Archaeological interpretation is increasingly an interdisciplinary effort between archaeologists and specialists of various archaeological sciences. In such integrated work, excavation data are the primary reference to provide context for the vast range of cultural and biological material that are later investigated. A review of over three decades of published Australian archaeological data shows that there is a widespread practice in the use of arbitrary excavation units, not only as excavation tools but also as analytical units. Building from the lectures of Smith on the Lost Art of Stratigraphy and other published literature, this paper explores some of the issues surrounding different excavation strategies applied today, particularly in Australian prehistoric archaeology, and the implications and impacts on interpretation of archaeological and palaeoenvironmental results. It is argued that, while arbitrary excavation is appropriate in certain circumstances, the best method for excavation, sampling and interpretation of archaeological sites is by stratigraphic context because it provides a more precise understanding of the original depositional context and what that might tell us about past environment and past human behaviour.
The city of Perth, Western Australia, has a long-running local popular music scene. Music is performed live in pubs and clubs, but it is often only a secondary reason for the running of these venues – consequently, the physical heritage of this music scene is often forgotten, with little memorialisation of the places and people involved in it. Archaeological investigation of one of these longer-running venues – the Fly By Night Club, a music venue from 1986 to 2015 – recovered a range of material culture that largely provides evidence of social encounters within the audience rather than of the many performers who have played at the Fly. The material evidence challenges the notion of modern music as capitalist commodity, including the idea of audiences as passive entities that exist in a subordinate position to performers, who occupy a privileged position within the paradigm of live music. Instead, the audience is shown to have considerable agency in the way it enhances its own enjoyment of live music, and to be an active participant in the social process of live musical performance.
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