Guide: Preservation

Preservation in archaeology is crucial, not just in terms of physical artifacts but also in maintaining the integrity of the archaeological record and the knowledge it provides. If we define it broadly, Preservation in archaeology involves:

1. Physical Preservation – Protecting sites, artifacts, and ecofacts from environmental and human threats.
2. Contextual Preservation – Ensuring that the meaning and associations of finds remain intact.
3. Digital & Knowledge Preservation – Recording, documenting, and sharing information to maintain accessibility for future research.

before we engage in a meaningful discussion about Preservation in archaeology, we need to define Preservation itself and determine which interpretation best suits our purposes.

Understanding the Multiple Meanings of Preservation

The word Preservation broadly means keeping something safe from harm, decay, or loss, but its interpretation shifts depending on the context:

1. Material Preservation – Preventing physical deterioration (e.g., preserving artifacts from weathering).
2. Ecological Preservation – Protecting natural environments (e.g., preserving a historic landscape).
3. Cultural Preservation – Maintaining traditions, knowledge, and intangible heritage.
4. Digital Preservation – Ensuring information is stored and retrievable long-term.
5. Legal Preservation – Protecting rights, laws, or historical sites through legislation.
6. Conceptual Preservation – Retaining an idea, structure, or interpretation over time.

Determining Relevance to Archaeology

Archaeology touches on multiple forms of Preservation, but the key question is: What aspect of Preservation are we focusing on?
To decide, we ask Socratic-style questions:

• Are we discussing the protection of artifacts and sites from destruction? → Material & Legal Preservation
• Are we focusing on the Preservation of knowledge, research, and records? → Digital & Conceptual Preservation
• Are we considering the Preservation of ancient practices and ways of life? → Cultural & Ecological Preservation
• Are we analysing biases introduced by what gets preserved and what doesn’t? → Preservation Bias & Selective Survival

Defining Our Scope for Discussion

For our archaeological focus, we likely need a composite definition, incorporating:

• Physical site and artifact Preservation (avoiding decay, erosion, and damage).
• Preservation of the archaeological record (ensuring findings are properly documented).
• Preservation of interpretation (understanding how knowledge survives or is lost).
• Bias in Preservation (why some materials, sites, and histories survive better than others).

Socratic Question

Here are a few Socratic questions to keep the critical thought process engaged:

1. Preservation vs. Interpretation – If Preservation aims to protect, but archaeology seeks to understand, how do we balance these two forces when excavation is inherently destructive?
2. The Role of the Observer – If Ray Selkirk had started his research today, with modern tools and data, would he have reached the same conclusions? How much does an archaeologist’s context influence their findings?
3. Non-Visible Evidence – If geophysical surveys provide a snapshot of what might be underground, to what extent can we rely on them without excavation? What is the threshold between hypothesis and fact?
4. The Bias of the Record – Given that much of what we know about ancient Britain is based on surviving material culture, what might we be missing from the picture? How do we account for lost traditions, beliefs, and perishable materials?
5. The Ethics of Naming – When we assign names to sites, features, or finds (e.g., “Roman road,” “Celtic fort”), do we shape public perception in ways that limit alternative interpretations? How much power does a name hold in archaeology?
6. Intellectual Legacy – Can an archaeologist’s work truly be separated from their personal worldview? If we reinterpret their findings today, at what point does their theory stop being theirs and become ours?
7. AI in Archaeology – If AI could process all available archaeological data instantly, would it be able to make better interpretations than a human? Or is the human ability to recognize nuance, intuition, and cultural meaning irreplaceable?

The Bias of Context & Information Overload

Archaeologists, like all researchers, work within a finite cognitive and data-processing framework. Whether constrained by technology, funding, time, or personal biases, they must make exclusion decisions about which sources are deemed most relevant. But these decisions may be flawed, and here’s why:

1. Selection Bias – We often prioritize data that fits existing frameworks (e.g., sites with clear stratigraphy over ambiguous deposits). What if we are discarding something essential because it looks unimportant by today’s standards?
2. Survivorship Bias – The archaeological record is incomplete. What has survived is not an objective sample of the past—it is a filtered version shaped by Preservation conditions, past destruction, and chance. How do we account for what is missing?
3. Information Bottlenecks – There is a practical limit to what can be absorbed, analysed, and stored. Does an archaeologist’s mental buffer (or even a database’s processing limit) inherently distort the truth by filtering too much information?
4. Cognitive Load & Memory Errors – If an archaeologist is overwhelmed by too much data, they might oversimplify or default to pattern-matching, filling in the gaps with assumptions rather than verified evidence. This leads to intellectual blind spots.
5. Authority Bias & Institutional Influence – If a respected academic, a government body, or a dominant school of thought has excluded certain ideas, future archaeologists may unknowingly adopt those exclusions without questioning them.

How Can an Archaeologist Counteract This?

1. Practice Cognitive Self-Awareness – Recognize the limitations of your knowledge buffer. Ask: Am I seeing only what I expect to see?
2. Question Every Assumption – Build an internal ‘buffer check’: Have I excluded something because of tradition, time pressure, or convenience?
3. Allow for the ‘Unknown Unknowns’ – Assume that critical missing data exists, even if you cannot see it. Avoid overconfidence in existing interpretations.
4. Use an Iterative Approach – Regularly revisit past findings with fresh methodologies, rather than accepting them as complete.
5. Encourage Diversity of Thought – Invite outsiders (e.g., scientists from other disciplines, local communities, independent researchers) to assess the evidence without archaeology’s inherited biases.
6. Maximize Preservation & Reproducibility – If data overload is inevitable, ensure that nothing is discarded irreversibly—future tools may find meaning in what is, today, seen as ‘useless’ information.

Conclusion: Can We Ever Know Everything?

No, and that is the heart of the problem. Archaeology is an act of curation, and every decision made about what is kept, excluded, or emphasized directly shapes the narrative of the past.

The best we can do is acknowledge our knowledge limitations and resist the illusion of certainty. True intellectual rigor means accepting that we never fully know everything, and that every theory must remain permanently challengeable.