The contemporary in post-medieval archaeology

Abstract

SUMMARY: Contemporary archaeology is an emerging field of enquiry within the wider discipline associated with the questioning of temporal boundaries in what we study and why we engage with material remains of the recent past more generally. This article argues that contemporary archaeology should be broadly defined at this stage in its development and therefore can be located in Post-Medieval Archaeology through research that explicitly engages with what it is to conduct contemporary archaeology, but also through those implicitly considering how the past intrudes into the present. We believe that Post-Medieval Archaeology will continue to highlight archaeological studies of the contemporary into the future.