ABSTRACT
Archaeologists have always recognised the malleable nature of their relationship to past material culture. In his magisterial study of the history of archaeology, The Discovery of the Past, Alain Schnapp (1993: 30) draws our attention to the imaginative character of archaeological interpretation. He argues that from its very inception those who discovered and studied past material culture recognised that their interpretations were an exercise in imaginative reconstruction. This recognition has continued throughout the history of the discipline, whether acts of reconstruction were framed as objective and scientific enterprises (e.g. Binford 1983: 45-57; Clarke 1973; Randall-McIver 1933; Watson et al. 1971) or as hermeneutic processes (e.g. Hodder 1992; Shanks and Tilley 1987; Shanks and Hodder 1995; Tilley 1993). Whatever the precise character of the interpretative process, throughout the history of the discipline antiquarians and archaeologists have been remarkably consistent in their characterisation of material evidence: material evidence is conceived as the material trace of past human activity. It is this characterisation of material evidence that this chapter seeks to question. In doing so, I will offer an alternative characterisation of material evidence, by considering the relational characteristics of material evidence, while also briefly examining the ontological status of this evidence.
