John G Sabol Jr

An Archaeology Without Borders John G Sabol Jr

Sometimes, archaeological work is a performance practice entangled with a still embedded sensory presence. This book is but one point of articulation along the movement of fieldwork that traces a particular path of haunting sensory entanglements. Contextual cultural performances are meant to be archaeologically effective without imposing modernist boundaries. As archaeologists, we must be interested in the persistence of these uncanny materializing sensory entanglements. Fieldwork becomes a process of extending the 'artifact' assemblages of movement, experience, memory, and temporality to a more active presence of the past in the contemporary reality of archaeological excavation and survey. Fieldwork at Burnside bridge on the Antietam Battlefield near Sharpsburg, Maryland was meant to expand archaeological fieldwork from an emphasis on turning material culture into history by processing objects into battlefield action to one of adding a sensory-embedded 'culture of war' that remains on the surface of an unbound 'warscape' setting. Such materializing sensory elements show that the past is not a series of historical narratives or archaeological moments in time. Rather, some of those moments remain as movements that may materialize the presence of the past in particular battlefield spaces.