Celtic monasticism- a discipline's search for romance?

Abstract

Beneath the mud-encrusted exterior of the average archaeologist, there beats the heart of a romantic. As a profession, we are attracted by the lure of lost tribes and societies, the life- style enjoyed by unknown civilisations, the worship and cults of forgotten gods. This fantastical element in our thinking is a fundamental part of the discipline; it provides the tension which keeps archaeology in its rightful position, linked to the outskirts of the humanities. Without it, we become the poor relations of the physical scientists, our suppositions unprovable and our data sets irretrievably corrupted through time. An integral element in the romance of archaeology lies in the distinction between the intensely local nature of the primary evidence and the distant cultures which may have provided the impetus for regional development. Here the distinction between the measurable data and the overall interpretation is at its most clear-cut. The former can be analysed with all the necessary tools of systematic enquiry, the latter remains a matter for impressionistic assessment and the exercise of judgement. The long-standing arguments about diffusion versus independent discovery lie at the very heart of all archaeological studies.