In summer of 2006 I left my job working for Brown University's Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology to participate in a project in Iraq investigating mass graves for the Iraqi High Tribunal. My primary duty was analyzing "cultural objects" found in the graves of genocide victims. These objects included ballistic evidence, personal effects, and clothing. Clothing offered a particularly interesting window into the lives of the victims, revealing ethnic identity, gender, manner of death and more. Collectively and individually, clothing made a compelling line of evidence for telling the story of crimes against humanity.

Bogolan (mud cloth): This bogolanfini wrapper, formerly on display at a Haffenreffer Museum textiles exhibit, was produced in Mali by Kouraba Diarra and Field Collected by Claire Grace. Photo Courtesy of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, Brown University.

Bogolan

I never had much interest in textiles as a category of material culture. Despite this, I found myself learning quite a bit about them. I had enrolled in a graduate seminar on museum studies during my senior year at Brown University. The course focused on developing an exhibit to be displayed in a new satellite gallery of Brown's anthropology museum. Much to my dismay, the course instructors had already decided that the exhibit would focus primarily on textiles. I wanted to gain some museum experience, so decided to continue with the course despite of my lack of interest in textiles. Ultimately, my contribution to the exhibit focused on pre-Columbian textiles from Peru and Bolivia. I considered myself to be more of an archaeologist than an ethnographer, so working with ancient textiles held more interest for me than working with some of the contemporary pieces in the museum’s collection. This was my way around the textile dilemma. After all, my curatorial contribution to the exhibit was archaeological: no touchy-feely interpretations of contemporary clothing here. I worked hard on my contribution to the exhibit, then washed my hands of the whole business of textiles, vowing never to turn back.

The first few days on the job, I made a thorough study of the exhibit text, thinking that this would be all that I needed to answer visitors’ questions about the exhibit. I was wrong. The exhibit text focused on examining globalization through the lens of textiles, and many people asked questions that simply were not covered by this topic:
Why do only elites wear this style? What do these geometric patterns mean? Can mud cloth be washed in a washing machine? When did our ancestors first start wearing clothes? Why do women dress differently than men and young differently than old?

Looking elsewhere to build a broader knowledge base, I began reading everything I could find on textiles. By the end of the first month on the job, I knew more about the textiles on display than I ever thought possible. Though I had already warmed up to textiles a bit by developing concepts for the exhibit, it was through this additional reading and interaction with visitors that I developed an appreciation for the symbolic meaning many of the pieces expressed, and developed a more penetrating understanding of how these objects fit into a larger cultural context. I learned that textiles are storehouses of meaning that communicate stories about individuals and societies. They may reflect ethnicity, gender, religion, social status, political affiliation and more. By the end of that month I could talk textiles all day long if need be.

Baghdad

Warp Speeds only ran for nine months. Around the time we were tearing everything down to make way for a new exhibit, I received a call about a potential summer project. The project director wanted an archaeologist with a background in forensics, military experience a plus, and experience working with and interpreting textiles. It sounded like the position was tailor-made for me. I had been involved in forensic archaeology for several years as a member of Forensic Archaeology Recovery of Rhode Island (FAR), and had served seven years in the U.S. army. I applied for the job. If hired, I would be working for the U.S. Justice Department’s Regime Crimes Liaison Office (RCLO) Mass Graves Investigation Team in Iraq. The goal of the project was to investigate allegations of crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Saddam Hussein regime. This was to be accomplished by a thorough examination of physical evidence. They wanted someone with a background in textiles to help process and interpret the clothing and other objects removed from mass graves. I sent in my resume immediately.

Fountain near Forensic Analysis Facility (FAF).
Photograph by Thomas Urban, 2006.

It was several weeks before I heard back. I had already assumed the position had gone to someone else. Then I got an email telling me that if I wanted the job, I was hired. In a few weeks I would be on a plane bound for Baghdad. Not my first deployment to a dangerous part of the world, but my first as a civilian. I knew it would be a bit of a shock. I would spend the summer of 2006 in Iraq. I would be turning 30 years old in Iraq just as I had spent my 21st year in Bosnia and my 18th year in Haiti. There was much to think about over the next couple of weeks.

About a week before my departure date, I headed to the American Museum of Natural History in New York for a crash course in textile conservation. I had plenty of experience now on the interpretive side, but wanted more on the practical side. I was trained on handling, cleaning, and storing textiles from Vuka Roussakis, a textile conservator at the museum. She wished me luck and I caught a bus back to Providence. A few days later I was on a plane bound for California to complete in-processing and hazardous environment training. From there it was on to Kuwait to spend several days awaiting a military flight into Baghdad.

The flight into Baghdad was aboard a military cargo plane packed with both soldiers and civilian contractors. Everyone was issued a kevlar helmet and vest in Kuwait to be worn on the flight and used for the rest of their stay in Iraq. Most people took this protective gear off once airborne, however, as the temperature in the plane hovered around one hundred degrees Fahrenheit. The flight lasted about an hour. After arriving at the airstrip and traveling another forty-five minutes or so by car, I finally reached the Forensic Analysis Facility (FAF); a series of laboratories set up in army tents. This is where I would spend much of the summer. I met the rest of the team, and got settled into my new home.

The next morning I began my first day of work as a cultural objects analyst. The leader of the cultural objects team was a Costa Rican social anthropologist named Ariana Fernandez. She had participated in previous mass graves investigations in Iraq and the former Yugoslavia, and instructed me on the various protocols of the work at hand.

I cannot relay many of the specifics of the work done in Iraq because a statement of non-disclosure binds me. I can say, however, that textiles came to play a major role in constructing a case for genocide. Textiles provided a line of evidence to compare against and integrate with skeletal profiling. For example, a determination of biological sex based on skeletal remains could be compared against a determination of gender that was based primarily on clothing. Additionally, injuries from gunshots and other trauma often left tell tale signs on the bones that could be compared to defects and blood stains in the clothing, thereby offering a complementary interpretation of physical trauma. Textiles could even indicate soft tissue injuries that left no trauma on the bones. More important, however, was the role of textiles as markers of ethnic identity. In order to make a case for genocide, it had to be demonstrated that specific ethnic groups were targeted for annihilation. While osteological evidence told a great deal about the victims, it could not tell the whole story. The ethnicity of the victims was determined by the clothing with which they communicated their identities.

Some team members observed that working with the bones of a victim is much less personal. The clothing really tells you more about who a person was and allows you to form a more complete picture of that person in life. From a bullet riddled shirt taken from the tiny torso of a young child, to the blood stained dress of a pregnant woman, the clothing told many horrific stories about who these people were and how they died. The most disturbing piece of evidence that I encountered was a child's shirt that pictured a cartoon character playing soccer. The shirt was very small and heavily stained with blood. To me, the cartoon character was a powerful symbol that made the youth and innocence of this victim very apparent and easy to connect with on a human level, in a way that bones could not. I wondered what this child looked like, and what he would say if he were here.

It was a number of months after returning from Iraq, that I read in a newspaper about evidence collected by the mass graves team being presented at the Iraqi High Tribunal. When our program director, Dr. Michael Trimble, presented our findings in court, the story of the victims was finally told. For six hours he stood before a transfixed audience that included Saddam Hussein and Ali Hassan Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti (Chemical Ali)
and gave the victims back a voice that had been silenced in a hail of bullets, cries of terror drowned out by the report of gunfire so many years before. Their story of suffering and injustice was finally told, and textiles helped to tell that story.

The Internet must be seen as a social phenomenon and its spatial properties should be critically interrogated... Our cultural archaeological production is today implicated in the discourses and contestations of identity, social roles and representations, in new ways, through new media and within new spatial configurations. If archaeologists are to play an active role in the process, and thereby come closer to disciplinary maturity, then we have to understand these processes and their position in the new cyber-order.
(Hamilakis, 2000: 257)

Since 2003 a team composed of a variety of professionals connected with the Landscape Archaeology Laboratory of the Padre Sarmiento Institute for Galician Studies (CSIC-Xuga) in Santiago de Compostela (Galicia, Spain) have been working on the archaeological site of Castros de Neixón - two hillforts located in a small peninsula in one of the Galician rias. In step with this project, an international work camp for young people aged 18 to 30 has been set up. The project has several broad aims: the recovery of the cultural heritage of this area; the design of and display of cultural materials in the Archaeology Center of Barbanza (open to the public since 2002); the promotion of the archaeological area of Neixón as a tourist attraction, and the communication of the scientific knowledge produced by our research to both local communities and society at large.

The project's logo ("Neixón" in Galician is pronounced like "nation" in English)

Scientific interdisciplinarity, work by volunteers in the international work camp, and local involvement constitute the three main pillars of the Arqueoneixón project (Ayán et al. 2007). These mainstays provide the basis for a scientific project that, despite having been designed in an academic context, seeks to permeate the social, economic, cultural and symbolic fabrics of the archaeological area of Neixón.

The context: the exceptional nature of a multidimensional area

Neixón hillforts have tremendous potential. Their complexity allows us to study and display the historical evolution of a wide area in Galicia (Rías Baixas), from the prehistoric period to the present, using a microspatial scale, accessible and understandable to the general public. From a natural, virgin area transformed by people and changed into a cultural built space, the two hillforts show the formation of a landscape across three millennia of human interaction (Ayán 2005). Neixón is a multidimensional space, where different experiences, perceptions of the present and interpretations of the past meet. These crossovers occur on six levels.

Local historiographical myth: the works carried out by Galician archaeologists Bouza Brey and López Cuevillas in one of the hillforts (Castro Pequeno) in 1925 were, on the one hand, the first scientific excavations in our country. On the other hand, their work became a key reference for Galician archaeology laying the foundations for the Celtic interpretation of the late prehistoric past in the region (Ayán 2008a).

An archaeological site representative of the Galician later prehistory and early history: Neixón was occupied for 1,500 years. We can explore the evolution of the Iron Age and the impact of the Roman Empire, between the eighth century BC and the fourth century AD (Ayán 2007a). An extremely important metallurgical and commercial enclave, this area was a pivotal crossroads in the relations between the Atlantic societies and the Mediterranean world throughout this period.

A different economy: Neixón Hillforts, within the parish of Sispalone, became an area bereft of houses in the Middle Ages. An outlying space, not very fertile from an agricultural point of view, this area was, nonetheless, flush with important resources: wood, gorse, stone, fish, and seafood (Ayán 2007). Everyday practices transformed the small peninsula into a shared economic area: Neyxon woodland. Yet it was the maritime aspect of the place that was fundamental during the Middle Ages and the Ancien Régime. Neixón was primarily an important natural anchorage for the local fishing fleet and a privileged area for gathering seafood. Geological resources also played a role in conditioning the historic development of the area. Indeed, some tin and wolfram seams, exploited since ancient times, remained in use as late as the 1940s.

An area for illicit activities: Neixón was a smuggler’s haven. During the last decades of the 20th-century it was a region used for smuggling cigarettes and storing cocaine from Colombia. There are still many small underground shelters for hoarding such contraband. This is another component that must be studied and made public in order to have a full understanding of the historical evolution of this place.

A symbolic space: In Galicia, many abandoned Iron Age hillforts not only had an economic relevance for peasants, but a symbolic one as well. Hillforts were reinscribed by the Church and popular culture (Arizaga y Ayán 2007). A religious procession takes place every August in front of the Castro Grande and it is considered today a referent in the summer festival calendar throughout the entire region. Everybody from the local parish to neighboring parishes alike, as well as many tourists, come for the celebration.

A space for the recovery of the collective memory of the contemporary past: Neixón was a referent for an archaeology born in the bosom of Galician liberal nationalism before the fascist coup of 1936. Young people linked to the political movement worked in the hillforts. After 1936, many either suffered reprisals at the hands of the regime, were exiled to Argentina, or found refuge in American universities such as in Texas and Pennsylvania. The more unfortunate were assassinated. The region as a whole suffered under reign of terror established by Franco’s regime through the establishment of concentration camps. In the 1940s, the Nazis were present in this area, with Franco’s connivance, for the exploitation of wolfram, used in the military industry.

Working strategy: a critical, reflexive and multivocal Archaeology

Neixón is a complex landscape formed at the confluence of different natural and cultural processes. It is a place significantly constituted where multiple realities from the past come together (Criado 1995, 2005; Criado and Parcero 1997; Tilley 1994; Whitridge 2004). The context of our project is thus a multidimensional archaeological site, where different interpretations and interests, at times compatible, at others antithetical and even conflictual, meet (Hodder 1998). When talking about the sites, we are cautious not to fall into academic authoritarianism, which regards archaeology as the sole guarantor of positive truth. The multiple voices at Castros de Neixón must be respected and analyzed from a reflective, critical and relativist perspective (Hodder 2000; Chadwick 2003). The archeological excavation creates a register - not a document of a real, pristine past - within a particular context of knowledge production. The certainties of our research may be challenged by criticisms made by different stakeholders: the local community, volunteers, and experts with different educational backgrounds and training. Likewise, we consider that the results must be made available to the public as fast as possible (Bartu 2000): they are presented at the site itself, in the exhibition arranged in the Archaeology Center and in publication.
Neixón can be approached methodologically from the perspective of multi-sited ethnography (Marcus 1995: 105; Bartu 2000: 103-4) and postcolonial theory (Gosden 2001). In this way, the interaction with the local community and other stakeholders is understood as a key factor in the development of a critical archaeology (Barreiro 2006-2007) which allows the site to be understood in terms of its living relations and not just a mere fossil of the past.

Arqueoneixón: What we believe in

The blog www.neixon.blogspot.com, was created in June 2007. We envision it as a step forward in sharing our work. With its creation, we joined the rank of blogs related to archaeology at large and to Galicia more immediately. In our case, we want the blog to be a useful locale which satisfies many different requests from people interested, or potentially interested, in the Neixón project: people who want to cooperate in the future with our international working camp, students, researchers, amateurs, people living in the area, tourists, travelers, potential sponsors, whoever has interest.
Our intention is to create a blog where one can see in real time, the day by day progress in the work camp, the activities that have been carried out within the project including the most remarkable findings, recent releases and more. Also, we hope the blog to be a virtual stage from which to communicate our approach as to what archaeology is and what archaeology should be, a social (and exciting) practice in the present that must contribute not only to the generation of a critical spirit among citizens but to also change reality (quite a task in itself!). Here is our Decalogue:

1. Archaeology is a social practice in the present that must aknowledge and fulfill popular demands and needs.
2. Archaeology is a mode for building social reality. It is not an innocent practice. However, it can be a powerful mechanism in the creation of political statements about the past. It also provides a basis to re-build and re-imagine identities.
3. With this awareness, we must critically think about archaeology as a discipline, as a field of practices, in order to redirect its power in the service of society. This perspective will contribute to a better assessment of our practice, rising heritage awareness and helping local development.
4. A critical archaeology contributes to shape a critical spirit and helps to construct and deconstruct social memory through cultural heritage.
5. We agree with and apply the Code of Practice of the European Association of Archaeologists, approved in 1997.
6. In line with this code, we take on the obligation (and all the necessary steps) to keep the public informed about the objectives and methods of our archaeological practice. In this we use all the available media.
7. We also take on the obligation to prepare and make accessible to the archaeological community (and to the non-archaeological community, alike) the product of our research without delay, through publications and/or electronic media.
8. The archaeological materials that are discovered are placed in the Archaeology Center of Barbanza and are made available for research by experts, students and scholars, in accordance with the legislation currently in force in Spain.
9. Our project gains strength from the motivation of volunteers, interdisciplinary collaboration, and the active participation of the local community.
10. Our project avoids any esoteric academicism and tries to document and incorporate the different voices and interpretations that come together in the hillforts of Neixón. Our scientific discourse is as legitimate as the popular imaginary (and its mythical view of the mouros as the original inhabitants of Neixón). This includes also the experiences of the people who see Neixón as an area linked to their childhood activities, or of those who use the site today for a range of activities: soccer (players train here), shellfish gatherers, Civil Guards, hunters, worshippers, and tourists. Punta de Neixón is, in a sense, a multifaceted, postmodern place (heterotopia), but also a living space where different identities are played out and (re)created.

Contraindications

Although Arqueoneixón is open to all, some points need to be taken into consideration:

-This blog is not recommended for those who consider archaeology a science with definitive explanations of the past.
-This blog is contraindicated in those people who consider archaeology as exclusive for experts on the matter, the holders of truth, who, in their work, turn their back to society.
-This blog is contraindicated in those people who deceive themselves thinking that the archaeological theory is to no avail, pseudo-positivists who only believe in what they excavate, as if the material remains spoke for themselves.
-This blog is not recommended for practitioners who are hooked on old, elitist academicism, and look down on other, non-modern, interpretations of the past, which still survive today.
-This blog is intended for people disappointed with conventional archaeology, those who still think that it is necessary to reflect on our practice, and who think that professional ethics are necessary (Shanks and Tilley 1987; Pels 1999; Pluciennik 1999; Barreiro 2006-2007; Fernández 2006).

Community Archaeology: Objects, People, Landscape, Memory, Identity

Our blog offers a visual way of experiencing archaeology (Russell and Cochrane 2007) with an approach to the material past that tries to reconcile basic and applied research through the work of volunteers and the cooperation of the local community. During the summer, all activities for volunteers are aimed simultaneously at producing new scientific knowledge and basic archaeological training, including the study of shell samples, seminars on geomorphology, processing of small finds, archaeological drawing, palaeometallurgical analyses, topography, ethnoarchaeology and ethnographic survey and experimental archaeology. In this way, our research becomes an arena for learning and experimenting with archaeology for young people without previous knowledge of the discipline. Besides, on a practical level, excavation fosters tourist interest in the sites and changes them into an open space where archaeological practice can be experienced live; an open space where a physical contact with the past is possible.

The blog comprises 14 interrelated categories, which try to cover in real time all aspects related to our research and public work. These categories are included in a transversal network that avoids closed sections:

• Work camp: The blog acts as an advertisement for young people who are looking on the Internet for information about places to work as volunteers. We hope to show how all the work that is done in Neixón is socially and scientifically useful.

• Archaeology and Society: This category captures the project’s philosophy. Here, there is room for the different perceptions of Neixón and archaeology in general.

• Galician Archaeology: Different aspects of our research about the history of archaeology in Galicia.

• Architectures: We look at the changes that vernacular architecture around Neixón has undergone. These changes have given rise to a postmodern landscape full of personal reinterpretations influenced by different processes like immigration or the destructuration of the traditional landscape. This category and the category Landscape complement each other.

• Landscape: We explore the different landscapes that existed in this area from Late Prehistory to our days, showing the interaction of landscape, material culture and people’s emotions, experiences, memories and lives (Tarlow 2000; Olsen 2003: 91).

• Season 2007: The idea is to present the most significant finds and the progress made in every research season in real time, including fieldwork and lab work. This category and the category Archaeological Excavation complement each other.

• Archaeological Excavation: Data from previous field seasons since 2003. This is complemented by the category Material Culture.

• Material Culture: Includes, among other things, data from the lab (microscopic images, photos taken with a binocular magnifier, reconstruction of pots, etc…); the social perception of archaeological artifacts, and the intricate networks of people, things and animals that constitute Neixón, in a symmetrical way - see articles by C. Witmore, T. Webmoor, B. Olsen and M. Shanks in World Archaeology (2007).

• Ethnoarchaeology: Musings from our ethnoarchaeological work in Galicia and Ethiopia. Visitors can draw analogies between them and interpret the archaeological record dug up in our excavations.

• Historical memory: In 2008, we have started an archaeological research of the landscape created by General Franco’s dictatorship between 1936 and 1945 (Ayán 2008). Our work fits in a tendency that has been followed lately by several research groups, grassroots associations, and public institutions in Spain, which bring in an ethic involvement in the contemporary past.

• Religiousness: We are carrying out a research on the religious expressions in the local parish from the point of view of microhistory and the history of mentalités (González y Ayán 2007). This category goes along with the category Procession, where the symbolic appropriation of Neixón hillforts by the local community is presented.

• Archaeological theory and methodology: Finally, these two categories include our reflections on new methods and theory in archaeology, with the aim of publicizing them in a context where the most traditional culture-historical archaeology survives.

The blog also includes a Press report, with direct access to all the news related to our project. There is also a section with Useful links and a section called Scientific work, where all the articles, books and communications are uploaded in PDF format, even before these are published or presented in conferences.
The next step for our blog will be to combine audiovisual tools to project the documentary O’Neixón: the living history of a hillfort, directed by Xosé Moledo, which is in the final stages of production, and to attach sound files, for displaying the acoustic heritage of the Neixón hillforts (Carles 1995). Sharing the symmetrical approaches to the material world (C. Witmore et al. 2007), our aim is to provide alternatives to conventional modes of representing the archaeological record, and show the complex nature and textures of landscape. In so doing we hope to do justice to the sensory qualities and the manifold times that are embedded in landscape.

Some figures for a critical evaluation of Arqueoneixón

Nine months after its inception, the blog is starting to have a remarkable impact, reflected in the increasing number of visits. When looking at this data we must take into account, the blog’s short existence, the Galician context itself (this region has a population of about 3 million people), the fact that it is in Galician language, and that it covers a specialized subject matter. In February 2008, and according to reliable figures from blogomillo, Arqueoneixon is ranked 717 out of 5471 existing blogs in Galician language. We hope that in the future the number of visitors will grow. This year a technological platform has been installed in the Archaeology Center in Neixón, which will provide Internet access for the volunteers during the archaeological excavation. It will also allow us to update the blog in real time as we are working in the site.
To sum up, our proposal, besides getting a favorable reception, seems to be coming along well. Overall, our aim is to create a platform for conversation open to the local community and to contribute to the socialization of the cultural heritage (Roca 2008: 16-7). So far, it seems that we have succeeded at it. And this is the direction in which we will continue working.

References

Arizaga Castro, Á. and Ayán Vila, X. M. 2007. Etnoarqueología del paisaje castreño: la segunda vida de los castros. In González García, F.J. (coord.): Los pueblos de la Galicia Céltica: 445-531. Madrid: Akal.

Ayán Vila, X. M. (Coord.) 2005. Os Castros de Neixón (Boiro, A Coruña). A recuperación dende a Arqueoloxía dun espazo social e patrimonial. Serie Keltia, 30. Noia.

Ayán Vila, X. M. 2007. Landscape, Material Culture and Social process during the Galician Iron Age: the architecture of Castros de Neixón. Paper presented at session: R. Pope and B. Edwards (org.): Architecture as material culture and social process: beyond the phenomenological. 13th Annual Meeting of European Association of Archaeologists (Zadar, Croatia,18-23 september 2007).

Ayán Vila, X.M. 2008. A Round Iron Age: The Circular House in the Hillforts of the Northwestern Iberian Peninsula. e-Keltoi. Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies 6: the Celts in Iberian Peninsula: 903-1003. http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/celtic/ekeltoi/volumes/vol6/6_19/ayan_6_19.pdf

Ayán Vila, X.M. 2008a. Neixón 1925: a prol da recuperación da memoria histórica da Arqueoloxía galega. Paper presented at II Encontros de Arqueoloxía de Barbanza (23-24 de febrero de 2008). [PDF document avalaible at www.blogspot.com]

Ayán Vila, X. M., González Pérez, L., Arizaga Castro, Á. and Bóveda López, M. M. 2007. O campo de traballo dos Castros de Neixón (Boiro, A Coruña): Balance e análise crítica dun proxecto de xestión integral do Patrimonio (2003-2006). En IV Congreso Internacional sobre Musealización de xacementos arqueolóxicos (Santiago de Compostela, noviembre de 2006): 261-8. Santiago: Xunta de Galicia.

Barreiro Martínez, D. 2006-7. Towards an Applied Archaeology, ERA Arqueologia Fóra de Série. Lisboa.

Bartu, A. 2000. Where is Çatalhöyük? Multiple Sites in the Construction of an Archaeological Site. In Hodder, I. (ed.): Towards reflexive method in Archaeology: the example of Çatalhöyük: 101-9. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.

Carles Arribas, J. L. 1995. La dimensión sonora del medio ambiente. Relación entre modalidad sonora y modalidad visual en la percepción del paisaje. Tesis Doctoral inédita. Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.

Chadwick, A. 2003. Post-processualism, professionalization and archaeological methodologies: Towards reflective and radical practice. Archaeological Dialogues, 10(1): 97-117.

Criado Boado, F. 1995. The Visibility of the Archaeological Record and the Interpretation of Social Reality. In I. Hodder, M. Shanks et al. (eds.): Interpreting Archaeology. Finding Meaning in the Past: 194-204. Oxford: Routledge.

Criado Boado, F. 2005. Problems, functions and conditions of archaeological knowledge. Journal of Social Archaeology, 1(1): 126-46.

Criado Boado, F. and Parcero Oubiña, C. (eds.). 1997. Landscape, Archaeology, Heritage. TAPA (Traballos en Arqueoloxía da Paisaxe) 2. Santiago: USC [http://www-gtarpa.usc.es/descarga/CapaTapa/Tapa/TAPA2.pdf]

Fernández Martínez, V. 2006. Una Arqueología crítica. Ciencia, ética y política en la construcción del pasado. Barcelona: Crítica.

González Pérez, L. and Ayán Vila, X. M. (coord.). 2007. Estudo antropolóxico da relixiosidade popular na parroquia de San Vicenzo de Cespón. In Ayán Vila, X.M. (coord.): De San Vicenzo de Sispalona a San Vicenzo de Cespón. Cadernos Culturais de Boiro 9: 85-128. Santiago: Garabal. [PDF book avalaible at www.neixon.blogspot.com]

Gosden, C. 2001. Postcolonial Archaeology. Issued of Culture, Identity and Knowledge. In I.
Hodder (ed.): Archaeological Theory Today: 241-61. Oxford: Polity Press.

Hamilakis, Y. 2000. Cyberspace/Cyberpast/Cybernation: constructing Hellenism in hyperreality. Journal of European Archaeology, 3(2): 241-64.

Hodder, I. 1998. The past as passion and play: Çatalhöyük as a site of conflict in the construction of multiples pasts. In Meskell, L. (ed.): Archaeology under Fire. Nationalism, politics and heritage in the Estern Mediteranean and the Middle East: 124-39. London: Routledge.

Hodder, I. 2000. Developing a Reflexive Method in Archaeology. In Hodder, I. (ed.): Towards reflexive method in Archaeology: the example of Çatalhöyük: 3-14. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.

Marcus, G. 1995. Ethnography in/of the world system: the emergence of multi-sited ethnography. Annual Review of Anthropology, 24: 95-117.

Marshall, Y. 2002. What is community archaeology. World Archaeology, 34(2): 211-9.

Pels, p. 1999. Professions of Duplexity. A Prehistory of Ethical Codes in Anthropology. Current Anthropology, 40(2): 101-36.

Pluciennik, M. 1999. Introduction. The responsabilities of archeologists. In Pluciennik, M. (ed.): The Responsabilities of Archaeologists. Archaeology and Ethics: 1-18. BAR International Series 981. Oxford: Archaeopress.

Roca, S. 2008. Looking for a new kind of writing: Integral Management of the Heritage: The LAR proposal at Os Castros de Neixón [PDF document avalaible at www.blogspot.com].

Russell, I. and Cochrane, A. 2007. Visualizing archaeologies: A manifesto. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 17(1): 3-19.

Shanks, M. and Tilley, C. 1987. Re-constructing archaeology: Theory and practice. London: Routledge.

Tarlow, S. 2000. Landscapes of Memory: the nineteenth-century garden cemetery. Journal of European Archaeology, 3(2): 217-39.

Tilley, C. 1994. A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths, and Monuments. Oxford: Berg.

VV.A.A. 2006. Guía de castros de Galicia e NW de Portugal. Santiago: Xunta de Galicia.

Whitridge, P. 2004. Landscapes, Houses, Bodies, Things: “Place” and the Archaeology of Inuit Imaginaries. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 11(2): 213-49.

Witmore, C., Webmoor, T., Olsen, B. and Shanks, M. 2007. Symmetrical Archaeology. World Archaeology 39(4): 546-596.

Some other blogs on Archaeology made in Galicia:

arqueoloxia
pasadoreciclado
arqueologiaypatrimonio
vigoarqueologico
arqueonovas

This paper starts with the question: can rivers usefully be studied as artifacts?

The question may raise an eyebrow or two. For the most part rivers tend to be regarded as more or less natural features of a landscape or townscape. Even in the midst of towns – bordered by buildings on both sides – rivers are often taken to represent ‘the natural’ or ‘the wild’ or ‘the environmental’. They tend to fall within the subject domain of the hydrologist or sedimentologist. In archaeology, rivers and palaeo-channels (traces of former river courses) are susceptible to a barrage of scientific techniques, not so much to the cultural theories applied to other more conventional kinds of artifact.

Yet a river and its flow of water is actually often as culturally re-shaped, used and re-used, as any artifact or building. Thousands of years ago, its course may indeed have been the result of largely natural processes. It may well have been continually subject to natural processes of erosion and deposition, which continue today. But over the centuries most rivers – especially in Britain - have also been artificially modified, diverted, narrowed, widened, channelled, siphoned, straightened, dredged, deepened, dammed, redirected, embanked, canalized, and so forth. If the river ever was entirely a natural entity, it has long since been honed to fit human projects. If it ever was wholly wild, it has long since been at least partially domesticated. And if it ever was merely an environmental entity, it has long since taken centre stage in the cultural landscape.

Are rivers natural or cultural? Rivers defy categorisation as one or the other. If we have to classify, we might call the river a ‘natural artifact’. Whereas the form of most artifacts is more or less fixed, the river has a wildness and fluidity about it that cannot be entirely contained. Unlike things crafted out of stone or other solid material, this artifact can escape the bounds of its culturally applied form.

Consider a typical English river, long since canalised and artificially embanked. When it floods, the river breaks its banks. It loses its outlines and therefore its shape. Its very boundaries become fluid. From being ‘formed’ it becomes relatively ‘formless’, and the river’s wild or natural aspect reasserts itself. When the flood recedes, however, the artificial edges re-emerge and the river shrinks back into its culturally applied form once again.

The river in flood

After the flood

Sometimes, then, a river is more of an artifact than at other times. Its very status as an artifact or natural entity is fluid. Neither one thing nor the other, it partakes of both. And these different aspects, far from being stable, fluctuate in relation to each other.

Even a flood is not entirely a natural phenomenon. Factors that cause floods include ‘artificial’ patterns of drainage, embankment and other aspects of water control, as well as ‘environmental’ factors such as climate and geology – intermeshed together as all these are.

Of course, we also tend to think of artifacts as being made out of materials that are more or less solid, like wood, stone, bone, metal - or perhaps softer material like cloth. While liquids are materials too, their non-solidity somehow makes them less material, less artifactual, in our eyes. Our common-sense notions of materiality stress the solidity and resistance of material objects, their sharp edges or their solid surfaces, and the affordances these have for human action. Articles and books about artifacts tend to be about solid things like pottery, keys, cars, baskets, clothes, jewellery. Not liquids like water (though see Ingold 2007 for all that gets left out of archaeological accounts of materials and material culture).

But here again the river changes from one thing to another. As the temperature drops below freezing the surface of water hardens into ice. The affordances of the surface change into those normally associated with hard and solid surfaces, then change back again as the temperature rises and the ice melts. There is a shift from fluid to fixed and back to fluid again.

Most objects can be defined as such precisely because their surfaces are hard and thus present resistance to incursions from human subjects. You can shape or fashion objects, hold and manipulate, use or apply them onto other things, but you cannot merge with or immerse yourself in them. By way of contrast, the surface of the river, at least when not frozen, offers little resistance to the subject. You can jump into it, swim through it - be surrounded or engulfed by it. Even when standing outside of it you can see yourself and other things reflected in its shimmering surface.

Yet it still makes sense to talk of rivers as objects. Rivers stand (or run) as entities in their own right. What is more, they have cultural affordances just like solid artifacts do. The difference is that their affordances tend to be associated with flow rather than form. A supply of water in the form of a river or stream might facilitate the washing of clothes, catching of fish, transport of logs, floating of ships, irrigation or drainage of fields, driving of water-wheels, cooling down of heated materials, or performance of numerous other tasks. Rivers may be radically re-shaped to maximise efficiency in these respects. And like other artifacts, rivers can be used to shape diverse kinds of materials and turn these into artifacts too. Thus water-powered water-mills were used at various times and places not just to grind grain but also to saw wood, to pulverise rocks, to full cloth, mint coins, sharpen swords, drive weaving looms, and perform numerous other functions. At least until the advent of steam power, use and control of water flow was embedded in countless industrial processes and domestic activities - interwoven into the very fabric of economic and cultural life.

This picture of the River Great Ouse as it flows through Bedford town centre (below) appears to show a largely natural scene. Islands and channels and the river as a whole do not at first sight appear to be artificial. Channels are choked with weed and full of fish and waterfowl. Islands are overgrown with trees and other vegetation, providing a habitat for a profusion of wildlife.

But hidden within this stretch of river is a dense archaeology – a treasure trove of information about human cultural activity in recent, medieval and earlier times. This photo was taken along the line of a former weir, which ran diagonally across the river towards the island. The main purpose of the weir, in creating a fall of water, was to provide the power to drive watermills on either side of the river: material clues can be found which reveal the former location of these vanished features. Upper and lower levels were created. Flow of water was diverted by the weir through sluices into mill-races, the courses of which can still be discerned. A semi-circular channel was cut on the opposite bank to facilitate passage of boats around the obstruction presented by the weir, thereby creating an island where no island was before. In the channel a lock was constructed to enable boats to go from upper to lower river or vice-versa. The whole river was intensively controlled and managed as a series of descending steps in the direction of flow. Each step or sudden fall in water level was created by a mill dam or weir, so that the tail-race for one mill could be the head-race for another mill further downstream. Few of these were noted in my Extensive Urban Survey report.

The absence of most of the features today is itself in part the result of subsequent cultural processes. Weirs were removed completely or their location shifted in the course of 17th and 18th century navigation works, in order to open up the river to the sea, while at the same time a whole new series of locks and overflow channels were built. Mills stopped working as a result and mill-races were filled in. Further traces were obscured by extensive landscaping of the river and the creation of riverside embankments, promenades and gardens in the Victorian and Edwardian era.

An early 20th century boatslide

So interwoven are rivers and other watercourses with human projects, in fact, that we have to ask whether it is worthwhile to divide the environment up into natural and the cultural components at all. Compare for example the almost organic growth of buildings and streets in unplanned areas of towns with the rigidly channelled and controlled flow of water in a certain rivers. While rivers (like buildings) may be utilised for all kinds of social or cultural activities – from ritual deposition to river festivals and regattas - nearby buildings (like rivers) become habitats for insects, animals and plants. Swifts nest in the eaves, bats colonise the attics, moss grows on the roof tiles, and spiders flourish in the gaps within the walls. Which is natural and which is cultural? Rather than try and divide the world up in this way, we might as well accept that our environment is an inextricably tangled mixture of both.

Weirs, dams, sluices, lochs, overflows, mill-races mill-pools, jetties, wharves, revetments, embankments, dredged channels, and so on, are all parts of the artificial construct of the river. Yet perhaps its most artificial aspect, its most cultural dimension, is the very idea of the river as a natural rather than a cultural entity. Latour states that “the very notion of culture is an artifact created by bracketing Nature off” (Latour 1993: 104) - to which we can add the converse, that the very notion of nature is itself an artifact created by bracketing Culture off. The notion of the river as a natural entity is sustained precisely by playing down its cultural aspects and forgetting that it is a cultural artifact like any other.

There is a sense, indeed, in which rivers were the first artifacts. The great human transformation of the material domain may have started with things that were fluid rather than the fixed. From the moment that hominids placed stones across a stream to step across to the other side, or built a crude dam in order to create a pool for fishing or bathing, they were starting to influence and control the flow of water. Flow has been increasingly controlled by human beings up to the present day, while water has exerted a powerful influence over our lives and our imagination. Archaeologists focusing on the material traces of human actions – together with hydrologists and sedimentologists – can unlock the past through the study of rivers. The potential for an ‘archaeology of flow’ has yet to be fully realised.

A river, then, is not simply the natural phenomenon we might conceive or describe it to be. It is just as appropriate to study its cultural dimensions as it is to examine its natural aspects - to see it as a material artifact. Indeed, as is the case with all artifacts, whether solid or liquid, it is inevitably a mixture of the natural and the cultural. The two aspects are inextricably intermeshed. The works and designs and projects of human beings are woven into the form and flow of the river, while at the same time the river weaves itself into the very fabric of human existence. It flows through the centre of towns, under bridges, beside parks and gardens, into sluices and culverts and cooling towers. It also runs through dreams, designs, projects, poems, memories and myth. It is a part of the human story. For towns and cities that are built on rivers, those rivers run as continuous threads through their history and development.

REFERENCES

Latour, B 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Harvard University Press, London / Cambridge MA

Ingold, T 2007. Materials against materiality, in Archaeological Dialogues 14 (1), 1-16.

“In popular belief, and unfortunately to some extent in fact, there are two sorts of archaeologists, the hairy-chested and the hairy-chinned. [The hairy-chested variety appears] as a strong-jawed young man in a tropical helmet, pistol on hip, hacking his way through the jungle in search of lost cities and buried treasure. His boots, always highly polished, reach to his knees, presumably for protection against black mambas and other sorts of deadly serpents. The only concession he makes to the difficulties and dangers of his calling is to have his shirt enough unbuttoned to reveal the manliness of his bosom.”

In an American survey from 1994 only 10% of the respondents stated that they had not seen any of the Indiana Jones movies whereas 60% had seen all three (Mackinney 1994). Indiana Jones is the most widely recognised and most enduring image of an archaeologist.

Unfortunately these kinds of clichés and narratives are not always harmless entertainment but can have highly problematic colonial and imperial undertones (see also Hall 2004). Recalling “imperial adventure tales for boys”, the Indiana Jones films are premised on “an imperialized globe, in which archeology professors can ‘rescue’ artefacts from the colonized world for the greater benefit of science and civilization” (Shohat and Stam 1994: 124).

But how does Indy compare to real archaeology? In his review of the third film, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the archaeologist John Gowlett (1990: 157) warned against over-reactions by his colleagues:

“I cannot think of anything worse than pontificating upon whether any archaeology in this fails to meet reality. That would be about as worthwhile as spotting the impossibilities of physics in Star Wars.”

Indy is entertainment, not a representation of archaeologists of real life. At the same time, it is clear that academic and professional have come a long way from adventurous expeditions exploring long lost sites (McGeough 2006).

Yet archaeologists have for a long time considered the pleasures of fieldwork, the harsh discipline it requires and the discovery of spectacular finds as the core of their discipline. A male archaeologist asked in an electronic discussion forum in 2004: “aren't we all (deep down) hoping to find a lost civilization, treasure hoard, gold filled tomb, find of the century? I think there is a little ‘Carter’ or ‘Indy’ in us all.“ Paul Bahn (1989: 59) reported that it is not unusual among American archaeologists to find a bullwhip and a battered hat on the back of office-doors! Moreover, real archaeological fieldwork can indeed be something of an adventurous experience (Pachinko 1997; Holtorf 2005: chapter 3). A colleague of mine suspected that ”the real turn-on” for archaeologists to do what they do is precisely that experience: ”the finding of things, the smell of the site, the bossily-arranged lines of pegs, the sexual excitement of new people in the trench, the ’abroadness’ of the places…” In this sense, there probably is a bit of an adventurer and a bit of an Indiana Jones in every archaeologist (Welinder 2000: chapter 4; de Boer 2004).

When the Swedish archaeologists Richard Holmgren and Anders Kaliff started in their own initiative (and partly with their own money) a project in Jordan, they were most deliberately in for a very special adventure. The popular account of the research conducted refers to their own “childlike enthusiasm” and “thirst for adventure” in “exotic surroundings” as “necessary ingredients” and “important motivation” of their work (Holmgren and Kaliff 2003: 151, 205, my translations). Both text and images in this book bear witness to the thirst and enthusiasm of those two.

Nowadays, many archaeology students even choose their subject out of fascination for figures like Indiana Jones. For example, Jay Fancher, a student at Washington State University, wrote to me (e-mail comm. 2003) that ”Indy’s combination of intelligence and bravery were very appealing” to him and that the seeds of his career path were planted through the association of the word ’archaeology’ with adventure”.

The association of Indiana Jones with the academic world was explicitly fostered in 1990 by the Institute of Archaeology at University College London (David Harris, e-mail corresponence 2005). As part of a fundraising initiative to build new archaeological science laboratories at the Institute, Harrison Ford was approached and offered to donate one of Indiana Jones’ bullwhips. It was subsequently auctioned for a substantial sum and the famous actor’s name was recorded on a brass donors' plaque at an entrance to the labs where it recalls his generosity and is seen by passing generations of students.

Indiana Jones has certainly created a lot of attention and goodwill for archaeology in the real world. It has even attracted students to University courses in archaeology. But we also need to ask precisely which kind of additional students have been attracted to archaeology in this way. Meredith Fraser (email correspondence 2003) is rightly concerned that

”the portrayal of archaeologists in mainstream popular culture as primarily white, male, heterosexual, ’able-bodied’ individuals serves to alienate experiences, identities and individuals that do not conform to this model of the ’ideal archaeologist.’ Ultimately, such portrayals have a detrimental effect on both the real and perceived accessibility of archaeology to individuals and communities that are not represented by this ’ideal.’”

According to an American survey (Baxter 2002: 16), students got the impression that archaeology was not for them:

”they consistently stated that these images left them feeling alienated from archaeology as a discipline, that archaeology was an inaccessible discipline to the lay public, and that they themselves probably could never be archaeologists.”

Behind this lie important issues that must be addressed in order to broaden recruitment and provide opportunities for everybody choosing archaeology as a career (see also Joyce and Preucel 2002; McGeough 2006). In particular, the very masculine Indy image suggests that there may be a gender imbalance in recruitment. But at my University archaeology courses in fact attract consistently more women than men.

With film number four around the corner, is there more mileage for archaeology in Indy? As I argued in Archaeology is a brand! (Holtorf 2007), archaeologists will only be able to draw on the enormous appeal of their own ‘brand’ if they themselves stand behind it and embrace its various connotations in their work. It simply astonishes me that a fairly large proportion of archaeologists still seem to find nothing more urgent than to distance themselves from popular heroes like Indiana Jones or indeed Lara Croft. It is deeply ironic that nothing seems to be harder for archaeologists to get to grips with in their relations with non-archaeologists than their seemingly limitless and virtually untainted overall popularity that is unrivalled among academic disciplines.

I have given up counting the number of exhibitions, educational events and publications (e.g. Robinson and Aston 2002) that are shouting into the reader’s face that ”the real archaeologist works practically never like Indiana Jones.” Translated, that means as much as ”If you happen to be interested in archaeology because of Indiana Jones/Lara Croft, then this is not for you!” Archaeology is thus suddenly outed as a different kind of ‘person’ than you thought and hoped it was; a person that lacks some of the traits you found most appealing. It is the equivalent to Greenpeace beginning a public presentation about its work by stating that ”the real Greenpeace activist works practically never in a small rubber-dinghy fighting illegal whalers.” Although true, this would achieve nothing except alienate an initially favourable audience before it has had an opportunity to hear what it is you actually want to convey.

Ironically, in many ways the reality of professional archaeology is not entirely different from the stereotypical clichés of archaeology that are so prominent in popular culture. As I argued earlier, these clichés have some affinity with what the professionals really do, as well as with how they see themselves -- although there are also aspects of archaeological work that are not reflected in any of these stereotypes. But at the end of the day, from time to time archaeologists really do find exciting treasures, and their fieldwork often is exciting in many ways. Precisely that adventure aspect is central to how many archaeologists define themselves as professionals, and how they choose to remember their research. In short, archaeologists really love Indiana Jones, and chances are that many will run to the movie theatres this summer.

According to Lynne Sebastian (2003: 36), it is an ”awful truth" that archaeology "is exciting because it connects with the past in a way that nothing else can, and sometimes that connection can be stunningly immediate and personal.” Indiana Jones would agree!

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Cornelius Holtorf teaches archaeology at the University of Kalmar in Southeast Sweden. The University’s programme in Heritage Studies (at this point taught through Swedish) is the basis for careers throughout the Swedish heritage sector including contract archaeology, various kinds of private consultancy work, public administration, museum employment and all sorts of tourism-related jobs.

Further links:
- Indiana Jones official site
- The Indy Experience
- Cornelius Holtorf, The A theme: the archaeologist as adventurer

References

Bahn, Paul (1989) Bluff your way in Archaeology. Horsham: Ravette.

Baxter, Jane (2002) Popular images and popular stereotypes. Images of archaeologists in popular and documentary film. The SAA Archaeological Record 2 (4), 16-17, 40.

de Boer, Trent (2004) Shovel Bum. Comix of Archaeological Field Life. Walnut Creek etc: Altamira.

Gowlett, John (1990) Indiana Jones: crusading for archaeology? Review of S. Spielberg (dir.), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Antiquity 64, 157.

Hall, Mark (2004) Romancing the stones: archaeology in popular cinema. European Journal of Archaeology 7, 159-76.

Holmgren, Richard and Anders Kaliff (2003) Arkeologer i Bibelns Sodom. Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand.

Holtorf, Cornelius (2005) From Stonehenge to Las Vegas. Archaeology as Popular Culture. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press.

Holtorf, Cornelius (2007) Archaeology is a Brand! The Meaning of Archaeology in Contemporary Popular Culture. Oxford: Archaeopress, and Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.

Joyce, Rosemary with Robert Preucel (2002) Writing the Field of Archaeology. In: R. Joyce, The Languages of Archaeology, pp. 18-38. Oxford: Blackwell.

Kidder, Alfred (1949) Introduction. In: C. Amsden, Prehistoric Southwesterners from Basketmaker to Pueblo, pp. XI-XIV. Los Angeles: Southwest Museum.

Mackinney, Lisa H. (1994) ”That Sense of Adventure”: Front-End Interviews about Archaeology and Indiana Jones with Visitors to the California Academy of Sciences. Unpublished report.

McGeougg, Kevin (2006) Heroes, mummies, and Treasure: Near Eastern Archaeology in the Movies. Near Eastern Archaeology 69: 174-185.

Pachinko, Joe (1997) Swamp! Berkeley: Superstition Street Press.

Robinson, Tony and Mick Aston (2002) Archaeology is Rubbish. A Beginner’s Guide. London: Channel 4 Books.

Sebastian, Lynne (2003) The awful truth about archaeology. The SAA Archaeological Record 3 (2), 35-37.

Shohat, Ella and Robert Stam (1994) Unthinking Eurocentrism. Multiculturalism and the media. London and New York: Routledge.

Welinder, Stig (2000) Arkeologisk yrkesidentitet. Universitet i Tromsø, Institutt for arkeologi.

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”.

I arrived at the cave with the programme still