You are looking at a page in a wiki called Traumwerk.

It is part of an effort to move beyond conventional documentation (of sites, events, whatever).

This page is an entry into some thoughts, a microlecture about writing history in the light thrown upon historical sources by the remains of the past.

Points I want to make.

• All historical sources are archaeological - that is they are partial, fragmentary, decayed. (This is an argument for a fundamental homology between archaeology and history). Actually, this is more of a starting point.

• Conventional historical (and archaeological) narrative is a poor, restrictive and reductive way of working with our sources.

• We need to rethink our historiography to be more rigorously empirical. It will look very different to what we are used to, maybe.

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You are invited to click on the links (in blue). For a succinct (15 minute) tour please follow the recommended links (starred) - *

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It begins with

two books on archaeological theory and an argument for archaeology as creative labor - ReConstructing Archaeology (Cambridge 1987) and Social Theory and Archaeology (Polity 1987), both written with Chris Tilley

an outline of an archaeological erotics that dealt in fields of connection and not objects - the book Experiencing the Past (Routledge 1991)

a ruin in a forest

a collection of perfume jars from Corinth * made in ancient Corinth and dispersed globally

a realization that the main principles held to organize archaeological history (date and site) are indeterminate (not unimportant, but treating them as only two organizing principles among many others is liberating) ...

Station yard, Pencader, West Wales - tracking Sarah Jacob - Three Rooms