Archaeology and Regional Identity in Saxony

Abstract

The paper discusses the interrelation between archaeological method and regional identity using the example of Saxony, a federal state of Germany. While the role of archaeology in the nationalist and ethnic discourse has been discussed relatively intensively, little is known about the hidden or open resistance present and the subnarratives used on a more local level. Saxony, with a multi-ethnic past (Germanic, Slavic and German settlement) and strong indications of a multi-ethnic identity, can be used to demonstrate the changing strength of the ‘Germanocentric’ view of German prehistory.

The paper follows the evolutions of the ‘Saxon character’ and its reflection in the archaeological narrative from the Romantic phase (c. 1817–70), through Nationalism, Fascism and archaeology in the GDR to modern times. This specific point of view does not only determine the evaluation of past events, but the questions asked and the methods used to interpret archaeological finds as well.

In conclusion, the ‘instrumentalization’ of archaeology as part of the public domain is seen as inescapable. But archaeologists retain responsibility for the use their data are put to. Any construction of identity by way of a common past is exclusive and potentially xenophobic. The author argues for a greater independencce from the past that leaves room for the recognition of distance and ‘strangeness‘.     

Teaching Anti-Colonial Archaeology

Archaeology is deeply troubled, but students are unlikely to learn about it in their ARCH 100 class. Our experience with ‘World Prehistory’ and ‘Introductory Archaeology’ courses and reviewing common textbooks charts a discipline securely anchored in the 19th century ideological harbour that is science, evolution, imperialism and progress. This includes so-called ‘middle road’ and ‘post-colonial’ approaches, which reinforce the status quo by limiting political action. In our search for an alternative, we discuss here our attempts to teach an anti-colonial archaeology rooted in critical pedagogy, political activism and anti-oppressive practice. At its core are three tenets: archaeology is personal, political and all about the present. While we are gratified by the many students who relish this opportunity for critical enquiry, we are faced with this lingering problem: most people do not want to hear the “negative reality” of archaeology.     

Is This Stone Alive? Prefiguring the Future Role of Archaeology

By reflecting on new and emerging perspectives and trends in the contemporary humanities and social sciences, including the critique of anthropocentrism, Eurocentrism and secularism, the questioning of human epistemic authority over knowledge building, the ‘indigenization of the academy’, and debates over the applicability of the humanities to the problems of the contemporary world, the author identifies tendencies that are relevant to discussions on the future role of archaeology. In her analysis of the ontological and animist/ic turns, the author claims that asking the questions ‘what is an object?’ and ‘is it alive?’ within the context of this paradigm shift might support the emergence of an alternative worldview based on a participatory perspective of the world that understands (new) animism as a different way of being human and relating to the world on different terms. The author asks whether it is possible for archaeology (as the discipline of ‘animated bones and things’) to potentially become an intellectual platform for exercising an alternative worldview.     

Transdisciplinary Archaeology and the Future of Archaeological Practice: Citizen Science,Portable Science,Ethical Science

This paper presents a vision and a pathway for the future of archaeological practice, in which several fields that are currently considered distinct, including community-based collaborative archaeology, indigenous archaeology, and applied archaeology, could become the norm. Inspired by personal encounters with some exceptionally open and collaborative archaeology projects, as well as by recent advances in archaeological science, which are starting to make it more portable, this paper sets out an agenda for a more open approach to archaeological practice. It advocates a method of producing knowledge about the past that does not privilege one investigator over another, but gives everyone who is interested and wants to participate an opportunity to do. Specific methodological challenges that are discussed include the need to ‘flip’ the public outreach element of research designs, to embed open participation from the outset by nurturing relationships of mutual respect and trust, and to take advantage of, and improve, the portability of archaeological science, so that it can be done in and by local communities. It is argued here that the opening of archaeological research, including the archaeological sciences, to a wider range of participants, is the most ethical approach to archaeological practice in a pan-disciplinary research environment.     

Archaeology from below

Abstract

This paper identifies and discusses two contrasting approaches to field archaeology in contemporary Britain. The dominant approach is that of ‘official archaeology’ rooted in professional rescue (or contract) work and represented by bodies such as English Heritage, county archaeology units and the Institute of Field Archaeologists. This ‘archaeology from above’ threatens alternative approaches to fieldwork, since state legislation and other bureaucratic controls are being used to restrict access to archaeology to an elite of self-accredited practitioners, and a persuasive and sophisticated ideology of heritage ‘protection’ and professional ‘standards’ is being deployed to legitimize this policy. This attempt to universalize the practices of professional rescue archaeology is academically incoherent and politically undemocratic. An alternative ‘archaeology from below’ is proposed in which fieldwork is rooted in the community, open to volunteer contributions, organised in a non-exclusive, non-hierarchical way, and dedicated to a research agenda in which material, methods and interpretation are allowed to interact. These points are illustrated with detailed references to the experience of ‘democratic archaeology’ on the author's project at Sedgeford in northwest Norfolk in 1996–98.     

Maritime Archaeology and Climate Change: An Invitation

Maritime archaeology has a tremendous capacity to engage with climate change science. The field is uniquely positioned to support climate change research and the understanding of past human adaptations to climate change. Maritime archaeological data can inform on environmental shifts and submerged sites can serve as an important avenue for public outreach by mobilizing public interest and action towards understanding the impacts of climate change. Despite these opportunities, maritime archaeologists have not fully developed a role within climate change science and policy. Moreover, submerged site vulnerabilities stemming from climate change impacts are not yet well understood. This article discusses potential climate change threats to maritime archaeological resources, the challenges confronting cultural resource managers, and the contributions maritime archaeology can offer to climate change science. Maritime archaeology’s ability to both support and benefit from climate change science argues its relevant and valuable place in the global climate change dialogue, but also reveals the necessity for our heightened engagement.     

Archaeology in the Lettered City

The ‘lettered creole’ Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora is widely seen as an antiquarian who collected textual materials associated with the indigenous past. But Sigüenza's historical interest exceeded both the textual and the indigenous. Following a popular insurrection in 1692, which left the viceroy's palace in ruins, Sigüenza was asked to present a proposal for segregating Mexico City into distinct Spanish and Indian zones. He framed his project not as an attempt to trace a new line but as the recuperation of an old one, ‘excavating’ the original plan laid out by Hernán Cortés. Drawing on recent work in the field of archaeology and proposing a revisionist history of Mexican archaeology, this essay reads Sigüenza's interventions in the wake of the uprising as articulating an ‘archaeology of the colonial present’ whose modalities include both digging and ‘walking in the city.’ This operation renders the Spanish city a colonial ruin to be curated by a creole administrative apparatus. For the first time, the Spanish present has become the colonial past.     

Unmanaging the past: Truth,data and the human being

Management systems in archaeology seek to impose the scientific objective‐reductionist paradigm on archaeologists and their data. This orthodoxy has been enshrined in English Heritage's document Management of Archaeological Projects (English Heritage 1991) which prescribes rigorous application of a standardized methodology. MAP II, as it is known, is based on a processual model in which ‘data’ enter at one end and valuable archaeology emerges at the other. Such a view not only lacks any appreciation of the distinctions between ‘data’ and ‘information’ but also fails to acknowledge the beliefs and values which underpin the decision‐making criteria crucial to the model. In this paper we argue for an approach which un‐manages the past — by building relativistic humans into our strategies for dealing with the past. Examples are given which demonstrate how such an approach might work in practice.     

RADIOCARBON DATING: REVOLUTIONS IN UNDERSTANDING*

Radiocarbon dating has undergone a number of ‘revolutions’ in the past 50 years. This is in part because it is a field in continuous development, but perhaps more because of its profound impact on archaeology and the nature of interdisciplinary research. In order to understand the use of radiocarbon as a dating tool, it is necessary to understand the life cycle of radiocarbon, from its production in the upper atmosphere, through its sequestration in reservoirs and samples and its final decay. Different elements in this life cycle lead to complications, or subtleties that need to be understood if we wish to develop high‐resolution chronologies. Most of the changes that have influenced radiocarbon dating are revolutions in understanding of the natural world in disparate academic disciplines. More than ever, it is necessary for users of radiocarbon to understand and engage with the science that underlies the method.     

The Mythos,Ethos, and Pathos of the Humanities

Summary

Justifications of the humanities often employ a mythos that exceeds their historical dispositions and reach. This applies to justifications that appeal to an ‘idea’ of the humanities grounded in the cultivation of reason for its own sake. But the same problem affects more recent accounts that seek to shatter this idea by admitting an ‘event’ capable of dissolving and refounding the humanities in ‘being’. In offering a sketch of the emergence of the modern humanities from early modern humanism, the paper argues that these twin philosophical justifications fail to capture both the array of intellectual arts that have informed the humanities disciplines and the variety of uses to which these arts have been put. Nonetheless, the two philosophical constructions have had a concrete impact on the disposition of the modern humanities, seen in the respective structuralist and poststructuralist reconfigurations of the disciplines that began to take place under the banner of ‘theory’ during the 1960s. In discussing the effects of theory on the humanities in Australia, the paper focuses on the unforeseeable consequences of attempts to provide arts-based disciplines with a foundation either in cognitive structures or in an ‘event’ that shatters them.     

Rational Mechanics in the Eighteenth Century. On Structural Developments of a Mathematical Science

Rational Mechanics in the Eighteenth Century. On Structural Developments of a Mathematical Science. The role of mathematics in eighteenth‐century science and of eighteenth‐century philosophy of science can hardly be overestimated. However, philosophy of science frequently described and analysed this role in an anachronistic manner by projecting modern points of view about (formal) mathematics and (empirical) science to the past: From today's point of view one might be tempted to say that philosophers and scientists in the seventeenth and even more in the eighteenth century became aware of the importance of mathematics as a means of ‘representing’ physical phenomena or as an ‘instrument’ of deductive explanation and prediction. But such modernisms are missing the central point, i.e. the ‘mathematical nature of nature’ according to mechanical philosophy. Moreover, the understanding of this mathematical nature changed dramatically in the course of the eighteenth century for various (i.e. mathematical, philosophical and other) reasons – a fact hardly appreciated by former philosophical analysis. Philosophy of science today should offer a more accurate analysis to history of science without giving up its task – not always appreciated by historians – to uncover the basic concepts and methods which seem relevant for the understanding of science in question. This paper gives a ‘structural account’ on the development of rational mechanics from Newton to Lagrange that tries to give justice to the fact that rational mechanics in the eighteenth century was primarily understood as a mathematical science and that – starting from this understanding – also tries to give good reasons for the fundamental change of the concept of science that took place during this period.     

A Multi‐disciplinary Approach to the Archaeological Investigation of a Bedrock‐Dominated Shallow‐Marine Landscape: an example from the Bay of Firth,Orkney, UK

Investigation of shallow‐marine environments for submerged prehistoric archaeology can be hampered in many localities by extensive bedrock exposure and thus limited preservation potential. Using the concept of ‘seamless archaeology’ where land‐based archaeology is integrated across the intertidal zone through to the offshore, a multi‐disciplinary approach is essential. This approach taken in the Bay of Firth, Orkney uses geophysics, historical archive and ethno‐archaeology, coastal geomorphology, palaeo‐environmental analyses and sea‐level science, and allows a clearer understanding of the landscape in which prehistoric settlers lived. While acknowledging the limitations of the preserved environment, we are successful in identifying areas of archaeological potential on the sea‐bed for both upstanding structural elements as well as sediment preservation that contains evidence for human occupation. This has wider implications beyond Orkney's World Heritage sites to provide a blueprint for similar studies elsewhere in the coastal zone. © 2012 The Authors     

Assessing the value of political science in the era of relevance and impact

The political science profession, like other social sciences, is under pressure from many quarters to demonstrate its ‘relevance’. This need arises primarily from requirements for universities to justify public investment in their teaching and research. Competition across the full range of science and humanities disciplines for public and private funding makes this an important challenge for all. This article reflects on how political scientists have seen the public value of their professional work. It concludes by suggesting some alternative ways of thinking about relevance, value and impact.     

Framing the past: situating the archaeological in photographs

Archaeology continually reproduces its own images. Speaking archaeology’s visual language is one way we prove membership in the discipline. Many aspects of this visual language have become so naturalized within archaeological representation as to be almost unquestionable: the cleaning of the site, the use of scale, and particular framings and perspectives. How, then, is the production of particular photographic images of archaeology related to the practice of archaeology? Does archaeology look a certain way (in photographs) or are archaeologists reproducing an archaeology according to the way it is thought it should look? Using examples of early photographs from Latin American archaeological expeditions, this article investigates not only photography as an applied technology for scientific recording, but also its power to situate archaeological knowledge. Drawing on recent reflective and critical developments in both the history of archaeology and visual anthropology, it uses five focal points – trace, objectivity and authenticity, sight/site, still lifes, and still lives – to argue that early-twentieth-century archaeological photographs of Latin America participated in the generation of an ‘authentic’ past rather than simply paid testament to it.     

Educating for Sustainability in Archaeology

‘Sustainability’ is a concept that suffuses the present. Policy initiatives require ‘sustainability’ as one of the criteria by which projects are judged. In recognition of their role as interpreters and custodians of the past, archaeologists are one of the many groups contributing to the creation of ‘a sustainable historic environment’ and ‘sustainable communities’. Accordingly, sustainability is a concept that we perhaps need to incorporate into our activities as educators of future good citizens and into our training for the profession of archaeology. This paper seeks to address this issue, particularly in the light of Themes and Sessions relating to both sustainability and education at WAC8, but where the link between them remains unexamined.     

从“归纳”到“解释”:汉唐考古研究的趋势

政治史取向和类型学方法在保证汉唐考古取得很大成绩的同时,也制约了汉唐考古的研究范围、理论建设,并影响到汉唐考古研究者的知识结构和思维方式。新出土资料的减少迫使汉唐考古改变"能源型"发展模式,其他人文学科的发展则为汉唐考古向"技术型"转变带来机遇。汉唐考古研究者的主要工作从归纳总结考古资料,转变为以历史文献为基础,借鉴其他人文学科的方法论,对汉唐考古材料的内涵和意义进行解释,是汉唐考古研究的发展趋势。     

Experiencing Climate: Finding Weather in Eighteenth Century Cumbria

This article examines whether Tim Ingold's concept of the ‘weather-world’ can be applied within discussions of climate in archaeology. Using a case study of eighteenth century Cumbria, the article first looks at the issues arising when environmental models are used to investigate landscape change. It then assesses the insights on landscape, weather and farming that can be gained from two historical diaries. It is recognised that advances in complex ecosystem and agent-based modelling have improved ‘climate change archaeology’, but that there are aspects of people's relationships with the weather and climate that are ill-suited to quantification. The article concludes by arguing that people's qualitative engagements with the weather are integral to how past people viewed and used the landscape.     

A Plea for a Richer,Fuller and More Complex Future Archaeology

In this paper there are some thoughts addressing issues of the future of archaeology that are especially dear to my heart, including questions of who sets research agendas, dissemination of archaeological knowledge, multiscalar interpretation of archaeological data, celebrating the ambiguity of the archaeological record, and putting the dialogic nature of archaeological research into practice as the dominant form of its dissemination. These would push archaeology towards a discipline whose boundaries are fluidly defined, flowing into other disciplines easily, driven by sensorially rich and complex lateral thinking and playful exploratory imagination. A discipline that defies categorization as either ‘humanist’ or ‘scientific’ but is nevertheless grounded in empirical data.     

Comments on Bertil Hallert,photogrammetry and culture history. Discussion continued from NAR vol. 4, page 28

In archaeology experiment can be used both as a topic and as a research tool. In the former case, through identification of past experimental activities, we can obtain one of the indices of the social and cultural level. In the latter, experiment may help us in verifications of our hypotheses or in searching for facts that are so far unknown. This may take place in all spheres of archaeological procedure, thus not only in physical modelling of ancient technologies of production and in simulation of various economic and social processes—i.e. in the sense in which the contemporary concept of ‘experimental archaeology’ is usually delimited.     

Participatory Augering: A Methodology for Challenging Perceptions of Archaeology and Landscape Change

Public engagement is a significant feature of twenty-first-century archaeological practice. While more diverse audiences are connecting with the discipline in a multitude of ways, public perceptions of archaeology are still marred by stereotypes. Community excavations of ‘sites’ to discover ‘treasures’ which tell us about the ‘past’ overshadow other forms of public research output and hinder the potential of the discipline to contribute to contemporary society more widely. This paper proposes participatory augering as an active public engagement method that challenges assumptions about the nature of archaeological practice by focusing on interpretation at a landscape-scale. Through exploration of recent participatory augering research by the REFIT Project and Environmental Archaeologist Mike Allen, this paper demonstrates how the public can contribute to active archaeological research by exploring narratives of landscape change. Evaluation of the existing case studies reflects the potential of the approach to engage audiences with new archaeological methods and narratives which have the potential to transform perceptions of the discipline and, through knowledge exchange, drive community-led contributions to contemporary landscape management.