12th July 2005, 10:51 AM
I have often wondered about this. I think that perhaps the best archaeology is done when a kind of empathy is reached between the excavator and the individual who created the feature, after all you are both digging the same feature in the same place( hopefully), probably both cold and wet, underpaid, hungover etc. If we accept that our own personalities will introduce bias into our interpretation of a site, the best way to counter this would be to have a broad demographic of society excavating and discussing the interpretation.I remember being shot down in flames when I suggested to an academic that individual personalities in the past were identifiable/ recoverable. The academic in question looked at societies as predictable mechanisms which could be understood in the same way a beehive can be ( drone A has this role which is supported by worker C) I always thought that this left little room for eccentrics or innovation and therefore evidence of this nature would be overlooked because it wouldnt fit into the mechanism. Hence the importance of discussing the site with collegues and the importance of the free text box on a context sheet.