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Documentary Archaeology Dialogues and Di
Documentary Archaeology Dialogues and Di
Documentary archaeology involves a process that is begun afresh for each archaeological
site or research project: that of constructing the archive through integrating differing
lines of evidence. For historical archaeologists, the archive includes written records, oral
traditions, and material culture; often elements of the archive provide overlapping,
conflicting, or entirely different insights into the past, requiring resolution and
integration because of differences in scale, completeness, representativeness, temporal
resolution, and lack of correspondence. This chapter explores how historical
archaeologists use and analyse textual sources in writing archaeological narratives and
considers the intertextuality of sources by analysing contrasting examples of success and
of failure in attempts to establish a dialogue between above-ground and below-ground
evidence.
Keywords: discourse analysis, documents, inscription, intertextuality, linguistic turn, literacy, text, writing
The imagination is at its most powerful and most fragile in writing that could be
said to be archaeological, that digs down in the dirt to bring other worlds to life.
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