Lydia Carr (University of Oxford, UK)

This paper examines two cases in which the personality of an excavating archaeologist drove longterm interpretation of a site. The social-academic impact of personally identifying a site with the person responsible for its initial ‘discovery’ is considered, as is the overall theoretical validity of personal interpretation. Difficulties can arise when an archaeologist is so completely identified with a site or work that any challenge of it becomes a personal betrayal rather than professional criticism. Added tensions often come from student-teacher conflicts and existent relationships, and the high potential for negative backlash within the small world of archaeology.
The two specific examples looked at here are Sir Arthur Evans in Crete and Sir Mortimer Wheeler at Verulamium. Evans’ work from 1900 onwards is considered, and special attention paid to recent scholarship exposing his unknowing and unquestioning purchase of fakes created by his diggers, who used their first-hand knowledge of his theories to profitably anticipate expected finds. His long-term dominance of Cretan research is also discussed, and the effect of his personality on the work of the younger scholars who came in his wake. The excellent new Evans display at his former museum, the Ashmolean, is given particular attention, as it represents one of the first attempts to present a scholar’s life-work to the general public in a way that evenly acknowledges both what has been disproved, and what remains canon.

Examination of Mortimer Wheeler’s work, more geographically wide-ranging than Evan’s, is here confined to the 1930s English excavation of Verulamium at St Albans. In the 1936 site report, he and his co-director Tessa Verney Wheeler painted a picture of the quality and decline of Roman town life which has had a permanent influence on the study of this important sub-field of Romano-British studies. However, scholars often praise the Wheelers while radically correcting their interpretations. Special attention is paid to the ‘storm in a teacup’ of the 1936 J.N.L. Myres–Wheeler fight. When his former student published a critical review of the Verulamium report in Antiquity, Wheeler responded in great anger, and a series of unpleasant letters resulted in both print and private. The long-term relationship and personalities of the two men are mined for an explanation of the event. How can the work of past and present archaeologists be criticized, not just tactfully, but productively?

This consideration of two giants in the field is then used as a point of departure for larger theoretical questions, in which audience members are invited to turn the critical method employed in the examples upon themselves. Ultimately, no archaeological interpretation can be said to be without the strengths and weaknesses of the interpreter – and would we want it any other way? Personal involvement in the interpretive humanities is a necessity. Without it, a researcher, and ultimately a reader or viewer, cannot engage fully with his or her subject. It is better to openly acknowledge, and thus mitigate, the unavoidable effect of personality, than attempt to deny or subvert it.