeology"? an "alienated division of labour"?
> do we see excavation work as "an essentially sensual, subjective
> experience"? and if so, how do we get more financing for our "embodied,
> sensual encounters"...?
> what bugs me is that adrian (& hodder, and a few others) insist on
> throwing out comments along the lines of "excavators must be treated as
> well-educated and/or experienced and multi-skilled specialists, and they
> must be paid and led accordingly well" without ever quite explaining how
> we can go about doing this...
> & i don't see how we can explain to developers that we need more money
> for our "embodied, sensual encounters"...
> any thoughts/comments (aside from complaints about this message being
> too long)?
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