| Especially
when dealing with cultures that have left few or no written records,
one of the primary means we have of learning about how and when
people lived is through archaeological research. The interesting
thing about archaeology and its relation to the humanities, however,
is that it's both a tool (used to help us to uncover factual
evidence about the past) and the focus of creative effort--in
films and novels (which tend to be not very factual) about archaeology
and archaeologists.
The
word archaeology itself comes
from the Greek and means, roughly, "a discourse about ancient
things." The Oxford English Dictionary provides several
other definitions:
1.
Ancient history in general
2.
Systematic description or study of antiquities
3.
Scientific study of the remains and monuments of the prehistoric
period
Because
this last definition leaves out an important aspect of contemporary
archaeology (i.e. excavating historical sites), we might
amend this to read something like
4.
Systematic, scientific study of cultural stages earlier than our
own
But
this, too, is inadequate, because some archaeologists deal with
the material remains of people still living. For example, a legitimate
scientific field called (rather unfortunately) "Garbageology"
is devoted to understanding the consumption patterns of contemporary
cultures. So perhaps a broader definition would help encompass everything
that archaeology is and has been in the past:
5.
Study of what human beings leave behind.
However
we end up defining or describing it, archaeology seems to have been
pursued, in one form or another, since Nabonidus,
the last king of Ur
(a Mesopotamian
kingdom mentioned in the Bible), discovered evidence of his predecessors
at Ur during his own building projects. His daughter excavated the
temple of Agade for several years and collected local antiquities.
Before
the time of Christ, the Greeks, Romans, and Chinese had developed
notions of human cultural and technological evolution through ages
of stone, bronze, and iron--which became the cornerstone
chronological system of modern archaeology in the nineteenth century.
A
large portion of the physical remains of the Classical world survived
into the 16th century. Western scholars, travelers, artists, popes
and cardinals, and others admired, described, painted, and collected
historical sites and artifacts; in Italian, these aficionados of
the past became known as Dilettanti--those who delighted
in the arts.
From
1750 to 1880, a second renaissance of interest in Classicism occurred;
French, English, and German scholars rediscovered the antiquities
of the Classical world. Painter James
Stuart (1717-1786) and architect Nicholas
Revett (1720-1804) documented surviving sites in a series
of books that helped revive interest in ancient Greece, while other
writers and artists traveled throughout the Near East and excited
new interest in that part of the ancient world. One of the most
influential events that took place in the eighteenth century was
Napoleon's expedition to Egypt, which eventually resulted in the
discovery and decipherment of the Rosetta Stone and the first wave
of "Egyptomania" in Europe (the second followed the discovery
of Tutankhamen's tomb by Howard Carter in 1922)..
The
art historian Johann
Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768) is usually called the "father
of archaeology," although his method (historical description
of antiquities) represents only a small part of what archaeology
does today. He was, however, the first to study his material systematically,
which continues to be an important aspect of archaeological technique.
Systematic
archaeology, which began to emerge in the nineteenth century, owes
its development to the rise of scientific inquiry--especially (early
on) in geology and biology, and later in chemistry and physics.
But a concurrent spirit during the nineteenth century, Romanticism,
brought about spectacular discoveries such as Troy in
Asia Minor (Turkey), and Knossos on the Greek island of Crete (see
my Bronze Age Aegean links for websites).
Before
Indiana Jones
During
this quarter we will study several Bronze Age Aegean sites and cultures
in depth, as well as New-World Maya and Anasazi sites and the Roman
cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Ostia. But because archaeology
is a vital agent in our understanding of prehistoric peoples, it
is necessary to comprehend how and why the practice of archaeology
has changed over the last 150 years, and how those changes have
affected our interpretations of evidence and the way we handle the
material we discover.
While
the art historian J. J. Winckelmann is often considered to be the
father of modern archaeology, two nineteenth-century archaeologists
provide a representative example of how modern archaeology was undertaken
in its earliest stages. Heinrich Schliemann and Arthur Evans were
inspired in their pursuit by a love of the Greek poet Homer's great
works, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Their views on the
historical accuracy and proper interpretation of the texts differed
radically and led to profoundly different interpretations of what
they found. We will discuss these differences in greater depth as
we study Troy and Bronze Age Greece, but the important thing to
note is that both men were driven by literary rather than
scientific notions of truth. Similarly, early explorations
among Maya ruins by John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood,
and among Anasazi sites by Richard Wetherill, produced valuable
information--although modern archaeological methods were hardly
in place during their respective investigations.
These
men, to greater or lesser degrees, engaged in the kind of archaeology
that gave rise to the "Indiana Jones" image of archaeologists
as risk-taking adventurers with varying amounts of larceny in their
hearts (Schliemann, for instance, smuggled many of his discoveries
out of Turkey and into Germany). Early archaeology could also be
dangerous (Winckelmann was murdered, and Wetherill died in a gunfight),
although the personalities of the explorers were probably more responsible
for the danger than archaeology itself. To some extent this kind
of archaeologist did in fact persist into the 1930s and '40s. By
the 1960s, however, archaeology had been transformed into a much
more scientific pursuit, enhanced by methods that made interpretation
increasingly less subjective. New cultural sensibilities also began
to emerge in the '70s (how would you like your dead grandmother
to be dug up and set off to a museum for "scientific study"?)
which further modified the way excavation takes place today. Although
looting is still a serious problem in the field, at least the archaeologists
themselves are no longer the ones doing the looting! And while the
beginnings of archaeology are to some extent tainted by the imperialism
and racism of the period in which it developed, more archaeologists
now come from the countries under study. Europeans and Americans
still dominate the field, but this dominance is quickly fading as
more and more native peoples become involved in the study of their
own cultures.
The
following archaeologists and/or explorers are closely affiliated
with the places we will be studying, and helped give rise in one
way or another to the "movie" archaeologist prototype.
Howard
Carter (1874-1939) discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen
in 1922. In the late nineteenth century, Carter worked under the
great archaeologist Flinders Petrie at Amarna, where he acquired
substantial knowledge of archaeological technique. He was later
able to convince Lord Carnarvon, for whom he had worked at Thebes,
to finance the excavation of the Valley of the Kings in search
of the lost tomb of the pharaoh who had succeeded Akhenaton. For
a complete account of Carter's work, see Tutankhamen:
Anatomy of an Excavation and read Carter's
Diaries. To rid yourself of any inclination to believe
in curse theories, read Howard
Carter and the Mummy's Curse, which also has links
to other sites on the excavation. The Discovery Channel has a
rather cute slide
show on the discovery of the tomb; click on either the Real
Player or Windows Media link to access it.
Heinrich
Schliemann (1822-1890) was a German businessman who had
been fascinated by Homer's epics as a child and was convinced
of their historical truth. By the age of 46, he had accumulated
a large fortune, which he used to finance excavations in Ithaka
(an island off the western coast of Greece, and the reputed home
of Odysseus) in 1869, and
later at Hissarlik in Turkey--the
site of historic Ilion, which he believed to be Homer's Troy.
He began digging the site in 1871 and continued, intermittently,
until his death. He was assisted in his early excavations only
by his Greek wife, Sophia; but the later digs were aided by the
archaeological training and expertise of Wilhelm
Dörpfeldt. Schliemann, in the meantime, also excavated
at Bronze Age sites on mainland Greece, including Orchomenos,
Tiryns, and Mycenae
(where, in 1876, he was convinced that he had found the gold death
mask of King Agamemnon, leader
of the Greek forces against Troy). In 1873 at Troy he discovered
a hoard of gold objects which he identified as the treasure of
Priam, King
of Troy. Later excavations proved Schliemann wrong
about which of the several levels on the site was Homer's Troy,
but did confirm that Homer's legendary city had once truly existed.
His ultimate success and the spectacular nature of some of his
discoveries inspired subsequent generations of archaeologists--and
raised their expectations about what one might be able to find.
In
1883, Schliemann obtained permission to dig at Kephala in Crete,
site of the ancient city of Knossos. He never had time, however,
to use his permit. The discovery of the legendary palace of King
Minos at Knossos was, therefore, left to an Englishman,
Arthur
Evans (1851-1941), curator of Oxford's Ashmolean Museum.
In 1894 Evans acquired the site, and began excavating in 1899.
Unlike Schliemann, Evans was a trained Classical scholar; and
although Evans was not burdened with a driving necessity to prove
Homer true, he nonetheless put enough stock in ancient myth to
interpret his excavation as a pre-Mycenaean (pre-Greek) culture.
He named these pre-Greek people Minoans, after the mythical King
Minos, whose palace was said to have housed the half-man, half-bull
Minotaur. Evans's methods were more scientific than Schliemann's,
and his interpretations better grounded, but his work was also
informed by a substantial belief in the essential historical accuracy
of Greek myth--which colored both his evaluation of the evidence
and his reconstructions of the palace itself.
Richard
Wetherill (d. 1907) was tracking stray cattle in December
of 1888 when he and his brother-in-law walked to the edge of a
cliff and caught sight of the dwelling ("Cliff House")
that later became the centerpiece of Mesa Verde National Park.
(There is some evidence that his brother had actually discovered
the site three years earlier.) As a result of this discovery,
Wetherill became obsessed with a quest to discover all he could
of the remains of the people he named "Anasazi" and
to learn as much as possible about them. He acquired thousands
of artifacts for museums both here and abroad. Unlike Schliemann
and Evans, whose work was inspired by their love of ancient literature,
Wetherill's interest was originally motivated primarily by cash;
he took loot from two years' worth of mining Mesa Verde on a "road
show" which became an immediate hit and netted him $3000
when he sold it to the Colorado Historical Society. In 1891, the
arrival of the scientifically (though not archaeologically) trained
Swede, Gustav Nordenskiöld, changed Wetherill's approach
forever. Nordenskiöld introduced Wetherill and his family
to scientific excavation and interpretation techniques, including
stratigraphy, which enabled them to determine relative ages and
dates at a site. Wetherill's excavation of Mesa Verde under Nordenskiöld's
tutelage resulted in an artifact collection put together for display
rather than for sale. (Nordenskiöld, however, departed for
Sweden with his own vast collection of Anasazi relics). Wetherill
was subsequently involved in excavating Anasazi sites throughout
the Four-Corners area, most significantly at Chaco Canyon in New
Mexico. In 1900, however, the government closed down work at Chaco
Canyon because of concern by academics and bureaucrats about destruction
and exploitation of the site. Wetherill was killed in a gunfight
(unrelated to archaeology) in 1907, and buried near Pueblo Bonito
in Chaco Canyon, the site of his last dig.
Frederick
Catherwood (1799-1854) and John
Lloyd Stephens (1805-1852) traveled through Mesoamerica
together and produced the influential works, Incidents
of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan in 1841,
and Incidents of Travel in Yucatan in 1843. Stephens was
responsible for the prose, and Catherwood's masterful drawing
set the standard for archaeological illustration. Catherwood had
already traveled and illustrated antiquities in Egypt, Arabia,
and the Holy Land before joining up with Stephens in 1839. Like
Evans did later at Knossos, Stephens bought the site of Copán
in order to work without constraints. Their documentation of the
nineteenth-century condition of such sites as Palenque, Uxmal,
Chichen Itza, Cozumel, Tulum, Dzilam, Izamal, and Ake provide
us with an irreplaceable legacy.
Giuseppe
Fiorelli (1823-1896) was the most famous of those who
excavated at Pompeii, because he invented the technique that produced
the plaster casts of victims of Vesuvius' eruption in CE 79.
Modern
archaeologists, as we will discover in class, tend to be far less
flamboyant than their predecessors--although Arthur
Demarest's recent cloak-and-dagger work at the Maya site of
Cancuén in Guatemala indicates that adventure is still to
be found. Regardless of of their exploits, however, archaeologists
today are carefully trained and follow exacting procedures which
allow them to interpret their finds far more accurately and appropriately
(and perhaps less colorfully) than they could in the past.
The
art and science of digging up the past
Archaeology
as a science, and as critical component of research in the humanities,
incorporates a number of means to help us find out about the past.
These include ways of determining the age of objects and sites,
and methods used to interpret the evidence uncovered.
Chronology
"Absolute"
techniques: radiocarbon
dating (also known as Carbon 14 dating), coupled with dendrochronology
or tree-ring dating; other isotope-based systems (such as Potassium-Argon);
Thermoluminescence, fission-track, obsidian-hydration, palynology
(pollen analysis), and lake varve measurements--all of which depend
on sophisticated scientific instruments.
"Relative"
techniques refer to stratigraphic analysis (the position in
which an artifact is located) as well as stylistic analysis. These
are comparative methods that are often very reliable, but less
so than the absolute measures noted above. Although they depend
on the expertise of the archaeologist, interpretations are correlated
as well as possible with absolute methods.
An article
from Science Daily (Cornell University) discusses work
being conducted in the Aegean, which is (as we speak) "editing"
the chronology of some of the periods we're studying in this class,
and describes current methods: Archaeologists
Rewrite Timeline Of Bronze And Iron Ages.
Methodologies
and sub-fields of archaeology
Palynology
and Paleobotany: These fields focus on the environment
in which ancient cultures lived. Palynology includes not only
the determination of chronology, but the analysis of pollen as
a means of determining diet and other aspects of ancient living
patterns. Paleobotanists study the floral environment as a whole,
in hopes of determining what plant materials were available for
human use in the area being studied.
Paleontology
and Forensic Anthropology: Scientific methods of studying
bones and of reconstructing human physiology help archaeologists
to understand the physical characteristics of the people they
study. Since archaeology is often similar to detective work, the
forensic anthropologist acts like a forensic pathologist--reconstructing
the last moments of our dead ancestors.
Epigraphy:
The science of decipherment, epigraphy includes the study of ancient
texts and writing systems. See my essay, Decoding
the Past: Epigraphy and Decipherment for more information
on its importance to archaeology.
Experimental
Archaeology: This is an extension of the use of analogy in
archaeology, but involves the reconstruction or recreation of
processes that we know to have occurred, so that the outcomes
of these processes can be observed. With the development of computer
technologies, this kind of work now frequently takes place in
cyberspace, as "virtual archaeology." Experimental archaeologists
also participate in activities that are designed to help us understand
how skills and tools were developed and used. The folks who spend
weekends recreating old battles, or who visit Colonial Williamsburg,
are participating in a form of experimental archaeology--or, more
properly perhaps, experimental history.
Ethnoarchaeology:
Another analogical technique, ethnoarchaeology involves research
on a site analogous to or historically related to the development
of certain cultures. Living among the !Kung people in Botswana,
for example, can tell us about how many early hunter-gatherers
lived. Studying the descendants of a particular group of people
can help us understand their ancestors by allowing us to observe
how traditions are carried into the modern world. The Pueblo peoples
in New Mexico, for example, maintain the ceramic traditions of
their ancestors, the Anasazi; listening to their stories, observing
their methods, etc., can give us clues about the lives of the
ancestors and help us to interpret artifacts more accurately.
Suggested
reading: Lewis Binford, Decoding the Past: In Search
of the Archaeological Record (Thames & Hudson, 1983); Colin
Renfrew, Virtual Archaeology: Re-creating Ancient Worlds
(Abrams, 1996); Glyn Daniel, A Short History of Archaeology (Thames
& Hudson, 1981). See the sidebar for books available in the
Kelley Library.
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