Inside is out

In order to reclaim archaeology, we would do well to begin by asking what it is we want to repossess. According to González-Ruibal (2011: 165), ‘Excavation is … still the primary trope of archaeology…. Only we archaeologists … have developed a whole methodology to see what is beneath the surface.’ As a recovering prehistorian, I can go along with the second part of this more than the first. To me, seeing beneath the surface includes all aspects of material culture; not just digging holes, but investigating all kinds of things, matter, stuff. Ingold (2007: 1) argues that ‘the ever-growing literature in anthropology and archaeology that deals explicitly with the subjects of materiality and material culture seems to have hardly anything to say about materials.’ I would take issue with this. For my own part, my involvement with materials predated the vaguest thought of ever becoming an archaeologist; from my mid teens to early twenties I worked as an engineer (and a musician). ¹ In this chapter I take the sense of embodied practice I learned then (and am still learning) as the starting point for an exploration of what it means to get at the inside of things, to encounter the substance that lies beneath the surface – and at the same time to consider the broader implications of this encounter.