Superficial Praise - Part I

This paper explores themes Dawid Kobiałka raised in his polemic discussion, “Against Gandalf the Grey: towards a Sherlockian Reading of the History of Archaeological Thought,” specifcally the role excavation plays in the discipline, thereby shaping narratives of surface and appearance, parallels between archaeology and detective fction, and ultimately of scholarship. By digging below the surface of these narratives and dissecting their history, revealing the relations between archaeology and such disciplines as history and philology, and some of the metaphors held in common by any number of scientifc disciplines, we come to critically examine the metaphysical assumptions of both the discipline itself potential “radical” approaches to it.