Writing wonders: poetry as archaeological method?
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2016-05-14

“Archaeology is the search for fact. Not truth. If its truth you’re interested in, Doctor Tyree’s Philosophy class is right down the hall”. (Indiana Jones, 1989) Fact, fiction, it’s a dialectical debate that both crosses and divides disciplines from archaeology to philosophy. Questions of truth value via authenticity, authority and
provenance abound alongside those of definition in theory and practice. This, however, paper argues that maybe, on occasion, it really doesn’t matter if we cannot tell fact from fiction — assuming that such telling is even possible. Instead, the blurring of this normative line may open an intersection in which our minds can engage in alternative ways of thinking to those that our academic and professional training usually dictates. Poetry sits in this intersection. It affords both the writer and the reader room to explore a variety of perspectives in a succinct form. Akin to a photograph it can be both art and reportage, a snapshot in which to hold a moment or to expand a concept, empowering us to “seize back the creative initiative” (Eshun and Madge 2012). As archaeologists we not only have a responsibility to the cultures we are representing, but also to the process by which we achieve
this with one another — and to ourselves. The diktat of site
reporting can be at odds with the demotic positon we inhabit
as living beings (Pluciennik 2015) which can strip away the
emotional meaning we glean from the wonders we are
uncovering; and in so doing the whole reason we began
archaeology in the first place. Thus perhaps it is time to
consider whether or not we can allow ourselves a small
platform on which to regain and express the wonder we feel
when we hold a pot, discover a mosaic, or make a leap of
interpretation. For if we are writing about wonders, can we therefore not do so wonderfully?

Erin KAVANAGH (University of Wales Trinity St David)