Artifacts Addicts Anonymous: The Road to Recovery from Negative Data

Summary

Have you recovered thousands of artifacts, but none from the time period of interest? Have you spent weeks or months in the field, with absolutely nothing to address your research questions so you keep digging? This is the phenomenon of negative data. While this can be a scary thing, it is okay. Archaeologists suffering from artifact addiction have developed an unhealthy obsession with the recovery, analysis, and interpretation of material culture. This addiction can result in delayed reports, articles, and dissertations. In this paper, I argue that the road to recovery begins with reassessing our purpose as archaeologists and looking beyond our data, reports, and artifacts as our cultural products. Overcoming this addiction may be challenging, but is possible using this novel perspective. Are you willing to acknowledge your negative data?

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21427