ABSTRACT
Historical archaeology in Britain has a rather dubious status: a historical archaeologist is not quite a real archaeologist and so as an archaeology book this volume is unusual in several ways. First of all, the contributors have not necessarily written about things which have been dug up. Archaeology is the study of the material consequences of human action in the past and this can include architecture, landscapes and standing monuments as well as artefacts and features recovered through excavation. All of these kinds of evidence are considered in this volume. Second, this book is not about ancient civilizations or mysterious, prehistoric rituals. Instead it is about the comparatively recent past, from the medieval period to the twentieth century. It is about our past, recent and familiar. The perceived familiarity of the recent past has bred, if not contempt, then at least indifference in the British archaeological community. The centuries which are apparently already known to us through books, stories, school lessons and television costume dramas have proved less stimulating to the imaginations of British archaeologists than the mysteries of the deeper past. The British post-medieval period is, after all, principally known to us through the works of historians, and archaeology’s role is often regarded as supplementary or illustrative at best, and at worst entirely irrelevant. But archaeology, as the anthropological study of human material culture in the past, has a potential well beyond that of ‘filling in gaps’ left by documentary sources. It can make sophisticated and nuanced contributions to current debates and discussions in the social sciences; challenge historical orthodoxies and examine the mechanisms by which social relations in the past were produced, maintained and transformed. In addition, historical archaeology has a respected role in making visible the invisible people of the past – the poor, the illiterate and those who were socially, politically or geographically remote from the literate and empowered centres of elite culture. Finally, the very materiality of archaeological evidence has an immediacy and an emotional power which is absent from more literary sources of knowledge about the past. The actual things of the past hold a fascination which goes beyond scholarship: there is a joy in being able to touch and see objects which have been held by women and men who died maybe hundreds of years ago. In the case of historical archaeology the nostalgia allied to this romantic fetishism has great public appeal.
