12th February 2007, 06:36 PM
Dave, I think you are absolutely right, and the sooner that someone who knows where his/her trowel is coins a good label the better. Workers of the world unite and all that! I think people are starting to touch on this new paradigm. This is from Bradley's 2006 SAL thingy:
'It follows that field archaeology is a mixed genre which does not lend itself very comfortably to the format of hypothesis testing advocated by the New Archaeologists of the 1970's or the vivid evocations of prehistoric life sought by the avant garde twenty years later. It tries to provide both, but does neither either terribly well. The reason for this weakness is revealing. It is because objectivity is really unattainable and subjectivity is only productive when it is constrained by clearly articulated ideas.'
To this I would add that well collected data allows the 'clearly articulated ideas bit'.
Im starting to feel really positive about the direction of things after reading the Bradley piece, he also says:
'there are indications that people are moving between these different sectors of archaeology. For some time there has been movement out of commercial firms and into universities, but at the moment that may not be such a popular career move. In fact there are signs that it may become a two way traffic, for there can be as much chance of conducting properly funded research within a good contract unit as there is in some archaeology departments. Equally significant are those joint ventures in which academics work together with field archaeology units on projects of common interest. All these break down barriers'
My hope is that it is this that will result in a British paradigm shift. An end to the ivory towers of 90's academics who see themselves as 'law producers' (cf Flannery 1982), and dont know how to collect decent data and ,indeed, dont see it as important.
G
PS Dave, who has called the current state the 'commercial' paradigm.
'It follows that field archaeology is a mixed genre which does not lend itself very comfortably to the format of hypothesis testing advocated by the New Archaeologists of the 1970's or the vivid evocations of prehistoric life sought by the avant garde twenty years later. It tries to provide both, but does neither either terribly well. The reason for this weakness is revealing. It is because objectivity is really unattainable and subjectivity is only productive when it is constrained by clearly articulated ideas.'
To this I would add that well collected data allows the 'clearly articulated ideas bit'.
Im starting to feel really positive about the direction of things after reading the Bradley piece, he also says:
'there are indications that people are moving between these different sectors of archaeology. For some time there has been movement out of commercial firms and into universities, but at the moment that may not be such a popular career move. In fact there are signs that it may become a two way traffic, for there can be as much chance of conducting properly funded research within a good contract unit as there is in some archaeology departments. Equally significant are those joint ventures in which academics work together with field archaeology units on projects of common interest. All these break down barriers'
My hope is that it is this that will result in a British paradigm shift. An end to the ivory towers of 90's academics who see themselves as 'law producers' (cf Flannery 1982), and dont know how to collect decent data and ,indeed, dont see it as important.
G
PS Dave, who has called the current state the 'commercial' paradigm.