Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T04:23:07.936Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘Always momentary, fluid and flexible’: towards a reflexive excavation methodology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Ian Hodder
Ian Hodder*
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3DZ, England
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Çatalhöyük, on the Konya Plain in south central Anatolia, in the 1960s became the most celebrated Neolithic site of western Asia: huge (21 hectares), with early dates, tightpacked rooms with roof access, exuberant mural paintings, cattle heads fixed to walls, dead buried beneath floors in collective graves.

This site, as difficult to excavcate as it is strange, is the object of a pioneering application of the ‘post-processual’ approach, hitherto largely a matter of re-working and criticism outside the trench. The Çatalhöyük project director explains his approach, in which the conclusions as well as the work in early progress will be ‘always momentary, fluid and flexible’.

Type
Papers
Information
Antiquity , Volume 71 , Issue 273 , September 1997 , pp. 691 - 700
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anyon, R., Ferguson, T.J. Jackson, L. & Lane, L. 1996. Native American oral traditions and archaeology, Society for American Archaeology Bulletin 14(2): 14–16.Google Scholar
Bapty, I. & Yates, T. 1990. Archaeology after structuralism. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Barker, P. 1977. Techniques of archaeological excavation. 2nd edition (1982). London: Batsford.Google Scholar
Barrett, J. 1994. Fragments from antiquity. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Carver, M. 1989. Digging for ideas, Antiquity 63: 666–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carver, M. 1990. Digging for data: principles and procedures for evaluation, excavation and post-excavation in towns, Theory and practice of archaeological research 2: 255—302. (Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences.)Google Scholar
Castells, E. 1996. The rise of the network society. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Conkey, M. & Tringham, R. 1995. Archaeology and The Goddess: exploring the contours of feminist archaeology, in Stewart, A. & Stanton, D. (eri), Feminisms in the academy : rethinking the disciplines: 199–247. Ann Arbor (MI): University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Eiland, M.L. 1993 The past re-made: the case of oriental carpets, Antiquity 67: 859–63.Google Scholar
Featherstone, M. 1991. Consumer culture and postmodernism. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Featherstone, M., Lash, S. & Robertson, R. (ed.). 1995.Global modernities. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Forte, M. & Siliotti, A. 1997. Virtual archaeology. London: Thames & Hudson.Google Scholar
Gero, J. 1996. Archaeological practice and gendered encounters with field data, in Wright, R. (ed.). Gender and archaeology: 251–80. Philadelphia (PA): University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Hodder, I. (ed.). 1996. On the surface: Çatalhöyük 1993-95. British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara and McDonald Institute, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Joukowsky, M. 1980. A complete manual of field archaeology. Englewood Cliffs (NJ): Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Joyce, R. 1994. Dorothy Hughes Popenoe: Eve in an archaeological garden, in Claassen, C. (ed.), Women in archaeology: 51–66. Philadelphia (PA): University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Leone, M., Potter, P. & Shackel, P. 1987. Toward a critical archaeology, Current Anthropology 28: 283–302.Google Scholar
Lyotard, J.-F. 1984. The postmodern condition. Minneapolis (MN): University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Lyotard, J.-F. 1991. The inhuman. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Mellaart, J., Hirsch, U. & Balpinar, B. 1989. The goddess from Anatolia. Milan: Eskenazi.Google Scholar
Meskell, L. 1995. Goddesses, Gimbutas and New Age archaeology, Antiquity 69: 74–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patrik, L. 1985. Is there an archaeological record? Advances in archaeological method and theory 8: 27–62.Google Scholar
Porter, D. 1997. Internet culture. New York (NY): Routledge.Google Scholar
Shankland, D. 1996. The anthropology of an archaeological presence, in Hodder, (ed.): 349–57.Google Scholar
Spector, J. 1993. What this awl means. St Paul (MN): Minnesota Historical Society Press.Google Scholar
Thomas, J. 1996. Time, culture and identity. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Thomas, S. 1996. On the use of hypertext in archaeological site interpretation. Paper presented at TAG, Liverpool, December.Google Scholar
Tllley, C. 1989. Archaeology as theatre, Antiquity 63: 275–80.Google Scholar
Tllley, C. 1994. A phenomenology of landscape. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Trincham, R. 1994. Engendered places in prehistory, Gender, Place and Culture 1(2): 169–203.Google Scholar