The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

• 6 • Ian Ralston and John Hunter
The latter was a legacy of, amongst others, Mortimer Wheeler, and of Gerhard Bersu. Bersu’s
excavations, most celebratedly at Little Woodbury, Wiltshire (discussed in Chapter 7), allowed the
import of the best of contemporary continental practice, including techniques appropriate to the
recovery of the stances of former earthfast timber structures, as well as furnishing new
interpretations. Wheeler’s campaigns at Maiden Castle, Dorset, published mid-way through the
Second World War (1943), were a demonstration of other technical innovations, and provided
the archaeological support for Wheeler’s vision of British Iron Age developments, as well as
showing the potential for public involvement in what was then a distinctly minority interest. In
the 1950s, larger-scale open-area excavations, as at Yeavering, Northumberland (Hope-Taylor
1977), became feasible and, particularly in subsequent decades, were much more numerous in the
countryside. Some sites were excavated at a scale that made them ‘laboratories’ for their own
period of use, such as West Heslerton or Wharram Percy in North Yorkshire (see Chapters 10
and 14 respectively); others, like Jarlshof in Shetland (Hamilton 1956), became used as a regional
control for predicting structural change in multiperiod settlements. Much of the best field
archaeology became avowedly multidisciplinary, as the potential contribution of physical and
biological scientists was increasingly recognized; Grahame Clark’s promptly published project at
Star Carr, Yorkshire, considered in Chapter 3, was particularly influential in this regard.
Much of the pattern of cultural developments recognized, described and refined during this
period, has survived into later usage. What has since changed, in some instances substantially, are
the modes of explanation favoured to account for changes seen in the archaeological record. The
use of invasion theory found much favour, particularly in periods involving recorded Germanic
or Scandinavian movement. Although still important for some horizons and periods, its use as
the primary means to account for change came under sustained, and often successful, attack
(Clark 1966).
From the late 1960s, a change in emphasis marked the way in which the archaeological record
was interpreted by a number of influential figures in the discipline. Radiocarbon dating had
already pointed towards errors in the chronology of British prehistory, and the writing of culture
history was no longer the primary focus. Archaeology, in some views at least, ‘lost its innocence’
(Clarke 1973) during this period, but as with the other realignments noted here, the new agenda
and approaches were far from universally accepted. Important manifestos, like David L.Clarke’s
Analytical Archaeology (1968), drew on American practice more closely to link archaeological
interpretation to dominant perspectives within cultural anthropology, borrowing its vocabulary
in the process. Primary aims now included the study of archaeologically recognizable changes in
cultural systems, often interpreted from changing spatial patterns in the data, and attention was
paid to those sub-systems considered most detectable from archaeological evidence. Particular
targets were subsistence economics and the recognition of social change; as a result, the recovery
and analyses of appropriate datasets immediately became of high priority. A distinctly positivist
attitude to reading the archaeological record is characteristic of some writing, often called the
‘New Archaeology’, during this period.
The period since 1980 has seen major developments in the consideration of fresh ways of
approaching the archaeological record, and of conveying its meanings. In contradistinction to
the New Archaeology of the 1960s and 1970s, frequently termed ‘processual’, subsequent
archaeological theorizing can be labelled ‘post-processual’—a term that obscures a burgeoning
range of post-modern theoretical stances and agendas. Included amongst external strands that
have contributed are social theory, ethnoarchaeological studies, certain kinds of historical practice
(particularly that concerned with long-term evolutionary rhythms and often associated with the
Annales school in France), feminism and gender studies, and attempts to analyse material culture
recovered archaeologically as encoded messages, akin to literary texts (e.g. Hodder 1986; Shanks