On boundaries

Last Wednesday, I escaped to London to hear Chris Wickham give the first Sir David Wilson lecture in medieval archaeology on ‘The problem of the dialogues between medieval history and medieval archaeology’. Given I have been wrestling with this very question in my own research and teaching of late, I was looking forward to hear Prof. Wickham’s thoughts on the matter; also it gave me the chance to catch up with some fellow bloggers, Jonathan Jarrett and Magistra et Mater. If what follows is slightly disjointed, then I apologise as I’ve written this post over several days.

I confess I left the Institute of Archaeology feeling somewhat disappointed, though having spent a couple of days mulling things over, I am more optimistic. Whenever archaeologists or historians address this matter, they have a habit of upsetting the other side. I’m not sure where Wickham fell, so he probably got the balance about right and upset everyone equally or nobody very much. I was probably hoping for the impossible and indeed, one of his first points was that he wasn’t going to offer any solutions to the problem. Instead, the audience was treated to a statement of a position and associated challenge.

Wickham gave the audience a potted history, in part through case studies, of the relationship between the two disciplines over the past thirty-forty years, illustrating the different currents in theory and practice. Indeed, tidal metaphors were very much to the fore in the shape of the redoubtable lecturer stranded on the beach as historians and archaeologists represented the tide coming in or going out, leaving him closer to one discipline or another.  This in itself was interesting in terms of giving us an idea of how research directions change. What was also satisfying for a continental historian such as myself, was the differences highlighted between the way the disciplines function both in Britain and in Europe more broadly. However, this made it all the more surprising for me that Wickham didn’t mention the very important excavations and research into the development of castles which has been carried out in Normandy in relation to his case study on the different narratives history and archaeology give us about the use of castles post-1066: this is something that merits a post of its own.

The subsequent case studies – a rural fortified site with urban characteristics in Italy and urban sites in Syria and Palestine 500-900 – illustrated different aspects of the dialogue. The Italian site (I didn’t catch the name) shows how historians and archaeologists can tell the same story of a site, but by using entirely different evidence, while the experience in the Levant (based on the work of Hugh Kennedy I think) reveals the depth and breadth of knowledge archaeological excavation can provide on its own, giving us a narrative of the development of particular sites.

The differences in types of evidence were very much at the heart of Wickham’s lecture. I am perhaps over-simplifying here, but his stated case was that archaeology tells us most easily about form and function, where as history tells us about conscious meaning. Having taken a group of students round Portchester castle – a very complex site – yesterday with my archaeologist colleague, there was much information of form, but interpreting function was considerably more problematic (but fun). Wickham did nuance this statement with reference to the potential of material culture of elucidating meaning, but he was, unsurprising given his background, was very much in the camp of archaeology tells us about the economic aspects of life above all others.

That is enough of the lecture’s aspects I found pessimistic. More optimistic were Wickham’s calls for grand narratives based on material evidence. I am wary of such things, but having struggled when writing some of the archaeology lectures to construct long ranging explanations derived from the archaeology rather than fitting the evidence into the narratives I am more familiar with as an historian, the need is there. Of course, this can only happen if practitioners of both disciplines listen to each other and this was really Wickham’s conclusion. As historians, or archaeologists, or people who try to be both, we need to recognise the different directions our sources may lead us in and the different protocols associated with the interpretation of these sources. Above all we need to start communicating again: Wickham was very keen to stress that communication failures had led to lost opportunities. I would differ slightly here and say we need to start listening again. I’d like to think that’s what my colleague and myself are doing in a very small way as I interpret Wickham’s challenge to apply equally to teaching as research. Somewhere along the line, historians and archaeologists of the medieval period diverged. If we collaborate more at the level of undergraduate teaching, that dialogue can surely be restored.

Edit. I had deliberately not looked at either Jonathan or Magistra’s blogs until posting this as I knew they would be also writing up their thoughts on the matter. Magistra takes issue with Chris Wickham’s explicitly socio-economic perspective and questions the place of models and structures in interpreting the evidence. Jonathan is more optimistic, focusing on the ability of archaeologists futher edit and historians to challenge each other. What is interesting from my point of view is that clearly I had my teaching head on rather than my research head in this lecture. While Magistra and Jonathan were mulling over the implications for the way they write history, I was pondering how we start to address the problems at undergrad level. I fear I am becoming institutionalised.