Abstract

This article argues that the development of excavation field methods in archaeology is closely tied to the social position of fieldworkers. We also note disaffection in field contract archaeology today resulting from a wide range of factors, including the separation of excavation from interpretation. We argue that this separation and the notion that archaeological excavation can be seen as unskilled undermine the scientific basis of archaeology. A reflexive archaeology is discussed that empowers field archaeology by (a) focusing interpretation at the trowel's edge, (b) bringing multiple perspectives close to the moment of excavation, and (c) documenting the documentation process.

No abstract

Video recording is increasingly becoming a favourable medium in archaeological research, particularly as an unconventional documentation tool that captures the elusive processes of on-going interpretation in an audiovisual format. Our research forms part of the Personal Architectonics Through INteraction with Artefacts (PATINA) project, a project that aims to revolutionise the design of technologies for supporting research, by emphasising the primacy of the research material. Archaeological fieldwork is one of the research environments being studied by the project, and one of our primary concerns was to observe and record current research practices in the wild, and to examine the influence of new technologies on those practices. This research brings together well established and advanced observation techniques used in social sciences and computing fields such as Human Computer Interaction with archaeological research and presents the deployment of an off-theshelf wearable camcorder as a recording interface in archaeological fieldwork. The paper discusses the user evaluation methodology and the results, while addressing long standing and timely theoretical discussions on the role of video recording in archaeological research.

In exploring the possibilities of reflexivity in the Cultural Resource Management archaeology in Sweden, a comparison is made between the excavation at Çatalhöyük in Turkey and an excavation at Burlöv in Malmö, Sweden. The former, a large-scale research project that aims at implementing post-processual ideas, differs in many ways from the latter, which is part of a large-scale rescue project, Öresundsförbindelsen. There are also similarities, and in different ways reflexivity seems to be achieved in both cases.