• DOI:10.1007/978-1-4614-2338-6_6
• Corpus ID: 159806972

Stepping into Comfortable Old Shoes: ‘The Consequence of Archaeological Comfortability’

@inproceedings{Jones2012SteppingIC,
  title={Stepping into Comfortable Old Shoes: ‘The Consequence of Archaeological Comfortability’},
  author={Cara Jones and Philip Richardson},
  year={2012}
}

• Cara Jones, P. Richardson
• Published 2012
• History

This paper takes as its starting point a comment made by Baines and Brophy (2006a, b) concerning the ways in which archaeologists in the field render the unfamiliar deposits they encounter familiar or ‘comfortable’ through the very methods and practices they use. At the excavation of Battle Moss, Caithness (Baines and Brophy 2006b), the excavators admitted that they began with a pre-formed idea of what the archaeology was going to reveal. They were faced with a known site type – multiple parallel stone rows aligned on a Bronze Age cairn. However in practice, the archaeology did not conform to known typologies and Baines and Brophy talk of being forced to confront their own preconceptions; preconceptions which tended to be confirmed by their methodology until the evidence began to veer too far from the expected (Baines and Brophy 2006b:79–87). Originally, due to the lack of other excavations of these types of features, they drew on their previous excavation experience and background knowledge to develop a methodology. As is common in archaeology, the excavators at Battle Moss rendered the complex archaeological remains into a familiar concept i.e. a trench, which allowed them to relate to the previous trenches they had excavated throughout their careers. Yet, as most of us can appreciate, this reliance on the familiar, initially at least, turned out to be inadequate and the archaeological process became problematic or uncomfortable (ibid). However, they maintain that, the failure of their preconceptions, which led to this uncomfortable state, made them confront the site in different ways, it made them think outside of the box (ibid), or better yet, the trench. By confronting this un-comfortable state, rather than accepting it as part of the process, Baines and Brophy were able to explore the site in a variety of different, and in the end fruitful, ways.