In recent years, researchers have begun to argue for a poetics of archaeology, and for a rapprochement between scientific and poetic discourse. I beg to differ. This is a view I have strongly endorsed throughout my professional life, ever since the times of my earliest fieldwork.

I was working in Mexico in the early ’60s. We were a young team, all fired up by the winds of scientific change that were in the air, and by the inspirational new chimes of cultural evolution that came ringing out from Michigan at the time. We would feverishly quote to one another about ‘extrasomatic means of adaptation’ or how to ‘explicate and explain the total range of physical and cultural similarities and differences’, pondering on each word. We revelled in the kinds of texts that could expand minds and unite a generation. And it most certainly wasn’t poetry.

One afternoon as we were digging, a young fellow pulled in on a motorcycle, wearing big shades and even bigger hair. He looked like one of those beats out of New York, but he sounded more like a lost Minnesota kid. He said he was a poet and tried to assume a suitably artistic air.

‘You can call me Rob or Bob or Zimmie… My name, it means nothing’, declared the young man.

‘Your name, it means nothing? Ha, looks like your age, it means less, son’, I teased him.

He looked up, ‘Huh, are you also a poet?’ He fumbled in his pocket and found a battered red notebook and a pencil to take down my punchline.

‘I’m NOT a poet! I excavate urban houses and monuments!’ I exclaimed.

He gazed absently around. ‘Yeah, and roads I see… There’s roads going everywhere in this crazy place. Really, how many roads have you found here?’ he asked.

The question was wholly unscientific, of course, and I had to tell him so. ‘Look, Rob or Bob, there’s no positive answer to that. Less than six-point-three per cent of the settlement area has been excavated. And many “roads” are really just trampled paths, the accumulated product of adaptive behaviour? How many roads must a man walk down? The answer is blowing in the wind!’

His eyes flickered for a second behind the shades. ‘What a far-out line! You really are some kind of poet, Sid! I MUST take that one down. I dig that!’ He pulled out his scruffy notebook again.

‘Well, excuse me, Mr Lyricist, but I dig that — that’s my job, you know!’

He laughed and replied, ‘I bet you do! But what do all those finds show you? Like, tell me: what dreams have been dreamt in these streets?’

I shifted the trowel uneasily in my hands. ‘Dreams? Dreams have no place in this techno-complex. These ancient empty streets are too dead for dreaming.’

His eyes flickered again, and he promptly produced his notebook. ‘Sure you’re not a bit of a poet, Siddie?’

I could see that my team of trusted professionals were losing patience with the intruder. They were sending ill gazes. They were not into poetry, and the situation was getting dangerous.

I’m afraid I sent him off with a bit of sermon: ‘Now take my advice, Rob: get yourself out, or you’ll soon be knocking on heaven’s door. With no direction home, I tell you! They’ll be selling postcards of the hanging and blame it on a simple twist of fate!’

He wisely abandoned the scene. As he motored away, I could see that he was still frantically scribbling in his notebook.

I often think back on that young fellow. He could have made a fine worker but for his poetry. The encounter convinced me for good that scientific discourse on the past should hold no place for abstruse wordiness. And frankly, archaeology will never inspire any memorable lines of poetry or song.