And, how do you do all this in an ear where the existing funding bases
and established approaches to public archaeology are under attack (as
discussed in several other recent posts), by people who would definitely
object to archaeology as "an essentially sensual, subjective
experience," especially when it is receiving public funds?  Perhaps, we
are entering a period of 'creative destruction?'

D. Babson.
 

-----Original Message-----
From: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of paul
courtney
Sent: Sunday, April 17, 2005 3:25 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: reflexive archaeology

When is a context not a context?

Geoff Carver wrote:

>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)?
>
>
>