Writing Archaeological Labour at Qau, Egypt, in the 1920s

Horn, Maarten (2024) Writing Archaeological Labour at Qau, Egypt, in the 1920s. Bulletin of the History of Archaeology, 34 (1). pp. 1-19. ISSN 1062-4740

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Abstract

This article offers a cautionary tale about exclusively relying on official archaeological reports for writing histories of archaeological labour. It investigates a small personal collection of postcards and photographs by British field assistant James Leslie Starkey to interrogate the representation of Egyptian labour in the official reports of an archaeological project run by the British School of Archaeology in Egypt (BSAE) at Qau, Egypt, in 1922–23. The postcards raise two points that the reports contest or fail to address: the Egyptian efforts of setting up camp and the Egyptian autonomy in seeking out new areas for excavation. I argue that these discursive strategies were entangled with an early 20th century style of writing reports, archaeology’s restricted self-image as primarily a field-based practice, hierarchical structures and representations, and an orientalist and colonialist discourse that sees archaeological knowledge as produced by European ‘heads’, never Egyptian ‘hands’. Unfettered by disciplinary standards, these ‘informal’ postcards give a glimpse of an archaeological project whose work was more collective and comprehensive than its official reports ever made it out to be.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	archaeological labour,history of archaeology,postcards,reports,1920s,archaeology ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1200/1204
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of History
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Heritage and History
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	04 Jun 2024 12:30
Last Modified:	04 Jun 2024 12:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/95382
DOI:	10.5334/bha-704

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