As a participant in the session, I really appreciate all the nice
comments that have appeared here, as well as on back-channel e-mail,
or in the halls of the meeting hotel. I will even use this transient
euphoria to shamelessly plug my forthcoming book, called Digging
Sites and Telling Stories: Essays in Interpretive Historical
Archaeology, to be published in Orser's new series for Plenum later
this year. I hope you all take the time to contact Mary and let her
know how much you like the session (if she's not listening in on
Histarch). There are a couple points I'd like to make about
story-telling, though.
 
1. We are all always telling stories. We can dress our work up in
caveats and methods, and the jargonized language of scholarship, but
we are, nonetheless, telling stories. Might as well make them
interesting. I remember one time at the jamaica meetin, Robin Ryder
was reading a book called "How to write science fiction" or something
like that. Margie Purser saw her and asked if she was writing science
fiction. Without missing a beat, Robin looked up and said, "Sure! I'm
an archaeologist. We all write science fiction."
 
2. The above notwithstanding, one of the things that contributed to
the success of this session, I believe, is that all participants were
highly seasoned folks with established reputations, etc. That made it
easier for us to take chances, and it made it easier for the audience
to trust our interpretations. We also all chose subjects from sites
projects we have lived with for many years. We "know" these people
and their contexts well.
 
I encourage anyone attracted to this approach--or any more
interpretive approach--to go for it. But you should consider that a
session by, say, some grad students dealing with projects they began
just last year would probably not have been as well met. It may have
been equal or much better in quality, but, as Geertz, Clifford and
others have demonstrated, interpretive success often depends on
narratological clues and auhtority that "convince" the readership or
audience. If you remember Mary's/Adrian's intro: they pointed out the
dirt under each participants nails. That rhetorical device alone let
many listeners suspend disbelief and to trust us to tell defensible
and meaningful stories. But then, ya gotta start somewhere...
 
Peace,
 
Dan Mouer