JISCMail - CONTEMP-HIST-ARCH Archives

I am sure that I am not alone in considering the Bristol CHAT conference to have been extremely successful , informative and thought-provoking - speaking for myself, it was one of the best conferences I've been to in a while. I was therefore very pleased to see that it was to be followed up at the TAG conference with a substantial session which I hoped would bring the developments in the area to the attention of a wider audience. Unfortunately, I found myself extremely disappointed by the tone of the event. Inevitably the content and presentation of the papers was of variable quality, but this is hardly new for TAG (or indeed any conference - and as an abysmal public speaker myself, I am hardly in a position to criticise on this point!). What was most worrying was the apparent attempt to define the scope of CHAT with a series of exclusionary boundaries, erected by the some members of the organising committee. It is not, apparently, acceptable to be:

The justification for these exclusionary statements is difficult to understand. Excellent papers were presented in Bristol by American students and academics and there is a tradition of good work in the US which it seems merely ignorant to ignore or downplay. Yes, there is also poor quality work undertaken there - but are we in Britain really in such a strong position in this regard? I think not. Paul Blinkhorn, Adrian Chadwick and myself, amongst others (including both RESCUE and the CBA), have documented, so far as we are able, situations in which work has been carried out which does not meet even the most basic standards of professionalism (or, in some cases, competence). At the present time the Ministry of Defence, Odyssey Marine and Giffords are working together to recover gold and silver the wreck of HSM Sussex for sale - I won't cite a whole list of cases (although I could) but a phrase about 'glass houses' and 'throwing stones' comes to mind. Telling our American colleagues that their work is 'crap' (if I remember the word correctly) hardly seems a usefulway of promoting dialogue or contact between us or, most importantly, of enabling those whose interest in archaeology is not primarily commercial, of making common cause with the aim of improving standards and criticising those who are motivated by profit.

The charge that those of us who are engaged in data collection and allied tasks are 'train-spotters' or 'anoraks' is one that is so familiar to ceramicists as to be hardly even irritating any more. But is it a useful way to go about characterising a fundamental part of the archaeological process?. One of the aspects that has drawn me to the study of the recent past is the wealth of data that can be brought to the tasks of interpretation and explanation. Why stigmatise the very people who have collected and published this data, recorded sites and documents and ensured the preservation of particular parts of the past (notably the industrial past) for the sake of a supposedly amusing 'sound bite'? If, in the course of a desktop assessment (to take one example), I encounter an industrial site, a railway, an inclined plane or whatever, I know that I can pick up the telephone and talk to a member of the local Industrial History Society - I am certain of a interested response, of free access to information, discussion and assistance on every level. That I lack a background in the study of the feature in question is never raised - the concern is always with the issue at hand. This information has been gathered over many years by people working for nothing and motivated by their love of the subject and their commitment to the history of their area. I find it potentially embarrassing to think that such people could come to a CHAT conference and find their work ridiculed by the application terms such as 'anorak' or 'train-spotter'. While archaeology is most certainly about interpretation and explanation, these processes must be founded on solid data if they are to be any more than mere stories. Without data we are no better than the pagans and others who make up nonsense about 'sacred sites' and 'ancient wisdom'. Why can't we acknowledge this with good grace and perhaps deploy our rhetorical abilities to attack those who deserve it? Clearly there is a new interest in approaching historical archaeology from a critical or self-consciously 'theoretical' standpoint - this is one of the things that makes CHAT so exciting, but in order to do this, is it really necessary to ridicule other people and their work? If so, then this is not an arena in which I wish to participate. I'd rather use such rhetorical and authorial skills as I possess for attacking people to whom archaeology is merely the contamination of a profitable building site, a drain on public resources that could be better spent on junkets for local councillors or the opportunity to loot a historic wreck for gold and silver (to take but three examples).

As for prehistorians - what is the problem here? I wrote my PhD thesis on the production and exchange of late Iron Age slip decorated pottery in central Europe (second to first century BC). I consider that whatever merits my recent work on medieval, post-medieval and later pottery has (and obviously this must be for others to judge), it is founded upon what I learned while a prehistorian (and have I ever stopped being this person? I think not). There may be reasons within academic politics for splitting the profession into ever smaller and smaller units, but for those of us who are not confined within the academic system, these are of little or no interest (indeed, at times they appear almost risible - the stuff of a Malcolm Bradbury novel). I consider myself to be an archaeologist - I have certain areas in which I have built up (and continue to accumulate) a certain amount of experience and knowledge - these are period and material based (Pottery: Iron Age, post-Conquest medieval, post-medieval, early modern, recent), practical (creation of usable archaeological archives, on-site processing and treatment of finds) and theoretical (economic archaeology, approaches to material culture, archaeology and politics). Am I supposed to shed some or all of these complementary experiences when I enter the CHAT environment? If so, why? And at whose behest? My reaction is simply to say 'damn you' and continue with what I do and what I enjoy doing while in the process making such contributions to the wider discipline as I am able. After Christmas I shall receive 400 sherds of Iron Age pottery from a crop-mark site in West Yorkshire. I shall also be participating in the work on the Alderly Sandhills site - Am I expected to disregard the one in favour of the other? The Iron Age assemblage is of quite exceptional regional importance ... Alderley is an unusual and exciting opportunity to be involved in an innovative project - why should I make comparisons between them? And why should I be judged for the one rather than the other?

It would be regretable, after the promising start made in Bristol, if CHAT were to become, or appear to become (for I am sure that some, perhaps most, of the more extreme statements made were unintentionally offensive and overly programmatic) a mere clique of self-regarding back-slappers. TAG is conspicuous as a loose organisation which successfully avoided this ghettoisation and has influenced even those who have criticised it. In my view we should learn from this example and seek to be inclusive in our approach to historical archaeology, to respect the work of other people (and this does not preclude useful critique or robust argument by any means) and to create an informal structure which enables and supports rather than divides and alienates. To do the latter will ensure nothing more than marginalisation and irrelevance. To do the former will strengthen us when we face those forces which are hostile to archaeology as a whole.