The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

Chapter Seventeen
Reeling in the years
The past in the present
Timothy Darvill
INTRODUCTION
Fragments of antiquity are all around us, components of the modern world that, by chance or
design, have survived to become part of the fabric of everyday life. As earlier chapters in this
book illustrate, archaeological remains, whether single objects, structures, or the complicated
stratified layers revealed through excavations, provide the raw materials from which each successive
generation of archaeologists constructs an understanding of the past; but archaeological remains
are much more than this. Britain is an old country that has been continuously occupied for over
10,000 years. Thousands of archaeological sites in Britain are still in use, in many cases perpetuating
the purposes for which they were originally built. Ancient churches are probably the most obvious
and widespread examples, but they head a long list that also includes houses, mills, bridges, roads,
tracks, and many different kinds of boundary. Tens of thousands of sites have fallen out of use
yet remain to be seen in the countryside, in villages, and in towns (Darvill 1987), and every day
archaeological remains are brought back into the light of day after hundreds or thousands of
years of lying hidden or forgotten in the ground.
Archaeological remains are real things that can be seen, encountered, experienced, explored,
touched and engaged with in all sorts of ways by individuals and groups, whether in the town or
the countryside (Figure 17.1). Because of this, archaeological remains have a contemporary social
context that gives them political, economic and ideological meanings, while making them
susceptible to control, manipulation and negotiation.
This chapter considers the ways in which archaeological remains are treated by archaeologists
in Britain today, especially in relation to the social context and competing demands placed upon
the material itself (Harrison 1994; Hunter 1996). The philosophies, theoretical perspectives,
practices and professional skills discussed here are collectively known as archaeological resource
management.
BACKGROUND
Archaeological resource management as currently practised in Britain is a relatively new branch
of archaeology (Hunter and Ralston 1993), although its roots penetrate deep into the history of
the discipline as a whole. As long ago as AD 1533, Henry VIII appointed John Leland as the first,
and as it turned out only, ‘King’s Antiquary’. He was commissioned to search England and Wales
for surviving antiquities and monuments, which he did between 1534 and 1543, although he