Because I prefer National Geographic News to listening to various idiots argue about the economy, here are two short and interesting articles about the archaeology of Pre-Columbian Peru:
The first one (here) is actually a week old now, but as we've learned already, I run behind the times. Anyhow, it seems last week was the 100-year anniversary of the first excavations at Machu Picchu after its "discovery" by American historian/archaeologist Hiram Bingham (a senator AND possible inspiration for Indiana Jones, if you weren't aware). Bingham's work at the site is credited with bringing it into public focus and causing it to become the famous tourist destination it is today, and has also resulted in repatriation issues between the Peruvian government and Yale University, where most of the artifacts and remains from those early excavations wound up. Interesting stuff. The NatGeo piece linked above presents a sort of mini history on the theories about Machu Picchu's purpose, the most credible at the moment being that it functioned as a retreat for Inca royalty, a highly symbolic religious site, or some combination of the two.
This is where the whole "tolerance for ambiguity" comes in—most likely, no one is ever actually going to know why Machu Picchu exists or who lived there. There's always going to be more than one possible explanation, and which if any of them is correct is anybody's guess. Interpreting archaeological evidence is often like putting together one of those puzzles with the flat-edged pieces, where you can match up groups of pieces in an assortment of ways, but there's only one way to fit all of them together at once. In archaeology, you're missing a few pieces, so you can put together all the ones that are left, but usually in more than one way, and you can't ever be sure whether you've got it right or not.
Speaking of which...
The second article at hand went up on Thursday and is about a recent discovery of a pre-Inca tomb.
Basically, the grave of an important person was uncovered at a site that has previously yielded evidence of human sacrifice. Cool. Said important person was buried with grave goods that included big copper knives. Also cool. Big knives are apparently common in noble graves from this culture—they're a status symbol.
And yet the article's headline, the topic sentence, the photo caption, and various phrasing used throughout the article consistently claims that this person was an "executioner" or a "sacrificer". Sometimes there's a subtle qualifier like "so-and-so suggests", but other times the article here straight-up states that the grave belongs to someone who ritually killed people, as if it's a known fact.
Kids... this is what we call CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
He's buried with knives at a place where women were sacrificed. Nothing about this proves that he was the sacrificer. The knives alone aren't even very good evidence to support that theory given that they're not an uncommon type of grave good for the time and place. It's an intriguing interpretation, and certainly not impossible, but it's not the only interpretation and probably not even the most likely one. National Geographic latched onto it because it will get people's attention and cause them to click on links. Maybe that's not inherently bad or wrong, but there's a way of presenting something like this that's balanced and not misleading, and then there's... well, the way they did it. If you want to inform the public, by all means do so, but draw a clear line between fact and speculation. Your interpretation of the evidence is merely that, and it really bothers me when a generally respected source like National Geographic fails to make that clear and instead gives into sensationalism.
The great poet W. H. Auden sums it up nicely (from "Archaeology"): "Knowledge may have its purposes,/ but guessing is always/ more fun than knowing."
Showing posts with label ambiguity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ambiguity. Show all posts
Monday, August 1, 2011
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
On The Irony of Archaeology, Or, Jimmy Knight and the Trenches of Despair
“The nice thing about Colonial Williamsburg,” someone told me during my first week as an intern, “is you always know who to blame.”
Well, not always, but often. More often than at many other sites that have been disturbed at some point in the recent, or even not-so-recent, past. That's because in CW, we, the researchers, are sometimes to blame.
On my second or third day on-site, I was introduced to the “Jimmy trench”, as it's commonly referred to by Williamsburg archaeologists. It's also often called simply “a Jimmy”. There's not just one of them, though. They're everywhere. Hundreds of them, cutting across nearly every part of the colonial area. They appear now as relatively narrow dark stripes in the soil, with very straight edges (clearly man-made), where they were dug and then filled in later with dirt that didn't necessarily match what was around it. They may vary a little in width and somewhat more in depth, but, as I understand it, there's no mistaking them. Excavating them takes extra time, can be awkward if they're particularly deep, and is rather dull work compared to some of what's there to be excavated besides the Jimmies.
So what is a Jimmy? In the 1930s/40s, when restoration work at Colonial Williamsburg was first underway, the foundation's architectural historians faced the challenge of determining exactly where the buildings indicated on eighteenth century maps had been located on the ground, not to mention how big they were, which direction they faced, and various other details that become necessary when trying to recreate something exactly as it once was.
And if one wants to locate the buried foundations of hundreds of structures spread across a large swath of land, what's the most efficient way to go about it?
According to James Knight, the architectural historian for whom the Jimmies are not-so-affectionately nicknamed, by systematically digging parallel trenches, so many feet apart, across every plot of land in the area in question.
They served their purpose: It's very unusual nowadays to uncover the foundation of an unknown building in CW. Nearly all that exist were found and recorded decades ago, even if, for whatever reason, it was decided not to reconstruct that particular building. Unfortunately, what Jimmy's trenches also did was disturb everything in them. They cut through other features that Jimmy and his crews weren't interested in, and any artifacts in them, dug up and dumped back in, are now completely out of context. They may or may not be anywhere near their original resting places or other artifacts with which they were once associated, and all time periods are jumbled up together. The Jimmies can tell modern archaeologists very little aside from where Jimmy (under whose name are now lumped all the men who ever did the actual digging for him) was. Which was everywhere.
Hooray: Wanton destruction in the name of research. It's a common theme in early “archaeology”, when people were singlemindedly looking for one thing, be it Pre-columbian treasures or just colonial-era building foundations, and completely disregarded everything else, never imagining that the other information they were obliterating might be useful to future researchers.
To be fair, Jimmies did far less damage than some other methods would have; at least the area between them remains more or less untouched, except where there are other trenches for utility lines and sewer pipes—and those we would have to contend with anyway. The Jimmy trench may be the bane of the CW archaeologist, but as irritating modern features go, they're relatively benign. Nonetheless, I was still reminded of the tale I heard in Belize about an “archaeologist” in the discipline's early days who went around dynamiting the tops off of Maya pyramids in an effort to get at the treasures inside. I saw one of those disfigured temples at Xunantunich—not a pretty sight, either literally or in terms of what it represents. In the olden days (also known as the early decades of the twentieth century...), archaeologists really were somewhat like Indiana Jones: looters and treasure-hunters, not systematic researchers.
It's worth noting that not only was this a broader phenomenon than the raiding of ancient ruins, but here in Williamsburg, destruction took place even before the first limited archaeology could be undertaken. The restoration and reconstruction of Williamsburg's historic area to an approximation of its 1770s appearance did not take place on land that had gone unused in the intervening century and a half, and required that nearly all of the more recent buildings be torn down. Many of these were also historic buildings, dating from as far back as the early nineteenth century, but didn't make the cut because of the focus on recreating colonial-era Williamsburg.
I'm not going to pass judgment on this, but I think it's worth knowing and bearing in mind, along with the other facts of how the landscape and layout of the town were altered by the restoration. I think the question it raises about when and how something becomes a part of history, even if it obscures or comes into conflict with an earlier part of history (What do you save? Where do you draw the line? Who gets to decide?), is worth thinking about, and it's something I'll probably return to in the future. The bottom line is that the past is not some static entity. Time does not happen in easily defined stages, succeeding one another neatly with abrupt, simultaneous change. It's an overlapping jumble of many people's many actions in many times. It's a rare site indeed where anyone can try to turn back the clock to an earlier time without undoing what's happened since. The eradication of nineteenth-century Williamsburg, as well as the Jimmy Knight trenches and the clay-filled ravines that plague our excavations, is as much a part of the story of Williamsburg as the eighteenth-century material we're actually looking for.
Restoration often springs from archaeology; archaeology often results in restoration. They are linked by the sharing of information, but also by their inherent destructiveness. It's been said in many ways by many people cleverer than I—archaeologists and non-archaeologists alike—but archaeology is almost unique among academic disciplines because it inevitably destroys the very things it studies. True, archaeology can lead to restoration or reconstruction, but to do so it must undo decades or centuries or even millennia of change. Or, in some cases, it must destroy things that have survived on their own for all that time, untouched. An excavation can never be repeated; once you dig something up, it's impossible to put it back exactly as it was. And it's just as impossible to record or keep or preserve everything you find—but then no one who comes after you will have the opportunity, either.
This is something every archaeologist must come to terms with, and the sooner the better. It's difficult for many of us. People like me become archaeologists because we want to understand and preserve what we can of the past, and it's a tough day when we first realize what excavation actually entails beyond the chance to hold some centuries-old artifact in our hands. (I have not forgotten how I felt the first time I was made aware that on certain sites, under certain circumstances, the backhoe can be a legitimate excavation tool, and it wasn't pleasant.) We may be the first to see what we've uncovered in hundreds or thousands of years, but we are also the last ever, no matter what, to see it in context and as intact as it will ever be again. And then we must undo it, to shuttle its artifacts off to a shelf in some lab, to see what's underneath it in the next layer, and finally to rebury the ravaged site once more. A handful of sites will be preserved and protected, perhaps even at least partially reconstructed based on what we've found, so that others can see what remains, or what might have been once upon a time. But we have undone everything before us, and we can't repair it again, no matter how much it teaches us. And anything we've missed, whether because the tools or methods to study it don't exist [yet?] or because we just didn't think it was important, is lost forever.
As I said, it's something all archaeologists learn to accept, or they wouldn't continue to pursue a career (or even a hobby) in archaeology. But privately, I've wondered for a while now if that's secretly a part of why archaeologists have such a reputation for being heavy drinkers.
Well, not always, but often. More often than at many other sites that have been disturbed at some point in the recent, or even not-so-recent, past. That's because in CW, we, the researchers, are sometimes to blame.
On my second or third day on-site, I was introduced to the “Jimmy trench”, as it's commonly referred to by Williamsburg archaeologists. It's also often called simply “a Jimmy”. There's not just one of them, though. They're everywhere. Hundreds of them, cutting across nearly every part of the colonial area. They appear now as relatively narrow dark stripes in the soil, with very straight edges (clearly man-made), where they were dug and then filled in later with dirt that didn't necessarily match what was around it. They may vary a little in width and somewhat more in depth, but, as I understand it, there's no mistaking them. Excavating them takes extra time, can be awkward if they're particularly deep, and is rather dull work compared to some of what's there to be excavated besides the Jimmies.
So what is a Jimmy? In the 1930s/40s, when restoration work at Colonial Williamsburg was first underway, the foundation's architectural historians faced the challenge of determining exactly where the buildings indicated on eighteenth century maps had been located on the ground, not to mention how big they were, which direction they faced, and various other details that become necessary when trying to recreate something exactly as it once was.
And if one wants to locate the buried foundations of hundreds of structures spread across a large swath of land, what's the most efficient way to go about it?
According to James Knight, the architectural historian for whom the Jimmies are not-so-affectionately nicknamed, by systematically digging parallel trenches, so many feet apart, across every plot of land in the area in question.
They served their purpose: It's very unusual nowadays to uncover the foundation of an unknown building in CW. Nearly all that exist were found and recorded decades ago, even if, for whatever reason, it was decided not to reconstruct that particular building. Unfortunately, what Jimmy's trenches also did was disturb everything in them. They cut through other features that Jimmy and his crews weren't interested in, and any artifacts in them, dug up and dumped back in, are now completely out of context. They may or may not be anywhere near their original resting places or other artifacts with which they were once associated, and all time periods are jumbled up together. The Jimmies can tell modern archaeologists very little aside from where Jimmy (under whose name are now lumped all the men who ever did the actual digging for him) was. Which was everywhere.
Hooray: Wanton destruction in the name of research. It's a common theme in early “archaeology”, when people were singlemindedly looking for one thing, be it Pre-columbian treasures or just colonial-era building foundations, and completely disregarded everything else, never imagining that the other information they were obliterating might be useful to future researchers.
To be fair, Jimmies did far less damage than some other methods would have; at least the area between them remains more or less untouched, except where there are other trenches for utility lines and sewer pipes—and those we would have to contend with anyway. The Jimmy trench may be the bane of the CW archaeologist, but as irritating modern features go, they're relatively benign. Nonetheless, I was still reminded of the tale I heard in Belize about an “archaeologist” in the discipline's early days who went around dynamiting the tops off of Maya pyramids in an effort to get at the treasures inside. I saw one of those disfigured temples at Xunantunich—not a pretty sight, either literally or in terms of what it represents. In the olden days (also known as the early decades of the twentieth century...), archaeologists really were somewhat like Indiana Jones: looters and treasure-hunters, not systematic researchers.
It's worth noting that not only was this a broader phenomenon than the raiding of ancient ruins, but here in Williamsburg, destruction took place even before the first limited archaeology could be undertaken. The restoration and reconstruction of Williamsburg's historic area to an approximation of its 1770s appearance did not take place on land that had gone unused in the intervening century and a half, and required that nearly all of the more recent buildings be torn down. Many of these were also historic buildings, dating from as far back as the early nineteenth century, but didn't make the cut because of the focus on recreating colonial-era Williamsburg.
I'm not going to pass judgment on this, but I think it's worth knowing and bearing in mind, along with the other facts of how the landscape and layout of the town were altered by the restoration. I think the question it raises about when and how something becomes a part of history, even if it obscures or comes into conflict with an earlier part of history (What do you save? Where do you draw the line? Who gets to decide?), is worth thinking about, and it's something I'll probably return to in the future. The bottom line is that the past is not some static entity. Time does not happen in easily defined stages, succeeding one another neatly with abrupt, simultaneous change. It's an overlapping jumble of many people's many actions in many times. It's a rare site indeed where anyone can try to turn back the clock to an earlier time without undoing what's happened since. The eradication of nineteenth-century Williamsburg, as well as the Jimmy Knight trenches and the clay-filled ravines that plague our excavations, is as much a part of the story of Williamsburg as the eighteenth-century material we're actually looking for.
Restoration often springs from archaeology; archaeology often results in restoration. They are linked by the sharing of information, but also by their inherent destructiveness. It's been said in many ways by many people cleverer than I—archaeologists and non-archaeologists alike—but archaeology is almost unique among academic disciplines because it inevitably destroys the very things it studies. True, archaeology can lead to restoration or reconstruction, but to do so it must undo decades or centuries or even millennia of change. Or, in some cases, it must destroy things that have survived on their own for all that time, untouched. An excavation can never be repeated; once you dig something up, it's impossible to put it back exactly as it was. And it's just as impossible to record or keep or preserve everything you find—but then no one who comes after you will have the opportunity, either.
This is something every archaeologist must come to terms with, and the sooner the better. It's difficult for many of us. People like me become archaeologists because we want to understand and preserve what we can of the past, and it's a tough day when we first realize what excavation actually entails beyond the chance to hold some centuries-old artifact in our hands. (I have not forgotten how I felt the first time I was made aware that on certain sites, under certain circumstances, the backhoe can be a legitimate excavation tool, and it wasn't pleasant.) We may be the first to see what we've uncovered in hundreds or thousands of years, but we are also the last ever, no matter what, to see it in context and as intact as it will ever be again. And then we must undo it, to shuttle its artifacts off to a shelf in some lab, to see what's underneath it in the next layer, and finally to rebury the ravaged site once more. A handful of sites will be preserved and protected, perhaps even at least partially reconstructed based on what we've found, so that others can see what remains, or what might have been once upon a time. But we have undone everything before us, and we can't repair it again, no matter how much it teaches us. And anything we've missed, whether because the tools or methods to study it don't exist [yet?] or because we just didn't think it was important, is lost forever.
As I said, it's something all archaeologists learn to accept, or they wouldn't continue to pursue a career (or even a hobby) in archaeology. But privately, I've wondered for a while now if that's secretly a part of why archaeologists have such a reputation for being heavy drinkers.
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