Archaeolog

Tim Neal (The University of Sheffield)

This photo essay was presented at the Association of Social Anthropologist’s conference in London in 2007. It was part of a panel organised around the theme of “Modernising archaeological tourism: from image conflict to archaeological expressionism” convened by Ian Russell and Andrew Cochrane. Taking up the theme of mentality/materiality, this paper suggests that such duality can dissolve through archaeological/heritage tourism. However the normative impulse that informs the latter cannot be maintained where this non-dualist perspective is to flourish.

This paper has been difficult to dislodge from my mind and onto paper. Something about the subject of the session it was prepared for rather than just my own approach. Materialities and mentalities as a subject spoke directly to me because it finds itself at the interface between archaeology and anthropology, material being in a sense the matter of archaeology while mentalities suggest an anthropological domain. Also perhaps, this is a didactic issue that I am raising: how to teach, or facilitate learning, without simply effacing other teachings or learning?

When I sent through my abstract Ian suggested that I might like to offer a substantive example to illustrate my paper. I replied that I would try to do this while in France researching where to carry out my fieldwork for a PhD.

This is the story of that attempt to illustrate.

I was visiting the department of the Ariege in the Pyrennees. My PhD research is based around an extended period of participant observation in a French commune with a significant proportion of resident and partially resident British migrants. My interest in this was initially prompted by a concern to explore the way in which British migration was activated by a British sensibility towards aspects of European cultural heritage such as Romanesque architecture, deserted uplands and surviving ‘peasant’ traditions. I decided to visit the cave of Niaux in the foothills of the Pyrennees. This cave, much like similar caves in the Dordogne where I had been a guide, was decorated in the late upper Palaeolithic some 14,000 years ago, with friezes of bison, horses and more abstract designs. I duly phoned the cave and booked myself for the 3.30 visit.

As I drove over the mountains to the cave I listened to the radio in the car. I tuned into the French culture programme to which I listened hoping to improve my ‘cultural’ French. The programme was about the destruction of aboriginal rock art by mining interests in Australia and consisted of the witness of various French anthropologists to the effects of mining and the unthinkable demolition of a possible 40,000 year tradition of decorative art. As one of the commentators said:

“Would we, the French, allow Lascaux to be destroyed by such actions? These paintings are at least as valuable”.

The 1970 UNESCO ‘Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property’ addressed the issue of “the illicit import, export and transfer of ownership of cultural property”. This was followed by the 1973 Archaeological Institute of America declaration

“The Archaeological Institute of America believes that Museums can henceforth best implement such cooperation by refusing to acquire through purchase, gift, or bequest cultural property exported subsequent to December 30, 1973, in violation of the laws obtaining in the countries of origin.”

Yet distinguished North American Museums kept acquiring.

And then came the raid on the Geneva Freeport and the seizure of Polaroids showing antiquities that had passed through the hands of the tombaroli.

So what are some of the lessons?

There is a Chasidic teaching about the Mezuzah, a small container which encloses a parchment upon which several passages of the Torah are written. The Mezuzah is placed on the door posts of houses and gates. The teaching expands on the placement of the Mezuzah, a place between the inside and the outside. There is a moment when you are no longer inside, but not yet outside. In this in between state, you are gathered up into the G-d Head, the Ain Sof, and made anew. The philosophers in the mystical tradition explore this notion, and consider similar moments, such as when an egg contains a being that is no longer an egg and not yet a chicken. Here again, the Rabbis suggest that this is the moment that the being is brought into the Ain Sof, the Source of Undifferentiated Being, and reformed. According to this teaching, this gathering up may occur at the threshold between any set of polarities, any set of dualities (Omer-man, 2002).

Between the moment an idea for a new invention is conceived and the moment a manufactured product comes off the production line, all work done in design engineering is done through the agency of representation. Representation in the field of engineering design encompasses a broad range of media, including rough sketches, physical prototypes, photographs, engineering drawings, stories, lists, charts, descriptions, and numeric digital files. Given representations central role in design, it would seem that successful development of an engineered product may be largely due dependent on the careful management of the “media cascades” which drive the design process. What does a media cascade look like? What are the characteristics of an effective media cascade? What work, so to speak, does a media cascade do for a design engineer?

The work of the design engineer is to bring concepts into being. A design engineer begins with a notion of something with the potential of existing, and reaches a point when the thing actually exists. Thus, the design engineer plays between the poles of the potential and the actual. Contemporary design theory offers a useful analysis of making representations of the potential and the actual in the design process.

C.K. Theory (Hatchuel and Weil 2002) posits a set of dualities, Concepts and Knowledge in an attempt to fashion a unified Design theory, based on Set Theory. A “Concept” is defined as, “a notion or proposition without logical status”. A piece of “Knowledge” is “a proposition with a logical status for the designer of the person receiving the design.” By logical status, the authors mean something that exists.

Furthermore, Hatchuel and Weil posit a fundamental proposition “design reasoning must always make a distinction between two related spaces: the space of concepts and the space of knowledge.” These spaces are made in relation to one another; K is the precondition of C, and the contents of C can expand the set of K.

How does a design engineer cross the space in between C and K? What happens in the moments when the designer traverses the threshold between Concept space and Knowledge space?

The road to understanding what occurs in this space has several markers. The first I will consider is to be found in the science studies of Bruno Latour. In his seminal “We Have Never Been Modern”, Latour suggests that the quest of Modernism is the distillation of phenomena into dualities, the paradigm of which is seen in Kant’s model of the gulf between “things in themselves” and the “transcendental ego”. Language and objects are likewise separated by an un-bridgeable chasm, which keeps knowing and the objects of knowing at bay. Latour explains that we have never been modern, because we are actually in the work of making “hybrids”, entities which lay between the poles of duality. Our problem, Latour suggests, is that we either fool ourselves into thinking hybrids don’t exist, or we are seduced into believing our real work is the work of purification, that is to say making dualities (Latour, 1993).

(Circulating Reference cf. Latour 1999:73)

All three previous movies about Indiana Jones have become quintessential adventure films, together grossing more than $1 billion at the box office alone, not counting associated merchandise and spin-off products like computer games, novels and a TV series. The films were inspired by King Solomon’s Mines (1950) and Secret of the Incas (1954) but created something of their own genre. In recent rankings – two decades after the height of the cinematic Indiana Jones fever – the character still made no. 4 and 7 respectively among ”The 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time” (see also here). On May 22, Indy will be back!