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Pre-‐Contact archaeological narratives in southern New England:
Plot in a discipline, pace and the past
By Katie Vickers Kirakosian ∞∞
Narratives are stories. They say a great deal about the cultures from which they originate,
including messages about deeply held values and beliefs. Similarly, archaeological narratives, or the
stories that archaeologists tell, say much about the discipline and it’s practitioners (Joyce 2002,
Pluciennik 1999). Discussions of archaeological publications as narratives gained prominence in
the 1980s, with papers such as Hodder’s “Writing archaeology: Site Reports in Context” (Hodder
1989) and more recently with Fagan’s similarly titled book Writing Archaeology: Telling Stories
about the Past (Fagan 2006). This is still a rich area for reflection because of the complexities
involved in thinking, writing and talking about the archaeological record, which according to Criado
is made up of “three distinct moments […]: the preexisting social reality, the physical processes of
decay and preservation, and the contemporary act of reading” (Criado 2006: 196).
My research is founded on the premise that when archaeologists think, write and talk about
the past (and their work which focuses on it), they do so in ways that have inherent narrative
structure. These narratives can be compared through time for evidence of patterns and variations
because of “the different ways in which archaeological texts are written through time” (Hodder
1989: 269). For my dissertation, I am focusing on a series of 70+ site publications published
between 1861 and 2007 from 38 excavated shell middens within Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and
Nantucket, MA. My data set also includes transcribed interviews with 11 archaeologists (7
academics, 2 CRM-‐professionals and 2 amateur archaeologists)1. While the specific focus of my
research is shell midden discourse from the 19th-‐21st centuries on Cape Cod and the Islands,
broader narrative strands that radiate from the discipline are presented here.
I first discuss the structures within archaeological publications that have correlations to
literary theory and then offer a preliminary series of themes from the transcribed interviews. As
this is a first attempt at testing and exploring themes and examples, there is greater breadth than
depth at this early stage of analysis. 1 All interviews were IRB-‐approved through the Department of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Considering the many ethical concerns involved when working with interviewees (AKA informants or human subjects), they will all be given pseudonyms at a later date. Currently all quotations from interviews are labeled “Anonymous” and numbered 1-‐11, where the number represents the order in which they were interviewed (from October 2010 to October 2011). This also allows the reader to differentiate between the many interviewee perspectives. Although I may be privileging the present, I have intentionally chosen to also keep the identities of all living individuals discussed during interviews anonymous. All deceased individuals are named, unless deemed inappropriate or insensitive.
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A place for archaeological narratives
I have sketched twelve main “elements” in archaeological narratives, which are:
1. The narrator (whether overt or covert) 2. The reader (whether addressed directly or indirectly)
3. The “natural” environment
a. This includes discussions of the environment through time, such as changing environmental conditions and taphonomic processes.
4. Native people in the past2
a. This includes literal discussions of Native people as agents of site formation and other activities being actively carried out by Native people in the past.
5. The “non-‐archaeological” world
a. This includes descendant communities, landowners, the general public, and other communities outside of archaeology.
6. The site
a. This includes known information about the site as a place on the landscape, such as topography, proximity to water, wind aspect, etc.
7. The excavation a. This includes all information about the process of uncovering
material remains, such as testing strategy, screen-‐size choice, etc.
8. Material culture a. This includes information about the artifacts, ecofacts and features
uncovered and examined from a site and/or at an excavation.
9. Other archaeological site locations a. This includes discussions which reference archaeological sites and
excavations regardless of proximity to the site that is the primary focus of the narrative.
10. Historical figures and groups
a. This includes discussions that reference historical figures (i.e. Roger Williams) and historical groups (i.e. the Pilgrims).
11. Archaeologists
a. This includes information about the practitioners of archaeology, such as professional archaeologists and amateur archaeologists.
12. The discipline of archaeology
a. This includes discussions related to the “culture” of archaeology, such as discipline-‐specific jargon and the many methodological, paradigmatic, theoretical and legal shifts.
2 As my dissertation focuses on Pre-‐Contact Native American sites, all examples here focus on Native people in the past. Whether Contact or Historic-‐period narratives fit in this model is not considered or theorized.
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While these dozen “elements” figure centrally in archaeological narratives, few have considered
how they come together to form a plot.
Every narrative has both a story and plot, where the former is the chronological order of
events and the latter, “a set of events related by causation” (Keen 2004: 73). In a famous example, E.
M. Forster explains, “The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died and the queen
died of grief is a plot”. He continues that, “If it is in a story we say ‘and then’? If it is in a plot we ask
‘why’?” (Forster 2002).
Site life histories and archaeocentric displays
Some narratives focus more heavily on story or character, while others focus a great deal of
attention to plot. Archaeologists spend a majority of their time focusing on the story, “and then we
excavated a unit, and then we found a feature and then we found these artifacts while screening”.
Archaeologists focus less attention on plot or character, although within the genre of journal
articles the plot can be prominent.
When a reader asks this very question “why”, two plots will unfold (although to different
degrees) within most publications. One plot explains why Native people were at a particular
location, while the other focuses, conversely, on why archaeologists were there. With many of the
site publications that I analyzed, there was a relationship between these two plots, although the
length and frequency of time that Native groups spent at a site did not necessarily correlate with the
amount of time that archaeologists spent there. There is a relationship between these two plots
however because quite literally if Native people did not stay at a location (or for very long),
archaeologists would also likely not stay at a location at all (or for very long). While the
“archaeological plot” is often contingent on the initial plot, it is often foregrounded.
The “archaeological plot” generally opens a publication, as the reader learns that looting,
erosion or construction threatened the site. However, archaeological plots are often sidestepped
when it was really field school students needing training, graduate students needing degrees or
academics needing tenure. These truths may be made more palatable to a reader, if the
archaeological plot is couched as focusing on an interesting, important or unique site although that
was probably not decided until during or after the actual excavation. The other plot, focusing on
why Native people created the site in the first place is not fully unpacked until the middle or the end
of a publication, such as within the results, discussion and/or conclusion. It is too early to theorize
about the effects, if any, that such “plot flanking” has on readers (and writers). Nevertheless, this is
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one example of a larger trend that I see in archaeological publications, which is a foregrounding
(and perhaps even a privileging) of the discipline f archaeology and the present.
Also, after analyzing dozens of publications, I was struck by the (unanticipated) realization
that upon close examination, what seemed logically to be all about the past was only superficially
so, as so much of every publication is really about the present and the experience of the past in the
present. Archaeological narratives spend much more time discussing the rationale and process of
archaeology then they tend to actually discuss the people and actions that created the sites in the
first place. Perhaps this is not the role of archaeology or a place for archaeologists to situate
themselves, but I think this is an area rich for discussion and debate.
Through the increased professionalization of archaeology and the use of technology within
the discipline, the percentage of a publication that focuses on the archaeology (and/or the
excavation) has increased much more dramatically than any other area of discussion. While I
absolutely understand the need for technical descriptions, especially with site reports, is this
necessary or even appropriate in every case? At the session “Against Objectivized Subjects:
Alternative Narratives in Archaeology” at the 2011 Society for American Archaeology meetings,
discussant Douglass Bailey called for a turn away from the usage of “crutches” in archaeology,
which he described as “the first three chapters which give us so much background so as to be
confident enough to say the final three chapters” (Bailey 2011). While I know this is not feasible or
appropriate in many instances, Bailey’s call for more experimentation and bravado is fitting.
Disparate durations
Since there is such a disproportionate discussion of the discipline of archaeology and the
excavation in most archaeological publications, I focus here on these narrative strands. To borrow
another literary term, the duration of these discussions in archaeological narratives are quite
disproportionate, where duration refers to the ratio between how long events took to unfold at a
site and how much text is devoted to them. The narrative tempo often expands or pauses when
discussing an excavation whereas the tempo surrounding the past would be deemed a summary or,
even worse, a gap to literary theorists. In essence, the events that might have occurred at the site
for millennia are summarized in a page or a chapter, whereas the events that occurred at an
excavation over several weeks, months or years, are discussed page after page (or chapter after
chapter). When narratives focus so heavily on archaeology and archaeologists, Native people in the
past as well as Contemporary Native people are often made “flat characters”. They are easily
forgettable, even allowing historical erasure to repeat on the page.
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Exploring narrative themes
To date I have coded a series of nine themes from the transcribed interviews. They are:
� Assumptions (AKA biases) about the past/the discipline of archaeology
� Change/Stasis within/outside the discipline of archaeology
� Connections/Disconnections within the discipline of archaeology
� Control of the field/the discipline of archaeology
� Experiences within/outside the discipline of archaeology
� Impressions (AKA outlook) of the past/the discipline of archaeology
� Knowledge within the discipline of archaeology
� Struggles/coping within the discipline of archaeology
� Success/failure within the discipline of archaeology
Although space does not allow me to go into great detail with each theme, I offer several examples.
Assumptions: Byers opens a short article “On the Interpretation of Faunal Remains” by cautioning,
“remember that in nature living beings are not subject to marshalling behind sharply defined limits,
but will almost inevitably be found outside the accepted ‘range’” (Byers 1951: 262). While he was
referring to non-‐humans as the “living beings”, such as the quahog that can live in colder waters
than originally thought; I would extend this to human beings as well, who will also frequently act
“outside of” predetermined “ranges” placed upon them. Assumptions about how humans should
and did act in the past inhabit and inhibit archaeological narratives. Examples of assumptions about
Native people relate to their assumed savage, lazy, violent, child-‐like, animal-‐like, and/or machine-‐
like nature. Overt examples (see Figure 1, page 15) are seen in early publications, such as a within
Scientific American (1862), in which an anonymous author refers to “The Indian [as] a mere child
when compared with the masters of modern science” (Anonymous 1862: 170).
A second example of assumptions can be traced quite deeply, showing how narratives can
be “echoes” from the field (Joyce 2002). The following passage from Ritchie’s (1969) seminal book
The Archaeology of Martha’s Vineyard has always struck me as rather presumptuous. Intentionally
quoted in its entirety below, this passage illustrates an important point:
On the bottom lay the fully articulated skeleton of an immature dog of a small breed, on its right side, facing west. Its limbs were askew, its head slightly thrown back, and its tail vertebrae were entirely missing. It seems to not have been a burial like that at the nearby Pratt site (see page 71), but a skinned carcass thrown carelessly on the pit floor, then covered with a thin mantle of refuse-‐-‐broken quahog shells, deer and fish bones in black
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sand. A Rossville point, possibly the instrument of death, lay in this refuse between the dog’s ribs. The same 1-‐inch layer yielded a small body sherd of grit-‐tempered pottery with corded exterior and much-‐eroded interior surface, suggesting a sherd of Vinette 1 type.
Directly over the dog skeleton, and completely filling the pit, was a compact mass of cobbles, 6 or more inches in diameter, all bearing evidence of intense heat by their ruddy color and crumbly texture. Since there was no trace of fire in situ, but marked scorching was present on the upper surface of some of the dog bones, it appeared that the stones had been heated elsewhere. As the skeleton was in perfect order and the bones intact it would seem that the hot stones had been placed upon a carcass rather than a skeleton. The missing caudal vertebrae suggest a flayed body. It is, however, impossible to decide whether the find represented an unrecovered meal of roast dog in an earth over, or an assemblage for some special purpose [Ritchie 1969: 138]
While visiting the New York State Museum in Albany this summer, I reviewed the original field
notes for this feature (see Figure 2, page 16). They were written by a graduate student who was
likely the sole excavator and later marked by Ritchie, which seems to be his custom. When the
student’s word choice (within his fieldnotes) is highlighted over Ritchie’s book passage, the
correlation between narratives is striking (see Figure 3, page 17).
Assumptions within archaeology have made some uncomfortable within the discipline early
in their education. As one interviewee explained, he became uncomfortable while in graduate
school because “ancient period people were being conceptualized by processual archaeologists out
of their humanity. Not things like ‘Oh no the Younger Dryas. It’s drying up, so I am going to change
my projectile point style” (Anonymous 9, personal communication). Models of human behavior,
such as the optimal foraging theory even offended this hard-‐working interviewee and as he
explains “I question the very basis of optimal foraging or the unwarranted assumption that people
are inherently lazy and will give the least amount of energy effort” (Anonymous 9, personal
communication).
Change/stasis: While archaeologists have thought about change and stasis in the past,
similar forces have been at play within the discipline itself. At the R.S Peabody Museum, changing
the system of recording and documenting sites seems to have been an easy one
The only thing you knew about the collection was what state it was from not the site. Byers changed that subsequently because when they dug a site they recorded it thoroughly. In fact I-‐I know this because Byers told me because I was asking him about how did um the maps that are in this case how did the system for keeping track of the sites uh come about. Well the answer was that uh Elmer Harp was uh at Dartmouth college the only professor that I know of at Dartmouth uh in archeology and he uh dug sites on the Arctic and um Labrador and so forth and he was a good friend of Doug Byers so Doug asked him how-‐how do you keep-‐ what is the system that you use to keep a record of the sites? So that became a uh a lecture from Elmer Harp to Doug Byers and that's the system that is on the maps here [Anonymous 4, personal communication].
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Today even changing a line on a site form can be difficult. It may not even be worth the
trouble because, as one interviewee explained, “you need a public hearing because the forms are
embedded as part of the regulations” (Anonymous 9, personal communication). As a result, many
site forms likely stay the same regardless of the desire for improvement. When discussing state
standards and expectations for site reports, one interviewee reflected that in his opinion that little
had changed within the tradition of report writing over the past 80 years. As for stasis, he said, “I
hate standardization. It is a straightjacket on creativity. If you standardize you never advance”
(Anonymous 9, personal communication).
As mentioned previously, while the lengths of reports have certainly changed, many do have
similar sections, such as Introduction, Environmental overview and Field results. The ways in which
larger changes in the discipline (whether paradigmatic, theoretical, methodological or legal) show
up in publications is also quite interesting. For example, while in 1941 an archaeologist said “No
burials were found” (Brooks 1941: 15) in 1997 archaeologists say “No burials or sacred items were
uncovered at this site” (Shafer and Herbster 1997: cii) and finally in 2001 “No human remains were
identified during the field excavation portion of the site examination” (Herbster 2001: n.p). I believe
these shifts illustrate changes in archaeological discourse, where in 1997 phrases such as “sacred
items” began to enter more readily into post-‐NAGPRA discussions. Interpretations have continued
to expand and become more and more subtle. As we see here the phrase “human remains”
increasingly replaces “human burial”, as “human burial” is more narrowly focused and open to
interpretation (as “burial” implies intentionality while “remains” implies presence versus absence).
Connections/Disconnections: This theme has been one of the most striking and interesting
to trace. Many authors and interviewees spoke to the importance and effect of human connections
in the present. Young archaeologists are mentored and encouraged by those that are more
established:
• They “were of course crucial. And they were extremely encouraging and thy helped me get a full ride scholarship” (Anonymous 6, personal communication)
• He “was my mentor. He taught me how to dig! And he taught me what archaeology was all about in a formal way” (Anonymous 4, personal communication).
One interviewee is even now a well-‐respected archaeologist in another continent because a faculty
member saw him in the hallway one day and said: “Want to come with me”? While this might seem
insignificant, these connections become foundational for each generation of scholars who then
continue the same cycle. Theoretical leanings, field techniques and mentoring strategies, are
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inherited in some respects and these genealogies can be traced quite far back, where many
archaeologists today are only 5-‐7 generations removed from Jeffries Wyman, appointed the first
Curator of Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in 1866.
There are patterns surrounding researcher “disconnections” as well. When one interviewee
wrote a watershed paper against a well-‐known researcher’s method for lithic analysis, they knew
that not citing a particular individual spoke loudly too based on the following reflection: we “had a
different way of looking at things and we could see connections all over the east that [he] had
missed entirely but we didn't bother saying that-‐-‐ just you just don't cite him” (Anonymous 6,
personal communication).
Control: I was not particularly surprised to see discussions surrounding the need for control
in the field, but when and how this theme embodied other discussions was not anticipated. CRM
site reports are turning out to be a very unique genre in terms of control, or perhaps a genre that
more overtly embodies this theme. When Berggren and Hodder (2003) reflected on contract
archaeology, they saw “a social divide between the people who produced the data by excavating
them and those who were to interpret them” (Berggren and Hodder 2003: 423). Field-‐specific
social relations within CRM are a fascinating area of interest, which make a clear narrative mark.
Ironically, “the more archaeological knowledge one had, the further away from the actual
excavation one was placed in the hierarchy” (Berggren and Hodder 2003: 424). Much of this does
not go unnoticed, and although I am yet to corroborate a colleague’s story, in some CRM firms the
field technicians are allowed two initials while the PIs were allowed three on all paperwork.
Two other interviewees discussed feeling “powerless” or “out of control”. One reflected, “We
don’t have the power to deny a proposal except for properties with preservation restrictions”
showing potential limitations (Anonymous 9, personal communication). Members of the public
sometimes approached this interviewee, hoping that he was able to help control an issue. As he
explains, “Sometimes members of the public come to us because they have an agenda issue. They
don’t want to see an area developed” (Anonymous 9, personal communication).
Another interviewee seemed to be frustrated and threatened by his lack of power and the
increased power of local Native communities. He reflects at the end of his interview “I think if I
were gonna do archaeology [here] I'd prefer to do the archeology of early Europeans because it's
much less complicated by the Native population which is actually pretty well got archaeology here
ground to a halt. […] nobody minds the Native people becoming empowered it's just what you do
with that power when you get it” (Anonymous 5, personal communication). According to him, the
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empowerment of local Native groups was affecting archaeologists’ abilities to work in the area. He
does anticipate another shift in the discipline though, concluding that “but that's life you know. It'll
come around again and another generation will be allowed to dig” (Anonymous 5, personal
communication). This exchange offers a rich area for reflection, as this interviewee paints a very
different picture of the state of archaeology in the Northeast. According to him, Native people are
not “allowing” archaeologist to dig, which many know to be false.
Impressions: Many impressions have surfaced thus far. Some surround Native life while
other interviewees spoke openly about their impressions of the discipline of archaeology. For
example, when discussing daily Native life on Cape Cod and the Islands, one interviewee concluded
“Well they’re not throwing their dirty old shellfish in their house” (Anonymous 2, personal
communication). Here the impression is that shellfish are dirty and logically Native people would
not keep them in their homes.
Ross Moffett also reflected on the cleanliness of Native homes. He was an amateur
archaeologist actively collecting on the Cape and leading excavations with the Massachusetts
Archaeological Society (MAS) until the 1960s. He presented a lecture entitled “Prehistoric
Americans” in Provincetown in 1953. Amazingly while collecting primary documents at the R.S.
Peabody Museum in Andover this past May, I came across this lecture, when I found his 7-‐page
hand-‐edited paper still with a large envelope. Moffett started work in 1944 on the Holden site,
which was a heavily looted shell “heap”. He interpreted one area here as a “blackened” living floor.
In offering a narrative to explain the archaeological record, he reflected that:
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This narrative sample, worked out by Moffett 58 years ago, offers an impression of Provincetown
gender roles and presumably, by extension, that of Pre-‐Contact Native women and men. While this
offers a fascinating glimpse into the past, it is certainly one that says perhaps a great deal more
about the 1950s than any other period.
An impression offered by many interviewees related to the perceived or literal ownership
for sites and artifacts after excavation by amateurs or professional archaeologists. While this
“ownership” runs the gamut of literal to subliminal ownership, it is sometimes easily spotted
because of the use of possessive pronouns. For example, one interviewee refers to archaeologists
“possessing” the sites that they excavated on two separate occasions. In one passage, he says she
“would identify it in her cremation burials” (Anonymous 1, personal communication). The same
interviewee continues a bit later that, “working with [him] would be useful because he was a
Prehistoric archaeologist and […] he had this site” (Anonymous 1, personal communication).
When the wife of an amateur archaeologist that I interviewed walked into the room, he said
“We found those letters…remember when he threw everything across the floor and ‘they’re mine,
they’re mine’” (Anonymous 3, personal communication). This impression of ownership extended to
the collection in his home, as he also informed me that he wanted to “get them in a museum some
day. They are in my will” (Anonymous 3, personal communication)3. Although personally painful to
imagine, even human remains have been considered the literal property of some amateur
archaeologists, as the same interviewee recalled that “One of my friends, when he died his wife gave
me a box of human bones […] and I took it out and buried it” (Anonymous 3, personal
communication).
Struggles/coping: The kinds of struggles that interviewees discussed varied just as much as
they did as individuals. Although many struggles did relate directly to archaeology, some fell far
outside of it (such as general stress, impending foreclosure, grief over loss of a dear friend, lack of
job security, and frustration over forgetting names, sites, and events).
Interviewees did reflect on struggles directly related to their experiences with archaeology
as well, which is exemplified in the following three passages:
� We “were comfortable following in her slightly worn footsteps but uh it wasn't easy. One of the library's was not open to women when we were there and uh what other indignities. Oh I don't remember, but we smiled on through”(Anonymous 6, personal communication)
3 It is important to note that while viewing the artifacts within this collection one afternoon, the interviewee commented that he had not looked at many of them since the 1960s. Although I cannot speak to why he kept so many boxes of artifacts in his home and never looked at them, it did seem apparent that he wanted them there for some reason, until he passed away and ceased to be “useful” to him in some way.
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� “The compensation is very discouraging because of inflation. I refocus on other things. I do
this for society, it’s public service” (Anonymous 9, personal communication)
� What bothers me are “clients who just really don’t care […] Having a client who just paid for a survey say ‘I don’t even want his a copy of your report. Just send me, just send me the sign off letter’. That, that, that bums me out” (Anonymous 10, personal communication)
Archaeologists seem to cope with their struggles in a variety of ways. In the first example, the
interviewee sought the support of other female colleagues. Instead of going into detail however, she
is rather cryptic about exactly how she coped, instead just saying “but we smiled on through”. The
second interviewee copes with less than desirable working conditions by “focusing on other things”
whereas the final interviewee mentioned later that they are pleased to know that Historical
Societies and other archaeologists, such as myself, do gain something from their work.
∞ A beginning to an end ∞
Having analyzed various publication genres (articles, books, book chapters, site reports)
that span roughly 7 archaeological generations, it is hard to make broad conclusions. One striking
difference is that many earlier texts “allowed the narrator to be present in the text” (Hodder 1995:
228). Styles within the discipline as well as editorial preferences are moving away from the use of
first person, which does have a subconscious effect on the reader (and author). By an author not
situating him or herself in the text, might it appear as though the narrator is omnipotent, or offer a
sterilized discussion of the excavation experience? By this I mean what archaeologists recollect
decades after a site excavation often times does not make it into the publication because it is
deemed incidental or inappropriate although it adds to the readers understanding of the
excavation. For example, one excavation had to be completed the very day of a hurricane. The
interviewee recalls that
it got so dark in fact that um because we had put up a tarp to protect the excavation area [the landowner] actually ran a extension cord out of her house and uh gave us one of her house lamps to uh to plug in underneath the uh the tarp so people could actually see what they were doing to uh finish off the excavation [Anonymous 7, personal communication]
Anthropomorphizing artifacts as proxies for Native people’s presence in the past rather
than directly including them in discussions of the site, archaeological narratives can also become
blindingly “sequestered”. While these choices may be used as a way to offer a less complicated, less
risky and even tidy discussion of a site, it again takes actual people out of the equation. This
problematizes Pluciennik’s observation that if “we benefit from thinking of artifacts as people, we
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can also think of people as artifacts” (Pluciennik 2002: 227). It is almost as if some archaeologists
have gone out of their way to remove any hint of people: people at a site and people at an
excavation. Even field photographs generally focus on the site (and the associated features, artifacts
and ecofacts) with the occasional cropped boot or shadow at the edge of the image.
Byers had this general impression as well, addressing it clearly to Moffett in a letter dated
November 24th 1953, in which he says:
Just to be clear, I am not sure whether and/or how to get away from many of the issues
outlined here-‐-‐yet. Every person reading a narrative wants a satisfying conclusion, so I do feel
obliged to offer one now. Perhaps it is ironic or apropos, that I am not yet ready to conclude my
narrative, because like so many others, this is a work in progress. But it is my sense that each
archaeological narrative does not need to satisfy every need. We need technical reports, but they
can be written in a more humanizing way. We also need to balance these with publications that are
accessible to the public, although for various reasons these types of publications seem to be
infrequent.
Finally, if one finds him or herself writing an epic, are archaeologists always the
heroes/heroines? Or a drama, who is the antagonist and protagonist? Or a mystery, where is the
“suspense” and how much can really be “solved”? And finally with a love story, who (or what) is the
love interest and is it really happily ever after (and for whom)? We should work against being
pigeonholed in one genre and against talking only to ourselves about ourselves. We can and should
break out of the mold and experiment with writing where we can, although the terrain is unfamiliar
and there are many ethical considerations. With all of this in mind, some could certainly spend the
second half of their careers writing “prequels” for the first half!
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all the staff at the Massachusetts Historical Commission (Boston, MA),
the Robert S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology (Andover, MA), the New York State Museum
(Albany, NY) and the Robbins Museum (Middleboro, MA) for their invaluable help while conducting
this research over the past two summers. Tristan O’Donnell has also been an invaluable transcriber.
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Works Consulted
Anonymous 1862 “Kjoekkenmoedding” in Scientific American Vol. 6: p. 170. Brooks, Edward 1941 A Preliminary Report on the Second Season’s Work at site M-‐52-‐3, Nantucket Island. Bulletin of the Massachusetts Archaeological Society II (2): pp. 15-‐16. Byers, Douglas S. 1951 “On the Interpretation of Faunal Remains”. American Antiquity 16:3 (pp. 262-‐263).
Criado, Felipe 2006 The visibility of the archaeological record and the interpretation of social reality In Interpreting archaeology: finding meaning in the past. Routledge, New York. pp. 194-‐204. Fagan, Brian 2006 Writing Archaeology: Telling Stories About the Past. Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek. Herbster, Holly 2001 Archaeological Site Examination Lot 11 Site (19-‐DK-‐143). On file at the Massachusetts Historical Commission, Boston.
Hodder, Ian
1989 Writing archaeology: site reports in context. Antiquity 63: pp. 268-‐274. Joyce, Rosemary A. 2002 The languages of archaeology: dialogue, narrative, and writing. Blackwell, Malden. Keen, Suzanne 2003 Narrative form. Palgrave Macmillan. Pluciennik, Mark 2002 "Art, Artifact and Metaphor." In Thinking Through the Body: Archaeologies of Corporeality. Yannis Hamilakis, Mark Pluciennik, Sarah Tarlow, eds. New York: Kluwer/Plenum. 1999 “Archaeological narratives and Other Ways of Telling” Current Anthropology 40: 5 (pp. 653-‐678). Ritchie, William A. 1969 The Archaeology of Martha’s Vineyard: a Framework for the Prehistory of southern New England. Natural History Press. Shafer, David K. and Holly Herbster 1997 Intensive (Locational) Archaeological Survey and Archaeological Site Examination of the MCI International Site Subdivision. On file at the Massachusetts Historical
Commission, Boston.
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Figure 2. Vincent site field notes (1966); Martha’s Vineyard, MA
Courtesy of the New York State Museum, Albany, NY
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