Attending to unproof: an archaeology of possibilities

Abstract

The fragmentation of the archaeological record presents methodological challenges: as researchers analyse and construct models, they do not (and in most cases cannot and will not) know what is missing. Here, the author argues that these gaps are one of the field's greatest strengths; they force practitioners to be reflective in their understanding of, and approach to, studying the material traces of past people's lives and to make space for ways of being foreign to present reality. The uncertainty of a past in ruins is a place of possibility that empowers us all to imagine and to work towards a better future.