A Symmetrical Archaeology Approach to Previously Excavated Sites: or, How I Learned to Appreciate Antiquarian Backdirt

Inspired by the author's experience of working at Sanam Temple, a 1st millennium b.c. site in northern Sudan previously excavated at the beginning of the 20th century a.d., this paper attempts to reframe current archaeologists' attitudes towards the backdirt of their predecessors. Using a symmetrical archaeology framework, it centers the concept of backdirt and analyzes it as a means by which different time periods and actors at the site influence each other, drawing them together into a network of relations. The strength of the relationship between these entities, facilitated through backdirt, produces surprising echoes and parallels across different historical periods, including between current and past archaeologists. Though backdirt is disdained, ignored, or rejected by different actors in the temple, it in fact repeatedly acts as a focus for creative engagement at the site and opens up new avenues of interpretation.