Alienation and Redemption: The Praxis of (Roman) Archaeology in Britain

Abstract

The TRAC session that led to this series of combined mini-papers was consciously designed as a forum for discussion. The aim of the session was to consider ways to tackle perceived systemic problems in the archaeology of Roman Britain (and, by extension, in the archaeology of other periods) that lead to destructive methods, interpretive fallacies and poor job satisfaction. The shared feeling of those attending the TRAC session seemed to be that well established systems in developer-funded or 'commercial' archaeology, university archaeology departments and even in museum environments are overly driven by ideas of competition, division and acquisition for its own sake, the apparently dominant neoliberal values of our time. Such values promote constraining hierarchies within and between organisations, generating lack of communication and ineffective team working. In this 'manifesto'-style paper, different authors discuss the systemic issue that has most impact on their field of employment or research, and offer solutions for a potential 'redemption'.

Roman Archaeology in Lockdown

“…As a consequence, university budgets have been squeezed, threatening jobs and research funding in the context of growing resistance from scholars to the neo-liberalisation of education (Corbera et al 2020: 192; The Lancet 2020). The overly competitive field of archaeology in Britain -as reminded to us by Weekes (et al 2019) -has not been left undamaged. The disparities between research-based archaeology and commercial archaeology have been heightened, particularly through the pausing of local and international research projects.…”

TRAC at 30: A Bibliometric Analysis of the TRAC Community

“…More recently, the TRAC thematic series has focused on specific theoretical strands, stemming directly from one or more sessions held at the conference. In addition, several multi-authored journal articles in TRAJ have brought focus to under-represented topics including the praxis of Roman archaeology (Weekes et al 2019) and modelling and complexity science (Brughmans et al 2019). Gardner (2016: 10) has recently argued that while TRAC's multi-vocality may have led to theoretical fragmentation, TRAC can act as a venue to turn diversity into renewed dialogue.…”

“…However, the overall number of multiauthored papers has increased in number since 2010, particularly in the years since the creation of TRAJ. Several recent multi-authored TRAJ articles have been produced from sessions held at the conference and represent the articles with the greatest number of co-authors (Brughmans et al 2019;Weekes et al 2019).…”

“…the Roman Rural Settlement Project) have shown, greater collaboration is key to pushing the frontiers of research by diversifying contributions. Moreover, discussion between groups enables a greater understanding of systemic issues present both within and between disciplines (Weekes et al 2019).…”

“…Positively, we are seeing the greater collaboration and innovation that Gardner (2016: 10) advocated on TRAC's 25 th anniversary. This is apparent through the three TRAC workshops held over the last five years (TRAC 2020b) and the reflexive publication style apparent in TRAJ, which in its short tenure has already seen the publication of two highly collaborative articles directly from TRAC conference sessions (Brughmans et al 2019;Weekes et al 2019). Together these improvements and the work of TRAC participants have enriched the diverse and cohesive community that TRAC is known for.…”