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LouvreWith Michael Shanks
Overview - Archaeology and the site report
Archaeologists work on what is left of the past. They do this in teams that bring different research skills and interests to bear upon the material remains left behind by communities of people - artifacts and sites. This makes of archaeology a unique interdisciplinary and collaborative field that ranges from genetics to folklore, from geophysical fieldwork to literary analysis, from excavation management to statistical modeling. It is this range of interest in the material immediacy of the past that helps make archaeology so appealing. And this appeal makes archaeology a great vehicle for exploring transferable skills in research and authoring.
Archaeologists combine their researches into catalogs, handbooks of different types of finds, art histories, historical narratives, anthropological theories, museum exhibitions and academic papers, as well as more popular media like TV programs. One of the legacies of the centuries old antiquarian interest in the past is a focus on landscape and the places people have lived. Archaeologists write about ancient places. Since the crystallization of the discipline of archaeology in the early nineteenth century archaeologists have produced site reports - accounts of particular sites, their location, history, architecture, the things found through archaeological excavation, the daily lives of the inhabitants, their culture and views of themselves. Such site reports have become one of the modern foundations of our understanding of history.
This course will introduce archaeology as such an interdisciplinary and collaborative field through this defining practice and medium of the site report. It will involve an encounter with eight great archaeological sites in Europe and the Old World: Stonehenge, Gavrinis in prehistoric France, Tel El Amarna on the Nile, Namforsen in Sweden, Housesteads at the northern edge of the Roman Empire, Dunstanburgh Castle in the UK, Knossos in the Aegean, and Olympia in Greece. Through selections from publications, plans and photographs, the class will explore each site in turn through its excavation, its features and finds, the arguments over its interpretation, and its place in our understanding of the archaeological history of Europe.
