TRAC 2006 SESSION
Field archaeologists don't think...
Dr. Pete Wilson (English Heritage) pete.wilson@english-heritage.org.uk
That appalling statement was made to a group of undergraduates in the early 1980s.
It is patently untrue, but does highlight an issue that most people working in British
archaeology would recognise - the apparent gulf between new thinking and the realities
of the situations in which most people work. The basic issues to be addressed are how
to use new (and newish) intellectual approaches and theoretical constructs to inform
and underpin the mass of research that is undertaken outside an RAE-driven framework,
and conversely how to best capture, integrate and utilise the 'research benefit' of
that work. Theoretical approaches may seem irrelevant to the hard-pressed development
control archaeologist dealing with planning applications in a restricted time frame.
But they should not be. Setting a brief can be regarded as mechanistic, simply a matter
of cutting and pasting the right conditions into it, but what underpins the priorities
that the brief identifies? Regional Research Frameworks, Agendas and Strategies inform,
but again what informs them? Similarly, those charged with presenting the Roman period
to the wider public rely on the research that we all undertake, but what informs the
decisions that dictate what appears in displays and by way of interpretation?
Paper titles
Dr. Dominic Perring (Field Archaeology Unit, UCL)
"Did something funny happen on the way to the forum? Describing urban markets from archaeological data"
Dr. Andrew Gardner (UCL) and Francesco Trifilo (Birkbeck)
"Thinking in Contexts "
Dr. Jake Weekes (University of Kent)
"Detection, protection and exploration of Romano-British cemeteries through competitive tendering"
Dr. Steven Willis (University of Kent)
"Out of Town: new perspectives on settlement in the Roman period and the implications for field archaeology"
Phil Bethell (National Trust)
"Towards a Virtuous Circle"
Prof. Martin Millett (University of Cambridge)
Discussant
Abstracts
"Did something funny happen on the way to the forum? Describing urban markets from archaeological data"
Dr. Dominic Perring (Field Archaeology Unit, UCL)
This paper explores some of the ways in which the results of commercially funded fieldwork can be used to describe the
impact of urban foundations on the settlement landscapes of Roman Britain.
"Thinking in Contexts"
Dr. Andrew Gardner (UCL) and Francesco Trifilo (Birkbeck)
In this paper, we will try to circumvent the well-rehearsed distinction between theory and practice in archaeology through
two arguments. As a starting point, we will suggest that the terms deployed in making this distinction are unhelpfully
laden with inappropriate ideological baggage and that, insofar as a distinction between various modes of working exists,
it might better be labelled in terms of 'craft' and 'experimentation'. We will then go on to argue that the oppositional
elements of this distinction could and should be eroded by a greater degree of attention to the basic units of
archaeological recording, where both current commercial
field-craft and university-based experimentation already have a great deal of common ground - though this can certainly be
enhanced. Recent concerns with issues like identity and agency require detailed understandings of artefact and feature
distributions and an appreciation of different (i.e. more or less intentional) mechanisms of site formation. These are
exactly the same problems which, from a methodological standpoint, are part-and-parcel of context recording. The point
of union between these modes of working thus becomes the humble context sheet, a type of artefact which, though already
contested to some degree, deserves more serious attention by all archaeologists. We will also suggest, as a positive step
forward in the breaking down of intra-disciplinary barriers, that the definition of what constitutes a 'professional'
archaeologist be further debated, and that denigration of either 'craft' or 'experimentation' serves nobody within the
discipline.
"Detection, protection and exploration of Romano-British cemeteries through competitive tendering"
Dr. Jake Weekes (University of Kent)
This paper re-evaluates the PPG16 system in terms of locating, excavating, analysing and researching Romano-British funerary
contexts, looking specifically at the level of data protection and interrogation afforded by current legislation, research
strategies and excavation methods. The aim here is to create a forum for discussion, in an attempt to generate more
specialised guidelines within the town and country planning and developer funded context for this very particular type
of archaeology. The changing impact of development on a particular Romano-British cemetery area is traced and assessed,
with a view to putting forward alternative research designs and methodologies for the future.
"Out of Town: new perspectives on settlement in the Roman period and the implications for field archaeology"
Dr. Steven Willis (University of Kent)
Approaching the archaeology of sites and settlements of the Roman era we are accustomed to the terms: military site,
canabae, civitas capital/major town, small town, roadside settlement, villa, rural site, etc. These familiar categories
have a utility and there is a tacit agreement as to what is broadly defined by these terms. Some have looked at 'sites'
in somewhat different terms, as expressed, for instance, by the nature of consumption that took place. However, since
c. 1990 three unfolding developments engender a change in approach to understanding sites and settlements of this period.
Firstly, the altered nature of fieldwork in Britain, which has meant that Roman archaeology has, of course, been found
in many types of places in the modern landscape where we had not looked before, especially in the suburbs of large modern
towns, in and around our current small and market towns and in the countryside. Indeed, the quantity of new evidence
forthcoming upon settlement of the Roman era has been remarkable. Secondly, we have made advances in refining our
understanding of the character of settlement sites, not least in terms of intra-site studies which have fulfilled the
old (processualist) promise of finding differing functional and status areas within settlements (eg. the work of Cool,
Eckardt, Jane Evans and Jeremy Evans). Thirdly, it is now clear that if Roman archaeologists had been inclined to lump
sites into streamlined categories implying regimented similarity our increasing knowledge of their archaeology underscores
instead how different and unique sites actually were. It is now apparent that each town, each roadside settlement, each
villa, etc., was distinctive. Each had its own identity, trajectory and fingerprint (yet so much work still remains to
be done, as, for instance, evaluation of military sites has begun to show).
Nonetheless the old categories (cf. above) still work; that is, they still have a strong analytical validity, at least for
the core areas of such sites. Yet what of the areas a little 'out of town' from which field units are now collecting so
much data? This has brought forward something new and exciting, for it demonstrates that so many sites were much more
expansive than hitherto realized, with suburbs, cemeteries, ceremonial and significant places covering a wide landscape,
perhaps for kilometres (think of the new pictures we have of Carlisle, Chichester, Colchester and Catterick, as well as
Elms Farm and the roadside complexes through East Yorkshire). The picture is suggestive of the low density occupation,
zoning and sheer spread of many Late Iron Age sites such as oppida. These places should not be seen as 'hinterland' but
part of the everyday lived environments of the people of Roman Britain. In other words we need to re-conceive (i) the
extent and materiality of settlements of all types, and (ii) the experience of them by past actors 'in Roman times'.
The phenomenology of such cultural milieux needs to be considered.
This contribution argues therefore that the traditional settlement categories are not dead, but that the outcome of PPG16
demonstrates their refinement is necessary at a number of levels. Often the best placed archaeological personnel for
exploring these refinements have been and will be the archaeologists in the field themselves. Characterising the world
of the Roman era remains a collective project and there are many perspectives that the wide constituency of those working
upon and experiencing its archaeological record can contribute.
"Towards a Virtuous Circle"
Phil Bethell (National Trust)
Abstract to be finalised.
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Last updated 3rd February 2006 R.M.B.