DESCRIBING AND INTERPRETING THE PAST. European and American Approaches to the Written Record of the Excavation

Archaeology has an ethic dilemma at its root − quite simply, if excavation is destruction, what, if any, can be its justification? Many ideas have been put forward to deal with this unsettling conundrum. Such a line of thought, with its champions and chastisers, is that even if the excavation physically destroys the site, it compensates for this by re-creating, by means of symbolic models and narratives, the historical sequence whose witness and result was the site itself. Nonetheless, the fact that archaeologist record the site they destroy seems to be the lynchpin in the defense of archaeology. Sixty case studies of archaeological recording are presented with commentary from methodological and epistemological perspectives. Procedures and pro forma used by teams from around the world, working at sites in the US, Europe and the Near Est are compared with an aim to further the development of recording theory and inspire new standards for field practices. For the first time in one volume, one hundred context, feature and burial sheets are illustrated and explained against the background of archaeology’s development as a humanistic discipline.“Recording is central to the process of archaeological excavation and for anyone interested in the history, theory, practice and ethics of recording this book is an essential read.” (Gary Lock, Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford)

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