Conclusion

The debate over Middle Range Theory has prompted an explicit consideration of the role of methodology in archaeology. By contrast, the influence of modernist epistemology on field archaeology has been more implicit, and as such it demonstrates the pervasiveness of these ideas in contemporary society. Manuals of excavation conventionally treat field methodology as a series of abstract skills that can be applied irrespective of the period or type of site under investigation (Wheeler 1954; Barker 1977). Not only are methods devised in abstraction, but their application in the field is presented as a means of acquiring evidence which is void of any historical meaning. This implies that data collection can be pursued as an end in itself (Tilley 1989a: 276), and that synthesis and interpretation are entirely distinct activities that constitute a later stage in a linear process (Andrews et al. 2000: 525; Lucas 2001: 11). In the British case this view proved to be politically expedient during the 1960s and 1970s, when the pressure of development resulted in an expansion of ‘rescue’ or salvage archaeology (Thomas 1974; Jones 1984). The doctrine of ‘preservation by record’ that emerged at this time held that if an archaeological site was to be destroyed, the information that it contained should be saved by preparing a complete inventory of the features and artefacts present on site. However, in many cases the budgets made available for rescue archaeology only covered the excavation stage, and the excavated materials and descriptive evidence were simply archived in the hope that they would eventually be brought to publication at a later date. The assumption that was made was that so long as a complete record of what was found on site has been compiled, any trained archaeologist will be capable of synthesising and interpreting the results. This is simply because the modern conception of method plays down the imbrication of observation and interpretation, so that the experience of having taken part in the excavation process is neglected. Ian Hodder (1997: 693) has recently argued that interpretation takes place ‘at the trowel’s edge’, and the implication of this is that the way in which we physically engage with the materiality of archaeological evidence has direct consequences for the way in which it reveals itself to us. Archaeological sites and their contents are not simply sets of alienated objects that can be described in a distanced and abstract way. The production of knowledge about the past on an archaeological site is a collective interpretive labour, which involves the ‘working’ of a set of social relationships between people and things.