ABSTRACT
It is very easy to forget why a site report is structured like it is – we read it without really questioning the partition and order of information, indeed we even expect it to look a certain way. A ceramicist may turn to the back and flick through, looking for figures and descriptions of pottery, knowing that such reports usually occur near the end and as distinct sections of text within the report. The faunal remains person, the lithics specialist, and so on, may do the same. Someone interested in the site phasing may look for phase plans, or for a quick summary of the site interpretation, and will go to the final discussion. It is very predictable, very repetitive and – boring? Well, perhaps, but this is not really my point. The site report as it usually appears today presents a whole classification of archaeological knowledge, one which is not necessarily ‘natural’, ‘scientific’ or the best, but one which has developed out of specific historical and theoretical circumstances. The very partitioning and order of information presented in a site report is as implicated in the history and conceptualisation of the discipline as the fieldwork which precedes it.
