Christopher Chippindale

This is one of the web files where I keep published or unpublished writing, so they are available in electronic form. The purpose of putting this on the Internet is so that people can have access to it. Any fair use of it is welcome, including its use as much as you want in learning and teaching, and printing-out or using items from it in reasonable quantities. It is not fair to pass it off as your own work, or to use material in a way that generates income for you.

I am always glad to hear from people who find anything in my work useful, or interesting. Feedback is most welcome.

The texts are taken from whatever is to hand. For published work, that is usually the word-processor file originally submitted to the editor of the publication. It will be essentially what was published, but without revisions, corrections and proof-reading fixes: for a word- and letter-perfect version you must look at the publication. They also lack, usually, all the pictures, for which again you must look at the publication.

To send an e-mail to me, click here, to return to my home-page click here.

Christopher Chippindale currently at

Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3DZ, England
cc43@cam.ac.uk

This page is written by Christopher Chippindale. Last update: 12/2/2000. © Christopher Chippindale and/or its other author(s).

Chippindale, Christopher. 1997. On writing about archaeology in the English language, Archaeological Dialogues

Writing about archaeology, reading about archaeology

The title of Archaeological Dialogues reflects the present concerns of the archaeological community not just for archaeology, but for how archaeological knowledge comes about, and how it is communicated between those of us involved in doing archaeology. One theme in these concerns is the way archaeologists write, for our choice of words tells the reader – as well as the facts of the matter – of the writer's ideas, attitudes and frames of mind. When David Gill and I looked at our 20th-century regard for prehistoric artefacts from the Cycladic islands, we were struck by how closely the choice of words reflects the scholar's attitudes, and in turn shapes all our present perceptions of an ancient era. Even a minute point, whether 'Master' (a key word in the new Cycladic research literature) is spelled with or without a capital letter, does its bit to change the picture (Gill & Chippindale 1993).

As archaeologists, we cannot see past human lives directly; instead, we observe material traces, and hope to grasp from them an understanding of the lives we cannot see. The same goes for archaeological writing and reading; we do not convey archaeological knowledge directly from one human mind to another. We can only try to express that knowledge in words on the printed page, and hope the mind of the reader can grasp the writer's knowledge from that expression of it. If the knowledge does not sufficiently show itself in the words, then the knowledge and the ideas remain confined to the privacy of the writer's head, not a useful place for the rest of us.

Looking at how excavation reports change over time, Ian Hodder (1989: 289) sees how the active narrative of the 18th-century report, 'a story of the excavation with a sequence of events through time', has been replaced by an abstracted account, written as if without an author and 'using a fixed descriptive code'. Hodder thinks writing in this flat way makes many of our field reports dull and unreadable, and I take this as a fair criticism of much academic writing about archaeology, not just the excavation reports. There may be cause for following a standard or 'fixed code' in reports thought to be scientific 'neutral' descriptions of basic data. I am cautious about this myself, believing that 'data' are not simple, uncontested 'givens' but observations we 'capture' as best we can, with risk and not always well (Chippindale 1991; in press).

In looking inwards to the dense way many of us now choose to write for colleagues, we must not forget that other, more outward-looking ways of writing about archaeology are much more spirited -– and flourishing today. Michael Coe's account of the recent Mayan decipherment, Breaking the Maya code (1992), is a splendidly live and human story. Many an example shows that complex and technical issues can be fairly explained in a way that captures the reader, the non-archaeologist as well as the specialist. An instance is Tjeerd van Andel's and Curtis Runnels's charming Beyond the Acropolis (1987), telling how archaeological field survey is done in Greece and sketching the good picture it makes of the ancient rural past, beyond the usual focus on the classical city. And a fluid and elegant writing style is possible in specialist and technical reports, as well as in books for a wider public.

One aspect to exact and detailed description, when it is done well, is a dry precision. It often involves a restricted range of words, each with a clear or specially defined meaning, which are used over and over again to convey just that intended sense. Many archaeological reports that follow the 'objective' model are not poor for that reason -- but through being clumsily and badly written. The distanced language of the twentieth-century field report can be used with grace; the one quoted by Hodder (1989) is a really wretched instance (if I were wanting to make his single-minded point, I would myself search about for a really bad example). Two recent reports of this genre for Wiltshire are Christopher Gingell's field report of Bronze Age landscape survey and excavation (1992) and the Royal Commission on the Historical Monument of England's collation of knowledge for churches in the county (1987). Opening them, I find a detached way of writing; yet neither is dull or hard to read, although the first person of the author is never declared, and there is no 'I did this' or 'I did that'.

One could think of these two aspects as distinct: a functional matter, of efficiency in conveying 'given' information, and a separate aesthetic aspect. But the two aspects are not distinct, just as the archaeological knowledge we have of an ancient society is entwined with the kind of materials available to us. The knowledge resides also in how it is expressed, and then also in how any one reader receives that account, and integrates it with a larger frame of experience. The means of expression transform what is expressed, in the process of conveying it. In the act of writing, one sometimes finds a certain phrase or turn of words coming to mind that expresses a concept better than one's sense of it as an abstraction in the mind.

Although Hodder is right to notice the problem, and right to ask for a solution to it, I think there is a simpler remedy than the experimental devices – of drama, dialogue, and disagreement – which his paper proposes (1989: 273—4), and which I have never seen taken up. (The reports of Hodder's own field projects, e.g. Hodder & Shand 1988, are wholly orthodox.) So in this essay, I explore through a worked example how a variety of words and forms can in the English language be used to express how knowledge is arrived at, alongside the content of that knowledge, and to convey the varied status and nature of the several kinds of statements that make up an archaeological report.

The language of a research report examined

The worked example I use is a recent research paper of my own, chosen because I should know what was its writer's intention. (The paper is co-authored with Paul S.C. Taçon, my colleague in the fieldwork and analysis; it was my job to work out its structure and to write the words.) As a field report and analytical study of some Australian rock-art, its subject-matter is not the everyday stuff of field archaeology in Europe, but I think it illustrates the issues well enough. The paper is entitled 'Two old painted panels from Kakadu: variation and sequence in Arnhem Land rock art' (Chippindale & Taçon 1993). The fieldwork and analysis were done in 1991–2, the study presented at a congress, then revised for its 1993 publication in a volume of conference papers.

These issues of writing about archaeology not being in the front of our minds when Taçon and I wrote our paper, we simply set out to report our work in a fair and straightforward way. But on reading the paper now, I find a pattern in the words and forms we have used. The variety is less in the choice of individual words, more in sentence structure. I can identify four 'moods' or modes of writing; each reflects a certain kind of knowledge we hope to convey.

The paper starts with these words:

We begin the account of our study, then, with essential points about the rock-art it addresses. We do not wish here to introduce new finds, ideas or methods, but simple to set out 'common knowledge' about the subject with which – we expect – anyone with expertise in it would agree. Accordingly, the verb 'to be' is often used: the art is distinctive ... a distinction is evident ... the new pictures are polychrome ... the old are red. As we do this, we set down other facts, not needed by informed colleagues, but useful for those who do not know the subject: where the art is (Arnhem Land in the 'Top End' of the Northern Territory of Australia – the paper title does not mention Australia); what it consists of (paintings in polychrome and in red); the fact that rock-art was painted in the region until recently (for this is unusual in rock-art); and so on. In choosing the 'essential points' in relation to 'common knowledge', we have a certain specialist audience in mind. A different audience would have a different range of common knowledge; a paper less concerned with Australian specifics would have 'Australia' in the title, for a reader knowing nothing of Australia might easily think the Arnhem Land mentioned must be in the Flemish countries of north Europe!

We mention as references five major studies in the field, where account of these basics is to be found. Referencing, which I do not explore here, is itself an aspect to structuring knowledge; as well as serving the reader with guidance about further sources, it gives cause for the authority the writer claims. These are reports based on known evidence, published and available.

That common framework set, we notice previous work about dating, a subject on which expert views have diverged:

As we are here reporting the several observations and views of individual researchers, rather than matters agreed in the common community of knowledgeable workers, we have switched to a mood which identifies the observation with the person who made it; we make it clear who has done what and who holds which opinion. It is right to introduce these points through the persons of the individual researchers: Chaloupka concludes ... Haskovec is not convinced and questions ... we have not seen these disputed panels ... Lewis contends, doubts and questions.

We then move to our own fieldwork, and a brief statement of what was done in recording the two rock-art panels. We switch to a passive voice:

The record we made is not a wholly neutral, still less an 'objective' account; there is certainly no such thing in the recording of faded rock-art where the image changes with the light and time of day, and much depends on just what the recorder's eye sees in the fragmentary pigment he looks at. We saw different things in different lights and on different days. Other recorders would see other things. But we did try to make a fair record, and to reduce the element in the record which is due to us as individuals. I believe that is sufficient cause to write in an impersonal mood; if one were to reserve the impersonal for those archaeological observations which had no dependence on individual judgement, it could be used in archaeological writing very little!

In this part of the work, where the unavoidable personal element was minimized, the mood reflects it. We do not say, for example, that it was Chippindale rather than Taçon who did the drawing, because that should not affect the result. It probably did in reality. So the impersonal factor which defines this mood is not a claim to objectivity achieved, but a statement of the spirit with which we worked in the field and in making our record of the panels under study.

In making the field observations and following our decided methods, we have tried to reduce the personal element, but the reasons that led us to adopt those methods are a different matter. There are many things that could be recorded, and even the largest record of a painted panel cannot include everything about it. Although the tone of the pigment is very variable on the surface, for example, we make no report of it exceptin broad categories - 'black', 'red', 'yellow' – with good cause, in our opinion. Our study is unusual in some aspects of how it records and reports the art; when we explain and justify why we have worked this way, we wish to make clear that we have chosen to do this. Where Mood 3 is about the research methods, this mood justifies the choice of methods, a matter of more personal judgement. So, of our decision to publish the panels by pencil drawings of varying tone, rather than conventional ink drawings in the 'hard' absolutes of pure black and pure white, we say:

This mood is a twin to mood 2. That mood links researchers with their considered views, and this mood binds ourselves in the same way to the decisions we have made: We have chosen ... We believe ... We emphasise ... What we believe we have observed...

Our Arnhem Land article is typical, I think, of many archaeological research papers and reports in its composite nature. The four moods fit the four components. It spans:

• the common body of knowledge shared by specialists in the field;

• the particular attitudes and interests that are not shared;

• the new information or analysis reported, which should not be much affected by who chanced to execute the work;

• the several choices these researchers made in their study, in the kinds of information they chose to gather and the analyses they chose to pursue.

By varying the manner of our writing as the article turns to a different component, we hope to give the article a changing pattern of colour; the reader, if sufficiently alert or interested in these matters, can see what kind of knowledge each portion of it offers.

Each of these four moods – and one could define and distinguish more than four – is not an absolute. The last example is in Mood 4, as it is a statement of what Taçon and I decided to do, against some common practice in our field. It is written with vigour, for I think that common practice is quite mistaken, yet it includes a phrase, 'it is offered', in the passive voice because this English construction best expresses what we want to say at that point in that sentence. Where the orthodox advice expects the passive moods, and the post-processualist critique asks for active personal rhetoric, I believe that effective writing generally uses some combination, since the right tone depends on the statement, the audience, the context, the meaning, the nuance -- as those vary even from line to line within a text.

One could instead present the whole article in a single colour, a single mood. If it were all in the passive voice and the 'objective' style often thought for any scientific report, the passage in Mood 4 becomes:

I do not like this. Its grammar is correct by the rules of English, but it is awkward and laboured in its phrasing. It has other defects. It conflates into the same tone, the same colour, a variety of kinds of knowledge, whose diversity is important. Responsibility – which extends to credit and blame – is not given to those who have made certain studies or who hold certain views. And it is odd to say 'it is believed that' without saying plainly who believes – since a belief is not a physical object, but an entity that by its nature exists only within a human mind.

One could equally translate the article wholly into a personal and an active mood:

Since the habit in science writing, the high-status business to which we in the 'human sciences' defer, is for impersonal modes, no archaeological report of recent times that I have seen is written in this style. One can see immediately why: it becomes too personal, too much about ourselves and what we did, not enough about the Arnhem Land rock-art and the ancient people who painted it that are the real subject of the paper.

These little samples of varying moods prove that style and content are neither synonymous nor independent of each other. Content can be translated from one style into another, but as it moves so does the content change. And, as important, so does the relationship between the writer and the reader. There is not a dialogue, for the writers never hears the reader's response, but the writer can be ready in imagination to attend to the reader's needs.

It is material that the sample of writing I address is in English. Every language itself has its own character; the passive voice in French is closely equivalent to the passive in English, but it is not the exact equal. English, thanks to its twin ancestry in Germanic and Romance languages, is fortunate in having an unusually large vocabulary; many English words which are synonyms in their central meaning convey different nuances. In the same way, English has many grammatical forms which are similar without being the same. An accident of linguistic history has given English a complex structure which advocates of a simplified 'plain English' have thought a tiresome inefficiency. In reality, it is a strength, for its varied words and grammatical forms offer many shades, many tones and colours; in choosing from that range of forms, the alert writer can convey subtleties of meaning simply and elegantly.

The advice that archaeological writing should be largely in the passive voice goes against the experience that the English language is happier and more at ease when the words are short rather than long, specific rather than abstract, and when the verbs are active rather than passive. My own university press tells me about a series of archaeology books: 'The theoretical and methodological emphasis is not divorced from the factual evidence, and critical appraisal is provided in relation to well-documented examples of substantive work' (publisher's notice on cover of Yoffee & Sherratt 1993). I hope I knowwhat this means. I might grasp it better if the press used shorter and less abstract words, and an active voice for the verb – and if it told me what the series is, rather than what it is not. Many routine habits of our academic writing in science and social science, archaeology included, now avoid the short words and active forms which work best in English. Oddly, the characteristic style one finds in the 'post-processual' writing which questions the authority of the 'objective' text is itself obscure and abstract, choosing remote terms -- like 'post-processual' -- and elaborate passive-voice sentences!

Language is about communication, and well-chosen language makes for clear communication.

An everyday archaeological example is in the words used for reporting radiocarbon measurements of age. The primary record of sample activity measured by the laboratory, by agreed convention, is reported as if it were a date in years – even though the C14 half-life to which it refers is known to be in error, and the measured age will be further adjusted by reference to the changing portion of radiocarbon in the atmosphere. In editing Antiquity, we encourage authors to call this uncalibrated measure a 'determination' as it is a measure somewhat removed from a real date, and to use the word 'date' only when it has been calibrated into a measure of age in real calendar years. Here, it seems to me, is a useful instance of the disciplinary value of controlled language, when defined terms are used with unambiguous meanings and a 'date' is not the same as a 'determination'.

The four moods or modes identified here are poles; scarcely a paragraph in the paper from which the examples come is wholly in any one pure mode, because the intention in each has been to advance the 'story' of the paper from that point. And, as I have indicated, the form of words has other jobs to do: specific factual and other statements are to be expressed (the main purpose of writing the piece), references have to be incorporated. And there are many slight points an author likes to see in the piece, not large enough to deserve a direct statement and often so lightly stated that practically no reader will ever catch them. In preparing this essay, I am aware for the first time how active are the words by which our paper reports my friend Darrell Lewis's views; our text has him contending and doubting and questioning within a single sentence. Darrell has a vigorous manner of arguing for his particular understanding of the Arnhem Land art sequence, a style that has found unconscious expression in the words that came to my mind for his contribution.

This essay is about structure in written words alone. The same issues arise for the drawn and photographed pictures that illustrate the examined paper, for archaeological illustrations in general, and for the other media – from spoken lectures to interrogated data-bases to electronic gossip on the Internet – which we use to transmit archaeological knowledge. It has justified a hearing of the personal voice in archaeological writing, against the consistent pressures of the 'neutral', 'objective' and impersonal. Another contemporary current tempts us with the other excess – the pushing of the personal, of the present-day author into the dominant centre of the picture: rather than reaching out towards a real past that really was, the past is to be seen as residing now in our own time, even in ourselves. Against that, I would make the matching defence, in remembering that the proper subject of archaeology is not the imagined worlds of our own time, but the ancient objects and the ancient lives that can be seen in the old stuff.

To treat archaeological knowledge as personal and largely of ourselves is to turn a public knowledge of others – realized or potential – into a kind of private possession, a hermetic hermeneutic. That is why it is important to write about archaeology in a way that makes our knowledge less opaque and more transparent, and that is why I have written this essay. The conventional forms of academic writing -- the paper, the book, the review -- are not dead, and we have no cause to abandon them. Excavation reports do not need to become poems or puzzles of drama, dialogue, and disagreement. Excavators, privileged by their first-hand knowledge of the material, are right to set out a view of what the stuff amounts to, as well as an account that others can challlenge and re-interpret. The creators of Archaeological Dialogues, aware of our so-changing times, have chosen the form of a conventional academic journal to execute their novel venture!

Acknowledgements. I thank Sally Beales, Paul S.C. Taçon, Susan Thomas and David Van Reybrouck for advice.

Chippindale, C. 1991. Editorial, Antiquity 65: 439—46.

Chippindale, C. In press. Capta and data: remarks on the nature of archaeological information, in Seamus Ross (ed.), The problems and potentials of electronic information for archaeology. London: British Academy.

Chippindale, Christopher, & Paul S.C. Taçon. 1993. Two old painted panels from Kakadu: variation and sequence in Arnhem Land rock art, in J. Steinbring et al. (ed.), Time and space: dating and spatial considerations in rock art research (papers of Symposia F and E, AURA Congress Cairns 1992): 32—56. Melbourne (Vic): Australian Rock Art Research Association. Occasional AURA Publication 8.

Gill, David, & Christopher Chippindale. 1993. Material and intellectual consequences of esteem for Cycladic figures, American Journal of Archaeology 97(4): 601—59.

Gingell, Christopher. 1992. The Marlborough Downs: a Later Bronze Age landscape and its origins. Devizes: Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural history Society.

Hodder, Ian. 1989. Writing archaeology: site reports in context, Antiquity 63(289): 268—74.

Hodder, Ian & Paul Shand. 1988. The Haddenham long barrow: an interim statement, Antiquity 62: 349—53.

RCHME. 1987. Churches of south-east Wiltshire. London: HMSO.

van Andel, Tjeerd H. & Curtis Runnels. 1987. Beyond the Acropolis: a rural Greek past. Stanford (CA): Stanford University Press.

Yoffee, Norman & Andrew Sherratt (ed.). 1993. Archaeological theory: who sets the agenda?. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.