Interpretation not record: the practice of archaeology

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Abstract

‘The separation of theory and practice is not one that will easily be overcome by academic and philosophical critique, however necessary and important these are.’ (Shanks & Tilley 1992: xxii). Here a team of archaeologists address this difficult theme, in the light of their experiences under the flightpath of Heathrow Airport.

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‘Always momentary, fluid and flexible’: towards a reflexive excavation methodology

Ian Hodder (1997)

Çatalhöyük, on the Konya Plain in south central Anatolia, in the 1960s became the most celebrated Neolithic site of western Asia: huge (21 hectares), with early dates, tightpacked rooms with roof access, exuberant mural paintings, cattle heads fixed to walls, dead buried beneath floors in collective graves.

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The Craft of Archaeology

Michael Shanks, Randall H. McGuire (1996)

The idea of archaeology as craft challenges the separation of reasoning and execution that characterizes the field today. The Arts and Crafts Movement of the late nineteenth century established craftwork as an aesthetic of opposition. We establish craft in a Marxian critique of alienated labor, and we propose a unified practice of hand, heart, and mind for archaeology. The debates engendered by postprocessual archaeology have firmly situated archaeology in the present as a cultural and political practice. Many, however, still do not know how to work with these ideas. We argue that a resolution to this dilemma lies in thinking of archaeology as a craft. This resolution does not provide a method, or a cookbook, for the practice of archaeology, as indeed the core of our argument is that attempts at such standardization lie at the heart of the alienation of archaeology. Rather, we wish to consider archaeology as a mode of cultural productión, a unified method practiced by archaeologist, “client” public, and contemporary society.