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This page intentionally left blank Archaeological Theory and Scientific Practice Andrew Jones Lecturer in the Department of Archaeology, Southampton University Preface Acknowledgements 1 The archaeology of ‘two cultures’ 2 Science as culture: creating interpretative networks 3 Archaeology observed 4 Materials science and material culture: practice, scale and narrative 5 Material culture and materials science: a biography of things 6 A biography of ceramics in Neolithic Orkney 7 Making people and things in the Neolithic: pots, food and history 8 Before and after science References Index Illustrations Tables Preface Since the contents of this book are concerned so much with issues of biography it makes sense to begin by saying something about the biography of both text and author. The subject matter—the relationship between archaeological theory and archaeological science—arose from my doctoral research between 1993 and 1997 at Glasgow University, which was supervised by Colin Richards and Richard Jones. The examination of the pottery assemblage from the Late Neolithic settlement at Barnhouse, Orkney comprised the central focus of the original thesis (see Richards forthcoming, and chapters 6 and 7 this volume). However I felt that wider and more fundamental questions lay behind my use of the techniques of materials science within a framework informed by interpretative archaeology and anthropology. It was for this reason that I began to write the first two chapters of the book in Glasgow after the completion of the thesis. At this time the subject matter was written from a personal perspective derived from attempts to balance an interest in archaeological theory with the practical application of scientific techniques. This perspective altered when I took up a teaching appointment at University College Dublin, where amongst other things I was able to observe the pragmatic application of scientific analysis alongside archaeological theory under the aegis of the Irish Stone Axe Project directed by Gabriel Cooney and Stephen Mandal. I began to see that the issues examined in the volume were more fundamental to archaeological practice, and in Dublin I completed the third chapter. I was persuaded more firmly of the subject matter of the book when I took up a post-doctoral position at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge. In Cambridge I came into contact with a growing number of people who were attempting to utilise both archaeological theory and archaeological science. My perspective on the topic had shifted over the course of the book’s inception in Glasgow to its completion in Cambridge some two years later. No longer did it appear to derive solely from personal experience; instead, it had become a topic that was of wider concern to a growing number of archaeological scientists. 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