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2.0 Other influences affecting the area of study

2.1 Introduction

This section traces the main influences affecting thinking about the area of study, since the late 18th century to the present day as they relate to burial archaeology. It is intended to lend perspective to the way in which the discussion is developed. Archaeology has been on a gradually accelerating trajectory since the early 19th century, and there have been points both within the discipline and outside it which have signalled significant advances either immediately or with delayed effect. For convenience, these are used to divide the narrative into three time periods, one ending around 1900, the next around 1960 and the third taking the narrative to the present. It explores the main contemporary influences of other disciplines (such as sociology, the natural sciences, and anthropology) as they themselves developed and were exploited by archaeologists and historians seeking to explain the mortuary material and the mortuary contexts discovered. The review seeks to show the way in which discovery and interpretation of the archaeological material has been and still is subject to a growing number of influences, and to show how understanding is still developing in the discipline of attitudes to disposal of the dead in the long period under examination.

Three main strands are identified:

• Excavation and survey methods which capture and record data and report reached minimum high standards in the late 19th century, were consolidated in the 1930s, and have since been build upon steadily, largely through scientific methodological improvements. Science has contributed generally but, since 1950, especially through radiocarbon dating
• Social anthropology as it might be applied to burial archaeology was founded in the early 1900s, but took until the 1960s to be recognised for its potential value, and in the 1980s and 1990s began to be used to some degree in the explanation of mortuary processes
• Archaeological theory existed in rudimentary form until the early 1900s when the cultural-historical method was developed. This has lasted until the present, but from the 1960s has been overshadowed by the move through the new or processual archaeology to develop a scientific approach to archaeological theory and method. The history of this since 1960 has been that of a discipline largely convinced of the principle, but one that is not yet agreed on the right combination and balance of methods to give reality to the vision. It has, however, generated a much more healthy, if at times contentious, academic environment for study, and there are some examples of the devising and application of method and theory which show the way. If past development patterns are a guide, it may be another generation before this phase comes to resolution and a successor appears

2.2 Attitudes to data and methods

2.3 Summary for late 18th century and 19th century

2.4 Summary for 20th century: 1900-1960

2.5 Summary for 20th century: 1960-2000

2.6 Three brief case studies

It would be wrong to leave the impression that archaeologists since 1960 have uniformly confined their practice of archaeological theory and method to single issues in their studies or on sites. Three examples of excavations of different kinds carried out in different circumstances follow to demonstrate otherwise. The sites date from the Neolithic, the Late Neolithic-Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age respectively.

View case studies: Hazleton North | Kalis Corner | Danebury

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