PUBLIC

ARCHAEOLOGY

(2000)

VOLUME

1 PAGES

21-33

Archaeology from below

Neil Faulkner
ABSTRACT
This paper identifies and discusses two contrasting approaches to field archaeology
in contemporary Britain. The dominant approach is that of 'official archaeology'
rooted in professional rescue (or contract) work and represented by bodies such as
English Heritage, county archaeology units and the Institute of Field Archaeologists.
This 'archaeology from above' threatens alternative approaches to fieldwork, since
state legislation and other bureaucratic controls are being used to restrict access to
archaeology to an elite of self-accredited practitioners, and a persuasive and sophisticated ideology of heritage 'protection' and professional 'standards' is being deployed
to legitimize this policy. This attempt to universalize the practices of professional rescue
archaeology is academically incoherent and politically undemocratic. An alternative
'archaeology from below' is proposed in which fieldwork is rooted in the community,
open to volunteer contributions, organised in a non-exclusive, non-hierarchical way,
and dedicated to a research agenda in which material, methods and interpretation are
allowed to interact. These points are illustrated with detailed references to the
experience of 'democratic archaeology' on the author's project at Sedgeford in northwest Norfolk in 1996-98.

INTRODUCTION
The Fleet Valley, City of London,

August 1989

On the south-western edge of the City, a new

railway station is being built, and a large area is
being sampled by the Museum of London's Department of Urban Archaeology (DUA), the biggest rescue unit in the country. The diggers, in
protective hard hats, walk past the bulldozers,
scramble over heaps of building rubble, disappear
through a hole in the wall, go down some steps and
end up in a subterranean cavern. Here is one of the
excavation sites, part of the old Fleet Prison, and
pneumatic drills are being used to smash through
the floor; there is no time to hang about with only
a couple of months left. The diggers are a mixture
of school-Ieavers, new archaeology graduates and
veteran 'transient
serfs' (people in their midtwenties who make a living moving from one
three-month rescue dig to the next). Few diggers
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are older than this, as most people go off and get

'proper jobs' before they are thirty.
Not many people working on it have much idea
of the project as a whole. There is a routine. One
follows the procedure. Each context in the irregularly-shaped 10m2 trench is treated in the same
wa y: a standard form is filled in and a plan is drawn.
If you have a ditch, for instance, there are two
identical plans drawn, one for the fill, one for the cut.
It is called 'single-context recording', and the idea is
to make it highly standardized,
dead simple,
completely foolproof. You do not need to think about
the material, nor understand it; you just have to
follow the manual. The theory is that you could
reconstruct the whole site from the records. The site
will eventually be written up by someone else; it will
be their job to work out what it all means. In short,
the methods are standardized, every site is treated
the same, the interpretation gets done later. Theory
and practice, method and material are completely
divorced. Anyway, it will soon be tea-break.

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ARCHAEOLOGY

Boneyard Field, Sedgeford,

August 1998

Norfolk,

In the middle of the field, which is small, steeplysloping and under grass, there is a medium-sized
open-area excavation (about 20 x 20m.). On the
far side is a towering spoil-heap formed of three
summer seasons' worth of digging. On the near
side are some forty-odd tents in disorderly rows, a
wobbly marquee and two ageing. family caravans.
About thirty volunteers are currently at work on
the excavation site. A family group are working
on a skeleton. Pauline, the mother, is the project
secretary, and Ray, the father, the site technician.
Their daughter, Helen, is working for her school
exams. All three are learning about animal bone
identification and will help process the backlog of
finds through the winter. Pauline has just done the
planning and drawing course, so she can record
the skeleton when the cleaning is finished.
On another part of the site, Italian student
Stefania is supervising undergraduates and senior
school students digging a maze of intercutting
ditches and burials. Last year's policy of trenching
to try and sort the area out by 'looking at the
section' has been abandoned, because it did not
make things any clearer. The great lumps cut out
of the stratigraphy in 1997 remain as monuments
to failure, and they certainly do not make Stefania's
job this year, trying to understand things 'in plan',
any easier. It was also apparent to everyone on the
dig last year that the degree of secondary disturbance was massive, and the context sheets have
been changed to include a special sectionfof this:
supervisors now have to report on 'post-depositional
processes' for each deposit.
Still, there is progress. At the end of the 1997
season, the old view that the cemetery was SaxoNorman remained unquestioned; it is only now,
half way through the third season, that it is finally
reinterpreted as middle Saxon. The site, the methods and the interpretations are in constant interaction. Moreover, everyone is learning a lot and
enjoying themselves.
Hypothesis
These two cameos, based on personal
tion, are representative of contrasting

recollectypes of

FROM BELOW

modern .British field archaeology .. They convey

the essential difference between the trowel-face
experience of what I shall call, respectively, 'archaeology from above' and 'archaeology
from
below'. The former is overwhelmingly dominant,
and some of its practitioners seem eager to eliminate alternative approaches to fieldwork. State
legislative and law enforcement agencies are used
increasingly to restrict access to the archaeological resource to an elite of self-accredited practitioners, and a persuasive and sophisticated ideology of heritage 'protection' and professional 'standards' is being deployed to legitimize this policy.
My purpose in this paper is to characterize what
I call the 'bureaucratic professional tendency' as
the defence of a vested interest in British archaeology which is both academically incoherent and
politically undemocratic. I propose as an alternative 'archaeology from below', by which I mean a
fieldwork practice rooted in the community, open
to volunteer contributions,
organised in a nonexclusive, non-hierarchical way and dedicated to
a research agenda in which material, method and
interpretation are allowed to interact. These points
are illustrated with detailed references to my own
project in Sedgeford, where for four years now we
have been developing what we call 'democratic
archaeology'. The paper is an appeal to everyone
involved in British archaeology to reorient themselves in opposition to growing bureaucratization
and exclusion.
THE RISE OF THE BUREAUCRATICPROFESSIONAL TENDENCY
Rescue archaeology developed in the UK in the
1960s and 1970s as a response to the large-scale
destruction without record of our material heritage. Numerous well-funded, full-time field research teams were set up, and over the past 25
years the archaeological
database has grown
exponentially and our knowledge of many major
sites has been transformed. London is perhaps the
most spectacular
example: between 1973 and
1991 the Department of Urban Archaeology dug
more than 300 sites in the City area alone, an
average annual rate ten times that of the former,
mainly volunteer-based,
Roman and Medieval
London Excavation Council (RMLEC) in 1947-62

NEIL

(Milne 1995, 20-26). In 1990, the status of rescue

archaeology was consolidated by PPG16 (Planning Policy Guidance 16) issued by the Department
of the Environment,. which required developers to
contribute towards the protection of the archaeological heritage as a condition of planning consent.
Though the introduction of competitive tendering, and thus 'contract archaeology', has disorganised and diluted rescue-based fieldwork by
allowing outside units to undercut local ones, the
overall amount of professional
archaeological
activity in Britain remains immensely greater
than at any time before the 1970s. For an entire
generation, some thousands of people have found
more or less full-time employment in British field
archaeology and its post-excavation spin-offs (albeit often insecure). This small group of people
share a role, a status and a livelihood, and this
means, to look at matters in a sociological way,
that 'official archaeology'
constitutes a minor
'interest' within wider society.
Let me deal first with a terminology problem. I
use 'official archaeologist' to describe those who
are employed by English Heritage (the UK government's official advisor, and funder, in English
archaeology),
public museums, local authority
curatorial units, or contracting rescue units. I use
'independent archaeologist' to refer to those who
practise field archaeology
outside this official
framework, principally university-based academics and local amateur societies running their own
research projects. 'Official' and 'independent' are
better terms than 'professional'
and 'amateur'
because they imply only a difference in organisation, not necessarily in quality of work. Official
archaeologists work full-time in field archaeology
and earn their living from it, so they constitute a
more clearly defined group than the independents.
One consequence has been that many official
archaeologists have joined trade unions and united
with other workers in defence of public services
threatened with cutbacks, a development very
much to be welcomed by anyone who cares about
heritage and proper state provision for its protection. But like other groups of highly skilled workers, some official archaeologists have been pulled
by an alternative (and far less effective) strategy in
defence of their interests. Professional associations
(in contrast to trade unions) sometimes develop the

FAULKNER

23

approach of the old medieval craft guilds, where

mystification and artificial barriers are used to
create an exclusive elite, and group interests are
advanced in opposition to other would-be practitioners deemed 'unskilled' and 'amateur'. This
attitude is sometimes represented in official archaeology, especially in its upper echelons (where
one might expect the professional association approach to be stronger than that of the trade union).
In the recent past, bureaucratic restriction and
ideological mystification have been used to exclude ordinary people from participation in heritage creation. This is what I call, perhaps flippantly, the 'bureaucratic
professional tendency'
(or BPT). I must stress that the BPT, in so far asit
exists at all, is not stable in composition, organisation or outlook. People drift in and out of jobs in
official archaeology, a huge range of opinion is
represented among those employed at anyone
time, there are constant debates about policy. and
procedure, and actual practice is often uncertain,
contested and contradictory. There is no sugges.,.
tion here of some monolithic state bureaucracy on
the Stalinist model. Rather, the BPT is intended as
an 'ideal-type': a concept which helps us identify
certain underlying tendencies apparent in many
concrete situations without actually being a precise description of anyone of them. That said, I do
think that some of the policies pursued by English
Heritage (EH), the Institute ofField Archaeologists (IFA) and many county authorities seem to
reflect a BPT approach, and the effects are to be
felt in most localities, where once active independent fieldwork groups have decayed into 'visits. and
lectures only' societies, their wider aspirations
frustrated by scheduling policy, opposition from
county authorities, lack of support from funding
bodies and professional indifference and snobbery. Let us explore this more fully.
Official archaeology in England is led by EH~
Its remit is: 'a) to secure, as far as practicable, the
preservation of ancient monuments situated in
England; and b) to promote the public's enjoyment
of, and advance their knowledge of, ancient monuments in England and their preservation'
(DoE
1990, Annex 1, 2). This statement clearly invites
wide debate on how best to do this, but in practice
the debate .has been very restricted. EH is not a
democratic body: it is a department
of state,

24

ARCHAEOLOGY

hierarchically structured under the authority of

government appointees, and thus, although a public body, effectively unaccountable to the communities it supposedly serves. Though much is made
of the need for 'consultation', this is not the same
as community control, and the decisions of EH
management are no more democratic than those
of the Department. of Health when it shuts a local
hospital, or a local council when it closes a
primary school.
The. chief weapon in EH management's
armoury ..is. the scheduling procedure. Over the last
hundred years, some 13,000 sites have been scheduled, which means they are protected under the
law. This is excellent asa defence against destruction without record by development, but it is also
used ..as a 'protection' ...against research unauthorized by the state, and very little research on such
sites is authorized.
The current policy is that
'where ..nationally important archaeological .remains, whether scheduled or not, and their settings, are affected by proposed development there
should be a presumption in favour of their. physical
preservation' (DoE 1990, 8). This has meant that
even well-funded research projects have often
found it difficult to get permission to work on a
scheduled site (see Faulkner 1998, 1). Communitybased projects on low budgets, likeSedgeford,
would have no chance at all; they would never get
off the ground ona scheduled site ..Moreover, EH
is currently embarked on a programme aimed at
adding many new sites to the present schedule,
which 'is expected. to result ..ina very significant
increase in the number of scheduled monuments'
(DoE 1990, Annex 3, 3). One estimate of the likely
eventual total of scheduled sites is60,000by
2007
(Faulkner 1998, 1). Nor is it simply a matter of
fixed 'out of-bounds' lists. The ground constantly
shifts. Any field project could be shut down by the
state at any timeif EH deems a new discovery to be
'nationally important'. Three sites actually discovered by Tony Rook's We1wyn group were scheduled
while work was still in progress (Rook 1998, 5-6).
If we lower our gaze to the interface between
EH nationally and the curatorial authorities at
county level, we encounter another. problem. Any
field research proposal is now expected to take the
form of a comprehensive. 'project design' (with
detailed cost estimates appended), including an

FROM BELOW

explanation of how it fits into the wider context of

national, regional and local 'research frameworks'
(HBMCE 1991; EH .1997). This elaborate legitimization process is articulated by various consultative committees, policy papers and application procedures. A hurdling race of report reading,
form filling and waiting on officials and committees confronts the would-be field researcher seeking official approval.
Such approval may be
necessary to secure the support of landowners and
funders, who may. well be put off by official
hostility, and, .as. noted ..above,on
an increasing
number of sites, where scheduling applies, it is in
fact essential. Bureaucratization
of this kind is
generally justified as rationalization,
the establishment of. order and purpose where otherwise
there would be chaos. But other interpretations. are
possible. There have been various studies, some
academic, some more light-hearted, in the social
behaviour of bureaucratic personnel. A special
favourite of mine is Parkinson's Law and Other
Studies in Administration (Parkinson 1957), which,
in spite of its comic purpose, contains many
essential truths about the self-reproducing character of bureaucracies. More sinister is the manner
in which bureaucratic procedures can be used to
empower top functionaries, a process represented
in an extreme (and thus especially well-defined)
form inthe degeneration of the Russian Revolution, where a democratic system of workers' power
was replaced by the dictatorship
of Stalinist
apparatchiks
in the 1920s (Cliff 1974). These
alternative perspectives on state regulation can be
linked with a critique of the methodology implied
in 'project designs' (e.g. Adams. & Brooke 1995).
These issues will be explored in greater detail
below. Let us first consider some other features of
bureaucratization
in archaeology.
What seems to be happening is that the experience
of rescue-work is being generalized to other types of
archaeology. Thus, the 1989 EH document The
Management of Archaeological Projects proposed
a standardized way of organising fieldwork:
the model put forward ... is applicableto all archaeological projects regardless of scale, although itis recognised
that the precise application of the model will vary from
project to project ... English Heritage would now like to
see other groups apply, interpret and develop this frame-

NEIL

work with reference to their own particular areas of

interest, and to other types of project, with the aim of
ultimately establishing a consensus on good professional
and management standards and practice in all areas of
archaeological

work. (Preface)

This document was the third in a series, the first of

which, published in 1975 in the early days of
rescue archaeology,
was entitled Principles of
Publication in Rescue Archaeology (my emphasis). This generalization of rescue experience now
applies to all aspects of archaeological field practice, and it is being promoted by many county
curatorial authorities and by the IFA. The Norfolk
unit has issued County Standards for Field Archaeology in Norfolk (1998), whose introduction states
that 'its contents are applicable to all field archaeology projects in Norfolk, both within and outside
the planning system operated by the Local Planning Authorities'.
Standardized procedures are
described for all aspects of field research, and
these are extremely detailed. In fieldwalking survey, for instance, the recommendation is for 20m
transects, divided into 20m lengths, with 2m wide
strips observed, using only 'staff with appropriate
fieldwalking experience' (Norfolk Landscape Archaeology 1998, 3, 3.2-7). Elsewhere, reference is
made to various 'codes and standards' issued by
other bodies (principally EH and the IFA) which
should be adhered to by Norfolk fieldworkers. The
proposed standards are promoted as 'well-established techniques and procedures which have been
developed in Norfolk since 1974', and, moreover,
alternative or new methods 'should not be employed without the prior written approval of NLA
[Norfolk Landscape Archaeology], (Introduction).
There is nothing unusual about Norfolk; it is
used as an example only because it is the county
where I happen to work. Standardization is very
fashionable. As a protection against the shoddy
fieldwork encouraged by competitive tendering in
rescue archaeology, it is to be commended. If
planning authorities can be persuaded to refuse
developers consent unless they fund high standard
work instead of merely accepting the lowest offer,
all well and good. In this case, a clear conflict of
interest is involved: developers want archaeology
on the cheap, and units want to undercut rival bids
and win contracts. The role of the market, as ever,

FAULKNER

25

is to cut costs, lower standards and preclude

proper planning. The county authority has a
public duty to defend the local heritage against
market madness. It is the same as when government imposes food safety standards on supermarket chains, the 'cheap and dirty' versus 'expensive
and safe' conflict, and we are rightly outraged if
public health is undermined by political corruption.
To extend standardization to research archaeology is, however, another matter. Here there is
no conflict of interest: in the absence of commer~
cial pressures, and the cost-cutting and constraints
of time and resources they give rise to, there is no
threat to standards. Yet some top official archaeologists still demand that bureaucratically authorized standards should be upheld, a claim to universal and eternal validity for a particular set of
procedures which is .both arrogant and ignorant
(see below). The same applies to the other two
principal weapons of the BPT discussed above: the
scheduling
and preservation
policy and the
bureaucratization
of fieldwork. The effect of this
drive towards increasing state regulation of archaeology is twofold.
First, it empowers a group of top bureaucratic
functionaries at the expense of everyone else interested in heritage. This includes most official archaeologists, whose work is controlled from above,
all those independents who are not networked into
the official system of red tape and regulation and
the very large numbers of ordinary people who
would like to be actively involved in heritage
recovery. Archaeology from above is, then, profoundly undemocratic.
Secondly, restriction and prescription threaten
the scientific integrity of the discipline. Good
research work depends upon the intellectual creativity which is possible when material,. method
and meanings are allowed to interact and crossfertilize, and this is precisely what the policies of
the regulators and standardizers undermine.
Both these arguments require detailed ex ami nation. I turn first to the second, which involves me
in a short digression on the theory of archaeological method. I make no apology for including this
in a paper on public archaeology,
since it is
fundamental
to my argument that the BPT's
claim to be the sole legitimate
guardian
of
heritage is false.

26

ARCHAEOLOGY

SOME SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLES IN FIELD

ARCHAEOLOGY

Rate standards are not applicable

All science involves making decisions about aims
and methods and having a concern to ensure the
validity of results. This is not the sameasproducing an EH -style 'project design' or using only IFAapproved 'codes and standards'; to conflate the
two is an ideological leap which has nothing to do
with science.
Let us take an example. We may want to know
whether wheat or barley was the. principal cereal
eaten in a medieval settlement during the 12th
century. Since we are excavating a large rubbish
pit, we take bulk samples for flotation in the hope
of recovering quantities of carbonized grains. We
make every effort to ensure against the contamination of our sample, lest our results be invalidated.
The variables here are numerous: our initial research question, the resources available to us, the
methodology chosen, the data recovered and how
we interpret. it, the possibility of further 'tests' if
our first is inconclusive, and so on. On this, as on
many matters, we would draw on a wide range of
past field experience, that represented by our own
knowledge,. our access to relevant references, the
advice of outside specialists and so on. But how
would it help us to be told that, come what may,
we had to float a fixed proportion. of the material
from every pit using three meshes of standard size?
What if there were 25 large .pits? What if the first
ten sampled all produced the same result? What if
the smallest mesh was slowing us down .without
yielding additional material? Once you break the
link between material, method and meanings,
procedure fossilizes into data-collection
for its
own sake without regard for purpose. Field archaeology .is not like a school chemistryexperiment, where everyone heats up the same stuff in a
test-tube until it turns yellow. Every site and every
field 'experiment'
(unrepeatable,
of course) is
different. Let us consider ..this further.

Field projects are diverse and organic

The social sciences are different from the. natural
sciences because humanity has the ability, through

FROM

BELOW

conscious collective action, to transform nature,

society and itself. This means that social experience is immensely diverse and constantly changing. This in turn means that the material traces of
past social practice are always characterized by
both similarities and differences; there is patterning
in material culture, but no two things are ever
exactly the same. We cannot properly speak ofa
'typical' Saxon village in the past, and therefore
there can be no 'typical' low-status Saxon rural
site in the present. Every site is different.
Equally,. no .two archaeological
projects are
ever the same. They vary greatly in their research
objectives, their personnel, their skills bases, their
equipment andresourcing,
their logistical infrastructure, the social relationships within the team
(especially of power) and many other things.
Moreover, their character is not fixed: people
come and go, relationships alter, new working
patterns emerge, equipment breaks down and
cannot be replaced: as every field director knows,
on a large project 'a thousand things go wrong'
(Peter Drewett, pers comm).An
excavation is a
highly individual and. organic entity, a thing of
strengths and weaknesses which are ever changing, and it cannot be fitted into the ready-made
mould of a detailed 'proj ect design', one where,
before any work has actually been done, we have
'soundly based estimates of the resources required
to achieve objectives', and 'a team with appropri"
ate knowledge and skills ... [including] ... representatives of all relevant specialisms' (HBMCE
1991, 5, 9).
This is perhaps especially true of communitybased projects like Sedgeford. To start work is to
create a pole of attraction for local enthusiasts,
and this rapidly transforms the character of the
project. When we began work in 1996, we had no
geophysics component ..During the first season, Dr
Peter Carnell, an outstanding local field scientist,
joined us, .bringing not only his own skills but)a
whole armoury of home-made resistivity meters
and computer.programmes.
He is now our Scientific Director and a central figure in the proj ect.
The bureaucratic mind thinks greyly in. terms of
fixed-value components. Had I appealed to EH for
permission to work on Sedgeford's one scheduled
site by claiming 'we'll find someone to do the
geophysics', I would have received short shrift.

NEIL FAULKNER

But the real world is not grey, it is green with the

shoots of life, and practical activity grows organically and soon no longer fits its first pot. Beside it,
the 'project design', with its 'soundly based estimates', appears a shrivelled irrelevance.

The undug is the unknown

If we knew in advance what a site was like, we would
not need to digit. It is because every site is different,
and therefore unknown until dug, that we continue to
excavate. Our ability to predict in advance what we
will encounter is therefore highly restricted and
provisional. This is reflected in two well-known
archaeological cliches about excavation: that a) we
always encounter things we did not expect, and b) we
always find things more complicated than anticipated. This has all sorts of implications.
Predictions about times cales and resources are
likely to be unreliable. Ideas about research questions and the work's likely relevance in wider
frameworks will be vague. Whatever methods we
start with, very different methods will later become appropriate. These many unknowns or partlyknowns mean that we cannot produce a detailed
'project design' in advance, certainly not one
which 'defines the objectives of the whole project
and gives an outline of the overall resources likely
to be necessary to achieve these' (HBMCE 1991,
3). Indeed, if we do, we run a grave risk: that we
will find what we are looking for, and miss what
we are not, that we will interpret evidence in
conformity with our expectations and preparations. Our preconceptions may influence our readingof the stratigraphy, perhaps filtering out evidence which does not fit the paradigm, and elevating the significance of that which does.
Excavations done in 1958 at Sedgeford indicated that Boneyard Field was a Saxo-Norman
cemetery. So when we formed a new proj ect in
1996, we geared ourselves up to dig skeletons: our
recruitment literature emphasised that the site was
a cemetery, the excavation was directed by a
cemetery specialist, two human-remains supervisors were appointed, we invested in 100 'skelly
boxes', our T-shirt for the first season was inscribed 'Invasion of the Body-snatchers'.
There
was then frustration when half way through the
season still no inhumations had been excavated.

27

Sondages were cut to 'find the skelly level', and the

size of the excavation was reduced to a central
strip in the middle ('because we can't dig it all this
year'), and this was then mattocked down to reach
the burials. Our preconceptions, and the methods
we adopted because of them, prevented proper
notice and record of numerous, disturbed, ephemeral settlement features, now known only because
hunches were followed up and methods altered in
1997 and 1998. Had we spent time on a detailed
'project design', it would now be waste-paper.

Material, method and meaning interact

Those who favour standardization in fieldwork do
so from a strongly positivist position, though this
is rarely made explicit and is perhaps more often
than not unconscious. Their approach implies a
sharp distinction between 'facts' and 'interpretations': the job in the field is to collect the
stratigraphic and artefactual 'facts' using 'objective' or 'scientific' methods, leaving site interpretation (essentially 'subjective') to a later stage
when all the data have been analysed. This view
of archaeology is patently false. There are no
'facts' except those we create. This act of creation
results from an interaction between three principal elements: the material we dig, the methods we
employ and the meanings we ascribe to what we
uncover. The interaction
is mediated by the
fieldworker.
A good excavator
is constantly
shuffling competing interpretations,
adjusting
methods to increase stratigraphic visibility, and
responding to the material as it appears. Our
observations may be changed by adjustments in
our interpretations
and/or modifications. in our
methodology while the excavation is proceeding
(Hodder 1999). Every fieldworkerknows
the truth
of this.
There is, for instance, the perennial dilemma of
whether to cut a section or excavate in plan. At
Sedgeford, in 1996, we sometimes cut vertically
through indistinct settlement deposits, because our
preconceptions of the site did not include their
possible presence. The following year, we excavated more consistently in plan in order to recover
just such evidence, but, frustrated
by limited
stratigraphic visibility, we still occasionally cut
sections in the hope clarifying the sequence. In our

28

ARCHAEOLOGY

third season,we
resisted the temptation to cut
sections entirely: we had learned from our experi"'
ence of the site that, however difficult it might
sometimes seem, we maximized data recovery by
excavating consistently in plan. In our fourth
season I ani convinced we will 'see' even more,
because we are installing a sprinkler system to
increase stratigraphic
visibility.
This interaction between material, method and
meaning occurs at the micro-level, too. Every field
director knows that the same section would. be
drawn differently by two separate teams, but that
the best people to draw it are the ones who
excavated the trench because they know 'what
should be there'. Of course it is subjective and
imprecise: one craves greater objectivity and certainty, and it is right to do all we can to maximize
the authenticity of the record we create. But that
does not mean pretending that it is the material
itself which speaks. It cannot, for it is mute.
Because we create the 'facts' ,we can, and do, also
alter them. This. tends to occur especially when we
compare the part with the whole and discover that
some of our evidence does not 'fit'. When this
happens, the interpretation may be adjusted, or,
far more often than is usually admitted, the evidence may be checked and rewritten. Hodder's
notion that knowledge-creation
in excavation is
essentially a process of 'fitting' is, Ithink, very
useful in clarifying this (1999). It underlines the
extent to which material, method and meaning
stand in a dialectical relationship to one another
during the excavation process.
Rescue is positivist-empiricist;
is dialectical

research

I do not think there is a Chinese wall between

rescue and research, but I do think there is a
marked difference of emphasis. In rescue, material
is dug because it is about to be lost, not because we
have formulated questions for which we thinkit is
relevant, and therefore we cannot adapt methods
to tasks. All we can do is dig the stuff up according
to a standard procedure, so that some sort of
record is saved from the wreckage;.it mayor may
not turn out useful someday. Empiricism is inevitable: one accumulates vast masses of data without knowing why (exceptthat
now is our only

FROM BELOW

chance) . Positivism is the theoretical, or, more

correctly, ideological, justification for this: the
idea that what is recovered in rescue are 'the facts'
makes the process more credible and endows its
practitioners with a 'professional' status. Hence
the drive to extend positivist-style standardization
to all archaeology: behind it lies the essentially
ideological claim that the only correct method is
that practised in the contract work in which most
official archaeologists are involved.
The weaknesses of the approach have not gone
unchallenged
even within official archaeology.
Barry Cunliffe, reflecting on the first decade of
rescue, argued for research designs which would
impose a more critical selection of data (1982). A
central theme of Martin Carver's critique of current practice in Arguments in Stone (1993) was the
need Jor research agendas to structure urban archaeology, and he expressed doubts about the
relevance of traditional rescue work to this. Even
EH admits there is a problem, but confesses that
attempts to address it have not so far been very
successful (HBMCE 1991, 1).
Let me conclude with an example. If a medieval
wall is about to be demolished, there may well be
a case for a stone-by-stone drawn record; in due
course, research questions for which this would be
relevant evidence, in the absence of the wall itself,
may arise. Not to make such a record would be
cultural vandalism. At Sedgeford, in our first
season, we began such a record of the 11th-century
parish church, because it was 'standard procedure' (Rodwell 1989, 85--113). The work was dull,
progress. was slow and the pictures were pointless;
the walls were not going anywhere and we could
study them at will. We now understand that the
rich repertoire of observation techniques used in
standing-building research constitutes a resource
to be adapted in relation to specific questions
being asked of particular material. What method
we use depends on what we are trying to find out.
There is no 'standard procedure' in research; to
claim otherwise is merely an excuse for not thinking.
In sum, we must distinguish clearly between the
imposition of universal standards where there is a
general interest to defend, as, for instance, in
consumer protection or. contract archaeology, and
the same thing where there is no such conflict and
the object of regulation is an academic research

NEIL

programme. I have argued that in the latter case

there is no place for externally-imposed standards
(as opposed to adherence to the methodological
rules of one's discipline). Any attempt to generalize the experience of one form of field research
(with its own methodological and temporal limits)
into a set of universal procedures and standards
represents an attack on scientific methods, since
the latter necessarily involve a constant interaction between a number of key variables: the site
and the material it contains, the research questions posed, the resources of skill, equipment
and time available, the methods employed, and
the changing interpretations
of the fieldworkers.
It is revealing that those who argue for standardization
rarely do so on the basis of any
explicit theory of knowledge-creation;
it appears to be an a priori assumption that facts are
things (not ideas) and methods are fixed and
universal (not dynamic and contingent). When
one enters the ideology of the BPT, one finds
oneself in the desert.
TWO CONCEPTS OF DEMOCRACY
EH management has recently rededicated itself to
'promoting public appreciation and enjoyment of
archaeology' (1997). The means proposed to this
end are various. They are also rather vague.
Suggested key mechanisms are to 'increase the
transparency of decision making on the importance of archaeological remains', 'promote and
acknowledge appreciation of the value and interest of the historic environment',
'ensure that
projects undertaken
are planned to maximise
the local and regional impact', 'generate public
curiosity and passion for archaeology by carrying out flagship research projects' and so on.
Only occasionally is the possibility of popular
activity, as opposed to the passive receipt of
archaeology from above, entertained,
as when
EH commits itself to 'acknowledge, develop and
enable the contribution
that independent
archaeologistscan
make to the discipline' (without saying how). The general approach is to
assume that ordinary people are simply consumers of fully-processed
and prepacked 'heritage'
served to them by expert guardians of 'ancient
monuments' .

FAULKNER

29

EH management seems at present hopelessly

locked into a Kafkaesque paradigm of exclusion,
restriction, regulation and obfuscation. This, of
course, is part of a wider problem concerning the
relationship between state and people in parliamentary democracies.
Numerous
studies have
shown that the extent of democratic participation
in formal decision-making
procedures in such
states is pretty minimal, that the mass of the
population is expected to be politically inert and
compliant, and that the real power-brokers regard
any mass activity to advance the popular interest
against the established order with the gravest
suspicion (e.g. Cliff & Gluckstein 1988). Just as
top politicians require of their supporters only
passive support, so heritage bosses require of the
community only passive consumption. A restricted
democracy which barely touches power produces
a heritage establishment whose idea of 'public
archaeology'
is the viewing-platform,
designer
signboard and glossy guidebook, where the officially-approved version of the past can be delivered in easily-absorbed gobbets.
All politics are about power. The politics of
archaeology are about who has power over material remains from the past. The state does not
allow local communities and interest groups real
power over heritage. To achieve this, to take
control of the archaeological record in the landscape, people disempowered under the present
system have to fight for an alternative approach.
The mass of official archaeologists, subject to the
dictates of traditional workplace hierarchies, should
challenge the priorities and policies of the heritage
bosses they work for. The mass of actual and
would-be independent archaeologists should organise their own heritage research and conservation in defiance of bureaucratic discouragement.
This is not an argument for excavation improperly
done without adequate record, still less for vandalising archaeological
sites for private profit or
pleasure. Indeed, if anything, it is an argument for
community mobilization against these threats.
What we need is the removal of alIt he dis inc entives to archaeology from below, to popular initiative and control, which at present frustrate the
development
of locally-oriented,
communitybased, mass-participation
field research. These
disincentives include EH's scheduling programme

ARCHAEOLOGY

30

and preservation policy, the hostility of many

county archaeologists
to 'amateur'
excavation,
the lack of official .funding. for independent research work, the demand that everyone conform
to centrally-imposed 'standards', and the mystification and hyping up of the costs and difficulties
of excavation. The effect is to dam up a huge pool
of enthusiasm, talent and creativity which, unleashed, could greatly enlarge the archaeological
database and our repertoire of field research techniques, widely extend the whole range of perceptions and voices contributing to the interpretation
of archaeology, and involve local communities in
the active process of creating their own heritage.
Let me now, finally, pursue this matter in relation
to the example I know best. It is by no means the only
project of its kind, but at Sedgeford we are, perhaps,
more explicit and. evangelical about our political
purpose than is true elsewhere.. Certainly, as an
example of its type, it is sharply defined.
SEDGEFORD:A MODEL OF DEMOCRATIC
ARCHAEOLOGY FROM BELOW
The Sedgeford Historical
and Archaeological
Research Project is a long-term, large-scale, multidisciplinary, multi-period investigation of the whole
sequence of human settlement and land-use in a
north-west Norfolk rural parish. Its main fieldwork activity each year is a six-week summer
season, with 50-75 volunteers active each week,
and work currently focused on two main sites: that
of the medieval. church and manor complexes in
the centre of the modern village; and that ofalarge
middle to late Saxon ruraL settlement and cemetery centred ina small field a few hundred metres
away. The project is self~consciously an exercise
in 'democratic
archaeology'.
This concept has
been worked out in opposition to many features of
contemporary .field practice, so that our approach
(which continues to develop) has been contested,
sometimes bitterly, within the project team. Iwant to
define Sedgeford's democratic archaeology as we
currently practise it in terms offive main principles.

FROM BELOW

cal remains, whether of national or only local

importance, whether scheduled or not, whether
facing redevelopment or not, should be sampled
through active field research when appropriate
projects can be established. The notion that we
should save everything for the future when techniques will be better is a transparent absurdity,
since the future, by definition, can never come.
Nor, if research is largely banned, are techniques
likely to develop much. Nor, if access to all the more
important sites is denied, can an academically
sound, properly scientific research programme be
worked out. The fact is thatthe amount of archaeology likely to be destroyed in field research could only
ever be a bucket in the ocean compared with the size
of the resource and rate of its destruction by construction work, quarrying, ploughing, desiccation of
wetlands, tidal erosion, and much else.
Sedgeford illustrates this well. It is one of the
largest summer research projects currently operating in Britain. On the main excavation site we
have probably had an average of about 25 people
working for a total of 18 weeks (over three seasons). My guess is that we have dug less than 10%
of it, possibly much less. There is likely to be a
comparable Saxon site in most English parishes.
Moreover, there are dozens of other sites within
the parish which we would like to sample by
excavation. There is, in short, enougharchaeology in Sedgeford alone to keep one of the biggest
contemporary projects running for hundreds of
years! Thus, to presume in favour of preservation
might bean appropriate response to the vandalism
of modern, . profit-driven,
commercial development; to impose this policy on field research is an
act of academic vandalism whose effect is to
empower state officialdom at the expense. of the
people to. whom the heritage truly belongs. And
one is bound to ask: how many sites 'preserved'
from research excavation today will be destroyed
without adequate record at some point in the
future? So, principle one: 'heads down, bums up,
get digging' (Peter Reynolds, pers comm).

Sites should be dug

Low-budget projects can be

'organically' resourced

Let me turn EH's famous 'presumption in favour

of physical preservation' on its head. Archaeologi-

Very few research projects are possible if they

depend upon professional levels of funding. For

NEIL

many of us, it is low-cost archaeology or none at

all. The major cost is, of course, labour, but
interest in archaeology is such that the demand
from prospective volunteers currently greatly exceeds the supply of placements. Volunteers are
willing to pay for their own subsistence, and at
Sedgeford, since all from the director down are
volunteers, we have no labour costs. I do not
advocate this for development-driven
archaeology. The whole thrust of this paper is to argue that
there are different archaeologies appropriate to
different circumstances; the only aspect of contract archaeology under attack here is the attempt
to generalize its practice to the whole discipline.
Research archaeology in Britain has always been
predominantly volunteer-based, and on this basis
we can continue to carry out projects at a fraction
of the cost of contract work.
A second major cost is that of facilities, equipment and consumables, but much of this can also
be met through contributions in kind if a project is
opened to mass participation. At Sedgeford, all of
the following have been donated or loaned by
local participants and supporters, or by one or
other of our institutional backers: an old village
hall as a finds-processing centre; a large converted
barn complex as a field history archive, a training
centre, and a meetings room; several electrical
resistivity meters and computer processing facilities; photographic
equipment and development
facilities; a large marquee; a scaffold tower; new
sets of high-level optical and low-level infrared air
photos; and an on-site environmental lab.
A third cost is that of post-excavation analysis
and specialist contributions. In fact, most of the
skills necessary to do the bulk of this work can be
developed inside any sizeable project, but this can
be greatly helped by the support of specialist
consultants. A Sedgeford example is provided by
EH-funded archaeo-environmentalists
who have
cbntributed generously both to the planning of a
sampling strategy and to the establishment of our
animal bones project. This is precisely the kind of
facilitating and supporting of independent work
which a state department committed to public
archaeology ought to be doing routinely on a
massive scale. As it is, the great majority of EH-,
county- and museum-based specialists can only
undertake unpaid work in support of independent

FAULKNER

31

projects as a favour. That they frequently do so is

admirable. That it is usually 'unofficial' is regrettable. This is a very specific feature of heritage
management policy which should be contested by
those working within official bodies. Even so,
despite our difficulties, the support we have received at Sedgeford from volunteer workers and
specialist consultants means that we have almost
no backlog of unprocessed finds.

Projects should be community-based

At Sedgeford, we encourage community participation at all levels. A local committee of trustees
handles all aspects of project administration. Several leading members of the supervisory team are
Norfolk independents. Many other local people
work on site during the season, and some are
involved in local history research, fieldwalking
surveys and post-excavation work out of season.
During the summer, the site is open at all times to
visitors, who can roam freely, and local people are
invited to a range of events, including weekly
lectures and site tours. This rooting of the project
in the community is crucial in three senses. First,
it allows a wide range of people to enjoy and
develop themselves by 'touching the past' in a
collective effort at heritage recovery. Secondly,
the fund of enthusiasm and goodwill it generates
ensures a continuing flow of time, skill and resources from the local community without which
we could not function. Thirdly, the recovery of
heritage becomes a living process in which a
multitude of interests and perspectives enrich the
archaeological
process.
One concrete illustration of the point will suffice. The excavation of human remains has often
been highly controversial. This is especially so in
a high-profile, community-based project like ours.
Discussion around this question has produced a
distinctive solution with which all seem happy: the
physical remains of the Saxons of Sedgeford will
continue to be excavated and studied, so that their
story can be told and enter the local heritage, and
when all work is completed the remains will be
reinterred
(though bagged and labelled as a
recoverable material archive), with appropriate
ceremony, and a permanent monument will be
erected in Boneyard Field to commemorate their

ARCHAEOLOGY

32

village, their remains

study of them.

and our excavation

and

Hierarchy should be minimal

We have a democratic
internal
structure
at
Sedgeford. This is not a matter of formal arrangements, such asa rigid decision-making procedure.
Rather, it means refusing to mimic the restrictive
hierarchies of factory and office, where talent is
bottled up and creativity frustrated, instead offering the opportunities, challenges and responsibilities which will. maximize people's enthusiasm,
self-development
and contribution.
After basic
training volunteers may request assignment to
particular parts of the .project, and a few. fastdevelopers may be promoted to the supervisory
team. Supervisors have full autonomy within their
areas of work, and are expected to be involved in
post-excavation analysis and to contribute to the
archive and publication. There is an informal and
relaxed working atmosphere on site (inthe context
of a strict routine), volunteers are encouraged to
demand explanations for everything they are required to do, and there is a weekly forum open to
everyone working on the site and any interested
visitors. The philosophy of .education and work
which underlies this is simple: people learn. and
work best when they are treated with respect,
when they understand what they are doing and
when they have control and opportunity in their
work. The result is a much higher standard of
work on the project overall.

There is no single correct method in research

At Sedgeford,we
believe that field archaeology
should be led by those with knowledge, skill and
experience in the discipline. They may or may not
have formal qualifications
in archaeology. We
neither advocate nor practise unsupervised work
by untrained volunteers. But this has nothing to do
with adherence to externally imposed standards,
and any attempt to conflate 'professionalism' and
'standardization'
is, as argued above, an ideological not a scientific move. All participants
at
Sedgeford are encouraged to contribute to discussion .about the material, the methods and the
meanings, but some contributions,
from those

FROM BELOW

with greater experience, are bound to be weightier

than others. However, experience .should not ossify into routinism.On
the contrary, the greater
the experience, the more likely it is that critical
engagement in the complex relationship between
material, method and meaning will produce new
ideas. This is one of the principal advantages that
research has over rescue. We do not have to work
fast. We can accommodate
large numbers of
unskilled volunteers, take time out for on-site
training and slow the pace while expertise develops. We can also allow ourselves the time to think
and discuss, to modify method in relation to
emerging material and changing interpretation,
to interrogate our site far more comprehensively
than we could if the developers were waiting to get
in. This is true not just during the season, of course,
but with a six-week bite of the material each year,
there are many months of post-excavation, writing up and discussion in which to plan a new, more
appropriate, better intervention for the following
season. Each year we return to our site armed with
new understandings. and new methodologies, when
a rescue site\would long since have been bulldozed
away and concreted over.
SUMMARY
Archaeology from below is not just about making
heritage an active process of creation belonging to
the people whose past it is. It is also about
achieving a truly scientific discipline where active
knowledge creation replaces standardized dataaccumulation, where material, method and meaning interpenetrate in dialectical tension. For me,
an academic archaeologist with ten years' experience viewing the discipline of field archaeology
in Britain at the end of the 20th century, there is
a sharp dichotomy. On one side stand big government, restrictive bureaucracy,
professional
snobbery, mystification
and exclusion, positivism and pseudoscience .. On the other stand local
communities,ordinarypeople
with a passion
for archaeology, popular excitement and activity, a dialectical approach to knowledge creation, and. the heritage as something living, growing and changing in the hands of the people to
whom it belongs. Let us hope that in the years to
come the workers, students and enthusiasts who

NEIL

form the mass base of British archaeology can

rescue their heritage from the tightening tentacles
of state bureaucracy.
Dr Faulkner is Director of the Sedgeford Historical and Archaeological
Research Project. Contact: 96 Dumbarton Road, London SW2 5LU, UK;
tel: +44 208 671 5363.
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Adams, M. and Brooke, C. Unmanaging the past: truth,
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Review 28(2) (1995),93-104.
Carver, M. Arguments in Stone: Archaeological Research
and the European Town in the First Millenium. Oxbow,
Oxford (1993).
Cliff, T. State Capitalism in Russia. Pluto, London (1974).
Cliff, T. and Gluckstein, D. The Labour Party-a Marxist
History. Bookmarks, London (1988).
Cunliffe,
B. The Publication
of Archaeological
Excavations.
Council for British Archaeology/
Department of the Environment, London (1982).

FAULKNER

33

English Heritage Archaeology Division Research Agenda:

Draft. English Heritage, London (1997).
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N. Who will do research archaeology?
Council for Independent
Archaeology
Newsletter
29 (1998L 1-4.
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The Management of Archaeological Projects. HBMCE,
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Milne, G. Roman London. Batsford/English Heritage,
London (1995).
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Boston
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I{odwell, W. Church Archaeology. BatsfordlEnglish Heritage,
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