Conversation in Front of a Megalith - A Contemplative Approach to Archaeology and Our Interpretative Existence

Abstract

During the last few decades of processual and post-processual discussions, the relationship between the archaeological interpreter and the interpreted material culture has been highlighted from different directions. However, it still seems that some fundamental questions concerning this relationship have been forgotten, and that some existential dimensions inherent in it have not been brought forward in processualist or in post-processualist reasoning. In this paper, which takes the form of a conversation between three archaeologists, the "Dwarfs' House" megalith in the northern part of the Swedish province of Halland is approached in a contemplative manner that takes these existential dimensions into account.