Constructing Narratives of Britain’s (and the Whole of Europe’s) Prehistoric  Past
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2021-04-05

Trying  to  understand  the  past  by  constructing  ‘big  picture’  and  more  detailed  narratives  is  what we, as archaeologists, do in our own varied ways; it’s what we have always tried to do, and  it  is  something  that  has  featured  in  a  major  way  in  this  lecturer’s  own  career  as  a  pre-historian, as a museum curator in one of Britain’s national museums and as a team member in  several  national  and  international  research  projects  including  the  Beaker  People  Project  and  Projet  JADE.  The  EAA  is  a  wonderful  vehicle  for  showcasing  the  diverse  intellectual  traditions  and  approaches  to  narrative  construction  across  Europe.  But  today,  the  task  of  creating these narratives is beset by many challenges. We have to deal with a vast amount of  new  data,  generated  by  a  wide  range  of  disciplines  –  not  least  that  of  human  and  faunal  genetics  and  isotope  studies.  Not  only  do  we  have  to  try  to  stay  au  courant,  we  must  also  develop  the  critical  capability  to  assess  the  quality  and  implications  of  those  data,  and  to  integrate them into our working hypotheses. In Britain, the specific trajectory of interpreta-tive archaeology has passed through various paradigm changes over the past few decades, from  the  positivism  of  processual  archaeology,  through  the  relativism  of  post-processual  theoretical approaches, to the current confused and confusing diversity of thought, with its contested discourses. As ideas familiar from the archaeology of half a century ago become reinjected into the mix – in the form of geneticists’ arguments for population movement, for example – we see the terms ‘cultural history’, ‘cultural diffusionism’ and ‘revisionism’ being bandied about as terms of abuse. How are we to cut through the fog of misconception and the  prairie  of  straw  men  in  our  discourse,  to  arrive  at  nuanced  set  of  narratives  about  the  past that actually accord with the data? And, distressingly, how can we continue to incorpo-rate developments in Continental Europe within our narratives for prehistoric Britain during the  current  febrile  political  climate,  where  a  big  question  mark  hangs  over  the  future  of  in-ternational  funding  involving  Britain?  This  presentation  considers  these  issues,  illustrating  them  with  examples  from  the  lecturer’s  period  of  specialism  (i.e.  the  Neolithic,  Chalcolithic  and Early Bronze Age).


Alison Sheridan