Disrupting the heritage of place: practising counter-archaeologies at Dumby, Scotland

Citation

Hale A, Fisher A, Hutchinson J, Jeffrey S, Jones S, Maxwell M & Stewart Watson J (2017) Disrupting the heritage of place: practising counter-archaeologies at Dumby, Scotland. World Archaeology, 49 (3), pp. 372-387. https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2017.1333923

Abstract
The notion of counter-archaeology is echoed by the opposing faces of the volcanic plug of Dumbarton Rock, Scotland. On the one side is the ‘official’ heritage of Dumbarton Castle, with its upstanding seventeenth-century military remains and underlying occupation evidence dating back to at least the eighth centuryad. On the other side lies a landscape of climbing, bouldering and post-industrial abandonment. This paper develops counter-archaeology through the climbing traditions and boulder problems at Dumbarton Rock and brings to the surface marginalized forms of heritage. Climbers and archaeologists have co-authored the paper as part of a collaborative project, which challenges the binary trope of researcher and researched and provides a model for a collaborative, co-designed and co-produced counter-archaeology.

Keywords
Dumbarton Rock; climbing; 3D; collaboration; ACCORD; archaeology

Journal
World Archaeology: Volume 49, Issue 3

People

Professor Sian Jones

Professor of Heritage, History