| ISSN 1357-4442 | Editor: Simon Denison |
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| COMMENT |
All archaeology is local, whatever its national value. Richard Morris explains
We are about five months from a new millennium, and I am about five weeks from the end of my term as Director of the CBA. The CBA is a vital, exhilarating body, and it would be interesting to look back across the years - 24 of them - during which I have worked for it. But I'd rather look forward. Where will archaeology be in 10, or 20, or 100 years' time? Where should it be?
Taking the last question, a few days ago I glimpsed something gladdening. I was in Leicester, on a hot evening, to talk to the Leicestershire Fieldwork Group. The title of my talk, dreamed up some time ago on the spur of the moment, was something like `Know your place: local research and national history'.
Little did I realise how apposite this was. Not only is Leicestershire a county where amateur archaeology - people studying their own surroundings - is strong, and links between the field, planning and museums have been close, but there is an equally vigorous interaction between the county archaeological service and local people. Increasingly, this involves parish councils. Some 200 of the county's parishes now have an archaeological contact. Leicester city's branch of the Young Archaeologist Club flourishes so well that there's talk of starting another.
Archaeology in local and national government is sometimes caricatured as bureaucratic, stifling to invention, more admin than adventure, more about stopping than making things happen. If, at times, there are aspects of that case to answer, they no more relate to the intrinsic merits of public interest archaeology than would an incompetent performance of Mozart's Jupiter symphony amount to a case against music.
Sir Mortimer Wheeler once cautioned me against describing anything in archaeology as exciting. `Trite word, my boy. Don't use it.' It's lucky that Wheeler never saw Time Team. I think I knew what he meant. If something is exciting, the thing itself will communicate it. The adjective adds nothing. The word may have slipped out once or twice in lectures or teaching, but from that day to this it has been on my list of proscribed sayings (along with `synergy', `heritage' - doubly so if it's `built' - `partnership', `finite resource', `Britain' when the writer means `England' and vice versa).
Until now. What is happening in Leicestershire, and in several other areas where kindred initiatives are building, is exciting. All archaeology is local, whatever its national value. From local particles, greater pictures are drawn, just as those greater pictures add meaning to the local perspective. Engagement with locality is the key to flourishing research and better stewardship.
Of course, it isn't the only key - education, public resources and timely access to information are others - but history without community participation is history confined. What we understand, admire, or find intriguing is more likely to be cherished than something which is ignored or underestimated.
Statutory protection will always be needed, and a sound planning system enables choices to be made between competing demands. But listing and scheduling will never cover more than a fraction of Britain's inheritance. A public sensititised to the historic environment can embrace it all.
This is why public interest services in local government, and in national bodies which shape their context, are so important. If we are to continue to have contracting archaeology, the contractors need to be in an intellectually rewarding, research-rich environment, which will only come about if those who govern it are in a position to help make it so. That includes an ability to offer support, encouragement, continuity and explanation to local communities. As popular feeling for archaeology mounts, it will become self-sustaining.
Utopian? No. And I am not saying that Leicestershire's provision is ideal, simply that the spirit of what I have been trying to put across on this page for some years is abroad there. It is elsewhere too, and I'm afraid it is caught by several of those words I vowed not to use - like partnership.
Now I am off to write a book on archaeology and history. If a reviewer describes it as exciting, I shall be flattered.
Richard Morris is the Director of the CBA
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