Archaeology/Architecture

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Archaeology/Architecture," at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Many archaeologists work to fully integrate the study of artifacts and other refuse of daily life with more deliberate archaeological study of standing structures. Conversely, contemporary architecture theorists draw from the lexicon and methods of archaeology to interrogate such topics as urban ruins, digital buildings, and project archives. Considering archaeologists encounter constructions next to, around, and beneath the sites they excavate, where within their field of inquiry does the built environment lie? How might we harness the mutual curiosity between archaeology and architecture to enrich our understanding of the built environment? The lingering presence of structures, the market in architectural fragments, or even the narratives that haunt buildings demolished and erased, blur the meaningful yet arbitrary distinction between vestige and architecture. This distinction might also influence the focus of preservation efforts and other aspects of the heritage sector, by separating built structures from materials of archaeological interest associated with them.