Material Evidence: Learning from Archaeological Practice Alison Wylie and Robert Chapman
A passion for things has taken hold in a great many fields, as subjects of inquiry and as a crucial source of evidence. The difficulties of working with material evidence are legendary; an interest in material objects and traces does not necessarily translate into direct engagement with them. It is primarily archaeologists who have successfully taken on these challenges. We provide an overview of the wisdom in practice articulated by contributors to this collection, delineating a repertoire of strategies by which archaeologists induce things to talk, building and refining interpretive scaffolding in ways calculated to counteract the risks of projecting “pre-understandings” onto the past.
