468

NOTES

Acknowledgements. I am grateful to Stephane Rault and Sinclair

Forrest, Directors of the Geonnais Project, who initially drew the
letters to my attention. I would like also to thank John MossEcardt, of St Johns College, Cambridge, who helped direct me to
the material in the Pitt-Rivers Collection, Linda Cheetham, of the
Pitt-Rivers Museum, for her considerable assistance, and Mike
Ilett and Jean-Paul Faruggia, for useful comments and discussion
on the affinities of the shoe-last celt.

1884-125.212

10 CM

Keferences
BAAL,H.J. 1930. Report on the excavation of the
Dolmen des Gdonnais at Vinchelez de Bas, Bulletin Annuel de la Societe Jersiaise 11:229-31.
BENDER, M.B. 1968. The neolithic cultures of
northern France. Unpublished. Ph.D. Thesis,
University of London.
FORREST, T.H.S. & S.-J. RAULT. Forthcoming. La
Hougue des Gdonnais excavation report.
HAWKES,J. 1937. The archaeology of the Channel
Islands 2: the Bailiwick of Jersey. St Helier: La
Socidt6 Jersiaise.
J. 1965. Les SepuItures Megalithiques
LHELGOUACH,
de LArmorique. Rennes: Laboratoire dAnthropologie.
M. 1980. Die Graberfelder der
LICHARDUS-ITTEN,
Grossgartacher Gruppe im Elsass, Saarbrucker
Beitrage zur Alterstumstunde 25.
OLIVER, S.P. 1870. Report on the present state &
condition of prehistoric remains in the Channel
Islands, Journal of the Ethnological Society NS
(1870): 46-73.

FIGURE 3.

Stone axes from Jersey and pendant from

Mont Orgueil.

Contextual archaeology
JOHN

C.BARRETT*

Ian Hodders book, Reading the past (19861, was reviewed in the last number (Gardin 1987).
Here a further comment is offered on Hodders proposal for a contextual archaeology.
We can and must . . . appraise the practical science
applied in laying-out and erecting a megalithic tomb,
its economic role in the acc;umulation of a social
surplus and in the distribution of wealth, its value in
cementing as well as expressing social solidarity. Not
one of these aspects of the ceremony is at all likely to
have been present to the consciousness - a false
consciousness of the architects and builders. Their
motives,like their emotions, have been lost forever,
~

Department of Archaeology, The ZJniversity, Glasgow c12 8yy.

Aivriyurrv 61 (1987): 468-73

just because they were illusions. Does that matter?

[Childe 1956: 1721
How can we explain how a tomb functions adaptively
in a society if we do not know what it means? [Hodder
1986: 751

Both individually and in co-operation with

students and colleagues, Ian Hodder has since

NOTES

469

3 All such analyses are therefore historical for

the early 1980s been involved in a programme
dedicated to the rethinking of archaeology. The they encompass the passing of time in cycles of
mature fruits of the various branches of this social reproduction. The social system can no
programme are now becoming available ( e g longer be regarded as a static machine, instead it
must be thought of as being continually brought
Shanks & Tilley 1987),and with the publication
of Reading the Past we have an accessible into being as human actions reproduce social
statement of Hodders own view of how archae- institutions over time and space.
4 The division an external observer may be
ology might be practised (Hodder 1986).
Without claiming that a single school of tempted to establish between a peoples knowlthought has been established through these edge of their own world as a false consciousvarious writings it is nonetheless time that we ness and the outcome of their actions as
take stock of the position which has been objective conditions is rendered invalid. To
reached (cf. Yengoyan 1985). I offer here, as a return to Childes argument quoted above, the
contribution to such an evaluation, a consider- tomb might contribute to the accumulation of a
ation of Hodders ideas concerning a contextual social surplus, but if its construction and use
archaeology. This will not be a matter of estab- was also intended to sustain beliefs about gods,
lishing an agreed definition of the term. Rather ancestors and the after-life, then the tomb
it is an enquiry into the value of some of the cannot be explained simply by reference to the
many approaches which might be termed con- partly unintended consequences of its construction.
textual.
We are dealing here with issues which are
Given the complexity of the issues my
discussion must be limited. I will first uncover being explored widely in the social sciences
one of the more influential lines of reasoning and bibliographic citation at this point must
behind Hodders critique of current archaeolo- isolate the work of Giddens (1984 with earlier
gical practice, and then consider the impli- references) and Bourdieu (1977). Although not
cations which he draws from that critique. My necessarily established in these terms I noneaim is to suggest that these implications do not theless believe these points contribute substanfollow from the theoretical position he appears tially to the theoretical base of Hodders
to have adopted, and that they do not lead to a reasoning (see also Barrett forthcoming). What
are the implications for archaeology?
viable form of archaeological practice.
Hodder defines a postprocessual archaeoHodder starts from the modern position that
humans are knowledgeable and competent logy, at the heart of which lies a methodological
agents whose actions sustain the social insti- procedure of contextual analysis (Hodder
tutions which they inhabit. A number of 1985). The approach, as the name implies, is
important points are developed from this posi- intended to break from the processual concerns
of the new archaeology. However, there are
tion:
1 As people act they not only make and areas of agreement between the two. Both agree
re-make the material and social conditions of that the aim of archaeology is to interpret the
their own world, they also make and re-make material remains of the past. These remains, our
their knowledge of how to act within those only evidence for the pasts which once existed,
are thought of as a static surviving record of a
conditions.
2 This duality, whereby knowledge and con- once dynamic past (Patrik 1985). The point of
ditions are linked through practice is insepara- contention, as Patrik notes, is the nature of the
ble and has to be sustained in any analysis of the link between past dynamics and the record. It is
social and cultural system. It is inadequate to this which determines what the record is a
focus upon the intentions of action without record of, and so determines its interpretation.
Hodder argues that the link is one of significonsidering conditions, and it is inadequate to
attempt to explain the intentions of action cation and communication, implying that the
simply by reference to its consequences. Many record contains meaning specific to the historiconsequences of action may be unintended and, cal conditions under which it was constructed.
because of the passage of time, consequences To have made and used the record, people will
are not reducible to the conditions from which have been guided by their particular cultural
understanding of their world. A general theory
those actions arose.

470

NOTES

linking material culture to meaningful social

practice therefore lays the foundation for studies which aim to reveal particular historical
practices. And here is a contrast for processual
archaeology looks to the specific case as a means
of evaluating ideas about general processes.
Such general processes are largely defined by
the objective consequences of human action
which, as I noted above, are wrenched clear of
the conditions of the knowledgeable human
action which instigated them. The effect of this
dislocation, coupled with mapping the logical
progression of these consequences as evolving
social systems, relegates the human actor to a
passenger on the historical trajectory which has
imprisoned herihim.
As Hodder notes, the distinction between
post-processual and processual archaeology is
the distinction between traditional historical
enquiry, with its concern to elucidate specific
social strategies, and the more generalized
model-building of a science concerned to
expose the regularities of processes working
across historical and cultural contexts.
However, although each will write a different
kind of history, both are concerned with operationalizing generalizations about the human
past through the material record.
Post-processual archaeology therefore aims
to speak about those knowledgeable human
agents who are hardly observed in the texts of
the new archaeology (Renfrew 1983 is one
attempt to deal with this problem). But it is here
that Hodder makes two errors. First, he places
the individual centrally within his historical
enquiry. Secondly, he treats the archaeological
(material cultural) record as the object of study.
I believe his argument can be summarized in the
following manner:
1 Human agency is formed through knowledgeable action; knowledge ultimately resides
in the minds of individuals.
2 An individuals actions contribute to the
creation and maintenance of particular kinds of
cultural order; these are signified by a particular
use of material culture.
3 Material culture can be regarded as a text
which encodes these ideas about a particular
cultural universe.
4 Archaeologists do not observe authorship of
a text but, like all readers, they have the text (or
fragments of it) available to them. The archaeological task is to read the textual record, recover-

ing meaning encoded within it. This reading is

achieved by contextualizing archaeological
data. Drawing loosely upon linguistic theory,
this approach states that the meaning of any
symbol (e.g. an artefact) is derived from the
associations and differences established between it and other symbols (artefacts). Thus
recurrent patterns of association and exclusion
within the archaeological record must evoke the
meaning of artefacts contained within that text.
5 Many authors were at work on the creation
of the archaeological text, and different archaeological readers will derive different meanings
from that text.
An edited set of studies under the general
theme of contextual approaches to archaeological material has now been published (Hodder
1987) but, as I am specifically concerned with
Hodders own work, I wish to look briefly at an
example of the approach which he uses. This
concerns a study of neolithic burial monuments
(Hodder 1984),which continues to be presented
as a, presumably, authoritative statement of
procedure (Hodder 1985: 15ff; 1986: 75). He
begins the study by noting that previous
discussion of these monuments has made little
use of the richness of information available. He
goes on to assert: Since one had no idea what,
for example, the shape of the tomb meant in its
particular context, one could have absolutely
no idea how it might have functioned (Hodder
1984: 53). However, there is considerable evidence that many of the earthen and chambered
tombs of western Europe referred symbolically
to earlier and contemporary houses. That evidence is the formal comparisons of shape,
orientation and certain structural features
which can be made between late 5th and 4th
millennium long-houses in central Europe and
late 4th and 3rd millennium tombs from Atlantic Europe (Hodder 1984: 55ff). It is supposedly
by shape that the tombs evoked the meaningof
the earlier houses.
Having established that tombs signified
houses a general model is then adopted for the
nature and evolution of neolithic society itself.
This is an essential step in the analysis, as it
allows the evocation of meaning to be situated
within social processes. It is widely accepted
that social groups were at this time small-scale,
largely acephalous, along with some degree of
differentiation between lineages gradually
emerging (Hodder 1984: 61). It is widely

NOTES

accepted that burial and settlement evidence

suggests a lineage-based organization of society
in the European Neolithic (Hodder 1985: 16).
And it is in terms of the evolution of this general
model, where the restricting resources of social
reproduction shift from being those of labour in
central Europe to land on the Atlantic faqade,
that the meaning of the megalithic tomb
becomes meaningful for the 20th-century
archaeologist.
The details of the model are unimportant
here. What matters are the problems inherent in
Hodders approach as he attempts to use the
meaning he has discovered for the tombs. In
reading the archaeological text Hodder discovers a meaning which appears to have no
clearly defined status. Is this meaning part of
what was once an idealized cultural system in
the European Neolithic? Was it available to all
or maintained by the practices of particular
groups? How did those who laboured to build
the Fussells Lodge long barrow know that they
were evoking the form of central European
long-houses of almost a millennium earlier? Or
perhaps we are in the presence of modern
textual criticism. Should we not recognize the
distance between author and reader of the text?
In this case the author(s) is indeed dead; the
question is no longer the historical question of
authorship but the contemporary issue of the
reader. Is this little more than Hodders reading
of the textual fragments sometime in 1982-3?
These questions expose the fundamental
issue: meaning has emerged outside any specified social context. Contextualization was
only made possible by adopting ex silencio a
model of the European Neolithic, from the
scholarship of generalizing, processual archaeology which Hodder had so roundly condemned earlier (e.g. Chapman 1981; Renfrew 1976).
A sense of disappointment accompanies this
realization, for is this no more than a spurious
cultural gloss added to long-established general
models of cultural evolution?
We must now return to our opening propositions. It is knowledgeable people who reproduce the material conditions which they
inhabit, their practical knowledge of how to act
within those conditions, and their place within
a matrix of social relations. People have to use
the world to know it. Communicable practice
(discourse) employs symbolic codes which
must also be maintained. But those codes have

471

an effect in structuring the relations which are

established through their use. They do this
because the code structures the knowledge it
permits, the discourse which takes place
through it, and thus the forms of social authority
which are maintained in that discourse (Bourdieu 1979).
Discourse thus sustains forces or powers
which act upon humans to form them into
social beings (subjects). Hodders individuals
are subjects created under these complex and
specific conditions. It soon appeared to me
that, while the human subject is placed in
relations of production and signification, [slhe
is equally placed in power relations which are
very complex (Foucault 1982, 209). This
argument does no violence to the idea of the
knowledgeable agent, monitoring the conditions under which [slhe acts, and who can
employ, with varying degrees of cultural
competence, the cultural codes to hislher own
advantage and sometimes to challenge a dominant authority. But to isolate, as Hodder suggests, individuals who instigate social
practices from the forces which create the
subject is actually a process of decontextualization.
Archaeological analysis should direct its
attention at the historical conditions under
which particular codes were maintained.
Material culture is a technology which stores
codes of signification to be drawn upon in social
discourse (Moore 1986). Archaeologists can
enquire about the way different types of
discourse may have operated and been structured by different material conditions and the
way dominant readings of the code were protected (Barrett 1987a).This is a contextual archaeology which attempts to preserve the context of
social reproduction over time and space but
does not depend on discovering ideas in peoples heads (Barrett forthcoming).
Instead of attempting to read back from
modern archaeological remains to meanings in
the past, a better proposal is to explore the
implications of particular material conditions
for the structuring of specified social relations.
In discussing his own approach to archaeological material, Hodder uses as an example the way
grave associations, fibulae associated with
female skeletons for example, may be read for
meaning; the question becomes, what is the
view of womanhood represented in the link

472

NOTES

between female skeletons and fibulae in was gained in the routine practices by which
graves? (Hodder 1986: 121). The implication they lived their lives.
is that such associations may tell us something
about gender relations. However, whilst gender Acknowledgement I must thank Stephen Driscoll and Ross
is structured through the various social stra- Samson for their comments upon an earlier version of this paper.
tegies employed by women and men, the grave References
assemblage emerges from a rather different BARRETT,J.C. 1987a. Food, gender and metal: quessocial context. By definition, the person buried
tions of social reproduction, in M.L. Smensen &
R. Thomas fed.),The Bronze Age-Iron Age transiis dead and no longer an agent in the processes
tion in Europe; aspects of continuity and change
of social reproduction. Instead the corpse itself
in European societies c. 1200 to 500 bc. Oxford:
may be thought of as a symbol central to the
BAR International Series.
funeral ritual which establishes a link between
1987b. The living, the dead and the ancestors:
Neolithic and EBA mortuary practices, in J.C.
life and death and reformulates, through
Barrett & I. Kinnes (ed.), The archaeology of
processes of inheritance, the rights and oblicontext in the Neolithic and Bronze Age: recent
gations of the living (Barrett 1987b; Samson
trends. Sheffield.
1987). It is the mourners who act upon the
Forthcoming. Fields of discourse: reconstituting a
corpse, and these strategies are rather different
social archaeology, Critique of Anthropology.
from the strategies of gender relations to which BOURDIEU, P. 1977. Outline of a theory of practice.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
that individual would have contributed in life.
1979. Symbolic power, Critique of Anthropology 4:
Once again the interpretation Hodder offers is
77-86.
in fact out of context.
R. 1981. The emergence of formal disposal
CHAPMAN,
areas and the problem of megalithic tombs in
In all forms of discourse there is, potentially,
prehistoric Europe, in R. Chapman, I. Kinnes & K.
a multiplicity of meanings available. To attempt
Randsborg (ed.), The archaeology of death 71-81.
to reada meaning from archaeological remains
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
as if they were a written text seems to miss the CHILDE,V.G. 1956.Piecing together the past. London:
point. What we should look at is how dominant
Routledge & Kegan Paul.
J. & G.E. MARCUS. 1986. Writing culture:
forms of meaning were produced and main- CLIFFORD,
the poetics and politics ofethnography. Berkeley:
tained. This is a question of historical analysis,
University of California Press.
and the detail of the megalithic tomb is germane FOUCAULT,M. 1982. Afterword: the subject and
to our understanding of the way that particular
power, in H.L. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow, Michel
Foucault; beyond structuralism and hermeneumedium was used to create subjects
tics: 208-26. Brighton: Harvester.
understanding of themselves as social agents.
J.-C. 1987. Review ofHodder 1986,Antiquity
The context of the tomb then becomes, not its GARDIN,
61: 322-3.
place within a text, but its active role within GIDDENS,A. 1984. The constitution of society.
particular social practices. Only through the
Oxford: Polity Press.
latter approach can we understand something HODDER,I. 1984. Burials, houses and women in the
European Neolithic, in D. Miller & C. Tilley (ed.)
of the production of knowledge and its social
Ideology, power and prehistory: 51-68. Camconsequences (Barrett 1987b].
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Anthropology has now come to address the
1985. Postprocessual archaeology, Advances in
complex issues involved in turning the discourArchaeological Method and Theory 8, 1-26.
1986. Reading the past; current approaches to
se of other cultures into written statements
interpretation in archaeology. Cambridge: Camcontained in anthropological texts (Clifford &
bridge University Press.
Marcus 1986). Again the issue is who controls
1987. (ed.) The archaeology of contextual
the meaning of the discourse, particularly when
meanings. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
the transformation of converting an oral
discourse into a written text is considered. MOON, H. 1986. Space, text and gender. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Archaeologists do not enter into a dialogue with PATRIK,L. 1985 Is there an archaeological record?
the people they study, but our obligations to
Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory
8: 27-62.
those people do remain. Can we really claim to
be able to understand how they saw their RENFREW, C. 1976. Megaliths, territories and populations, in S.J. de Laet (ed.), Acculturation and
world? This seems both dubious and unnecesscontinuity in Atlantic Europe: 198-220. Bruges:
ary. Instead we can learn something, through
De Tempel. (Dissertationes archaeologicae Ganthe surviving evidence, of how their knowledge
denses 16.)

NOTES

1983. Towards an archaeology of mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

SAMSON, R. 1987. Social structures from Reihengraber: mirror or mirage, Scottish Archaeological
Review 4(2).
SHANKS, M. & C. TILLEY.1987. Re-constructing

473

archaeology; theory and practice. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.
YENGOYAN, A.A. 1985. Digging for symbols: the
archaeology of everyday material life, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 51: 329-34.

A secure future for the Roystone Grange Archaeological

Trail
RICHARDHODGES& KEN SMITH*
The July editorial [pp. 163-4) worried about the place for archaeology in the future of the
British countryside, a n d this issue returns to the subject (p. 355). Here is a first example of
the most satisfactory outcome imaginable - the acquisition of a n upland farm primarily for
archaeological use
The Roystone Grange Archaeological Trail was
set up in 1984, linking monuments of all periods in a remote valley of the Peak District
National Park, Derbyshire (Hodges 1984). The
trail has proved more successful than was
anticipated and, as a footnote to the CBAI
RCHM(E) report, The archaeology of the
uplands: a rapid assessment of archaeological
knowledge and practice (Darvill 1986
[reviewed in the July ANTIQUITY: Fleming
1987]), we draw attention to further developments concerning the trail.
Initially it was hoped that about 1000 persons
might follow the trail each year. It is, after all, a
walk of some 7 km, located in a remote part of
the White Peak. No amenities were planned,
though the walk begins and ends in the National
Parks Minninglow car park. In addition, none
of the monuments is individually outstanding,
though the combination of well-preserved prehistoric, Romano-British, medieval, and postmedieval sites, besides the striking scenery,
make it a memorable walk. In fact, the number
of visitors has far exceeded the initial estimates,
with perhaps 3000-4000 each year following
the route including many school parties (cf.
Darvill 1986: 70-1).
The unique juxtaposition of settlements of so

many periods within the unspoilt valley, and its

success as an educational and interpretational
feature, led the Peak Park Joint Planning Board
to purchase the farm on the retirement of the
farmer, Mr David Twigge, in 1987. The Board
managed to raise the bulk of the necessary funds
as grants and loans from the Countryside
Commission, English Heritage, and the
National Heritage Memorial Fund. Immediately
100 ha (250 acres) were sold off, but with
protective covenants to ensure the conservation
of the identified heritage features. Some 36 ha
(90 acres),the archaeological core of the estate,
have been retained by the Peak District National
Park.
Among the features protected by covenant are
the many field walls, whose role in the development of the estate has been unravelled by
Martin Wildgoose (1987). These include a
walled stock pen of the neolithic period, two
large enclosures of the Roman period, the
boundary of the medieval grange farm, and the
sequence of field walls associated with the
emergence of mixed farming here since late
medieval times.
The future of the archaeology at Roystone is
now being discussed. The 10 seasons of
fieldwork are currently being prepared for

* Richard Hodges, Department of Archaeology & Prehistory, University of Sheffield, Sheffield s10 2 ~ Ken
.
Smith, Peak District
National Park, Aldern House, Baslow Road, Bakewell, Derbyshire D E ~~ A E
Awric~riiIu62 (1987): 473-4