Box 1.2 From Excavation to Publication

Since the intrusive access to the archaeological context is unique (represented by rhe narrow bars in the graph in contrast to the repeatable processes represented by the thick bars), the initial phase of planning and excavation plays a fundamental role. The common separation between the plan­ning and excavation phases, on the one hand, and the subsequent evaluation of the results on the other, with regard to the staff as well as to its design, directly affects the quality and adequacy of this stage of the interpretative process. The web of interactions during the interpre­tive evaluation takes up a large part of the archaceologist's work. Just like the overall chart, this web represents a non-linear hermeneutic process of perception. It is, however, strongly oriented by the data. Quantitative-deductivist procedures that determine the individual steps are thereby integrated into an overall hermeneutic frame­work. Within such an integrating approach, hermeneutics and deductivism are not dichoto­mous, but fruitfully compatible (Kosso 1991; Patrick 1985; Hodder & Hudson 2003, 239-42). The sequence of the representations (coloured boxes) of the archaeological record used here follows in part the `Archaeological Method' of Evžen Neustupný (1993); the term `archaeologi­cal structures' has likewise been adapted from this work. Within archaeological practice, the docu­mentation resulting from excavation is meaning­fully transcended by phenomenological access, as well as by conversion into data for processing. The potential of `Life', `Analogues', `Hypotheses' and `History' (small boxes), as sources of com­parative knowledge, has been widely used ever since. These factors - understood as unrecog­nised influences - cannot anyway be avoided, a fact that has been stressed by both processual and post-processual archaeologists, from their distinct perspectives.

By Sören Frommer

Aarhus University Press