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Real Job,
I too struggled to think of any practical examples of changes in field practice as influenced by theory.
I also strongly disagreed with his suggestion that field archaeologists aim for neutral recording. I certainly don't. It would be like throwing away the years of experience that my colleagues and I have accrued to even try for a 'neutral' recording.
It brings to mind an argument I once had with some German archs who insisted that recording should be detailed and objective (colour pencils for section drawings!), but with not a jot of interpretation in it. Great for student archs I suppose, but a complete waste of experience otherwise.
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I would argue (not the full half-hour though) that no site is objective. For one thing, it is a subjective decision to define a site in the first place. Then everything you record, or more importantly select not to record, is the result of a theoretical decision. Certainly the concept of stratigraphy altered the theoretical approach to fieldwork, and I suggest that the concept of commercial archaeology has also. As a completely different set of judgements is made, by a different process to that previously, as to whether to excavate, where and how much to excavate.
We owe the dead nothing but the truth.
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Invisible, I agree there are a whole new set of factors influencing the way archaeology is done related to commercial archaeology and that neutrality is impossible, but I don't think Bradley means that - he suggests that our basic techniques should be theory driven. I can only think of two ways in which 'theory' could influence field techniques, depending on what he (and others) mean by theory:
1) Someone come up with a new theory about the use of, say, SFBs in which it becomes vitally important to record the nature of the fills.
Depending on the level of detail they want, either a) its covered by our existing suite of techniques, or b) it isn't possible. As long as we (field archaeologists) know about this change in theory, we can make sure that we record in sufficient detail. I would suggest that such new theories, i.e., ones that can be directly examined on site, are few and far between and that usually we do change our techniques to deal with them (e.g., the careful, three dimensional recording of possible 'structured deposits' in prehistoric pits).
2) It becomes (again/still?) fashionable to discuss the way that features of archaeological sites would have structured individuals' response to these sites in antiquity (or some such).
In this case, the records we produce should be up to the task (plans showing position of features, and dating and phasing of said features) even if such issues are not tackled directly in the report. Short of recording our emotional response to each post hole, I'm not sure what else could be done! These kinds of shift in theory can't cause a change in fieldwork.
If he means the former kind of instance, then I think he is overstating the crisis (I'm not saying there is no problem - the issue of communication between the university and the trowel face is real)and anyway it doesn't call for a radical shift in technique, but if, as I suspect, he means the latter, then I am still in the dark.
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Did anyone work on the framework projects at heathrow? I understand that the methodology was driven by new theoretical concerns and involved 'front-loading' the on site aspect of the project, including on site access to the material as it was processed and interpreted. Be good to hear from someone who experienced this-was it effective and did it differ substantially from conventional practice?
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I am not sure that archaeologists aim for 'neutral recording', nor indeed should they. However the modern system of stratigraphic recording emerged in the 1970s as a response to (ultimately flawed) attempts to develop a 'rational' and 'scientific' approach to archaeology and is part and parcel of all that. It works because it does enable 'raw' data to be isolated to some extent and assessed using different theoretical criteria than those employed on the original project.
The real issue is the subjective experience of the staff filling in the forms - two people excavating the same layer on different days can produce quite different context sheets, resulting in potentially different interpretations of the site.
I am not however sure that commercial archaeology actually makes the decisions about where, what, when to excavate any different. Even Pitt-Rivers had time limits and a funding limit. I agree though that these constraints are now a bit more sharply felt. Arguably commercial archaeology has refined things like the notion of representative sampling.
I too would be interested to hear from anyone who worked on the frameworks project. I have my own views but they are not informed by direct experience of that project, only by previous encounters with those responsible for designing it.
http://ironbridge.blogspot.com
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On the subject of wherther the interaction between the individual archaeologist and the archaeological resource is subjective or objective, can I highly recommend Matt Edgeworth's PhD dissertation 'Acts of Discovery' available online at
http://traumwerk.stanford.edu:3455/MetaMedia/468
