Critical Approaches to Fieldwork

Chapter 2 Critical Approaches to Fieldwork In Critical Approaches to Fieldwork Gavin Lucas provides a fundamental examination of the historical and conceptual framework within which archaeology is practised today. Drawing on the development of the discipline since the nineteenth century, the relation between theoretical paradigms and everyday archaeological practice is critically explored. This work takes as its starting point the role of fieldwork and how this has changed over the past 150 years. The author argues against progressive accounts of fieldwork and instead places it in its broader intellectual context. From this, a number of key structural changes are identified in archaeological practice which correlate interestingly with the emergence of sub-divisions within the discipline, such as finds specialisms, area/period research and theoretical/methodological specialities. It is argued that such structural divisions within archaeology have major theoretical consequences which need to be addressed. This work contributes greatly to this emerging discussion. In providing a much-needed historical and critical evaluation of current practice in archaeology, this book opens up a topic of debate which affects all archaeologists, whatever their particular interests. This will be essential reading for all current and future archaeologists. Gavin Lucas is currently working for the Cambridge Archaeological Unit involved in directing excavation and post-excavation programmes. Chapter 2 Critical Approaches to Fieldwork Contemporary and historical archaeological practice Gavin Lucas TL E D U G O E R • • T a p y u lo ro r G & Francis London and New York !" # $ %& '( ' Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2001. ) *+ , " +- . ( , . ,, ,, ( . + , , , . + . - British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data " , , . ( + . / Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data , *+ #0&1 , , .( 2, , ,, ,, 3 *+ ,- - , - 4, , ., 5- - ",- - ",6. (- 4-7- 8& -89 #%-6, 1%% 4/ :&:%&%: ;(< 4/ :&:%&%%: ;(< ISBN 0-203-13225-4 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-18003-8 (Glassbook Format) Chapter 2 Contents List of figures vi List of tables vii Acknowledgements viii 1 Introduction: archaeology and the field 1 2 Finding the past 18 3 Splitting objects 64 4 The measure of culture 107 5 Eventful contexts 146 6 Conclusion: material archaeologies 200 Notes 215 References 216 Index 242 Chapter 2 Figures 1 Excavation of Wor Barrow by Pitt Rivers 21 2 Wheeler’s section at the Roman fort of Segontium 37 3 Wheeler’s box-trench excavation at Maiden Castle 40 4 Kenyon’s correlation table of archaeological layers 42 5 Wheeler’s section from Brahmagiri, India 46 6 Modern open-area excavation in Cambridgeshire, England 53 7 Harris matrix 59 8 Graph showing rise in specialist reporting in a sample of major British site reports 66 9 Pitt Rivers’ chart of the evolution of Australasian weaponry 72 10 Montelius’ typology of Bronze Age artefacts 77 11 Cluster analysis dendrogram of obsidian points 99 12 Chart of principal design changes on English domestic clock dials (1620–1860) 101 13 Mortillet’s chart of French periodisation 110 14 Childe’s chart of Danubian culture groups 112 15 North American culture classification schemes 117 16 Visibility of stratigraphic/soil interfaces according to different electro-magnetic wavelengths 156 17 Harris matrix (a) and alternative graphic representation of site temporality (b), based on a sequence at Çatalhöyük, Turkey) 164 18 Objects as contexts: pottery refits at the Romano-British site of Haddenham 166 19 Objects as contexts: half-sectioned Bronze Age cremation urn 169 20 Excavation at a Viking farmstead in Iceland in 1908 (a) and 1995 (b) 203 21 Late nineteenth-century advertisement for gas brackets 207 22 Wheeler’s and Bersu’s section drawings 209 Chapter 2 Tables 1 Discourse and the field 13 2 Ratio of generic to specific finds categorisations by period in major British site reports 70 3 Hargrave’s artefact taxonomy 81 4 Pairwise table of hypothetical pottery assemblage 97 5 Mortillet’s and Childe’s schema of the partition of culture 113 6 Models of artefact cycle and the archaeological process compared 150 7 Levels of archaeological data as proposed by the Frere and Cunliffe report 213 Chapter 2 Acknowledgements This book first took form in 1997 and has since been modified quite substan- tially due to the helpful advice of a number of people. In particular, its direction and coherence has benefited immeasurably through this feedback. I would like to thank many people for their help and support: Ian Hodder who read various drafts and provided much support, particularly in the initial stages of writing; my friends and colleagues in Cambridge and from Çatalhöyük (1996–7), among whom I had the best possible environment to learn what it means to do archaeology; and in particular those who read and commented on various drafts or parts of this book – Craig Cessford, Adrian Chadwick, Jenny Bredenberg, Victor Buchli, Chris Evans, Carolyn Hamilton, Mark Knight, Lesley McFadyen and Roddy Regan. My thanks also go to Vicki Peters at Routledge for pushing the book through with encouragement and sound advice, and to Polly Osborn for taking it through its final stages; and finally to Randy McGuire, Bob Preucel and two anony- mous readers for providing much needed criticism and comment. Several figures in this book have been drawn from other publications and I would like to thank the following for permission to reproduce them: Academic Press Ltd (Figure 7), Institute of Archaeology (UCL) (Figures 14 and 16), Orion Publishing Group (Figure 4), Oxford University Press (Figure 5), the Prehistoric Society (Figure 22), Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum (Figure 1) and the Society of Antiquaries (Figures 3 and 22). In addition, I would like to thank the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum for providing the photograph reproduced as Figure 1, the National Monu- ments Record for supplying the photograph in Figure 3 and Fornleifastofnun Íslands for providing the photographs used in Figure 20. This book is dedicated to my mother and late father. Gavin Lucas Cambridge Chapter 1 Introduction Archaeology and the field Not so long ago I was working on a small trial excavation in the village of Castor in eastern England; it involved cutting a narrow trench into a beautiful old orchard garden backing on to a churchyard in order to find evidence for a Roman palace which once occupied almost the whole village. In the end, we did find the remains of Roman buildings on a terrace, as well as a great deal of subsequent occupation which ceased sometime in the twelfth or thirteenth century when the area became part of the churchyard. The process of excavation involved using a machine to strip off the garden soil, followed by hand digging with mattocks, spades, shovels and trowels. In the process, we sought to identify separate deposits marked by differences in their composition, deposits such as slopewash, floor layers, pit fills, walls and so on. Each of these was described on separate record sheets accompanied by measured drawings to scale, and identified by a unique number; any artefacts or other remains such as animal bones or shells were bagged and labelled according to the deposit they came from. Critical to the whole process was understanding both what any deposit represented and what its relationship was to other deposits, i.e. earlier, later or contemporary. After excavation, all the finds and records were taken back, put in order and checked through; the different finds – the pottery, the animal bones, the coins, etc. – were sent for study to different specialists, each of whom analysed the material in certain ways and produced a report. For example, the ceramicist sorted out all the sherds into different types of vessel based on their fabric and form, quantified this information and at the end was able to say what kind of vessels were represented from the site, what period they dated from, and where they were made. On this site, most of the pottery came from local kilns, but some came from other places such as France, and most could be dated to the latter part of the Roman period. This and the other specialist information was then integrated with the records made on site to produce a narrative which aimed to establish the sequence and nature of events which left their trace under that old orchard garden about 1,500 years ago. 2 Critical approaches to fieldwork I have just described very approximately what happens on innumerable archaeological sites in Britain and all over the world; the precise procedures might differ, but basically they share similar goals. How is it that we use these procedures? Why do we do it in this way rather than in any other? I ask these questions because I think there has been a notable lack of concern for them in the recent wider theoretical debates about archaeology, in particular with the development of post-processual approaches in the past ten to fifteen years. While one can point to changes in practice which New Archaeology effected – from field survey and sampling tech- niques to statistical representations of data – can post-processualism be said to have had such an impact on everyday practice? This may seem a harsh statement, since post-processualism is certainly not a purely theoretical, armchair exercise (as some might believe) and its studies are as data-driven as any processual work. But this is not the point. How much has post- processual theory actually altered the everyday practice of archaeology? When I consider the investigation of the Roman palace described above, I cannot think of any way in which post-processualism has effected the process, yet there are numerous ways in which New Archaeology has. To me, this points to a serious lapse in critical thinking about what we do.

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