Archaeology Matters

Action Archaeology in the Modern World

Jeremy A Sabloff

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781315434032
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Social Sciences
• Categoría: Archaeology

Archaeology is perceived to study the people of long ago and far away. How could archaeology matter in the modern world? Well-known archaeologist Jeremy Sabloff points to ways in which archaeology might be important to the understanding and amelioration of contemporary problems. Though archaeologists have commonly been associated with efforts to uncover cultural identity, to restore the past of underrepresented peoples, and to preserve historical sites, their knowledge and skills can be used in many other ways. Archaeologists help Peruvian farmers increase crop yields, aid city planners in reducing landfills, and guide local communities in tourism development and water management. This brief volume, aimed at students and other prospective archaeologists, challenges the field to go beyond merely understanding the past and actively engage in making a difference in the today's world.

CHAPTER ONE

The Importance of the Past for the Present

Everything contributes to the belief that archaeology, this young and dynamic expression of the historical sciences, can and should make a valid contribution to the defining of a new form of universal humanism, appropriate to the scientific age.

MASSIMO PALLOTTINO¹

The scholar and popular writer Neil Postman wrote in his book Building a Bridge to the 18th Century: “… whatever future we see is only—can only be—a projection of the past.”² I am convinced that archaeologists can and should play a useful and important role in such projections.

Archaeology is currently a very popular pursuit, with students flocking to archaeology courses, and movies, television, newspapers, and magazines giving it major coverage. Archaeological field research, from survey to excavation, is a very exciting endeavor, as are both high- and low-tech laboratory analyses of archaeological material. I feel fortunate to be an archaeologist and frequently reflect on how lucky I am to be able to practice and teach such a stimulating subject—and get paid to do so to boot! But I also believe—and I hear from students that they strongly agree—that archaeology can be more than just a fascinating exercise in illuminating the past. Yogi Berra has famously stated that “the future ain’t what it used to be.”³ Yet, I hope to show in the pages that follow that no matter how diminished the future might seem to us in today’s perilous world, insights derived from archaeological research can help in at least a small way to bolster the chances of a better future.

Thus, my goal in this short book is to try to show why and how archaeological findings are appropriate resources not only for understanding the past but for better planning for the future and that the search for such illumination of future paths should be a key aim of the discipline of archaeology. I will illustrate this argument with a series of case examples that show archaeologists using their findings to impact the world beyond the narrow confines of academia.

Some years ago, in an article on “Communication and the Future of Archaeology,” I issued a call to arms to my colleagues to expand and improve their efforts to communicate with their publics.⁴ But my message in this book is stronger. Not only must archaeologists do a better job in communicating what we do—convincing the general public that we are not clones of Indiana Jones or Lara Croft, searching for lost gold statues or arks—but archaeologists also should show people that much of what we do has the potential to be practically useful to the world today. Archaeology is as much about the present and the future as it is about the past. This is obviously not a new idea, but I am surprised how little archaeologists talk or write about it (although there have been some notable exceptions⁵), especially to the general public.⁶ I strongly believe that this must change.

Archaeologists have to do more to make aspects of archaeological research applicable to the modern world and to better communicate this to the public, if the field is to survive and flourish. One archaeologist has noted: “On the face of it, the study of archaeology, however fascinating, seems a luxury we can ill afford in a world beset by economic uncertainties and widespread poverty and famine.” He goes on to say: “But to regard archaeology in such a way would be to treat the entire cultural heritage of humanity as irrelevant and unnecessary to the quality of our lives; in reality it is integral.”⁷ However, many archaeologists would contend that the results of archaeological research do not significantly affect contemporary society and the major problems facing the world today.⁸ While I concur that this view of the current situation is probably an accurate one, I am convinced archaeologists can alter it, as the field of archaeology is in a better position than ever before to make itself pertinent to key modern issues such as the sustainability of our planet.

Thus, the crux of this book’s argument is that archaeologists can play helpful roles in broad, critical issues facing the world today. Archaeological research not only can inform us in general about lessons to be learned from the successes and failures of past cultures and provide policy makers with useful contexts for future decision-making, but it really can make an immediate difference in the world today and directly affect the lives of people at this very moment. In relation to this latter goal, I would argue that we need more “action archaeology,” a term first prophetically introduced more than fifty years ago⁹ but not widely used in the modern archaeological literature. In this book, I have taken this term to mean involvement or engagement with the problems facing the modern world through archaeology. In other words, by “action archaeology,” I mean archaeologists working for living communities, not just in or near them. Furthermore, these are engaged archaeologists who can effectively communicate with their varied publics. In sum, my argument in this book is not for something totally new—as we shall see, there are some excellent examples of action archaeology in recent years—but for much more of something of great promise. It also is an argument for not only undertaking more action archaeology projects but also for communicating the results of these projects clearly to non-specialists and involving them in the projects where possible.

For instance, with regard to broader questions of human sustainability on this planet, the pioneering action archaeological work of the archaeologist William Rathje and his colleagues on modern garbage disposal is a terrific, well-known case example.¹⁰ Beginning in the 1970s with the Tucson Garbage Project and spreading both nationally and internationally in more recent years, Rathje and his team used an archaeological perspective to analyze patterns of the use and disposal of material culture, with their sites ranging from garbage cans to large landfills. As Rathje and co-author Cullen Murphy state in their popular book Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage (1992):

Created in 1973 primarily as an exercise in archaeology, the Garbage Project has evolved into a multipurpose enterprise whose interests include diet and nutrition, food waste, consumerism, socioeconomic stratification, resource management, recycling and source reduction, and the inner dynamics of landfills.¹¹

Since archaeologists are often referred to as scholars who work in the garbage heaps of antiquity, it makes sense that they could bring their methods and technical tools to bear on the study of modern garbage.

I visited Bill Rathje and the Garbage Project in its early days at a Tucson sanitation department facility and remember seeing the University of Arizona students—dressed in white lab coats and rubber gloves—busily studying pieces of garbage. They were carefully sorting the garbage and recording and cataloging it, just as they would have done with refuse from an archaeological site, although the latter probably would smell better! The team then looked for patterns in the data they collected and analyzed and interpreted these patterns, again, just as archaeologists would do with ancient artifacts.

From this modest start in the early 1970s, the Garbage Project expanded to other cities, initiated interviews with people about their disposal habits, and began to examine other kinds of sites, such as landfills. At the latter, using heavy equipment, scholars excavated parts of the fill. This research has had path-breaking public policy consequences and has shed new light on a number of other entrenched myths about garbage disposal. The project has been able to show, for instance, that a number of assumptions were either wrong or too simple. Among such mistaken views are:

trash, plastic, foam, and fast-food packaging are causes for great concern, that biodegradable items are always more desirable than nonbiodegradable ones, that on a per capita basis the nation’s households are generating a lot more garbage than they used to …¹²

The Garbage Project was further able to correct the widely held view that much of the garbage that was packed into landfills decayed significantly over time by showing that this was not the case. Moreover, they were able to show that well-designed landfills tended to preserve their contents rather than degrade them, and that this was a good thing, as it prevented the creation of methane gas and liquid pollutants, among other positive effects.¹³ Surprisingly, newspapers tended to preserve well in landfills, contrary to popular myth, as did—believe it or not—hot dogs! As Rathje and Murphy point out: “Whole hot dogs have been found in the course of every excavation the Garbage Project has done, some of them in strata suggesting an age upwards of several decades.”¹⁴

On the most general level, Rathje and his colleagues have convincingly shown how garbage disposal and recycling issues are far more complex than had previously been assumed.¹⁵ Garbage Project members also have made a number of other contributions to understandings of consumption and disposal. More specifically, they have been able to confirm the widely held view that the poor pay more for household items than middle class consumers, by finding that with less money to purchase items, the poor buy relatively smaller-sized items at relatively higher prices than wealthier consumers, who can buy things in bigger, relatively cheaper sizes. They also have been able to show, not surprisingly, that people waste more of a food item when it is not part of their regular diet than they do of a more familiar item.¹⁶

More recently, Tani and Rathje have examined patterns of household disposal of dry-cell batteries. This case study focuses on what these scholars label “the most feared beast in the jungle of household hazardous wastes.”¹⁷ Among the most important of their findings is that the highest rates of battery discard occur among younger people, especially children of upper-income families, and Latino households. The public policy implications of this research, especially with regard to educational efforts, are clear and significant.

Bill Rathje’s Garbage Project is just one example of a series of innovative archaeological studies on modern material culture¹⁸—present-day artifacts—that scholars such as Rathje, Michael Brian Schiffer, and Daniel Miller, among a growing number, have undertaken over the past three decades. Archaeological interest in how material culture was produced, used, and disposed of in the past has given these scholars the tools to examine these topics in both recent historical and modern contexts. Who better than archaeologists, with their interest in and knowledge of artifacts, to illuminate the modern material world and study the nature of communication in this world?¹⁹ Schiffer’s classic study of the portable radio is an example of how an archaeological perspective can yield new insights into common, everyday modern objects.²⁰ This focus on materiality is a frontier area in archaeology that is certain to have growing relevance in the coming years. One of the best terms that they have used to describe this relatively new area of interest is “the archaeology of us.”²¹

Another compelling example of action archaeology is the field research of my archaeological colleague Clark Erickson, in South America. In research projects in Peru and Bolivia over the past two decades, Erickson and his colleagues have shown that Pre-Columbian peoples in both the Southern Andes and the headwaters of the Amazon River employed sophisticated agricultural techniques that were sometimes even more productive and efficient than those practiced by peasant farmers in these two areas today.

Figure 1. Construction of experimental raised fields in the Community of Bermeo, Bolivia (1992). (Photograph courtesy Clark Erickson, University of Pennsylvania Museum.)

In the Lake Titicaca region of southern Peru and northern Bolivia, archaeologists have found the remnants of an ancient agricultural technique called “raised field agriculture.” In simple terms, the technique involved raising small plots of land above ground level by excavating shallow canals around the plots. Earth from the excavations was piled on the plots in order to raise them. The result was a latticework of plots and canals. The plots were renewed and the canals kept flowing by piling mud from the canals on the plots. This technique was effective because, among other reasons, it allowed the plots to be used constantly, kept them fertile over time, and helped retain heat, which allowed the farmers to extend the growing season in this mountainous region, where cold temperatures can arrive relatively early in the fall.

Figure 2. Members of the Community of Bermeo and their experimental raised fields (1992). The community later harvested a bumper crop of manioc and peanuts. Sadly, these fields are now abandoned. (Photograph courtesy Clark Erickson, University of Pennsylvania Museum.)

Erickson and his fellow archaeologists set up a pilot project to teach local farmers to utilize the ancient techniques that the scholars had uncovered in their research. This project was successful, as it improved the yields for the farmers over their traditional methods.

More recently, Erickson has been conducting fieldwork in the savannas of the Bolivian Amazon. When I look at recent aerial photographs of this seemingly bleak environment, it does not seem at all inviting. The low-lying grassy areas are seasonally flooded and much of the region is sparsely inhabited. However, Erickson and his team have found strong evidence of significant modifications of the Pre-Columbian landscape here. The ancient inhabitants constructed long canals to capture and move water during the rainy season and built up other areas to create large, highly fertile “islands” of cultivatable land amidst the seasonally flooded savanna. These are like the raised fields of Lake Titicaca, but they are far longer and larger. The photographs of this region show a landscape that almost looks like a giant golf course with the raised fields as the fairways and greens. Erickson also has been able to show that there was a complex culture in this area well before the Spanish Conquest that supported these extensive landscape modifications, as well as much greater populations than those who live there now.

But perhap...