It is such a natural and profound human motivation to be interested in the past, that one should not have to ask how archaeology can be made interesting for a wide audience.
Yet the perception has grown that much of the archaeology published nowadays in Britain is rather dull. There have been few, if any, archaeological bestsellers in recent years. The contrast with historical writing – the same subject, after all, viewed from a different angle – is stark.
‘Why, as a profession that deals with the supremely exciting world of the remotest past, have we become so tedious? ’ asks the distinguished prehistorian Francis Pryor in a paper to be delivered at the annual Archaeology in Britain conference in Manchester this month. ‘Why are we so scared of our peers’ opinion? Why can’t archaeologists write in vivid English? ’
Pryor is not a lone voice. Frequently one hears complaints about the lack of spirit, of bold new interpretation, and of literary merit in much of today’s archaeological writing. All too often, even in books intended for the ‘general reader’, there is an excruciatingly detailed examination of the minutiae of sites and objects – dates, dimensions, materials, layout – presented in an overblown, pseudo-technical language, and with too little interpretation of what life may have been like for the people who used these sites and objects in the past. Publishers who tolerate such bad writing deserve their share of the blame.
For Pryor, as indeed for British Archaeology, the difference between an interesting and an uninteresting piece of work lies in how far an attempt has been made to turn it into a story. Does it bring the past to life? Is it surprising or dramatic in some way? What does it add to our knowledge of the past? Ultimately, does it have a point?
At this magazine, in choosing articles for publication and advising on how they should be written, we face these questions each month (although only our readers can judge if we answer them well). For some contributors, it is a way of thinking that comes naturally, and stories flow from their word processors with ease.
Surprisingly, though, there are many other archaeologists – some of them quite senior – who react with incredulity to the ‘so what? ’ question. They suffer from Discovery Fever, and for them it is enough simply to find things – a Bronze Age cemetery, a Saxon village, a collection of medieval fishbones, or whatever. They will happily set their discovery in context: to date it, and tell you how it fits into a pattern of similar discoveries. But you will get very little in the way of a story. Ask them what is interesting about their discovery, or how it adds to our understanding of the period, and they often respond, with baffled annoyance, that the find is interesting enough in itself and requires no further interpretation.
Discovery Fever not only turns much archaeological writing into a series of lifeless catalogues, it also brings archaeology itself into disrepute. It encourages the view – expressed every so often in newspaper columns – that archaeology is a trivial pursuit, involving massive expense and disruption for minimum return.
If archaeology has any purpose, it is to tell stories about what happened in the past. As new evidence is found, new stories can be told. For many people, the past is like music: its appeal is emotional and cannot easily be explained. But stories are the way in, the key to the door of the past’s magical realm. Stories about people, how they lived, and what they did, make the past comprehensible; they allow us to find our own meanings in the events of long ago.
Archaeology appears to have become uncomfortable with the idea of story-telling since it started regarding itself as a science a few decades ago. Imagination and intuition – those two most useful tools – were suppressed in favour of the measuring rod and the microscope. To say anything not strictly supported by the evidence was to invite the contempt of one’s peers. Despite recent theoretical advances, this culture of scientism prevails.
Yet story-telling, technical precision, and the sophisticated deployment of evidence should be able to live happily together. In archaeology, a complete fiction is a poor story. Stories must be plausible. They can be complex and erudite. But they also require courage, in the story-teller, to venture beyond the evidence into intelligent speculation, and a willingness to be proven wrong as new interpretations evolve.
Archaeological evidence – some will argue – is mute and mundane. It is often difficult to turn into stories. Yes, and too much should never be made of slim materials. But without interpretation and storytelling, in however small a way, archaeology itself will become as mute and mundane as the meanest of the materials it studies.
Simon Denison is the Editor of British Archaeology
A session entitled ‘New light on the past: recent fieldwork in Britain’, organised by British Archaeology, takes place at the IFA conference in Manchester on 9 September. The session includes a paper by Francis Pryor, entitled ‘Is archaeology telling enough stories?’
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© Council for British Archaeology, 1997