11. A Strange Receding Past

The past is much further away than it used to be. The rapid change in our culture over a few generations has disconnected people from the countryside and agriculture, as well as from the skills, crafts, and materials of previous generations. The past will always be mysterious, because the vast majority of it leaves no trace and is ‘invisible’ to archaeology. These invisible bits, like buildings, we have to make up or imagine.


Increasingly, the past has become the realm of theory, abstract thought, and introspection for archaeologists operating in the wide-open spaces of our ignorance. Novel theoretical approaches are borrowed from other subjects with obscure and unfamiliar vocabularies, and these are used to conceptualise our lack of understanding. If all else fails in the strange world we are reconstructing, archaeologists pass off what we don't understand as ‘ritual’. It therefore passeth all understanding and can be used to justify all manner of absurdity.




How the original palimpsest at Mucking in Essex was ‘solved’. A: All features. B: Roundhouses & (4-post?) structures located. C: Simplified Plan. D: Reconstruction [1]

3. How do archaeologists recognize buildings and structures?

Let us be perfectly clear from the outset: the foundations of prehistoric buildings were not continuous, being formed by intermittent posts. In more modern buildings, the foundations are usually continuous strips set in the ground, marking the position of ‘load-bearing walls’. Since all the elements of the modern foundation are joined together, it is easy to understand the plan of the building. However, working out which posthole goes with which prehistoric structure, often without evidence of walls and floors, is not easy. In fact it is very difficult, and in many instances, probably impossible.



Part of the site at Mucking, Essex [1], a collection of postholes so complex that it prompted the excavators [2] to compare it as a palimpsest – an ancient document that has been overwritten several times.