2.3: 'Digging Up Old Things' is not Archaeology


The suggestion sometimes heard that artefact hunting and archaeology have in some way 'common aims' in fact basically means that the people espousing this view (some unreflexive UK archaeologists included) consider that this common aim is nothing more than 'digging up (interesting) old things'. But that is the aim of bottle dump digging

Trash dump trashed
Bottle dump digging is not archaeology, any more than bird-egg collecting was ornithology.



Tamara Kroftova comments:
"The idea that one can find reflected in much archaeological discussion of artefact hunting that what is important is having access to objects is simply a naive and unreflexive denial of what differentiates archaeology from mere Treasure Hunting".


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