Digging Deep: Close Engagement with the Material World

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Digging Deep: Close Engagement with the Material World," at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The careful consideration of archaeological provenience is what gives archaeologists our edge in studying the past. Not only do archaeologists recover material traces of past (and present) worlds, we do so in a manner that allows contexts of use to be reconstructed or inferred. While such an approach is often considered more method than theory, in fact, it is these contexts that are critical for deep interpretation of the past, regardless of how recent or ancient that past is. Using case studies from the Chesapeake region of North America, presenters urge archaeologists to think deeply about provenience and context and to recognize that these concepts are foundational for integrating archaeology’s unique form of empirical evidence with higher order interpretations. By closely engaging with the material world, we realize the full potential of our field; without it, our interpretations are at best incomplete and at worst unsubstantiated.