Almost all cultures that have ever existed have experienced war in one form or another. War, however, is not meant just to eliminate entire populations. War’s ultimate aim is to change a culture and a way of life, an ideology that is especially prevalent in the United States’ civil war. Civil wars occur when two central ideas of a culture become so polarized that simple negotiation is no longer effective in resolving the issue. During the US’ civil war, the Southern section of the country favored slavery while the Northern was against its practice. Although the two coexisted for a time, war was inevitable because of uncompromising differences between the free and slave states over the power of the national government to prohibit slavery in non-state territories. President Lincoln is often viewed as one of the main causes of the civil war, for he refused to recognize the legitimacy of the states that were receding from the union, fearing a broken-up and jeopardized democracy. Prior to his election, events such as John Brown’s raid and Nat Turner’s rebellion further increased the rift between the North and the South.

John Brown- An abolitionist who believed that armed rebellion was the only way to overthrow the institution of slavery in the United States.

The first real “battle” of the war, however, did not occur until the battle of Fort Sumter. With the secession of many Southern states, several federal forts, including Fort Sumter in South Carolina, suddenly became militia outposts in foreign land. Abraham Lincoln, sensing war, then made the decision to send fresh supplies to the outposts in an attempt to coerce the South into firing the first shot of the war. The strategy was successful, and Confederate warships turned back the supply ship to Fort Sumter to begin a 34-hour siege on the fort, leading to its surrender. After this battle, the war had officially begun between the free Northern and the slave Southern. What followed was one of the bloodiest wars on American soil, a total of about 620,000 deaths at its end- the bloodiest battles claiming 85,000 casualties between them. Despite the death and violence of the Civil War, it was never either side’s initial intention to completely eliminate the other. Instead, the aim of the war was to change the other side’s culture- in this case, the culture surrounding slavery. Due to the North’s victory, their view on slave culture prevailed, completely changing the overall culture of the US. The fate of the then-defeated confederate culture, however, can be observed in the burials of the soldiers. In the Soldiers’ National Cemetery there are markers of 3,500 Union soldiers. However, the confederate soldiers were left in unmarked graves and never properly buried. This reflects the fact that America now considered the slave culture eliminated, and all who believed in it were no longer Americans- only remnants of a past culture.

An example of quickly dug and shallow Civil War graves, meant to quickly dispose of bodies before the onset of decay.

Although war of any kind is a great tragedy, it can succeed in changing the entire culture of a nation.

Sources:

“Civil War Facts.” Civil War Trust, Civil War Trust, www.civilwar.org/learn/articles/civil-  war-facts

Keegan, John. “The American Civil War: the Gruesome Suffering of Soldiers             Exposed.” The Telegraph, www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/6199297/The-American-Civil-War-   the-gruesome-suffering-of-soldiers-exposed.html.

Images:

http://militaryauction.org/s/civil-war-grave

http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/a_c/brown.htm

Further Reading:

http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/civil-war/

What Happened to Gettysburg’s Confederate Dead?

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One important question archaeologists face today is how to best preserve the world’s heritage. Are ancient artifacts safer in more modern museums or should they reside in their country of origin?  The Greeks and British have debated over this issue for years due to some of the world’s most famous artifacts: the Elgin Marbles.

Picture of the present day Parthenon with missing frieze
Photo by: Marissa Kokinis

The story all begins with Lord Elgin. At the time Greece was under the control of the Ottomans and Elgin was the acting British Ambassador to the empire.  Lord Elgin came to an agreement with the Ottoman Sultan to make casts and paintings of the Parthenon sculptures to take back to England with him, but through questionable means Elgin gained permission to “take away some pieces of stone with old inscriptions and figures,” (Sánchez, 2017).  Elgin went on to remove most of the Parthenon’s frieze along with other statues, but after falling into debt he sold the marbles to the British government.  

The horsemen from the west frieze of the Parthenon as displayed in the British Museum

After gaining independence the Greeks asked for the Elgin marbles to be returned, but as of now they remain in the British Museum causing a huge debate.  Those opposing their return argue that Lord Elgin had the legal documents to take the marbles, paid the Ottoman Empire appropriately, and that the marbles have been safely displayed in the British Museum for over 200 years, whereas they could have been completely destroyed had they remained in Greece.  Those in favor of returning the marbles to Greece argue that these marbles are a symbol of Greek heritage and that Elgin did not actually use legal means to obtain the marbles.  Others are concerned the marbles will be damaged if they are returned to Greece, as archeologists say current sculptures at the Acropolis are threatened by air pollution, but Greek archaeologist Alexandros Mantis says that Greece can prove to the British they are capable of taking care of their artifacts by moving these sculptures to the museum and that Greece deserves to have the marbles returned (AFP, 2008).  There are also arguments that the British Museum is more suited to host the Elgin marbles, but the New Acropolis Museum, which opened in 2009, is now fit to host any of the Acropolis’ ancient artifacts.  

The New Acropolis Museum in Athens, Greece

Archaeologists play a large role in preserving the world’s heritage and should participate in debates over questions such as, are there cases where certain artifacts are better preserved in more developed countries? Or if a country requests the return of their artifacts should they be returned even if it might endanger the artifacts? These questions will not be answered overnight, but archaeologists can offer unique opinions on these issues with their knowledge of cultural identity and desire to preserve world heritage.

Sources:

Sánchez, Juan Pablo. “How the Parthenon Lost Its Marbles.” National Geographic, 28 Mar. 2017, www.nationalgeographic.com/archaeology-and-history/magazine/2017/03-04/parthenon-sculptures-british-museum-controversy/.

Silverman, Helaine. Contested Cultural Heritage. New York, NY, Springer, 2014.

King, Dorothy. The Elgin Marbles. London, Arrow, 2007.

Dorment, Richard. “The Elgin Marbles will never return to Athens – the British Museum is their rightful home.” The Telegraph, Telegraph Media Group, 30 June 2009, www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/richard-dorment/5699534/The-Elgin-Marbles-will-never-return-to-Athens-the-British-Museum-is-their-rightful-home.html. Accessed 7 Nov. 2017.

Flows, Capital. “The British Museum Should Return The Parthenon Marbles To Greece.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 26 Dec. 2014, www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/12/23/the-british-museum-should-return-the-parthenon-marbles-to-greece/#b936d6029e5a.

AFP. “Archaeologist says pollution threatening last Parthenon marbles.” ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), 13 Apr. 2008, mobile.abc.net.au/news/2008-04-13/archaeologist-says-pollution-threatening-last/2402058. Accessed 7 Nov. 2017.

Pictures (In order of appearance):

Parthenon. 7 July 2017.

“Horsemen from the west frieze of the Parthenon.” British Museum, British Museum, www.britishmuseum.org/visiting/galleries/ancient_greece_and_rome/room_18_greece_parthenon.aspx. Accessed 7 Nov. 2017.

Daniilidis, Nikos. “A nightview of the Parthenon Sculptures of the Acropolis Museum, opposite the Sacred Rock and the actual monument.” Themanews, 29 July 2014, en.protothema.gr/opinion-professor-dimitrios-pandermalis-president-of-the-acropolis-museum/. Accessed 7 Nov. 2017.

Additional Resources:

Johnston, Ian. “First-Ever legal bid for return of Elgin Marbles to Greece thrown out by European Court of Human Rights.” The Independent, Independent Digital News and Media, 19 July 2016, www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/elgin-marbles-return-greece-legal-bid-thrown-out-eu-court-human-rights-a7145216.html.

Robertson, Geoffrey. “Let’s do a Brexit deal with the Parthenon marbles | Geoffrey Robertson.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 4 Apr. 2017, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/04/brexit-deal-parthenon-marbles.

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The adage goes that if we do not learn from our past than we are bound to repeat it. Nowhere is this clearer than when we look at the fall of the Roman Empire and the social and financial situations prior. Before the collapse of the Roman Empire, the top 1% of its population controlled over 16% of its wealth. The Gini coefficient; which measures the level of income disparity in a society where 0 is perfectly equal and 1 is perfectly unequal, measured Rome at an incredibly high 0.43[1].

Diocletian’s Palace, Croatia. Built at the turn of the 4th century for Roman emperor Diocletian.

Further compounding the issue was that wealthy Romans increasingly removed themselves from cities and positions of power as they saw the first signs of collapse from the edges of the empire. This is made very clear in the archaeological record where before the end of the Roman Empire there was a large spike in fortified villas far from cities and people[2].“Their disinclination to lead may have been caused by forced exactions, confiscations, business concerns, tax pressured, or general economic fears, which made protecting one’s own interests seem more prudent than looking out for the interests of others.”[3] In their selfishness the upper class romans abandoned their people when they needed them most, only further destabilizing Rome.

Worsening matters was the fact that Rome had been built on expansion, militarism, and the spoils of war. “Being Roman eventually meant being whatever wealth said it was, and shorn of the old ties that kept the rich and poor together out of a mutual sense of common destiny, they soon turned on one another.”[4] Soldiers and common citizens could no longer trust that they would get what was “theirs” as the ruling upper-class tended to keep all of their wealth to themselves while maintaining slaves who did all of the work of the typical middle working class. All that was left for citizens and soldiers was economic squalor as wealth continued to be inherited by the rich, and labor was taken by the slaves of war.

Rendition of daily life in Pompeii showing interaction between upper and lower class peoples.

These are just a couple reasons for the fall of Rome, but what is perhaps most terrifying about the fall are the corollaries to today. The Unites States of America has a Gini coefficient of .45, and 40% of the wealth is controlled by the top 1% of the population.[5] By every metric, the United States is even more divided and unfair than Rome before its fall. The effects are perfectly evident as well as there is increasing inclination from the rich to build fallout bunkers and withdraw from civilization and politics just as the roman elites did centuries before. Worsening matters is the evidence of extreme racism towards migrant workers who like slaves in Rome “take the labor from the hardworking middle class”. Increasingly the middle class shrinks as social unrest and bigotry grows. It is a scary combination that, if we aren’t careful, could spell the end of civilization as we know it, just like it did for the Romans centuries before.

Bonus:

Sources:

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/even-the-roman-empire-wasnt-as-unequal-as-america-today-2011-12

[2] Ermatinger, James William. The decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Greenwood Press, 2004, Page 58.

[3] Ermatinger, James William. The decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Greenwood Press, 2004, Page 58.

[4] http://www.mintpressnews.com/how-inequality-diversity-and-empire-brought-down-the-roman-republic/188498/

[5] http://www.businessinsider.com/even-the-roman-empire-wasnt-as-unequal-as-america-today-2011-12

Picture Sources:

Diocletian’s Palace, Croatia. This heavily fortified palace was built at the turn of the 4th century for Roman emperor Diocletian. The massive palace was protected by large walls with numerous towers. Some times, it housed over 9000 people. I’ll post more in the comments. from castles

https://popularresistance.org/the-science-of-inequality/

Reading Thomas Piketty: A Critical Essay

Further Reading: 

Income inequality in the Roman Empire

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-30/following-ancient-romes-footsteps-moral-decay-rising-wealth-inequality

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Consider Central Asia, where Russia’s Altai Republic intersects with Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and China. Much of the region remains a tractless wilderness, with roads and settlements existing only in the most sparse and isolated sense of the term. Here, tourism is an undertaking of long distance and remoteness, but the history of the Altai Mountains defies the conventional wisdom of such a place.

Long before the storied Silk Roads wound across the Eurasian landmass, Altaian peoples operated within a dynamic interplay of genetics, language, artistry, and culture, at once receiving from others and wielding influence over them. Theirs is an expansive narrative with links to Africa, Europe, the Middle East, India, China, Korea, and even North America that toys with the modern ethnocentric default of “othering” unfamiliar peoples and trivializes the theory that it is possible to delimit distinct branches of humanity.

Figure 1: Cross-section of a Pazyryk burial.

Prominent over 2300 years ago, the Pazyryk people left behind burial mounds called kurgans that today proffer the bulk of data on the history of the Altai Mountains. Evidence from numerous well-preserved kurgans allows experts to claim with “no doubt that this culture was closely linked…to the leading centers of civilization at the time in China, India, and Achaemenid Iran” (Tresilian). By reusing items from other peoples and adapting foreign motifs into their own designs, the Pazyryk demonstrate an eclectic taste that would not have been possible if they were closed off from the exchange of goods and ideas. Some iconography from Western China clearly exhibits inspiration from the style of the Altaian nomads (Tresilian), while the embellishment of Chinese silks to clothe the renowned Pazyryk noblewoman approaches stylistic elements that remain common among the nomads of the region today. From the western side, Altaians absorbed Achaemenid influences and endured observation by the Greeks. Any depiction of a human is rare in Pazyryk art, and yet a bridle carved with the image of Bes, an Egyptian genie that was popular among the Achaemenids, appears in one of the tombs (Rubinson).

Figure 2: Image of Bes, a token of Achaemenid influence in the Altai Mountians.

When paired with genetic evidence that links modern Altaians to the Iranian-Caucasian lineage of the Pazyryk (“Siberian Princess”) and to ancestral Native Americans (“On Our Mind”) through demographic expansion from the region (Gonzalez-Ruiz et al.), an image of the power of cultural synthesis across history takes shape, an image in which each group of people depends on the accumulated influence of others.

When archaeologists under the auspices of UNESCO propose awareness among local people as if it were an afterthought (Tresilian) and Russian officials cast off pleas for the return of Pazyryk mummies with invocations of science (“Siberian Princess”), they disregard indigenous ways of knowing and transform heritage into an exotic subject of curiosity. The residents of the Altai region may be able to claim a history that transcends the boundaries surrounding them, but the institutions championed by Europe and America continue to put themselves above the rest, deepening divisions and ignoring the profound connections that link every group of people to a shared human story.

Sources:

Gonzalez-Ruiz, Mercedes, et al. “Tracing the Origin of the East-West Population Admixture in the Altai Region (Central Asia).” PLOS One, PLOS, 9 Nov. 2012, journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0048904. Accessed 5 Nov. 2017.

“On Our Mind in March.” Altai Project, 27 Mar. 2015, www.altaiproject.org/2015/03/on-our-mind-in-march/. Accessed 5 Nov. 2017.

“On the Path to Celestial Pastures.” Science First Hand, Infolio, 30 Dec. 2014, scfh.ru/en/papers/on-the-path-to-celestial-pastures/. Accessed 6 Nov. 2017.

Rubinson, Karen S. “The Textiles from Pazyryk.” Penn Museum, Expedition Magazine, Mar. 1990, www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/the-textiles-from-pazyryk/. Accessed 5 Nov. 2017.

“Siberian Princess Reveals Her 2,500 Year Old Tatoos.” The Siberian Times, 14 Aug. 2012, siberiantimes.com/culture/others/features/siberian-princess-reveals-her-2500-year-old-tattoos/. Accessed 5 Nov. 2017.

Tresilian, David, editor. “Preservation of the Frozen Tombs of the Altai Mountains.” World Heritage Convention, UNESCO, Mar. 2008, whc.unesco.org/document/100814. Accessed 5 Nov. 2017.

Image Sources:

Drawing of Section of Pazyryk Barrow No. 5. State Hermitage Museum, 2007, depts.washington.edu/silkroad/museums/shm/shm06231.jpg. Accessed 6 Nov. 2017.

Image of Bes Confirmed by Identical in Rubinson Publication. Pinterest, i.pinimg.com/736x/46/39/17/463917c441cd869509086b95efaae3fd–hermitage-museum-plaque.jpg. Accessed 6 Nov. 2017.

Further Reading:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2015/12/01/no-the-siberian-ice-maiden-is-not-a-man/#7f401b67605b

http://www.face-music.ch/archelogy/burials_en.html

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