ABSTRACT
An archaeological site is like a text in an unknown language. Like a written text, archaeology is fixed discourse (Ricoeur 1976, 1981). Just as writing fixes the ‘said’ of speaking, so a given site fixes the ‘said’ of doing. The ostensive reference – the situation surrounding the act of discourse – is lost. The actions of certain people have left their traces in the dirt, and these have become documents of human action. The task of the archaeologist is to recover these documents or texts, and then to try to decipher and interpret them. Decipherment is difficult and interpretation may be impossible, but if one is to ‘read’ the history of man’s past, then an attempt must be made: to fail to do so is to leave archaeology with only the sterile remains of unread texts.
