Recovery, Recording, and Publication
Was Pitt-Rivers really the ‘father of field archaeology’? He certainly contributed to artefact seriation and was aware of the importance of everyday artefacts for archaeological reconstruction, but, though meticulous in recording artefacts, he was not noted for recognizing structural features and he did not excavate stratigraphically. Field survey had a long history in Britain before the establishment of the Royal Commissions at the beginning of the twentieth century, with air photography subsequently developing out of military survey in the First World War. The importance of stratigraphy, association, and context was promoted by Sir Mortimer Wheeler from the 1930s, but scientific techniques were not widely applied until after the Second World War, with the advent of radiocarbon dating, geophysical survey, and a developing range of analytical techniques. Environmental archaeology as an integral part of the discipline was a relatively late development, as were osteological studies, notwithstanding the interest in craniology since Victorian times. ‘Rescue’ archaeology and development-funded archaeology has not only transformed the scale and quantity of finds, but has transformed qualitatively understanding of settlement patterns and distributions.