Welcome to an Archaeological Ark!

Over the last decade it has been archaeologists who have led the way when it comes to telling the world just how various types of historians go about their business. Their methods give a pull – large yellow machines, stone foundations made visible from the earth, stripy layercakes of urban stratigraphy – and the expense of those methods gives a push: big holes in towns are so costly that diggers need to give visible account of what their work amounts to. Public interest and public support provide the Ark in which urban archaeology can float. That support has to be earned. It means venturing to explain ourselves and our activities.

One of the most successful of such ventures has been the Jorvik Centre. Built into a shopping development in central York, it offers a reconstruction of the Viking city using modelled human figures, houses, livestock, sounds and smells. This lively scene is set alongside the sticky grey goo of the waterlogged deposit from where the evidence to remake Jorvik was discovered. But how the translation from site to spectacle has come about is not explained; the archaeological skills are left a mystery.