Screenshot of opening section of co-authored article in Journal of Field Archaeology. Access it freely at https://doi.org/10.1080/00934690.2025.2504235
The question above sits at the core of a new #openaccess article we’ve just published—the outcome of an exceptional collaboration between Anna Simandiraki-Grimshaw, Colleen Morgan, James Stuart Taylor, Aida Fadioui, Lise Foket, Piraye Hacıgüzeller, Despoina V. Sampatakou, Paola Derudas, Holly Wright & Alice Clough.
Alongside our wider team on #TETRARCHs – Transforming Data Reuse in Archaeology – we’ve been using storytelling as a device to support different forms and conceptions of collecting and using archaeological data.
We have a hypothesis that more creative, emotive, complex datasets can lead to more creative and complex use and reuse of archaeological information. At the same time, we suspect this process of creating more creative, complex datasets can bring greater agency, recognition and equity both to archaeological practitioners and to wider communities. We have been testing the usefulness of storytelling as a springboard for exploring these ideas.
However, at every turn, systemic barriers have interfered with our efforts. Such barriers are often related to the sense that there is a ‘normal’ way of practicing archaeology which cannot be compromised, and that experimentation with creativity and emotion are not quite acceptable and must therefore sit next to—not within—archaeological data-making.
Simultaneously, it is widely recognised that there is no ‘normal’ archaeology, and that unrelenting conformance to normativity (which denies emotion and creativity) seriously undermines the possibility for change, for inclusion, for agency, for redistribution, for representation and equity both within and beyond archaeology.
In the article, we review key barriers we’ve faced in implementing new methods for creative data-making, and offer reflections on how to move forward. Importantly, we are readying now to test out the next iteration of our research questions thanks to our dear friends and colleagues on the Tharros Archaeological Research Project (Steven Ellis, Eric Poehler, and team), and in collaboration with the one-of-a-kind Fondazione Mont’e Prama. Thank you for making it possible to push further! And please stay tuned, as we leave for Tharros next week.
This research would not be possible without our phenomenal collaborators at Toumba Serron, our funders Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), CHANSE: Collaboration of Humanities and Social Sciences in Europe, and the tremendous support of my department UCL Institute of Archaeology. We are indebted to many whose ideas have inspired us, including direct feedback on the article from Sadie Watson, Guillermo Diaz de Liano, and Mark Gillings.
Your constructive thoughts are much appreciated!
Read the article here 👇https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00934690.2025.2504235
#Storytelling #archaeologicalmethodology #data #creativity #professionalism #trust #leadership
SARA PERRY 
