Editing Oral history (section)

== Archaeology ==
[[Archaeologists]] sometimes conduct oral history interviews to learn more about unknown [[Cultural artifact|artifacts]]. Oral interviews can provide narratives, social meaning, and contexts for objects.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Mullins |first1=Paul |title=The rhetoric of things: historical archaeology and oral history |journal=Historical Archaeology |year=2014 |volume=48 |issue=1 |pages=105–106, 109 |doi=10.1007/BF03376922 |hdl=1805/4862 |s2cid=142160356 |hdl-access=free}}</ref> When describing the use of oral histories in archaeological work, Paul Mullins emphasizes the importance of using these interviews to replace "it-narratives". It-narratives are the voices from objects themselves rather than people; according to Mullins, these lead to narratives that are often "sober, pessimistic, or even dystopian".

Oral history interviews were used to provide context and social meaning in the Overstone excavation project in [[Northumberland]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Webster |first1=Jane |last2=Tolson |first2=Louise |last3=Carlton |first3=Richard |title=The artifact as interviewer : experimenting with oral history at the Ovenstone miners' cottages site, Northumberland |journal=Historical Archaeology |year=2014 |volume=48 |issue=1 |pages=11, 19–20 |doi=10.1007/BF03376916 |s2cid=160431759}}</ref> Overstone consists of a row of four cottages. The excavation team, consisting of Jane Webster, Louise Tolson, Richard Carlton, and volunteers, found the discovered artifacts difficult to identify. The team first took the artifacts to an archaeology group, but the only person with knowledge about a found fragment recognized the fragment from a type of pot her mother had. This inspired the team to conduct group interviews volunteers who grew up in households using such objects. The team took their reference collection of artifacts to the interviews in order to trigger the memories of volunteers, revealing a "shared cultural identity".