Artefactual Persons: The Relational Capacities of Persons and Things in the Practice of Excavation

A number of recent theories have argued that archaeological objects and data reflect the social and subjective interpretation of the archaeologists excavating them. These interpretative or post-processual approaches have importantly called into question the empirical assumption that the world exists as an object prior to interpretations that archaeologists give it. However this perspective fails to look at the ways in which the social and subjective factors are themselves constructed through fieldwork. In contrast to an approach that seeks to investigate how social and subjective factors 'determine' different kinds of archaeological objects, this article therefore examines the particular fieldwork practices and conventions through which an opposition between subjectivity and objectivity is itself created.