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

The past in the present
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Problem-orientated research
arises from the definition of a
potentially interesting problem and
a methodology that allows it to be
explored. The work may involve the
application of particular
methodologies, including perhaps
excavation, at a local or regional
level, depending on the nature of the
problem under investigation.
Funding for this kind of work
usually comes from public sources
through government agencies, local
authorities, charitable trusts or
universities. Naturally there is
considerable competition for the
relatively limited sums available.
Development-prompted
research arises from the need to
investigate deposits that in the
normal course of events will be destroyed. This is usually because the preservation of a monument,
or part of it, is not feasible or is deemed to be of secondary importance to the benefits of the
works that will replace it. Superficially, this is ‘rescue excavation’, at one time rather euphemistically
called ‘preservation by record’; but to compare modern rescue excavation with that undertaken
in the 1960s and early 1970s is rather unfair. Much earlier work was literally rescuing what could
be salvaged; nowadays the skill of the archaeological curator specifying the work and the
archaeological contractor carrying out the work lies in getting the best information possible from
the opportunity available, being selective within defined research parameters.
A popularly perceived down-side to development-prompted research is that investigations are
tied to particular development sites which, if the archaeologist has a totally free hand, may not be
the first they would choose to excavate. This view is naive and ill-informed. It tries to force
development-prompted research into the same frameworks as problem-orientated research,
without admitting that both approaches have distinct but different benefits. Much the same
arguments were presented in the 1960s and 1970s when a massive motorway construction
programme prompted numerous archaeological surveys and excavations. In retrospect, the
considered results of that phase of archaeological research completely changed understandings
of settlement patterns and estimates of population density for almost every period of Britain’s
past. Numerous problem-orientated research programmes have arisen as a result of motorway
archaeology projects, perhaps more than anything else underlining the need to invigorate
archaeological research from as many different sources as possible.
CONCLUSION
Figure 17.10 Archaeological excavations at Silchester, Hampshire.
Source: Timothy Darvill
The past gets out of date very quickly, not so much because of new discoveries (although these
are always important) but because of new ideas, new models and new explanations. How long the
explanations and accounts presented in this book will stand up remains to be seen, but alongside
a continuing concern for explanation there is, as this chapter seeks to show, considerable interest
in the raw data on which explanations are built. Society continually steals bits of its past to shape