SESSIONS, PAPERS and POSTERS

TAG 2009: 17th-19th December

Information about

Plenary session – 17^th December

Sessions and papers – 18^th-19^th December

· Abandoning ‘the curse of the mummy’: new theoretical approaches and methodologies in Egyptology (Veronica Tamorri) papers

· Archaeologists as contemporary critical thinkers (Vitor O. Jorge) papers

· Archaeology and Englishness (David Petts and Paul Belford) papers

· A Weather Eye on the Past: Weather, Climate and Landscape Archaeology (Bob Johnston; Toby Pillatt; Simon Jusseret) papers

· Bad archaeology: a debate between academic and commercial archaeologists (Andrea Bradley and Peter Hinton) papers

· Caring for the Dead: changing attitudes towards curation (Myra Giesen, Liz Bell and Tori Park) papers

· Categories and Categorisation (Andrea Dolfini and Chris Fowler) papers

· Conflict Archaeology – It’s a Battlefield out there! Or is it? Method and Theory in 20th Century Conflict Studies (Gavin J Lindsay) papers

· Developing Anarchist Archaeologies (Tobias Richter and Andrew Gardner) papers

· Developing Landscape Historical Ecologies: Integrating Theory with Applied Approaches (Paul Lane and Daryl Stump) papers

· Dwelling, lithic scatters and landscape (Olaf Bayer and Vicki Cummings) papers

· Experimentation in Archaeology: Combining Practical and Philosophical Methods in the Pursuit of Past Culture (Frederick Foulds and Dana Millson) papers

· Exploring new theories for Mediterranean prehistoric archaeology (Robin Skeates) papers

· Fair Archaeology - Building Bridges instead of Deepening Gaps (Mariana Diniz and Miguel A. Aguilar) papers

· From Bare Bones to Interpretation (Jaime Jennings and Charlotte Henderson) papers

· General session papers

· Going Against the Flow: New Interpretations of an Old Source (Rona Davis and Rebecca Williams) papers

· Landscape Theory, Landscape Practice: contemporary intersections between past and future (Kenny Brophy, Chris Dalglish, Alan Leslie and Gavin MacGregor) papers

· Medieval Sensory Perceptions: Beyond the Classical Senses (Durham Medieval Archaeologists - Gwen Dales, Sira Dooley Fairchild and Jocelyn Baker) papers

· Messing around with bodies: theorising the manipulation of the corpse and deviant burial practice (Karina Croucher, Zoë L. Devlin, Emma-Jayne Graham, Amy Gray Jones and Dani Hofmann) papers

· Metacognition in Archaeology (Mara Vejby) papers

· 'Oneness and otherness' : Self and Identity in relation to material and animal worlds (Marcus Brittain, Andy Needham, Nick Overton and Penny Spikins) papers

· On the Record: The Philosophy of Recording (Martin Newman) papers

· Palaeolithic Archaeology and Theory: mortal enemies or best of friends (Helen Drinkall and Tom Cutler) papers

· Reanimating Industrial Spaces (Hilary Orange and Sefryn Penrose) papers

· Ritual Failure (Jeff Sanders and Vasiliki Koutrafouri) papers

· The affective properties of architecture (Oliver Harris, Serena Love and Tim Flohr Sørensen) papers

· The ethics of heritage tourism, archaeology and identity (Margarita Díaz-Andreu, Nuria Sanz and Cesar Villalobos) papers

· Theorising digital archaeological objects
(Kalliopi Fouseki and Kalliopi Vacharopoulou) papers

· Theorising Early Medieval ‘Towns’ (c. 700-1200 AD) (Letty Ten Harkel, Abby Antrobus, Dawn Hadley and Andrew Agate) papers

· Theorising Imagery in Past Societies (Amanda Wintcher and Daisy Knox) papers

· Twenty years after the wall came down: theoretical archaeology in central, eastern and south eastern Europe (John Chapman and Bisserka Gaydarska) papers

· ‘Us and them’? A critical examination of public participation in archaeology today (Don Henson, Dan Hull, Richard Lee and Suzie Thomas) papers

· Water as Sacred Power (Sarah Semple, Pam Graves and Tom Moore) papers

· Wrapping objects (Susanna Harris and Laurence Douny) papers

Posters – 18^th-19^th December

· The poster session will be on Friday afternoon. Poster authors will be requested to be in the poster area (room 231 in the Earth Sciences building). posters

TOP

_________________________________________

SESSIONS AND ABSTRACTS

Abandoning ‘the curse of the mummy’: new theoretical approaches and methodologies in Egyptology

Organised by: Veronica Tamorri (Durham University, veronica.tamorri@durham.ac.uk)

Supported by the Landscape Research Group, Dept of Archaeology, Durham University

SESSION ABSTRACT

Is Egyptology a discipline in itself, or just an amalgamation of different subject fields – archaeology, philology, arts — united only by a geographical area? Ancient Egypt is arguably the most popular culture among the general public across the world, with a very recognisable external visual profile. While the attractiveness of the subject is often good for financial and media coverage, to what extent does it promote or hinder a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches to its study? In the case of archaeological remains, the abundance and richness of sites, together with global interest, means that excavation could be at risk of neglecting developments in scientific theory and methodology. In spite of all this, ethnoarchaeological, experimental and other scientific approaches have proved as beneficial for Egyptology as for any other discipline.

From a theoretical point of view, Egyptology has benefited from contributions from a number of fields such as linguistics (Loprieno), philosophy (Assmann), literary theory (Parkinson), cultural history (Baines, Wengrow) or ethnicity (Goudriaan) in addition to art history or Levant archaeology. There also are strong theoretical discourses in archaeology (Meskell).

This session aims to draw on all these valuable contributions to show how Egyptology can benefit from the theoretical institution of interdisciplinarity as one of its inherent qualities and advance the implementation of such approaches. Contributors are invited to illustrate how specific methodologies can be developed to target particular problems in Egyptology and how new theories and methods can be applied to various topics.

TOP

__________________________________________

Archaeologists as contemporary critical thinkers

Organised by: Vitor O. Jorge (University of Porto/CEAUCP,

vitor.oliveirajorge@gmail.com)

SESSION ABSTRACT

Right from the beginning of archaeology as a “science” during the 19th century, archaeologists, like any other social scientists at the time, tried to elaborate a “theory” of “man” and of “society”. Implicitly or explicitly, this “theory” was, and still is, meshed with “practice”. Theory and practice are combined in fieldwork, in the production archaeological texts (reports included) and the presentation of “results” to the general public. This session aims to think critically about archaeology in the modern world, paying particular attention to those debates and enquires that have preoccupied modern thinkers in the last decades. What are the contributions that archaeology has made to modern dialogue in the social sciences? If we want that the production and diffusion of our work have some effect beyond the purely academic world, how do we integrate it into a modern politics of knowledge? That is the challenge of this session, calling for papers that are situated in the interface of archaeology and a politics of knowledge, i.e., of a critical thinking and action.

PAPERS

Archaeological critical practice

Lesley McFadyen (University of Porto,

lesley.mcfadyen@mac.com)

I have been thinking about excavation and archive, and on the terms that we bring the making of the archive into our practice. How are excavation and archive, practice and object, material and representation, expressive? In particular, I want to discuss the excavation, drawing and writing of an Early Bronze Age ringditch at Barleycroft in Cambridgeshire.
Jacques Derrida in ‘Archive Fever’ and Hannah Arendt in ‘Between Past and Future’ discuss archive and literature. Both of these critical thinkers found themselves in-between things, and this process disrupted historical knowledge, created different notions of time, and opened up the question of the future. I want to take the temporal qualities of that work and discuss the moments in archaeology when there is a tension between the sculpted shape of the excavated feature and the traces of action that we can draw. For between cut and fill, excavation and drawing, trowel and pencil, the archaeologist is between an upcast barrow that is not quite here but yet at hand. But what I want to emphasise about drawing, and about bringing the making of the archive into that practice, is how it changes what we can write about time and how prehistoric things relate to past and future.

Towards a critical archaeology of late modernity: the archaeology of the contemporary past as counter-modern archaeology

Rodney Harrison (The Open University, rodney.harrison@gmail.com)

Julian Thomas (2004) has recently argued that archaeology could only have emerged as a distinct discipline under the particular social and intellectual conditions of modernity. In this paper I explore the archaeology of the contemporary past as a ‘counter-modern’ archaeology which aims to challenge the underlying impulse of modernist archaeology and anthropology to produce an ‘Other’ to ourselves by focussing attention on the archaeology of contemporary, late-modern social life. In doing so, I argue that the archaeology of the contemporary past has the potential to produce insights which not only address themselves directly to contemporary social, ethical and political concerns, but which also contribute to the development of new forms of social knowledge that extend beyond the boundaries of our own discipline by breaking down the disciplinary boundaries that have restricted such movement, as well as develop new forms of critical thinking about the place of humans and contemporary material culture in the world.

Archaeology after Simplicity - Redesigning Reflexivity

Stephanie Koerner (University of Manchester, Stephanie.Koerner@manchester.ac.uk)

Until recently, not many archaeologists would have expected fundamental change in theoretical and methodological orientations to arise from projects that challenge presuppositions perpetuating ‘expert knowledge’ - ‘public issues’ dichotomies. I explore developments transforming this situation, and the bearing upon challenges facing “archaeologists as critical thinkers”.

There are no such things as context independent problems. “We never experience or form judgments about objects and events in isolation, but only in connection with a contextualised whole. The latter is called a situation” (Dewey 1938: 66-67). Complexity and emergent novelty are the normal state of affairs for reality, and crucial for understanding how we find the world intelligible (Ingold and Koerner 2009), Such dichotomies as nature-culture, the global versus the local, the real versus the historically contingent, prioritise the least (rather than the most) tractable problems, and impede appreciating the importance for sustaining diversity of human life ways of plurality of the past and future aspirations.

My presentation concludes with suggestions about implications for concerns to ‘re-design’ archaeological reflexivity for “needs of a world in which simplicity is a memory of a bygone age” (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1997; Latour 2008).

The case for revisiting a deliberative poetics in archaeology: rejecting dichotomies from the past

Adrian F. Davis (University of Wales Lampeter – UWL, pg329@lamp.ac.uk)

Where archaeology has successfully wrested it's epistemology from a production of knowledge predicated on a heavy handed empiricism, then perhaps archaeologies greatest success to date has been its embracing of a resolutely political approach to a Diaspora of critical issues around cultural and heritage resource management. For the most part much good work has been done here to rectify the undeniable inequalities of power through pursuing a generic inclusivity toward other pasts. The cost to our discipline's standing in the academy however have been considerable; particularly in so far as we have been compelled to accept a resolutely pejorative account of our disciplinary history as being steeped in and emerging from the worst excess of enlightenment 'rationality' and colonial excess. This lurch from unreflective science on the one hand to a politics steeped in the hermeneutics of suspicion on the other have not in my view effectively countered our ongoing disciplinary leanings toward modelling our discipline on the hard sciences, from which ultimately, many of our political headaches arise. This somewhat vicious circularity remains doubly unsatisfactory, and my paper will attempt to argue that archaeology can only demonstrate it’s most attractive and critical thinking to the wider intellectual community by jettisoning this circularity in favour of a timely and historical reprise of a more deliberative poetics, and with it a raft of more innovative and interpretive methodologies.

Solid things and bizarre stories. The archaeologist as a tragic narrator

Joana Alves Ferreira (University of Porto/CEAUCP, jalvesferreira@gmail.com)

…“It was nothing but glass”

Virginia Woolf, Solid Objects (1918)

In this sentence, apparently of easy understanding, Virginia Woolf encapsulates the complexity of the “unknown” showing us the way to the wonderful simplicity of the opening.

The bizarre story told by V. Woolf make us reflect about the narrative and its traditional way of representing the world as well as on the paradigm of the historical discourse, which is the crystallization of an image. Therefore, any narrative reflects a desire for singularity, a desire to narrate its genesis, making it intelligible. Here lies the tragic sense of the narrative, which is the impossibility of origin. In this sense, the archaeologist while a “storyteller” moves in this tragic emptiness postulating, in his/her fantasy, an answer to this riddle, trying to print a positive sense to the world around.

As well as Virginia Woolf’s character we, the archaeologists, are faced with the impossibility of the answer. Reflecting on the impossibility of the origin implies a rejection from the logocentric discourses, breaking with the crystallized images of any unique phenomenon. The impossibility of the origin is the opening to an exterior ambiguity and to a repetition of the always different. It is a thinking outside the concept of linearity.

Like Mirrors: Archaeological Parallax

Gonçalo Leite Velho (Polythecnic Institute of Tomar, gonvelho@gmail.com)

In his “Contre-Chant” part of the poem “Fou d’Elsa”, Louis Aragon writes “I am that wretch comparable with mirrors / that can reflect but cannot see”. These words, who allow us to have a glimpse in the situation of Ego, illustrate well the situation of Archaeology. We seem to be always in the presence of an insurmountable gap (a parallax gap) pulled apart by two forces, one centrifugal, pointing to the past (the desire to see in a “pure gaze” the past “as it was”) and other centripetal, where the present works as a gravitational point (marked by the continuous presence of reflections). When looking at Archaeology through the prism of Time, it is usual to see traces of epochs, reflexes of principles, that didn’t seem to be so present to those who “lived” them. It seems like an impossible displacement the movement of being somehow “out of joint”, “out of oneself”, “out of one’s time”. In heideggerianees we might say that, it seems that even when we take our most resoluteness authentic act we cling to some inauthentic presence (what we might dare to call in lacaneese “the Other”). This paper explores these gaps and its parallax possibilities (in an obvious debt with Zizek). Taking in account the Greek concepts of αρχη (arche) and λογος (logos) we develop the concept of Principle Reflection.

Why is archeology a pervert science or why Kung fu Panda and Fight Club are worth watching?

Dawid Kobialka (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, dawidkobialka@wp.pl)

Archaeologists used to think about themselves as socially desirable objects. I disagree with such a point of view. Rather, I claim that archaeologists want to be desired by society. That is why archaeologists are the object of their own desires. Such a conviction about the knowledge of Other’s (society’s) desires is defined in the psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan as a perversion. I argue that contemporary archaeology can be seen a pervert science.

Psychoanalysis and cinema can shed new light on archaeology and reconsider some fundamental assumptions about public archaeology. Using the thoughts of the most prominent follower of Lacan, Slavoj Žižek, my theoretical discussion takes into account the examples of cinema. Cinema is a very interesting theoretical tool that should often be used by archaeologists. The result of taking into account cinema is – what is called by the author – the theory (in a broad sense of the term) of Kung-fu Panda. On the other hand, Fight Club is approach as an answer to what has to be done with contemporary archaeology.

Archaeology and the politics of inheritance

Sérgio Gomes (University of Porto/CEAUCP, sergioalexandregomes@gmail.com)

Archaeology, among other social sciences, has been providing raw materials and contributing to the construction of different kinds of identity and identification strategies. Regarding its importance, archaeologists often discuss their role in this process, and think about their connections with the social context within which they develop their practice. In such discussion, should be highlighted important works on archaeology and nationalism or archaeology and gender, which contribute to our understanding of how prejudices act from the moment we identify, select and interpret materials. In this paper, I aim to focus on these topics, trying to discuss how the idea of inheritance entails a chronological linear sequence that pushes us to reproduce a set of identities that reinforce the hegemonic models that rule contemporary societies. In doing this, I will try to argue that archaeology might have an important role on the invention of new kinds of identity or, at least, could contribute to a better understanding of how complex, and often paradoxical, can be the way people represent themselves and others.

The importance of a philosophy of techniques and technology to archaeology and beyond

Vítor Oliveira Jorge (University of Porto/CEAUCP, vojorge@clix.pt)

Following a very long tradition, several recent French thinkers, among many others, have underlined the crucial importance of the techniques and of technology to understand the human reality. In spite of it, philosophy has rarely taken this subject as a really important one; in the words of Stiegler: “ Technics is the unthought”. I will concentrate in just two of those authors, Gilbert Simondon (1924-1989) and (the one quoted above) Bernard Stiegler (born 1952). These two philosophers have a critical importance to archaeology, contributing to a correct vision of a central issue of its object, human’s activity in relation with materials and through the mediation of “machines”. Also, Stiegler in particular may allow us to comprehend what is at stake in our hyper-industrial society, in which technology has gone out of the citizen’s control, provoking a crisis of general or libidinal economy. Archaeology, as any other field of research/activity, may and shall call for a different organization of society where processes of individuation be made within a sense of community and not in the neo-liberal way of abstract and isolated consumers. This political and philosophical approach is also consistent with a more comprehensive view of our past as human beings.

Political animals: predator or prey?

Bo Jensen (independent, Copenhagen, bojensen_dk@yahoo.dk )

Post-industrial society (or risk society, or hyper-industrial society) entails a democratic crisis: new issues arise that do not respond to the neat divisions of old party politics. Environmentalism is one such issue, animal rights another. Neither the old left, nor the old right has a strong tradition on these issues. Further, animal rights debates have so far escaped the privatization of ethics and the institution of state of emergency as the norm. The indeterminability and subjectivity of involved ethics and the resulting epistemological uncertainty is obvious to most participants. Everyone argues from an acknowledged minority position. At the same time, post-industrial society also coincides with an information revolution that puts the status of archaeology in crisis. Due to information glut and due to a post-modern undermining of the epistemological standards of traditional bourgeois culture, archaeology and other disciplines now risk becoming true but irrelevant to much of the reading public

I argue that there are potentially productive intersections between archaeology and animal rights debates; and that they offer us sound epistemological critique and a vast new, potential readership; but that so far, zooarchaeologists have shied away from pursuing these opportunities.

Archaeology. An autopsy
Manuel Maria Guimarães de Castro Nunes (arteminvenite@gmail.com)

To identify the structural problems that archaeology needs to face, concerning to clarify the crossing through multiple tasks, concerning research, cultural heritage preservation and valuation, and cultural sociability of knowledge, several ethical and epistemological matters may be revaluated. The increasing specialization of several ranges of archaeological praxis, disseminating the knowledge through an infinite universe of tight scientific domains, obstructed the rule of the History and Social Sciences as the assembly of archaeological knowledge and its social finality.
Taking the history of medicine as paradigm, and the fighting between medicine and surgery as the topic where we may understand the rule of the antinomy between theory and praxis on the formulation of modernity, we will propose that the crucial epistemological cracks on archaeological thinking an theory are, nowadays, fundamentally, an ethical problem. And it concerns the use or the finality of knowledge.

Discussant

Julian Thomas (University of Manchester, julian.thomas@manchester.ac.uk)

TOP

__________________________________________

Archaeology and Englishness

Organised by: David Petts (Durham University, d.a.petts@durham.ac.uk) and Paul Belford (University of York, pjb505@york.ac.uk).

Session supported by the Archaeology of Northern England Research Group, Dept of Archaeology, Durham University

SESSION ABSTRACT
"Field archaeology is an essentially English form of sport" O.G.S Crawford

As Gordon Brown wrestles with how to promote a sense of ‘Britishness’, there are increased signs of revival of a sense of English identity, whether expressed through the resurgence in popularity of the English flag or increased call to celebrate St George’s Day as a national holiday. There is also an increasing popular literature exploring the notion of the ‘English’ and ‘Englishness’ often creating essentialised models of the concept (e.g. Ackroyd 2002; Gill 2007; Paxman 1999).

However, whilst other discipline, such as art history, literary studies and geography have long treated the notion of ‘Englishness’ as concept worthy of analysis and deconstruction, this has not been true for archaeology (cf. : Burden and Kohl 2006; Corbett , Holt and Russell 2002; Matless 1998; Pevsner 1956). Whether exploring the development of national traditions of scholarship or considering the way in which material culture is used to develop and maintain a sense of national identity, there has been a tendency for England to be subsumed within a wider British or imperial discourse (though there are some exceptions e.g. Johnson 2007). This session aims to restore this balance and consider the extent to which it is possible to recognise the notion of ‘England’ and ‘Englishness’ within archaeology.

It is hoped to explore a number of facets of the problematic relationship between archaeology and English identity including: 1/ Materiality and Englishness: the way in which material culture, structures and landscapes were used to create and maintain a distinct sense of English identity in past societies; 2/ The development of English traditions of archaeological scholarship and a consideration of the consequences of the development of ‘England’ as a distinct unit of analysis. Is there a distinct English tradition of archaeology or heritage management?; 3/ The use of archaeology to create discourses of ‘Englishness’ in popular culture.

PAPERS

A Saxon, a Frenchman and a Dane walked into a bar…

Duncan Brown (freelance pottery specialist, dhb@bethere.co.uk)

It is possible to argue that the creation of the Danelaw and the unification of the Saxons under Alfred led to the notion of England as an identifiable entity. This paper will search for archaeological evidence of cultural differences within both Wessex and the Danelaw in an attempt to illuminate notions of ‘Englishness’, or perhaps ‘Saxonicity’ as separate from things that were ‘Danish’. Much of this discussion will be based on a reading of the ninth century ceramic evidence, showing how differences in technology and form can be understood as a deliberate statement of cultural identity. Through this analysis of material culture we can observe how the Saxons defined themselves, and how what they did then has informed the development of English culture thereafter. This paper might begin with the ninth century, but the story goes on far beyond that time. Meanwhile, across the Channel, other forces were at work…

French Catholics and English Whitewares: Transnational Charity in a Hawaiian Institution

James Flexner (University of California, Berkeley, jamesflexner@berkeley.edu)

From the 17th century onwards, the Western world embarked on the construction of unprecedented facilities of isolation, reform, and control, generally referred to under the rubric of 'total institutions'. These settlements and structures were meant to isolate, reform, and discipline the individual as a microcosm of an ordered society. In the colonized world, nationalism typically played an important role in determining the networks through which materials entered total institutions. In the Pacific Islands, missionary activity was also closely linked to nationalism, with the French championing the Catholic missions, and the English backing Protestant missionary activities. Recent archaeological investigations of the late-19th and early-20th century leprosarium at Kalawao, Moloka'i Island, Hawaii, revealed a mixture of material culture, including an assemblage of English Staffordshire ceramics. Ethnohistoric research suggests that this material may be related to charitable donations from organizations such as the London Missionary Society, but possibly in response to calls for charity revolving around Kalawao's more famous Catholic Missionaries, specifically the Belgian-born, French-trained Father Damien de Veuster. The presence of an English monument to Fr. Damien further suggests the extent to which English protestants were smitten with this 'French' Catholic missionary's activities on Moloka'i. In examining the nature of transnational charity in the Hawaiian leprosarium at Kalawao, this paper will question what caused people to overlook nationalistic charitable impulses, in the context of leprosy as a symbolic disease, heroic narratives that transcended national and sectarian missionary competitions, and paternalistic attitudes expressed in charity towards Pacific Islanders.

This Other Eden: 19th-century Transfer-Printed Ceramics and Representations of English Identity

Alasdair Brooks (University of Leicester, amb72@leicester.ac.uk)

In the late 18th and 19th century, British potters produced vast quantities of transfer-printed ceramics featuring a wide variety of designs. Many of these transfer prints prominently displayed images related to Scottish, Welsh, and British themes, and past research by this author has investigated the extent to which these images interacted with broader social manipulations of national identities within the new United Kingdom. But what about Englishness? Is it possible to see transfer-printed themes specifically relating to English identity? Is Englishness subsumed within the broader British-themed patterns? Or are English themes not so much subsumed, but rather dominant within the transfer-printed iconography of a 19th-century imperial Britishness that could find William Gladstone – resident in Wales, representing Midlothian in Parliament, born in Liverpool to Scottish parents – unselfconsciously consider himself entirely English despite his very British background. Consideration is also given to the extent to which the interaction between Britishness and Englishness on 19th-century transfer-printed ceramics is symptomatic of, and helps to inform, modern understandings of the complex interrelationship between the two identities.

Investigating and Writing Romano-British Wessex: from Roach Smith and the British Archaeological Association Congress to the Victoria County History and Collingwood

Colin Wallace (University of Liverpool, C.R.Wallace@liverpool.ac.uk)

‘Wessex - The name of a kingdom in south-west England in Anglo-Saxon times, used by Thomas Hardy as the name of the county in which his stories are set (corresponding approximately to Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire and Wiltshire) …’ (OED [2nd edition], 1989, 160). By C18, the study of Roman Britain in the south had settled down into a dominant discourse on the known Roman names for sites and on the road-system – the ‘periphery’, while imperial ideologies drew only on more literary sources stretching back to classical Greece and Rome – the ‘core’. Contrasts within Britain, when debating national origins, come to be strongly marked through C18 & into C19; it has even been argued that in Scotland, compared to England, ‘because the connections with Rome were actually more tenuous, the Scottish archaeological tradition put its Roman history at the centre of its activities’ (Stevenson, Scotlands 4, 1997). As part of this session’s focus on the development of English traditions of archaeological scholarship and its consideration of the consequences of the development of ‘England’ as a distinct unit of analysis, it is worthwhile to discuss examples of what people thought they were up to when investigating and writing Romano-British Wessex in the period bracketed, on the one hand by the British Archaeological Association Congress meeting there at Winchester in 1845 and, on the other, by the publication of Roman Britain and the English Settlements in 1936. Is it better to explore how some Nineteenth-century archaeological discourse still resonates today while other elements have been discarded – exploring all aspects - rather than concentrate on either all that appeals to or that jars with modern sensibilities? ‘Wessex’ is of course familiar as a setting for generalising narratives of British Prehistory; it came into focus as a setting for notions of ‘England’ and ‘Englishness’ {when? Origins of institutions}. What survived when writing and thinking about the Roman past grew dis-satisfied, come the beginning of the C20, with the piecemeal recording of sites and finds, preferring to work on a larger scale? This paper is also in part a critique of recent writing linking a classical, colonised ‘past’ to a British, colonising C18/C19 ‘present’, attempting to go beyond simply a focus on those scholars and achievements that are now regarded as having led to modern historical methods.

A Mirror of England: H.J. Massingham and Archaeology

David Petts (Durham University, d.a.petts@durham.ac.uk)

Hugh Massingham (1888–1952) was an influential writer on English rural life between the Wars. He was part of a wider group of English ‘ruralist’ writers, including Adrian Bell, Rolf Gardiner and Edmund Blunden who were committed to an anti-industrialist reform of English agriculture, and were the founder members of Kinship for Husbandry, a pre-cursor of the Soil Association. Despite having background as a journalist Massingham spent time in the School of UCL working with hyper-diffusionist Eliot Grafton-Smith. This fed into a profound opposition to social Darwinism, and influenced much of his writing. A hallmark of his writing was a close interest in the materiality of the past; this is reflected in his highly idiosyncratic synthesis of British prehistory (Downland Man 1926) and in his important early collection of tools and objects related to English rural life. This paper explores how Massingham’s interaction with mainstream archaeology and his use of archaeology and material culture studies to propogate and develop a notion of Englishness.

Rattling Forges and the Wild Woodland Choir: Industrialisation and Englishness

Paul Belford (University of York, pjb505@york.ac.uk)

England during the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries was an undoubtedly industrial nation – indeed England was the first industrial nation. Early responses to industrialisation were very positive, and the process of industrialisation was seen as central to English identity as a colonial power. The positive aspects of English progress through technology were also emphasised (and envied) abroad. However, the rise of Romanticism from the late 18th century meant that this dirty, smelly, money-making and technical identity was eschewed in favour of the rural, pastoral and ‘traditional’ elements of English life. A rural idyll was presented which was actually very much at odds with the reality of intensive urbanisation, industrialisation and mechanisation. Indeed, the more modern England became, the more rural imagery was used to evoke Englishness and the more this pastoral perception became the dominant expression of English identity at home and abroad. This paper will examine aspects of the process of industrialisation and its relation to English identity between c.1600 and c.1900, and identify ways in which an archaeological approach to industrial sites and landscapes can be used to explore some of the nuances of the transformation from industrial power and positivity to post-industrial impotence.

English Heritage, World Heritage, Modern Heritage

Dan Hicks (University of Oxford, dan.hicks@prm.ox.ac.uk) and Laurie Wilkie (University of California, Berkeley)

As from Montreal Bruce Trigger was drafting his classic reflection on alternative forms of archaeology - 'nationalist, colonialist, imperialist' - in London the second Conservative administration was, through the National Heritage Act, creating 'English Heritage'. This paper introduces a current transatlantic collaboration between the authors, which seeks to give modern conceptions of heritage a different, and more archaeological, history. Through examples drawn from London and New York City, the paper will historically situate and call into question conventional distinctions between 'national heritage' and 'world heritage' in archaeology.

'Englishness and the Museum'

Chris Gosden (University of Oxford, chris.gosden@arch.ox.ac.uk) and Chris Wingfield.

We start with a proposition – anthropology and archaeology began in their modern form due to a loss of faith in their ancestors on part of the middle classes. Anthropology allowed people to become interested in other people’s ancestors; archaeology displaced problems of ancestry way back into the past making it an impersonal quest, easily mythologized. The interest in ancient ancestry and the ancestors of others fused in the notion of the primitive, so that other people’s ancestors and our own distant origins fused and became confused. Such a loss of ancestry also confused broader identities, such as what it means to be English. This paper will explore a project underway in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford to look at the English collections there and through them broader issues of Englishness.

On the Englishness of W. G. Hoskins

Andrew Fleming (University of Wales Lampeter, andrewfleming43@btinternet.com)

W. G. Hoskins’s The Making of the English landscape, first published in 1955, is still in print, and is still basic reading for beginners in landscape history. For Hoskins, the ‘Englishness’ of ‘the English landscape’ [sic] was very important, and it also forms a starting-point for his critics – such as Barbara Bender who described him as ‘anti-modernist, post-Imperial, and Little Englander’. This paper briefly explores the nature of Hoskins’s Anglophilia and goes on to assess its influence on the character and development of the discipline of landscape history, a critique which means rather more than rapping him over the knuckles for his nationalism!

‘Essentially English’? – 21^st-century archaeology in the field

Mark Bowden (English Heritage,

Mark.Bowden@english-heritage.org.uk) and David McOmish (English Heritage)

This paper addresses the second theme of the Session, the development of ‘English’ traditions of archaeological scholarship. This is a topic that we and other colleagues have been pursuing recently, as direct professional descendants of Crawford, especially in reference to the new European Landscapes Convention – should we seek to pursue English, or rather British, modes of landscape archaeology on the continent where traditions are very different; if so, how; and why did these differences arise?

We will present our own perception of British landscape archaeology as currently practised and contrast with brief observations about practise on the Continent, concentrating on a few areas in Western Europe.

Discussant

Richard Hingley (Durham University, richard.hingley@durham.ac.uk)

TOP

__________________________________________

Bad archaeology: a debate between academic and commercial archaeologists

Organised by: Andrea Bradley (IfA) and Peter Hinton (IfA). Contact: andrea.bradley@archaeologists.net

SESSION ABSTRACT

A debate between academic and commercial archaeologists, aiming to distinguish between Good Archaeology and Bad Archaeology, and providing at least 2 genuine examples of how commercial archaeologists do Good Archaeology.

In the commercial world – as fieldwork specialists, consultants and planning archaeologists - we are often accused of doing things by rote, creating records not interpretation, being self referencing, inward looking and process focussed. We ‘mitigate’ the impact of development through ‘preservation by record’, responding to the requirements and rituals of the planning process and the demanding developer who pays and controls us. We create mountains of raw data which languish on shelves of ‘grey literature’ for academic archaeologists of the future to unearth, research and interpret. At worst we are stupid, lazy and corrupt. We do Bad Archaeology.

Anyone who thinks that this is how commercial archaeology is done is deluded. You can’t do archaeology and be objective. You can’t not interpret. We create the archaeological record through our own intervention, and we interpret information through an iterative process of question and answer as any academic archaeologist would do. What we produce is research, interpretation, an advance in knowledge and benefit for the public. We have to do this to provide value for our clients and to justify our existence to society. This is Good Archaeology.

But do all professionals observe the professional ethics that bind Good Archaeology? Is all archaeology good research? Does everyone know what Good Archaeology is? There is Bad Archaeology – and that happens in the academic and the commercial worlds.

1) How far is it true that commercial archaeology is Bad Archaeology?

2) What is Bad Archaeology, and who is responsible for it?

3) How do we, as professionals, ensure scholarship and intellectual rigour in everything we do?

PAPERS

Introduction

Andrea Bradley (Institute for Archaeologists

Andrea.Bradley@archaeologists.net)

Only connect

Richard Bradley (University of Reading, r.j.bradley@reading.ac.uk)

The session abstract suggests a debate between academics and field archaeologists. I prefer to think in terms of a dialogue and believe that it is already taking place. To be sure, there are fault lines in contemporary archaeologist. I shall suggest what some of them are and what think of Bad Archaeology. The division between good and bad is quite different from the distinction between professional field archaeologists and academic researchers. Both can share the same bad habits, and both can have the same merits. The truth is that too few academics have first hand experience of the commercial sector or its output. They might be favourably surprised by what they find there.

You Only Dig Once: the Bad Academic vs. the Good CRM?

Dianne Scullin (Columbia University, dms2193@columbia.edu)

You only get to excavate a site once. While this fact remains foremost in the minds of CRM archaeologists because of impending destruction, many academics take this for granted and continue to rape and destroy sites for the purpose of uncovering data to support their theories and increase their political power, meanwhile ignoring the actual archaeological record. In theory, CRM appears to possess less integrity than academic archaeology. They have less time, less resources and many times less funding. Academic archaeology possesses the luxury of time. It has the ability to slow down when the record becomes complicated, to pause at difficult excavation junctions, to proceed carefully, and to apply for more funding when needed. Possessing experience as both a commercial archaeologist in the UK and as an academic archaeologist in Peru, I intend to break open these stereotypes and illustrate that the differences in techniques and attitudes are never so black and white. Both sides employ practitioners who are not objective and who bring their interpretive biases with them, both set goals and possess political agendas. The difference between Good and Bad Archaeology derives from the data produced. Good Archaeology produces data of a quality that can potentially be reviewed and re-interpreted at a later date. Bad Archaeology excavates a site and leaves no viable record behind. CRM potentially produces more high quality data than research excavations, because commercial archaeologists attempt to record as much as they can, not simply picking and choosing data based on interest or dissertation topic.

Good, bad and ugly zooarchaeology; but from whose point of view?

James Morris (Museum of London Archaeology, jmorris@animalbones.org)

This paper will explore the session’s themes from the specialist point of view, in particular zooarchaeology. It could be argued that material and environmental specialists more than any other sub-discipline of archaeology branch the commercial/academic divide. Many university based specialists contribute to commercial activity and conversely many commercial based specialists actively publish their results and take part in academic research projects.

Using a survey of commercially active zooarchaeologists in the United kingdom, as well as examples from the commercial and academic worlds the concepts of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ archaeology will be explored from the specialists view point. It will be argued that the majority of archaeology is neither good nor bad, but is rather a shade of grey. How ‘good’ archaeology is depends upon the consumer which goes deeper than an academic/commercial divide. Good archaeology is a different concept for each stake-holder such as the developer, commercial archaeologists, material specialist, thematic specialist, academic and the public. Good archaeology for the specialist may be bad or ugly archaeology for the non-specialist and vice versa. The paper will conclude with a number of suggestions as to how we deal with such a diverse range of view points.

Commercial and Academic Collaboration: A Theoretical and Realistic example of Good Archaeology

Nick Garland (Archaeology South East, n.garland@ucl.ac.uk)

Richard Bradley’s article ‘Bridging the Two Cultures’ (2006) examined the division between academic and commercial archaeologists in Britain. His article explored the conflicting problems of these groups and how their division has restricted the flow of information and the development of both ‘cultures’. This is Bad Archaeology. Commercial and academic collaboration is the key to ensuring our work meets the standards of ‘Good Archaeology’. Furthermore, full integration of the two ‘cultures’ would benefit the standards of Archaeology in Britain. As Bradley suggests, the weakness of commercial archaeology lies in its failure to acknowledge that all practical work requires a theoretical viewpoint. Academic guidance within commercial projects would address this flaw and help ‘bridge’ the divide between the two fields.

This work has begun and many tangible examples within University run commercial units illustrate how the standards of archaeological practise have improved within both fields.

Concepts of Value in a Commercial World

Kate Geary (Institute for Archaeologists, Kate.geary@archaeologists.net)

Archaeologists in the ‘commercial’ sector consistently undervalue the work that they do, literally in terms of budget and more generally in terms of the contribution their work makes to advancing society’s understanding of life in the past. As a sector, we also undervalue the people who do that work: we don’t value their skills, we don’t pay them enough and we don’t invest in their professional development. This is because our clients, the developers, don’t value archaeology, right? They’re paying for a product they don’t want and, despite the 19 years that have passed since the introduction of developer funding for archaeology, don’t really understand that they need. Or is it the other way round? In this paper, I would like to explore how the concepts of value we as archaeologists ascribe to different sorts of archaeological work affect how we feel about our professional identity, how we regard and remunerate our staff and, ultimately, how we sell our product to the wider world.

Rethinking development-led archaeology

Roger Thomas (English Heritage, RogerM.Thomas@english-heritage.org.uk)

The current policy for development-led archaeology in England (PPG 16) places the emphasis on ‘recording’ (‘preservation by record’). This is reflected in professional approaches and practice. A different view, now enshrined in the draft PPS 15, would see the purpose of development-led archaeology as being the production of a public benefit (in the form of increased understanding), rather than simply the accumulation of an ever-increasing number quantity of site-specific data. This can be seen as a form of ‘offsetting’ – a public benefit of one kind (increased understanding) to offset damage of another kind (the loss of in situ archaeological potential).

But what would be the implications of such a view for professional practice? Would it require a more critical approach to what we do, and why we do it? Would it place a premium on academic insight and intellectual rigour and elegance in research design? Would it require more investment of time, effort and thought ‘up front’: more consideration of the wider context and relevance of the research designs for particular projects? Would it lead to a form of development-led archaeology which was ultimately more satisfying in both intellectual and employment terms?

This paper will explore some of the issues which arise from rethinking the nature of development-led archaeology.

Discussant

Peter Hinton (Institute for Archaeologists, Peter.Hinton@archaeologists.net)

TOP

__________________________________________

A Weather Eye on the Past: Weather, Climate and Landscape Archaeology

Organised by: Bob Johnston (University of Sheffield, r.johnston@sheffield.ac.uk); Toby Pillatt (University of Sheffield, t.pillatt@sheffield.ac.uk); Simon Jusseret (Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium; Simon.Jusseret@uclouvain.be)

SESSION ABSTRACT

The contributors to this session will discuss the place of weather and climate in landscape archaeology. The overall aim is to address the disconnection of climate and weather from accounts of cultural landscapes and societal change. This disconnectedness resolves into two extreme positions: either climate change and extreme weather events are treated as powerful, determining forces affecting the course of human history; or they are disregarded through a vigorous critique of the role of external agencies in social change.

We wish to debate the value of these positions and to consider abstract and applied theories that re-place climate and weather into the inhabited landscape and acknowledge their roles as material conditions in social life. Is it possible to define mechanisms for human-environment interaction which rely less on the assumption that the coincidence of climate change with social change denotes a causal link between the two? How do we accommodate the fleetingness of individual weather events and human lives with the longer and often imprecise chronologies presented by both archaeology and climate science? Can various forms of modelling (both climatological and societal) offer ways forward, or are they too programmatic to account for the variability of human agency?

PAPERS

Anywhere the wind is blowing: Theories of Climate Change and the Bronze to Iron Age transition in the Ukrainian Steppe (1200-700 BC)

Nicholas Efremov-Kendall (Washington University in St Louis,

nefremov@artsci.wustl.edu)

Explanations of cultural change in Eurasia have generally relied upon climatic change as a driving factor in social evolution. The end of the Bronze Age in Eastern Europe is associated with large-scale changes in socio-political complexity, production economy, and material culture. Two competing theories explaining these changes argue that the changes during this transition were caused by opposing climatic scenarios; this underscores the tautological problem of explaining cultural changes as a direct result of climatic factors. I argue that neither lock-step climatic determinism, nor the complete dismissal of climatic factors is satisfactory to account for the social changes observed during this period. Thus, instead I suggest a more nuanced approach informed by the archaeology of landscape using archaeological data from the Ukrainian steppe in an attempt to better explain the social, economic, and material changes observed during this transition. Climatic changes can have particularly dramatic effects in mosaicked ecological zones such as the steppe affecting the locally available resource base. However, climatic changes affect both the potential resources and stressors available to human populations. Responses to climatic changes must therefore be determined by both the perception of those changes, as well as the cultural/economic ability to respond to these changes.

Belderrig: extreme weather, climate and history

Graeme Warren, Stephen Davis and Naomi Holmes (UCD, graeme.warren@ucd.ie)

This paper arises from a project bringing together palaeoclimatologists and archaeologists in order to understand how climate change is integrated with the history of early agriculture in the Céide Fields region of NW Ireland, in particular in Belderrig, Co. Mayo – location of the wettest day in Ireland in 2008. This requires the construction of robust local climate models and a nuanced consideration of how climate change may have impacted on particular historical societies. In brief, and following Hulme’s recent discussions, climate change as we understand it was not experienced by any individuals in the past: but changing patterns of weather were. The distinction between weather and climate is often elided in discussion, where either or both are made to stand as causal mechanisms for significant changes in human history, including the adoption of agriculture in NW Europe, or the collapse of Neolithic agriculture in NW Ireland. Alongside this abstraction, models often combine information gathered across large areas. We argue here that replacing climate and large regions with weather and local landscapes is a useful way forward.

Societies facing changes in climate, land use and river behaviour in the province of Narbonese Gaul, Southern France: Changing concepts, changing science

Jean-Paul Bravard (University of Leon, UMR 5600, IUF,

jean-paul.bravard@orange.fr ) and Jean-François Berger (UMR 6130, Cepam-UNSA, Valbonne)

Research carried out by French geographers during the early post-colonial era (1960s and 70s) transferred modern understandings of soil erosion to studies of past. Following this, the rise of environmental studies which stressed the influence of climate in palaeoenvironmental studies led to mixed conceptions concerning the role of humans in the environment. These ideas had influence in the text books and teaching of geography in French universities. However, in France during the 1980s and early 90s, environmental studies were not restricted to just one discipline. This diversity of study led to an increasingly complex understanding of social and environmental crises, which were considered primarily as a function of hydro-climate control.

During the last 25 years, a number of geoarchaeological and palaeoenvironmental studies have been performed in the Rhône valley and adjacent areas, which are part of a wide region of south-eastern France known by the Romans as the province of Narbonese Gaul. We will present the results of some recent studies in the area, demonstrating how interdisciplinary collaboration can produce interpretations which jointly consider the influences of both natural and cultural processes in the landscape.

The Little Ice Age, settlement and land use change in upland Britain: towards a methodology?

Ian Whyte (Lancaster University, i.whyte@lancaster.ac.uk)

The paper will briefly review the scale and nature of post-medieval climatic changes in upland Britain before considering the complex nature of their impacts on upland farming and settlement. Problems of identifying cause and effect linkages will be discussed together with the problems of linking these to the responses of upland farmers and landowners. A model of the potential impacts of the Little Ice Age on upland livestock farming will then be outlined.

"Of Molluscs and Men": studying change and adaptation through time

Isabel Rivera-Collazo (UCL, i.rivera-collazo@ucl.ac.uk)

Climate change is one of the most relevant issues worldwide due to the threats it poses to modern way of life, particularly in coastal areas. However, this is not the first time that humans have responded to changes in climate, landscapes and environments. Change is part of all adaptive cycles. In order to understand the mechanisms and strategies for cultural persistence within changing conditions, it is necessary to comprehend the natural and social environments within which these developed and how change has also occurred within them. Using a palaeoeoclogical approach, this presentation will use as example case studies from the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico, where modern landscapes differ from those inhabited during the Mid-Late Holocene Caribbean; and will discuss how these changes affect the modern interpretation of past human socioeconomic strategies. A deep-time perspective of human-environment interaction facilitates better understanding of the scope of human strategies leading to either resilient or fragile socioeconomic systems when facing change and crises.

“Marginal” meteorology: the identification of long and short-term responses to climate and weather during the late third and second millennium in the Mediterranean Alpine zone

Kevin Walsh (University of York, kjw7@york.ac.uk), Florence Mocci (Centre Camille Jullian , CNRS) and Suzi Richer (University of York)

For many decades, the roles of climate, and by implication, weather have been an important element in the development of interpretative models for many archaeologists. Today, whilst there is much variation in the level of explanatory importance attached to climate as a driver of cultural change, such discourses are still apparent. Traditionally, climate change has been employed as an explanation for the waxing and waning of human settlement and activity across the Alps during the Holocene. There is no doubt that the climatic and meteorological characteristics of high altitude environments do affect human engagements with these areas. However, we must develop discourses that clearly differentiate between the influences of long-term climatic processes, and the shorter-term (possible) weather events that constitute climate. The recently completed research in the Parc National des Ecrins (Southern French Alps) will be presented within a framework that assesses long-term responses to climate, as well as shorter-term reactions to weather. It will be argued that periods of climatic warming during the Bronze Age and Roman period may actually have seen an increases in meteorological instability and a concomitant increase in risk, and thus contributed to very different social constructions of alpine landscapes during these two periods.

Climate, Soils and Early Agricultural Dispersal: Modelling the Neolithic Advance in South-Eastern Europe

Pavel M. Dolukhanov (Newcastle University, pavel.dolukhanov@ncl.ac.uk) and Anvar M.Shukurov (Newcastle University, anvar.shukurov@ncl.ac.uk)

There is no evidence suggestive of any impact of catastrophic environmental events (either real or putative) on the spread of early Neolithic. Yet, long-term climate variations directly affected the agricultural productivity of potentially arable areas and thus had a considerable impact on the sustainability and dynamics of early farming economies. The ‘8200 BP cool and dry event’ apparently provoked the outflow of early Neolithic communities into south-eastern Europe. The modelling of early agriculture in Ukraine (Shukurov et al., in preparation), demonstrate the direct relationship between rainfall, duration of cultivation and crop yield. The estimation of carrying capacity of early agriculture strongly depends on the subsistence strategy and the land use. Based on the nutritional requirements and agricultural productivity, we arrived at the estimate of ca. 2-5 pp per sq km for early farming populations. The life-time of settlement is estimated as 60–100 years, after which time the decline in soil fertility necessitated either technological improvements or relocation.

Materialising seasonality

Lesley Head (University of Wollongong, Australia, lhead@uow.edu.au)

The persistent legacy of early twentieth century environmental determinism has made those interested in social archaeology overly wary of drawing climate into explanations for social change and process. The challenges for a more nuanced landscape archaeology are very similar to those involved in contemporary climate change debates, which some have argued are now taking shape as a new environmental determinism. A key problem in both spheres is constructing climate, and climate change, as monolithic entities. In this paper I explore these issues by re-engaging with the concept of seasonality and its expression in the archaeology of hunter-gatherers in north-western Australia. The lens of seasonality allows connections to be traced at diverse scales; from sweaty bodies to global circulation patterns, and from the late Holocene to the IPCC.

Discussant

Julian Thomas (University of Manchester, julian.thomas@manchester.ac.uk)

TOP

__________________________________________

Caring for the Dead: Changing Attitudes Towards Curation

Organised by: Myra Giesen, Liz Bell and Tori Park (Newcastle University, myra.giesen@ncl.ac.uk, elizabeth.bell@newcastle.ac.uk, v.m.park@newcastle.ac.uk)

SESSION ABSTRACT

Archaeologists, museum practitioners, government agencies, claimants, and the public often disagree over the subject of human remains. Questions of how to care, store, display, and interpret human remains as well as issues of ownership places the subject into complex political and cultural arenas. This session proposes to shift the discussion away from the impossible task of trying to satisfy these often contradictory positions and to focus on the practical requirements of curating human remains in both museums and learning/research laboratories. This is particularly relevant as lack of collection content and accusations that skeletons continue to 'linger unstudied' in collections have been used to justify reburial.
The issues to be discussed will include ethics, curation standards, policies, access, and the needs of those interested in using human remains for education and research purposes. Papers in this session will aim to identify best practise for both short- and long-term care of human remains and explore ways to improve overall curation, ultimately improving our understanding of existing collections and building future research capacity.

PAPERS

Introduction

Myra Giesen (Newcastle University, myra.giesen@ncl.ac.uk) and Tori Park (Newcastle University, v.m.park@newcastle.ac.uk)

Dead and Forgotten?: Some observation on curation of human remains in England

Myra Giesen (Newcastle University, myra.giesen@ncl.ac.uk).

The study of human remains can provide major insights into lifestyle, health, trauma, migration patterns, demography, and many other important heritage questions. However, answering such questions often depend upon a combination of excavation records, collection histories, and associated funerary objects as well as observations of and from the human remains themselves. The availability of such evidence is largely dependent upon accurate and accessible collection records, and up-to-date curation documents. In this paper, I will briefly summarise legislation, policy, and guidance that pertain to the curation of human remains. Then I will review how human remains find their way into collections; how practices can influence our understanding of the remains themselves; how repatriation and reburial influence documentation prioritisation; and how and what information about human remains collections are typically made available. A case study from North East England will be used to exemplify difficulties in bringing together even basic details needed for human remains research (e.g., minimum number of individuals, provenience, and time period). With this background, I will suggest that those responsible for curating human remains potentially can do more to make their collections more accessible, and thereby increase their preservation and research value.

Care and custodianship of human remains: legal and ethical obligations

Charlotte Woodhead (University of Derby, C.Woodhead@derby.ac.uk)

The exact nature of the legal entitlement to human remains enjoyed by museums remains contentious. Questions arise as to whether museums have an unfettered right to make decisions regarding the care of human remains or the transfer of them from their collections. This paper will focus on the legal and ethical obligations owed by museum professionals in respect of human remains. These obligations derive from codes of ethics, Department for Culture, Media and Sport guidance, institutional policies and on occasions the Human Tissue Act 2004. This paper will analyse how far the views of other interested parties are relevant to the curatorial decisions relating to human remains. These include the views of those interested in them for the purpose of education and research as well as individuals who claim an entitlement to be consulted about the future treatment of the remains or who wish to rebury them. Consideration will be given to the legal standing of individuals who wish to rebury remains and their entitlement to bring claims for the transfer of remains to them. Furthermore, the question as to whether scientists have a right of access to remains for research purposes will also be analysed.

Giving up the Dead: Museums, Ethics and Human Remains in England

Liz Bell (Newcastle University, elizabeth.bell@newcastle.ac.uk)

Human remains have now been at the centre of a worldwide ethical debate for over two decades. In England, these concerns have more recently resulted in the passage of legislation and guidance. In 2004, the Human Tissue Act 2004 came into effect, giving nine national museums the power to de-accession human remains from their collections. Under the same law, museums are now also obliged to acquire a licence to store and display human remains under 100 years old. In October 2005, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport published The Guidance for the Care of Human Remains in Museums. Although the Guidance was primarily developed to address concerns relating to repatriation, it deals much more generally with the curation of human remains; a best practice document designed to be developed and adapted by museums in order to suit their own individual needs. This paper will discuss the results of PhD research aimed at evaluating the impact and effectiveness of the Human Tissue Act 2004 and the Guidance for the Care of Human Remains in Museums upon English museums and their collections.

Museum of London: an overview of policies and practice

Rebecca Redfern (Museum of London, rredfern@museumoflondon.org.uk) and Jelena Bekvalac (Museum of London, jbekvalac@museumoflondon.org.uk )

The Museum of London holds the remains of over 17,000 individuals excavated from the City and Greater London area, dating from the Neolithic period to the Victorian era. In 2003, the Centre for Human Bioarchaeology was established, and working in partnership with the London Archaeological Archive and Resource Centre (LAARC) curates and cares for the skeletal remains and site archives. The Museum of London is unique in that it freely provides the majority of its osteological data online, made possible by the Wellcome Osteology Research Database. In this paper, we will present an overview of the Museum of London policies and practices focusing on: acquisition and reburial of human remains, the use of skeletal remains for gallery display and learning, collection care, access, and sampling, and recording standards.

Archaeological human remains and laboratories: attaining acceptable standards for curating skeletal remains for teaching and research

Charlotte Roberts (Durham University, c.a.roberts@durham.ac.uk)

The study of archaeological human remains in the UK has increased immeasurably over the last 25 years, especially with the advent of masters courses in the 1990s, now eight, and an increase in PhD students. Masters and PhD training instils into students the necessary skills and knowledge to analyse and interpret observations made using various analytical techniques; students are expected to regard studying human remains as a privilege and not a right, and an activity that should pay due respect to those remains. It is with this increased activity, and other factors in the UK, that university, contract archaeology and museum laboratories are developing the most appropriate ways to curate and utilise skeletal remains under their care. This paper will provide an overview of current laboratory protocols at Durham University’s Fenwick Human Osteology Laboratory, but will also include the author’s experiences of setting up and managing laboratories at both Durham and Bradford Universities. High curation standards and relevant policies must be in place so that skeletal remains in laboratories are utilised in the right way for teaching and research. Both teaching and research using this special resource can considerably benefit society in its understanding of the history of their past.

Curation of Human Remains at Barton-upon-Humber Church

Simon Mays (English Heritage, Simon.Mays@english-heritage.org.uk)

In 2005, a new policy regarding archiving of archaeological human remains from Christian burial grounds was agreed by English Heritage and the Church of England. This policy argues that, where appropriate, human remains from Christian burial sites should be archived in redundant or partially redundant churches. This satisfies both the desire of the Church that remains rest in consecrated ground, and the needs of researchers for continued access to important collections. As a result of this policy initiative, English Heritage has set up a storage facility for the 2800 human burials excavated from Barton-upon-Humber churchyard, dating from the 10th-19th century AD, at the redundant church of St Peters, Barton-upon-Humber. Creation of church archives of human remains, such as the facility at Barton, raises its own challenges for the implementation of agreed curatorial standards (DCMS & English Heritage/Church of England), and for facilitating access to the skeletal remains by researchers and others with a legitimate interest in them. In this paper, I will discuss these matters for the case of Barton-upon-Humber.

'No room at the inn' ... contract archaeology and the storage of human remains

Jackie McKinley (Wessex Archaeology,

j.McKinley@wessexarch.co.uk)

Archaeological contractors are not museums, permanent or long-term storage is not their role, in theory they merely function as the holding-ground between the source and the final destination of excavated archaeological materials, generally within the main museum of the county from which those materials originated. Increasingly, however, contactors are left holding human bone (and other materials) for years after analysis has been completed and the results published. Excavators generally have to get an agreement in principle from a museum to accept a collection well in advance of deposition; but here lies at least part of the problem. Space may well be the final frontier, but it's in short supply within many museums. Deposition may be accepted in principle but human remains are bulky and in many cases there really is no longer any room at the inn. It's a dilemma the archaeological world has to tackle and soon, particularly if we are to peruse the excavation and analysis of post-medieval cemeteries where the numbers recovered run into their thousands rather than the tens or hundreds of the prehistoric-Saxon cemeteries until relatively recently viewed as the archaeological arena.

Discussants

Andrew Chamberlain (University of Sheffield,

A.Chamberlain@sheffield.ac.uk); Margaret Clegg (Natural History Museum, m.clegg@nhm.ac.uk); Jackie McKinley

(Wessex Archaeology, j.McKinley@wessexarch.co.uk) and

Hedley Swain (Museums Libraries and Archives, hedley.swain@mla.gov.uk)

TOP

__________________________________________

Categories and categorisation

Organised by: Andrea Dolfini and Chris Fowler (University of Newcastle, andrea.dolfini@ncl.ac.uk; c.j.fowler@ncl.ac.uk)

SESSION ABSTRACT

Human beings divide entities such as artefacts, materials, places, and persons into bounded categorise of knowledge in order to make them intelligible, and archaeologists can discuss and interpret them (e.g. Miller’s classic 1985 ethno-archaeological study Artefacts as Categories, CUP). Studies may operate across certain categories (human/object) in order to appreciate other categories (e.g. humans and objects that share similar biographies). Archaeological categories may be specific, discriminating between similar objects to produce refined typologies (e.g. types of Beakers), or general, enabling cross-cultural comparisons (e.g. axe, house, tomb).

This session aims to stimulate debate on: the bases and principles of human categorization; ‘Strong’, ‘weak’ and ‘fuzzy’ categories; How categories change, and how this relates to changes in the objects, persons, etc, that those categories describe (e.g. through the introduction of new materials, technologies, forms, practices, processes, species); The relationship between present categories and past ones and between category and context; Multiple and overlapping categories; comparisons across categories and categorisation other than by natural types, e.g. based on: comparative biographies of people, things and buildings; skeuomorphism and other material metaphors; or similar properties of different materials; How categories of things, people, etc, relate to modes of practice or ways of being in the world. How identifying such categories helps or hinders the study of activities, strategies or processes; and, finally, the extent to which categories can be used as heuristic tools without creating reified constructs.

PAPERS

Taxonomy or typology? Theorising classifications of plants and animals in archaeology.

David Orton (State University New York SUNY, dorton@binghamton.edu)

Plant and animal remains are amongst the most abundant archaeological finds, and their analysis inevitably begins with a process of identification and classification. At first glance this process is much more straightforward than that for artefacts, since Linnaean taxonomy provides a more-or-less universal classificatory system. While it may or may not be possible to identify a bone fragment or seed to species, and while one may or may not do so correctly, we can at least be sure that the categories themselves are natural types rather than products of subjective, theory-laden typology.

Or can we? This paper raises several causes for doubt. Firstly, the species concept itself applies a static classificatory framework to a fundamentally dynamic system. This can be problematic in deep prehistory, but particular ambiguities arise with domestication. Secondly, I demonstrate that while zooarchaeological and archaeobotanical classification is superficially Linnaean, the interpretive categories (e.g. wild:domestic:commensal) that actually structure analyses are effectively folk-taxonomical. The subjective, somewhat fluid nature of these classifications should, I argue, be embraced, with categories explicitly formulated and justified in relation to cultural context and research questions, as for other forms of archaeological typology. Finally, I touch on the classification of humans vis-à-vis non-human species.

The Misidentification of Music: a Moche Case

Dianne Scullin (Columbia University, dms2193@columbia.edu)

The interpretive practice of archaeology involves making descriptive choices in the field as to how to categorize artifacts for processing and curation. Unfortunately, a fairly uninformed descriptive field classification can have long-lasting effects on the treatment and further research conducted upon archaeological materials.

Many classifications continue to derive from the visual presentation of an object, not actual use. This visual bias occurs across archaeology, despite the fact that many modern objects do not ‘look’ like their intended use and cannot be classified by visual criteria alone. A person interacts very differently with a visual object as opposed to a tonal or textured one. The case study I wish to present is that of the whistling bottles from the Moche culture of the north coast of Peru. These artifacts consist of double-chambered ceramic containers connected by a double spout. Recent re-analysis has uncovered that many of these double chamber ceramics contain an internal whistle, which when one blows into the spout, produces a loud tone. Despite this now obvious use as a sound producer, these artifacts have yet to be formally recognized and classified as such. Many examples continue to languish in collections, when such a reclassification would change the interpretation of their context and use.