UK's PAS Archaeological Outreach

 

"Happy Birthday to a dead King"... 

 

This is not archaeology. This is not archaeological outreach. Archaeology is not just "digging up and making up stories about old things". Not even is modern historiography  just kings-and-battles res gestae and has today gone somewhat beyond merely being a historia rerum gestarum, so this is not even that. So what is going on here? Is this not an archaeologist being a gatekeeper ("come gather round, let me show you some of h treasures I have gathered") and doing a bit of show-and-tell?

What archaeological values are being communicated here? What historical knowledge about life and society in the mid fifteenth century is this disseminating. None. This is just empty narrativisation of artefacts, using artefacts to illustrate a history constructed on the base of written sources.

See: Barford, P. M. (2020). Artefact collecting: creating or destroying the archaeological record?. Folia Praehistorica Posnaniensia, 25, 39-91. https://doi.org/10.14746/fpp.2020.25.02