22nd June 2006, 12:26 PM
An excellent form of madness if ever I saw one.
I love all this kind of stuff. I agree that a site would be better to excavate than a van though, perhaps a site hut on the last day of a long job. I am reminded of Victor Buchli and Gavin Lucas' excavation of a recently vacated council flat. It is best if your analogous material has as much similarity to your subject matter as possible. What can you compare a van to? boats? cartwheels?
This also has similarities to the practice of incavation carried out by Cornelius Holtdorf and others. Somewhere there's a webpage documenting how CH buried a perfectly good evening meal in the garden and had a think about what that might mean. Angella Piccini might argue that as soon as you put people into the frame, the practice becomes visible as a performance, adding another level of meaning. (We all know archaeologists who are performing, and projects that are a bit of a performance).
If nothing else this kind of work highlights the fact that archaeology is a practice and process of inhabitation: building upon the activities of the people we study. Mind you, anyone who has looked down on a big ditch section at the end of a hard day's work can tell you that. After years of thinking about ditches I still can't say clearly what ditches 'mean', but I think I know what it 'means' to have spent all day cleaning the silt out of one and seen water flow down it again.
It appears that practitioners in this area tend to have flamboyant names. Sadly Mr Belford, I suspect that your efforts are doomed to failure. I shan't even try.
Tom Wilson
I love all this kind of stuff. I agree that a site would be better to excavate than a van though, perhaps a site hut on the last day of a long job. I am reminded of Victor Buchli and Gavin Lucas' excavation of a recently vacated council flat. It is best if your analogous material has as much similarity to your subject matter as possible. What can you compare a van to? boats? cartwheels?
This also has similarities to the practice of incavation carried out by Cornelius Holtdorf and others. Somewhere there's a webpage documenting how CH buried a perfectly good evening meal in the garden and had a think about what that might mean. Angella Piccini might argue that as soon as you put people into the frame, the practice becomes visible as a performance, adding another level of meaning. (We all know archaeologists who are performing, and projects that are a bit of a performance).
If nothing else this kind of work highlights the fact that archaeology is a practice and process of inhabitation: building upon the activities of the people we study. Mind you, anyone who has looked down on a big ditch section at the end of a hard day's work can tell you that. After years of thinking about ditches I still can't say clearly what ditches 'mean', but I think I know what it 'means' to have spent all day cleaning the silt out of one and seen water flow down it again.
It appears that practitioners in this area tend to have flamboyant names. Sadly Mr Belford, I suspect that your efforts are doomed to failure. I shan't even try.
Tom Wilson