Invention and Reinvention: Perceptions and Archaeological Practice

Hot off the presses...several months ago, and otherwise respectable. This volume that I co-edited is a collection of papers focusing on personal perception and the practice of archaeology; how we archaeologist invent and reinvent aspects of our discipline. Cannibals, fake pyramids, Mel Gibson, and Peter Pan, we've got it all. In all honesty, it is a good read.

Yours here for only £9 (not including postage):
http://www.societies.cam.ac.uk/arc/home.html

For reference, a list of contributions:

Where is Reflexive Map-Making in Archaeological Research? Towards a Place-Based Approach
James Flexner

Evaluation of a Reflexive Attempt: The Citytunnel Project in Retrospect
Åsa Berggren

Beyond the Viewing Platform: Excavations and Audiences
Gabriel Moshenska

Contextualising Alternative Archaeology: Socio-Politics and Approaches
Tera C. Pruitt

Royal Jelling: Danish National Heritage Reinvented
Mette Bjerrum Jensen

Digital Simulation, Mediating Agents and the Implied Historical Object: Towards an Understanding of Mediaeval Jewellery Objects
David Humphrey

Sights of Invention: Deconstructing Depictions of the Earliest Colonisations of Australia and Oceania in the Academic Archaeological Literature
Sara Perry

Adding a Literary Bent to Historical Archaeology
Laurie A. Wilkie

Twenty-First-Century Reinventions of Alexander, Xerxes and Jaguar Paw: A Critique of Apocalypto and Popular Media Depictions of the Past
Traci Ardren

Science and the Epistemology of Culture: How We Know What We ‘Know’ About Human Burials in Chaco Canyon
Kerriann Marden

Text, Narrative, Evidence: Travel Writings and Archaeological Perspectives of Amazonia
Anna T. Browne Ribeiro

Reinventing an Old Discourse: Neolithic Cultural Similarity Across Eurasia
David Steel

The right to isolation (and other empty promises)

Last night I was thinking about uncontacted peoples which, for some reason, I devote a surprising amount of time to...from time to time. Like many others I have a dark fascination with isolation. The idea of existing without the 'world' is intoxicating. Clearly that term 'uncontacted' is used liberally, such as with the Sentinelese. The Sentinelese have been contacted quite a bit, they just want everyone else to stay the hell away. They seem quite in charge of the situation, however their agression makes them more alluring. Why do they like red buckets but not green? Why? I both want to know and want them to be left to their island.

I will probably spend a portion of my day playing around with Survival International's Uncontacted Tribes site. I actually lived about 50 steps from Survival International for several years and never stepped inside to say hello. It is funny how that happens. I was thinking a lot about the series of photos they released a little while back of an uncontacted group in the Peru/Brazil border area, where everyone looks so healthy and strong and together. I doubt the airplane even phased them. Apparently there was an earlier flyover and in the time between they put on paint and got their weapons out. Basically they were able to culturally explain the plane, they did the thing they do for whatever the plane was, and it did not come back again. Problem solved. Pats on the back all around. Hurrah. Cough.

Actually I think what draws me in to the idea of uncontacted or isolated people is what goes on around them. What they are part of, even if they do not know it. This whole spiral downward was triggered by a portion of the new Bolivian constitution:

Article 31.II. The indigenous original nations and peoples, in isolation and not contacted, enjoy the right to maintain this condition, through the legal definition and consolidation of the territory that they occupy and inhabit.

So first, these uncontacted and isolated people are under the jurisdiction of the country of Bolivia, a spacey concept that they know little or nothing about, and second this Bolivia has the athority to mandate the continuation of their current status as uncontacted. They can set up 'reserves', make laws, and create whole government agencies that the people will never know about provided that everyone involved does their job well. This mode of thinking inevitably has me thinking of these isolated people as some sort of endangered jungle mammal and yet I want them to be left alone. I'm torn between thinking "how great" and "how horrible."

On further reflection, which is always dangerous, I started to think about "citizenship" and what it supposidly offers. Bolivians, so says the constitution, are promised and required to engage in free public education. Healthcare is also promised and while indigenous medicine is fully recognized, the constitution promises the regulation and safe administration of it. Among other things, Bolivians are required to be familiar with the constitution and to this goal, there was an audio version of it released, and so on.

So think about it: the constitution provides certain things for all Bolivians and absolutly promises and requires things like education, HOWEVER uncontacted and isolated groups "enjoy the right to maintain" this status and thus will not get the constitutionally mandated things. Neither will they be able to do the things required of all Bolivian citizens like be familiar with the constitution. Basically they are a class of Bolivians goverend by the law and outside of it.

And how about the phrasing "enjoy the right to maintain" isolation. Yes I truely believe that we should all leave them alone to do their thing, but the wording implies a decision, that constitutionally they can choose to "maintain this condition" over the other options. But there is no choice involved, despite promises of universal education and healthcare, the decision has been made by someone else that the isolated peoples' condition SHALL be maintained for them.

Please let me emphasize again that I think uncontacted peoples should be left alone and that all illegal loggers and everyone involved in rainforrest oil should be sentanced to 50 years aboard a slow moving Greek island ferry, with no ticketed seat, surrounded by mean old ladies in support stockings and spoiled crying children. I am just squirming at the creation of a state in which these people are official citizens with official rights and requirements that in reality they do not have or know about. A constitutional right to isolation for people without a constitution and without the means to actively exercise or revoke that right. Decisions made for people who do exist by people who might as well not exist (to the isolated people at least).

Living in the Iceage (twice removed)(poor Ian Curtis half-pun)

It has been a bit since I posted something here. I am still feeling it out I suppose. I've been having amazing conversations with students but where is the line? What can appear here?

On my mind over the past few weeks as been the Anthropocene. I could devolve into any number of puns about being behind the times but I had never heard of this concept until C waved an article at me as I poked at digital Iranian pot sherds.

The idea that humans have had/are having a measurable impact on Earth's climate is pretty much a given these days but that we have caused a new geological epoch? I was so very secure in the Holocene up to moment. I was sure what Age I was in. Geological epochs bring up images of massive ice sheets cutting through some tundra terrain as tiny little fur clad humans throw spears at woolly rhinos or aurochs or something. They are the big to the humans' little. In a very structured view of things, the epoch governs or limits human activity: humans respond.

From Lenton (2008): In a feat unprecedented for a single animal species, humanity's total energy use has now exceeded that of the entire ancient biosphere before oxygenic photosynthesis, reaching about a tenth of the energy processed by today's biosphere.

Zowie. Ice Age by Joy Division has been replaced by Freur's Change the Weather...which is very unfortunate for me.

I'm now going through the extended process of logging into an academic article database from outside of the Cambridge network. I suppose I shouldn't complain, I have access. These should be public...

Anyhow, true to my vision of epoch power, the Anthropocene just is. I suppose we have come control over its' course, but it seems as if I may have never seen the Holocene which is a shame. The Holocene seems so nice, utopian...pastoral. I feel like I missed out.

I am heading to London for the big Darwin Exhibit hullabaloo on Tuesday, words to say perhaps!

What to do when the President's grandpa robbed your grandpa's grave and maybe made out with the skull...

Oh interesting! It seems as though Goyaale/Geronimo's descendants are suing for the return of his bones which are supposedly held by the Skull and Bones secret society at Yale. Apparently a Bush was even one of the diggers up.

In reading this article (and not the lawsuit) I noticed two things. First Yale mentions that the Skull and Bones vault is not on their property. The obvious reason for this is that it indicates that they deny having any reason to be in this lawsuit. It also seems to be a NAGPRA inspired statement. If a Native American skull was being held on their property they would have been required to report it years ago under NAGPRA and possibly return it to the descendant community years ago as well. Yale receives some level of public funding thus they are not immune to NAGPRA thus this skull better not be at Yale proper or else they are in non compliance with a federal law.

It seems that the descendants of Goyaale/Geronimo are with it, however, and do not seem to be claiming him under NAGPRA. Rather they are the actual direct descendants: a family saying grandpa's grave was robbed and his body illegally taken with the Native American stuff mixed in just for flavor. If the bones are not Goyaale/Geronimo, but another Apache, the Geronimo family indicates that they want them returned as well but that would probably require a switch in legal tactic.

In a way it seems like they have left all doors open. I truely doubt they will ever get these bones back. I mean come on, the Skull and Bones people almost certainly have something Native American down there and they can just go hide it all before any search. These fellas are not the sympathetic sort (and I can pretty much assert that they all huge jerks and many other negative things). It is just an interesting way to go about it, to reach just a little beyond NAGPRA.

Spirit

Today I heard a First Nations elder speak. This was particularly convenient as I spent most of yesterday discussing the concept of being indigenous with undergraduate students. The subject is so very complex that it was nice to invite them to come along to this and take in what he had to say.

This is where I might lose you, oh dear reader:

He spoke a lot about his own religion and his concept of Spirit, how Spirit comes from connection with the earth, etc. That this Spirit was quality of all human beings and that from it we know who we are, what we are, and where we should be. This and the rest of his talk brought my mind back to Bolivia in June 2005.

I suppose it is no surprise to say that my upbringing was decidedly western and passively non-religious which means that I am more than happy to accept any religion but claim none for myself. I feel powerful moments, just not spiritual moments. Except for once.

It was the solstice, the new year, and there were tens of thousands of people at the site. It was very cold, I hadn't slept. First we ended up in the room with all the mallkus, fellas holding various levels of power within the indigenous communities. We entered the site with them which involved a lot of shoving and pushing and Bolivians becoming angry at us getting special treatment for some weird reason. In the semi darkness I walked past where I was going to be digging the next week (and where I dug the year before) and there were people scattered about. The main temple complex was bursting at the seams.

This was before I lost my archaeological ID card in one blurry birthday night. I teamed up with my boss who is Aymara (plus his archaeology cred was way high) and we convinced the military police that we were important enough to be let into the off limits part of the site. Then we waited. Various computer programs told us that there would be an astronomical alignment with one temple during the solstice sunrise and that is what we were there to see. The 20,000 odd people behind us did not know about this alignment. We didn't know about it until just before. We waited.

Then the first sun of the new year peeked out over the distant ridge of the snowy topped Andes. The alignment was there. We were the first to experience it in that way in hundreds or a thousand years perhaps. Maybe more. I was struck by the idea that I was experiencing what this place was meant for. I was not just visiting, I was participating. We took off our gloves and, like the thousands of people behind us, warmed our hands with the new sun. My boss softly told what he believed this all meant to me and a young indigenous MP guy who had abandoned his post at the entrance to the alignment temple because we were clearly on to something interesting. We then climbed to the top of the pyramid (flashing our ID cards again) and looked out at the people filling the temple. It made so much sense.

Practically this had an effect on my archaeological work. It all made sense, everything I was finding, especially when illustrated with a modern photo of the packed temple spilling out onto my excavation area.

In a broader sense, and going back to this fellow's talk, I've found that I mentally cannot stay away from Bolivia...nor away from from that site (and I have tried to). All other projects seem to fail. I come back to it. He would say, perhaps, that I am connected to that land. I would say, maybe, that I just feel like I understand it a little bit. Who knows.

Perhaps Spirit is just some level of pan human understanding that can be transmitted through time by place. This part of our nature that suddenly allows us to understand what others of our species were going for when they produced something. If so, warming my hands to the new sun, standing exactly where I should be, was my contact with Spirit.

I wonder if others out there who are on intimate terms with the past have felt the same way.

"still laboring as their ancestors did, scraping salt off the ground"

Very recently the New York Times published an article entitled "In Bolivia, Untapped Bounty Meets Nationalism." My heart beats for yet another marketable natural resource that Bolivia has the most in the world of, but like the rest of them I wonder where it is going. I know nothing about lithium extraction and less than nothing about any extraction infrastructure that may already exist. I fear it may not exist and thus would be difficult/impossible to get off the ground. Nationalizing an industry that doesn’t exist yet…the article makes it sound like they are going at it. Go! Go team!

What really gets my typing fingers in a jitter is the wording of the article. First, the word Indian is used throughout. Come on Simon Romero...no one who isn't from India is an Indian anymore, get with the program dude. You are publishing in the US where Indian is quaintly antiquated at best. You call someone an Indio in Bolivia they might knock your teeth out. What dude at the Latin America desk with the surname Romero doesn't know that? Ultimately in many circles, Indian/Indio is a racial slur. It is loaded down with 500 years of oppression and people don't like it. I'm not wiggling my finger at nothing.

I also wiggle at "this desolate corner of the Andes, where Quechua-speaking Indians subsist on the remains of an ancient inland sea by bartering the salt they carry out on llama caravans." I know he is trying to be dramatic here and maybe explain why someone would support indigenous resource control but, Jesus. Why not just write 'the savages scrape at the dirt.' Actually he kind of says that later on, see title. Sure this is less obvious than "Indian" but sensationalization is really dehumanizing. Othering. Those Quechua speakers just totally got Othered.

What do you say to that, random Indigenous dude that got interviewed? "We are poor, but we are not stupid peasants."

Speaking of Othering: "Mr. Castro said. “But in order to go down that road, we must raise the revolutionary consciousness of our people…" That is Mr. MARCELO Castro, not Fidel or Raul. He is the manager of the project and this was said "Over a meal of llama stew and a Pepsi." The llama eating was clearly a very important detail. Basically some dude said one thing that was sorta red, his name is Castro, and wham bam it is in the American paper because, you know, they seem a bit commie down there and we are not sure what to think about them. Par for any article on Bolivia.

"...should concern anyone interested in our nation's rich history and heritage"

According to the Telegraph the general financial collapse will lead to around 1000 archaeology job losses in the UK alone this year. It is interesting to think of archaeology as artificially inflated, contract work having grown to accommodate the unsustainable building industry over the past years.

A friend of mine teaches primarily the children in families with less than favorable immigration status. Recently some of these families have been considering making a move back to Latin America. The demise of construction means that work is scare to the point that home (in this case Guatemala) seems the only option. Somehow this story has defined the extent of the financial crisis for me. The complete lack of work and the desire to get to the US/Spain etc was the general theme of most conversations I had with Guatemalans while working there in 2003.

Thus it seems that archaeology is in the same boat: with construction not likely to pick up for a while (and perhaps never reach the same levels again) are we destined to go back to a time when an undergraduate degree in archaeology led no specific practical carrier?

On this chilly night marking undergraduate essays, I wonder where each of them will end up. I wonder where I will end up for that matter.