ABSTRACT
This book is less about archaeology the academic subject than it is about aspects of experience which might be termed archaeological. It is a story of what archaeologists and others do and might do, rather than a theory of what archaeology is or should be. I do consider ideas within the discipline about what archaeology is and archaeologists should be doing, summarizing the condition of the discipline, at least in terms of its theory and from my personal viewpoint as a participant in an ongoing debate over the scientific character of archaeology. But I focus more widely on what it means to do archaeological things such as excavating, surveying and collecting the material past, visiting and valuing collections and monuments of the past, asking what it is that might make these attractive to many people. I am also interested in how archaeology is basically about particular experiences of the object world. I emphasize experience because, with others, I try to understand archaeology in materialist terms, that is not so much as a set of ideas or body of knowledge, but as a collection of things people do.
