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

• 300 • Timothy Darvill
What unites everyone, however, is a concern for the raw material of archaeology, the stuff of
the discipline that is in, on or under the ground which has come to be understood as the
archaeological resource.
WHAT IS THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESOURCE?
Defining what constitutes the archaeological resource is far from easy, and has both intellectual
and practical dimensions. At a theoretical level, what is of interest to archaeologists largely depends
on the interpretative frameworks within which they work. In Britain, as in other western societies,
archaeology is distanced from the societies that created the things that are studied; as David
Lowenthal suggests, ‘the past is a foreign country’ (1985). Archaeological remains are examined
with detachment and from numerous viewpoints. Thus within the processual perspectives of the
‘New Archaeology’ of the 1960s and 1970s, the archaeological resource was the material against
which theories were tested. In the post-processual archaeologies of the 1980s and 1990s, it is not
so much the individual elements that are important as the totality, the materials and their context
from which broadly based narratives can be constructed.
In practical terms, there are problems and issues too. The core is easy, as things like Palaeolithic
hand-axes, Neolithic long barrows, Roman villas and deserted medieval villages are widely
recognized as being within the archaeologist’s domain. But where does it stop? What about
hedgerows and boundaries that are still in use but which were first built in prehistoric or Saxon
times? Is a historic building or ancient church archaeological? And what about a peat-bog? The
problem is that, in operational terms, much of what is of interest to archaeologists is also of
interest to others. The boundaries of the subject are blurred, and archaeological interests overlap
with history, sociology, landscape geography, anthropology, ethnology, architectural history and
others beside. Peter Fowler once argued that the whole of Britain should be seen as one enormous
archaeological site, and in a sense he was right. Since earliest times, people have lived, worked and
been buried within a space that, in social terms, is infinite because it stretches outwards in all
directions from the focus of an individual’s existence: their home or home territory. While space
is socially infinite it is, however, physically constrained. There is only so much of it and the
distribution of activities within space is uneven and discrete. What the archaeologist normally
finds are hot-spots or nodes where evidence of the activities that took place are rich enough, or
substantial enough, or well-preserved enough to be visible and recognizable. This is the
archaeological resource, but there is no neat embracing definition of it; it is effectively whatever
archaeologists recognize as relevant to their work at any given point in time. In this sense, the
intellectual or theoretical constitution of archaeological work drives and defines its practical
application.
While the exact definition of what the archaeological resource comprises evolves and develops,
a number of common characteristics can be recognized:
• Finite: there is only so much of it, even though we do not know exactly how much.
• Immovable: context and relationships are critical to understanding and appreciating
archaeological material. While individual objects and sometimes whole sites have been moved,
doing so destroys their authenticity, setting and context.
• Non-renewable: archaeological material does not regenerate itself. Once destroyed it has gone
for ever. It could be argued that because the social process continues, more archaeology is
being formed all the time, but this is an extension to the record, not a replacement or
replenishment of it.