Returning from the ‘field’…some thoughts on what constitutes fieldwork. Such a pregnant term for the human sciences; replete with senses of: initiation, untowardness, difficulty, spontaneity, inauguration, maturation, practicum, discipline, validation, accreditation, as well as exoticism, travel, aristocratic pursuit and leisure. A process or ‘fielding’ of experience, ‘fieldwork’ plays an indispensable role in the training of academicians – but also of inculcating professionalism in general – so what/why is it? Is it simply the proverbial adage? application of skill is the best apprenticeship. Amazingly, though pedagogically central to these disciplines, there is little explicit discussion except in the administrator’s office signing forms or expressing anxiety, or as part of a project defense; and in these instances the logistics of preparation for carrying out a project ‘in the field’ outweighs any mention of what type of experience it will entail. This only adds to the mystique of ‘the field’. And sets up the fieldworker for the questions: is this what they hinted at with their reticent descriptions?; is this how it’s supposed to go? for everyone or is this intended to be an idiosyncratic experience?
No ritual without anticipatory anxiety and then confusion, self-doubt and questioning. Eventually a re-orientation or shift somehow, bringing a re-formed confidence.
This could be discussed with respect to Van Gennep or Turner’s process of ritual. And of course social/cultural anthropology, the discipline of fieldwork, has drawn this reflexive analogy. But I’d like to start with what/why fieldwork is from a ground perspective.
First, ‘an archaeology through the back door’. This relates to the sentiment of attempting to begin a project. Without using prior personal or professional connections to an archaeological field-site there is an incredible amount of leg work – or more accurately dialoging – which has to be built up incrementally in order to gain the confidence and critically the acquiescence to begin working as ‘an outsider’ @ a new site. Summer after summer I would meet more Mexican and foreign archaeologists excavating at the site and visit their camps. At the end of the day over a beer or pulque – think milk gone off mixed with tequila – perhaps after mixing a ton of concrete by hand with the site’s restorers to gain respect – there would be a verbal exchange about projects’ intentions, theoretical background, legitimacy of interests, appropriateness of Teotihuacan, etc.; generally culminating in a tour of recently excavated tunnels or trenches, chatting with the other excavators, and perhaps a ride back through the site at night on an ATV – urbanized Teotihuacan covers more than 22square km. – catching ‘privileged’ glimpses of the pyramids in moonlight not permissible for tourists.
Yet often the result is utterly discouraging: excavation leaders are uninterested in participating, or downright hostile to your theoretical intentions, days are ‘wasted’ attempting to track down ‘so and so’ who finished/is starting/is looking for help for a project, a bottle of coca-cola is thrown from a passing bus @ the strange gringo walking the streets, a run-in with feral dogs in an abandoned street, seeing a drunk man die in the mercado, being lost and alone in the northern deserts, spending days fevered and ill in bed, etc. At times that ‘back door’ only seemed to become impenetrable, and a desperate feeling builds: will I have to conduct a project ‘through the back door’ without institutional approbation and as the strange outsider/gringo – how? And how much time before its necessary to tell the academic advisors that prospects are looking bleak?
Second, though, there slowly builds a feeling of gaining ‘the inside’: guards no longer harass you but wave you through the gates, the ubiquitous vendedores of crafts (and sometimes cheap crap) no longer proposition you, señoras at the mercados recognize you – and no longer overcharge you – you’re invited to houses for dinners, senoritas begin to flirt; and then you find yourself in a cantina singing a Led Zeppelin song you barely remember, but which the señor singing Mexican ballads insists upon as a sign of good faith between the two cultures. You become part of the local gossip. Just everyday experiences; but they’re paramount in building a confidence and an inter-confidence with the site, the archaeologists, the towns, the people. And none of this ‘data’ will be part of the finished dissertation. Throughout the fieldbook, thoughts scribbled in the margins: “how am I going to use this” crop up. Critical yet not within the strictures of an archaeological report, it forms part of the ‘behind the scenes’, off the stage field-working which will continue to inform the meshing of practice and theory for the duration of the project. It also nonetheless furnishes the requisite starting point of a project – later condensed and edited for the revealing and liberating personal prefatory remarks. At this point, the ‘limen’ or threshold of Van Gennep’s scheme seems to still hold as a concise metaphor for this experience of imperceptibly gaining a new vista– of the possibility of conducting and concluding the project. Something critical has been crossed.

But this takes a while (not quantifiable) as you, your demeanor, your spoken Spanish, your institutional standing, your generosity, your clothing, your amiability, your propensity to drink/or not and so forth are all studied and the conclusions evaluated. Really, it constitutes an intimate defense of the project’s fieldwork.
Third, once a measure of momentum builds, the project unexpectedly take off. All that ‘pointless pandering’ in the towns, with the local archaeologists and tourists, at local festivals, affords a familiarity which abruptly makes the project viable and, even better, builds an interest in what you are doing. Suddenly, I am asked for questionnaires and times to chat for interested brothers, knowledgeable grandparents, disgruntled employees of the site wanting an outlet for their opinion, local ‘traditional’ leaders who are conducting fasts in opposition to a new Walmart, ‘new age’ Toltec shamans meditating in the site who believe in ‘black light’ conduits of spiritual experience, and for once aloof archaeologists who now want ‘their story’ to be included. This is the rewarding part. And though fleeting, the ‘hope’ should be recorded for reading through the fieldbook later on: “yes, thank god it’s somehow coming together. Letting things unfold w/o expectations, and people and opportunities present themselves – I let it unfold without forcing” (p.159 fieldbook).
Fourth, the security in the project is fleeting and circumstances continue to place you in an ‘over-exposed’, vulnerable position. Not that the momentum of the project has slackened, but ever new happenstances present themselves which poise to threaten the progress. The new director – as with ever-changing political contexts – of the site sends his guards to collect you in their pick-up for an impromptu meeting. Things have changed since the meeting with the original director: the governmental institute overseeing the archaeological zone has created their own questionnaire, and mine is now seen as competition with the ‘official census’. Moreover, he is displeased with the questions targeting the institute, and he is concerned about the critical opinions of the employees. I should preface this by stating that the director has an uncanny resemblance to Fidel Castro, replete with obsequious assistants running to and fro and a large cigar. He would like me to discontinue working within the zone. A set-back; yet I already have a sufficient number of completed questionnaires from internal employees, and am already at the decisive stage in fieldwork where the question becomes: one can always collect more information, more contacts, but balancing that with the progress already made and the financial and temporal constraints of continuing, do I have enough to produce a convincing and compelling dissertation? Part and parcel with the behind the scenes ‘establishment phase’, this represents another crucial topic of fieldwork rarely explicitly discussed – and certainly not quantifiable in definite terms. Somehow my guidance for this portion came solely from a nondescript, almost folkloric saying: ‘you will know when the time is right.’ My ‘field’ component of the fieldwork was winding down. And at the time, I knew that the ability to make this decision was somehow an encapsulating learning experience in my ‘fielding’: identifying an interesting project, locating it materially where it would be most salient and potentially poignant, stepping-off into the vagaries of ‘background work’, and making the project feasible all appear to be contained within that singular moment when theoretical interest and lived-through practical application collude in the judgment ‘I have enough to write this fieldwork.’
There it is again: ‘fieldwork’. But such a realization quickly makes one certain of the dispersed and distributed nature of ‘fieldwork’. It was not over. I would be reworking and generating anew information for my dissertation long after my flight back north over the Chihuahuan deserts. Chris Witmore has pointed up this heterogenous, un-contained nature of ‘multiple fields’ of production. Where did the fieldwork begin and end? Even while in the preliminary stages in Mexico I was far from gathering data. And now back, much information will still be collected via the internet in the form of newspaper articles and e-mail exchanges. Can we only lodge a definition in physical terms: the presence in Mexico, whatever form it took, constituted my fieldwork? This contains some of the ‘field of production’ for my dissertation, but much slips by. ‘The field’ for me might have been geographically encapsulated by the valley of Teotihuacan, but the fields of engagement and production extend to my room cluttered with notes and papers, to conference locales where the material is worked through, and even cybernetically, with material being continually worked and reworked on my computer, and through its connection to servers sitting distributed over various non-places.
Perhaps then I would, if forced, land on a definition in terms of a state of being; something closer to an emotional state than anything else. There doesn’t seem to be a concise word to summarize the travails of being simultaneously driven for a purpose and ‘on’ in every sense of the word, while simultaneously being vulnerable, of allowing oneself to be a neophyte open to happenstance and opportunity. A paradox, a process indefinable in temporal and physical terms and yet definite in experience and memory, ‘fielding’ may better capture the dynamic Being, the what, why and how, of fieldwork.