Themes
A focus of my research has been to try and identify some of the core ideas or tropes that guide developer-funded archaeology, and how these influence interpretation and storytelling.
Another way of thinking about this might be the dominant ways of thinking that inform, and potentially constrain, how archaeological information is integrated and presented.
So these are themes that I've noticed are recurrent in practice or thinking, or that have stood out as significant moments during my fieldwork at MOLA. Often, these themes connect or overlap.
I am using these themes as launchpads for developing speculative alternatives / additions to current practice, which I am calling narrative blueprints.
We can think of a narrative blueprint as a way of creating and presenting stories about the past. A grey literature report is a narrative blueprint that prioritises weights and quantities, separates materials into different specialist reports, and is designed so that it can be used in legal settings if necessary. A monograph is a narrative blueprint that relies heavily on text, pulls together a lot of contextual information, and is often quite expensive to access. A StoryMap would be another kind of blueprint - they aim to bring different types of media together into something more visual and interactive, but are vulnerable to software changes and glitches, and tie events into set configurations.
I am particularly interested in narrative blueprints that might offer new ways for various publics to encounter archaeology in the future, and foster enjoyment, wonder, or different ways of thinking for archaeologists in the present. The blueprints I am currently working on are exploring sound, a workshop design, and exploring micro-narratives.
Example theme: linearity + fragmentation
Lines are embedded in archaeological thought, particularly in the commercial sector, often tangled with ideas about continuity, speed or efficiency.
For example the past is largely understood as a linear process that starts at the beginning. Sense-making seems to rely on linearity - everything is assumed to fit somewhere along the line into a coherent, linear sequence. It is assumed that continuity is possible in theory, even if we don’t have all the pieces of the jigsaw yet. Modern traces or things that disobey this linearity may be recorded as contaminants.
In the case of MOLA and the A428, the model of the Ford production line is thought to offer speed and efficiency to the archaeological process. As in any production line, roles or stages of the process are disconnected or dislocated. In the case of archaeology it means that processes operate at different times and in different places. Specialists are often physically and conceptually siloed, materials are understood in isolation, and each person in the process knows only what they need to know in order to keep the process running smoothly.
An impact of this is that relatively few people feel they have access to the bigger picture of the archaeology – it is functionally restricted, creating fragmented or compartmentalized understandings. This potentially creates a structural barrier to synthetic dialogue across teams, specialisms, and offices. It can also manifest in reporting strategies, which compartmentalise materials, time periods, the activities of humans in the past, and specialisms of archaeologists in the present. A focus on linearity-as-process can therefore, counterintuitively, result in fragmentation rather than cohesion.
[Image: The Ford assembly line, 1913, Wikimedia Commons]