The material object at the centre of my contribution is a ‘graffitied’ door and panel wall, made of wood, approximately 2.4 metres high and 1.2 metres wide. These were originally located in one of a group of derelict labourers’ cottages on a farming estate in East Lothian, Scotland. In poor condition and proposed for redevelopment, the cottages were the subject of a report by the Buildings Archaeologist and Heritage Consultant David Connolly (2010). His report included some description of the penciled graffiti, and summarized its significance as ‘providing a record of the people who travelled from Ireland to find seasonal work on the farms of East Lothian in the mid 20th century.’ (Connolly, p 3, 2010) He concluded that further archaeological work is unlikely to be necessary, ‘though more documentary research into the previous inhabitants may be appropriate. The decision however rests with East Lothian Council Archaeology Service.’ (Connolly, p 21, 2010).

Towards the end of 2010, I met David and his partner, Maggie Struckmeier at East Lothian’s Peter Potter Gallery. As an artist who investigates the contemporary relevance of found artefacts and hidden histories of specific sites, I was struck by their story of finding the graffiti made by Irish migrant workers and also how these lived on in the archaeologists’ minds. The gallery had secured Heritage Lottery funds for its programme ‘Lost Landscapes’ and was in the process of commissioning me to produce a work that would result in the show Archaeology of the Ordinary (2011). A compelling question emerged at this point: how could art and archaeology come together to rescue the wooden wall of ‘graffiti’ from a builder’s skip? And secondly, how could its significance and meaning be articulated? In short, how to convey that this material object, and its transient history, was worth keeping. With these questions in mind, the process of rescuing the wall and the consequent display within an art exhibition, led to the development of a particular methodology. This was collaborative and worked across disciplines of material culture (such as archaeology, museum conservation) and contemporary art (installation, curation). For example, the use of photography included the documentation of the wall in situ and its removal; Photoshop for tracing the lines of the original writer to retrieve more information; and picture research in the local history. Museum conservation included the treatment for woodworm, courtesy of the National Museum of Scotland’s deep freeze facility. Given the importance of farming in East Lothian and the role played by migrant workers, other methods associated with social and oral histories also became part of the methodology.

A brief description of the show is important here. The door and panel wall were displayed free standing in the middle of the Peter Potter Galley along with a number of other artefacts retrieved from the cottages, such as wallpaper fragments, and a spail (potato) basket. A soundtrack played intermittently. This consisted of edited interviews with people who had a specific relationship with the wall, or to the history it alluded to, such as the son of a Potato Merchant Supervisor. Gallery Interpretation introduced the show, and carefully avoided ‘explaining away’ the objects. It invited the audience to consider the show as ‘an archaeology of living memory’ making connections between contemporary art and archaeology through addressing key terms such as ‘site’, ‘artefact’ ‘excavation’ and ‘history’ (Peter Potter Gallery, 2011). Therefore two areas proved to be crucial in helping tease out the wall’s meaning. Firstly, the decision to move door and wall from the cottage to the gallery allowed for all viewers to share the experience of a physical encounter with the object. This led to a close looking at names, statements, dates, written on the wall and in turn different readings of it. Local voices, such as the reminiscences of a farmer’s wife alongside scholarly perspectives revealed the wall’s significance in terms of mid 20th Century changes to farming practices and how these marked the contemporary rural landscape.