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We
increasingly
function
in
the
world
through
things.
This
is
no
less
true
for
how we
work
on
the
past
and
make
claims
to
know
it.
The
archaeological
process
is less
to
do
with
discovering
and
representing
the
past
than
with working
with media
to
assemble
a
past
for
us
to
know
and
engage. Instead
of
asking
how
do
we
document
and
represent
the
past
we
ought
to
ask
how
we
work
with
media and
instruments
to
assemble
the
past.


This
paper
considers
archaeological fieldwork
and
recovers
the
active
role
of
visual
media.
Such
media
are archaeological
prostheses
–
augmentations
of
ourselves
and
the
past. 'Taking
things
seriously'
involves
asking
what
and
who
are
involved
in
working
on the
past?
Contrary
to
embedded
notions
of
'representation'
which
distance
past from
present,
human
from
nonhuman,
specialist
from
stakeholder,
we
ought
to
unpack
the
transformative
and
collective
(people,
media
and
instruments) process
of
mediation.
The
aim
is
to
recover
a
deanthropocentric
ethnography
of archaeological
practice.
Instead
of
an
encounter
with
archaeological
material
or a
record
(whether
described
as
textual
or
physical),
archaeologists
and
things
 ‐ archaeological
materials,
instruments
and
media
‐
are
mixed
at
every
step.
This mixing
of
archaeologists
and
the
archaeological
confounds
the
conventional research
flow
as
linear;
it
is
continuous
and
reversible.
The
past
as
a
collective and
participatory
‘heritage
ecology’
packed
with
people
and
things.