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

The past in the present
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• Fragile and vulnerable: archaeological remains are easily toppled and broken, buried remains
can be segmented or the environments that surround them inadvertently changed.
• Integrity is consequent upon completeness of survival: the value of the resource lies partly in
our ability to interpret it and read it. Legibility is therefore important and the more complete
the surviving pieces the more that can be done with them.
• Each element has spatial, temporal and socially determined relationships with other elements.
The material that comprises the resource was created as part of a set of social processes that
were not confined to single sites or places.
• Attributed meaning: archaeological objects do not have inherent meaning; people and society
give them meaning.
• As a whole what is represented is a unique record of human achievement over the whole
duration of human existence.
Within these common characteristics, it is recognized that three main kinds of archaeological
deposits and situations can be identified, partly as a result of conditions of survival and partly
because of the intrinsic nature of the material itself. These provide useful pragmatic categories
for dealing with remains:
• Single monuments: the most familiar items that archaeologists are concerned with, including
relatively discrete structures such as round barrows, long barrows, Roman villas, deserted
villages, mines or glasshouses.
• Urban deposits: composite deposits created in heavily occupied areas from Roman times
through to the present day. Especially important is the way in which they build up within a
restricted area and become reworked over and over again.
• Relict landscapes: potentially the most important kind of data for archaeology, especially for
earlier periods, relict landscapes comprise groups of related monuments and structures bound
together as though in some form of articulation (natural or man-made), even though the
archaeological deposits may not themselves be continuous.
One major problem with all three
forms is the extent to which we know
what we have. No one is ever able to
see the complete picture, and there is
no way of really knowing how much
archaeology there is to find. For this
reason, the resource has to be
conceptualized and quantified in a
carefully structured way. Figure 17.2
shows a diagram representing the
main elements. The outer box
represents what, within any particular
definition of archaeology, there is to
know about the ‘original resource’.
Part of that material is recorded in
various ways. Britain is very fortunate
to have numerous and long-standing
lists and inventories of ancient
monuments held at national and local
level by government agencies and local
Figure 17.2 Diagram showing the main components of the archaeological
resource.