There are many unsolved archaeological and historical mysteries such as who created the mysterious monument of Stonehenge and why?  And, how were the Great Pyramids in Egypt constructed? According to one television series on the History Channel the answer is simple: aliens. Yes, aliens. The commentators on the show Ancient Aliens propose that most of the unsolved archaeological mysteries can be explained by extraterrestrial beings who visited ancient civilizations and gave them technology and knowledge.

The Saqqara Bird

Once you get past the dramatic editing, special effects and dramatic music, an individual who is not familiar with “real” archaeological research and analysis may actually begin to believe what the show is trying to convince you of. The first case that the show presents is the Saqqara Bird (a small wooden bird that was recovered during the excavation of the tomb of the ancient Egyptian official Pa-di-Imen in 1898). An author and an engineer then explain to viewers the interesting physical properties of the bird (wings that look like aircraft wings, a tail that appears to be a rudder). These observations, along with the fact that it was found lying next to a papyrus with the inscription “I want to fly” lead them to believe that the bird is most likely a model for an aircraft.

So far, taking into account that they have not explained all of the information known in relation to the artifact, the interpretations don’t seem too extreme: they are presenting a hypothesis based on observations of the artifact’s characteristics and its provenience as well as specific prior knowledge. But hypotheses cannot be held up without evidence, therefore, a larger scale model of the bird was built and tested to see if it would be able to fly. Quick shots of the experiments were shown to the viewer without any explanation of what was happening or why, and then we were told that the results clearly show that the bird is a model of a “highly developed glider”. We, apparently, use that same design today, but our gliders are launched with a bungee cord system. If this is indeed what the Saqqara Bird is, how did the Egyptians come up with such an advanced technology? The answer, according to Ancient Aliens, is obvious: aliens. They jump to this absurd conclusion abruptly, without any supporting evidence. They omit and misrepresent facts and disregard much of the previous information known about ancient cultures. Their only claim to truth is that there is no proof to disprove them.

They are doing what many people believe real archeologists do: making up information about past cultures and people. When real archeologists present a hypothesis or theory, they conduct an interpretive process that is based primarily on the gathering of information. Most non-archaeologists do not have the understanding of anthropological or archaeological theory to understand this process (Beisaw). They think archaeologists are creating stories about the past without proof when they are in fact undergoing a thorough scientific process to reach their conclusions.

The most common theoretical approach to archaeology is the culture history approach. This approach is a way of reconstructing the past using a normative model of culture. Each culture has a set of rules or norms that govern the society and are passed from one generation to the next (Ashmore 40). If this theory is applied to the Saqqara Bird, a trained archaeologist might conclude that the bird was perhaps a ceremonial or burial item based on the provenience and the  previous known fact that falcons were a highly valued bird in Egyptian culture. The slight style variations that the show explains to be unique features could be attributed to the degrees of change (idiosyncratic behavior, aka, the choice of the artists) within the normative system (Ashmore 40). Only if enough evidence and support through the careful assimilation of data would the archaeologist hypothesizes the potential meaning of the bird. If there is no evidence to support the claim, the archaeologist may search for new interpretation. Ancient Aliens does the opposite and creates false evidence to support a hypothesis. This pseudo archaeological approach involving the misuse and omission of facts used in Ancient Aliens is a gross misrepresentation of how archaeologists analyze the past and also an insult to our ancestors.

A recent influx of embracing the present and future has overshadowed any appreciation we have for our pasts. As human beings living in the 21st century, we are bombarded with urges to “live in the moment” and “seize the day”. We have become obsessed with knowledge about the end of the world (such as 2012…which is rapidly approaching!). Even popular media figures have enlightened us with quotes to live by, such as Drake’s famously rapped motto “YOLO – You Only Live Once”.

This disconnection doesn’t seem to be purposeful, but merely a result of technological advances (everybody impatiently awaiting the newest iPhone model) and the fact that human beings are currently in a constant forward plow towards an obscure future (going to college in order to get into graduate school in order to get a job in order to raise a family, etc).

However, as Professor Beisaw made us all aware of in class on Thursday, the past is interwoven into every single facet of our daily lives. Although we tend to neglect this fact, we aren’t entirely oblivious to the past – but we only use it when it is convenient (to describe the unique nationality you inherited from your father’s uncle’s mother’s Portuguese brother). We ignore it when it is hurtful (losing a war) or shameful (slavery in colonial America). As inferred in Bernbeck and Pollock’s article “Ayodhya, Archaeology, and Identity”, human beings manipulate the past, and therefore archaeology, so that it becomes a glamorized version that we can be proud of. This is displayed through ascending and descending anachronisms. An ascending anachronism attempts to push a past event farther back in time so that it appears to be more distant, while a descending anachronism brings events closer to the present. By ascending events that are dishonorable and descending events that are more respectable, people take control of their histories and create a version to fit their desires.

This is where the public misunderstands archaeology – archaeology provides the facts of the past, but these facts are misconstrued by public manipulations. Mythical history “stresses continuity of past and present” (Bernbeck and Pollock 140), and many political issues today are based on this manipulation. For example, the current battle between the Hindus and Muslims in India displays how “bringing the past very near to the present helps to legitimate revenge for past injuries” (Bernbeck and Pollock 140). This is just one example of how issues based far in the past are manipulated by present day humans in order to solve ancient quarrels that probably don’t even matter in the slightest bit.

This just proves to show how archaeology is relevant to EVERYTHING. Archaeology is the analysis of our pasts but places so much emphasis on the bigger picture, and therefore has so much substantial influence in our present and our futures. People misunderstand this aspect of archaeology because of our manipulation of the past, as well as our inherent obsession with living in the now and embracing our futures. The truth is, the past is what makes us who we are and what gives us a sense of identity. The present and future are nothing without the past, and to say “what’s done is done” is ignorant. That present and future are nothing without the influence of the past – and that’s where archaeology comes in – it is the vehicle through which the past is revealed and interwoven into our lives.

I believe archaeology is misunderstood because people assume archaeologists only work at ancient sites where the artifacts, ecofacts and features are thousands of years old and are dug up on a different continent instead of under our feet or in our backyards. Even if they do understand that archaeology can be done anywhere, they lack the understanding that archaeology goes beyond collecting, identifying and analyzing artifacts, ecofacts and features. Archaeology looks at the big picture. Archaeologists use analogy and theory to answer the big questions such as “What does it mean to be human?” and “How do humans deal with change?”

A stone wall and a fence serve the same purpose

As we were searching for the cemetery at Boyd Corners North, we stumbled across a stone wall in the middle of the woods. Using what Ashmore refers to as analogy, we could infer that the stone wall was used to mark a property and possibly enclose a house or a church by comparing the shape and structure to what we use today (fences).

Where we found artifacts/features

When we found stone walls and eventually the cemetery along our hike, we plotted the latitude and longitude coordinates of each feature or artifact in the GPS. Ashmore stresses the importance of this on pg. 187 because “spatial distributions and associations of archaeological data are often directly observable” when plotted on a map. If we were to go back and look at the plots, patterns could arise and we might be able to conclude how big the community was and how it was laid out. Then if we wanted to look deeper, we could infer why they placed features in specific areas and what the purpose of each feature was.

Example of a woman's tombstone

A cemetery might not sound interesting to most of the general public, but I was amazed to realize how much a cemetery that was only a century old could tell us about who lived on the ground we were exploring. In the short fifteen minutes we were there, we concluded that it was not solely a family cemetery, but a community cemetery. The presence of a stone wall around the land suggests that those that lived there planned to stay for a long period of time. Also, there is evidence based on the wording and trends of the tombstones that women didn’t have much power in their society because husband’s names were listed on the wife’s tombstones but not the other way around.

A cemetery, before my practical on Friday and this week’s classes meant a place where several dead people were buried, a place where their family, friends, and ancestors could come pay their respects. Never had I considered the amount of archeological knowledge that could come from just walking around one.

One of the main reasons the general public is confused about archaeology is the fact that they do not understand modern technology’s role in studying the past.  The classic image of an archaeologist is of someone in the field, digging with a shovel or trowel.  People picture a very isolated dig site without any sort of modern equipment and cannot understand why professional archaeologists need training for such straightforward work.  Because the act of digging seems so physical and basic, people assume that archaeology is not a science but guesswork.  They do not know that today, there are many advanced scientific ways to gather data about an artifact or ecofact.

This past week, we looked at flakes of obsidian in class.  When asked to speculate on what tools these flakes were, some people suggested that they were knives because of the way the stones fit into the palms of their hands.  However, it is dangerous to try and determine utility from something that varies as much as hand size does.  People have even mistaken ordinary stones for artifacts using this method.  Professor Beisaw instead suggested that one could determine usage by looking at the flakes under a microscope.  If the edge of a flake had been worn down, one would know it was used to cut something.  From there, one might be able to hypothesize more specifically about how it was used.  On the other hand, maybe the microscope would reveal that it was simply an abandoned remnant of a larger piece of stone that had been made into an arrowhead.

Obsidian Flake

Professor Beisaw also explained that a gun-like instrument that could determine a stone’s chemical makeup had been developed.  This technology helps identify whether a tool was made from local materials or materials from further away by scanning nearby natural resources.  If none of the natural resources match the tool, it not only reveals more information about the tool itself but also suggest that trade once occurred within the region.  In this way, using technology to analyze artifacts helps determine the exchange systems of ancient cultures.

Wendy Ashmore mentions a similar type of technology in Discovering Our Past.  On pages 200-201, she describes X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and neutron activation analysis (NAA) as analytical methods that determine the physical and chemical makeup of artifacts.  X-ray fluorescence works by releasing photons due through radiation that correspond to particular elements.  (http://serc.carleton.edu/research_education/geochemsheets/techniques/XRF.html)  Neutron activation analysis involves targeting nuclei with neutrons, producing a specific gamma ray reaction. (http://archaeometry.missouri.edu/naa_overview.html)

Neutron Activation Analysis

These technologies only scratch the surface when it comes to the methods used to study archaeological sites.  In addition to collecting artifacts of interest, archaeologists use both their knowledge of historical context and scientific instruments to paint a more complete picture of past civilizations.

I think one of the most misunderstood aspects of archaeology is that artifacts are more important than features in telling us about the past. When most people think about archaeology and excavations the first thing that comes to mind after gold, curses, and Indiana Jones of course, are artifacts: chipped ceramics, arrowheads, statues, bones and mummies. They often forget about features such as stone walls, buildings, hearths, storage pits, and roads.

I think one of the main reasons people seem to care more about artifacts and ecofacts than features is because they can relate to them more easily. For example people are often more excited about finding ancient tools than an old road because they can physically hold a stone tool in their hand and compare it to more modern tools that they use daily, whereas most of the general public doesn’t think twice about the development of roads over time. Another example is the excavation of bones, either human or animal. I think people feel a strange connection to bones because we have a fascination with death. All cultures have certain burial practices and beliefs regarding death but for some reason most people would be more shocked and excited to discover bones on their property (ecofacts) rather than a stone wall (feature) surrounding a cemetery.

While artifacts and ecofacts are extremely useful in teaching us about past activities and environments, features are just as helpful in finding out about past cultures. They help us understand the spatial distribution and organization of human activities and can reveal information about construction methods and the resources available during a certain time period (Ashmore 149).

Confederate Civil War Fort Excavation: Fort Pocahontas on Jamestown Island in Virginia

The video above shows the excavation of a bombproof shelter that was a feature of Fort Pocahontas on Jamestown Island during the Civil War. I think it’s really interesting for a number of reasons. First of all the bombproof shelter was a part of Fort Pocahontas that was constructed in 1861, the southern half of which was built directly on the remains of James Fort which was originally constructed in 1607.

One really confusing aspect of archaeology to explain is stratigraphy and I think this video does a good job of showing different layers of strata in the excavation of the bombproof shelter. When we looked at the sratigraphy diagram in class on Tuesday we all had a difficult time determining which layers contained features and which were simply strata. I think the archeologist in this video does a good job at showing the coloration of the different strata being excavated and touching on the often misunderstood concept that the top layer always contains the most recent features or artifacts.

What is an artifact? More importantly, what can an artifact tell us about past cultures, peoples or even individuals? If you ask someone these questions, it’s very likely that you will get an earful about beautiful, rare and precious items found in exotic places deeply attached to ancient rituals and curses.

Besides the plagues, curses and grumpy mummies, I don’t think anyone in that movie was too interested in learning about ancient Egyptian culture from those artifacts.

In fact, the most commonly encountered artifacts in the archaeological record are lithic and ceramic industries – stone tools and pottery.  Of course, there are a HUGE variety of other types of artifacts in the archaeological record, but to keep it relatively concise I’ll mainly discuss these two industries. These artifacts are among the first to be made by early humans and even hominids and can tell us important information about the daily lives and behavioural patterns of past cultures – they are often beautiful and can be precious, but without any context they are just objects that mean absolutely, squat-diddly nothing.

Not Learning Much.

So what makes an artifact culturally meaningful?

The answer is its context. The context of an archaeological find depends on geographic location, depth/soil layer or level in which an artifact is recovered (stratigraphy), association with surrounding ecofacts and features (and whether or not the association has been altered by living organisms or natural geological forces), and analysis of the processes that some human being undertook to make that object (which can indicate cultural change over time.)

Different layers of soil.

For example, the observation of stratigraphy – the level and layer of soil in which stone tools or pottery shards (or any other artifact, for that matter) are found is very important in assessing the age and associations of the materials discovered. An artifact may look pretty, but if you don’t know its context, you lose its most valuable properties. Take that, Indiana Jones.

Association with surrounding ecofacts (naturally-occurring yet culturally meaningful remains – such as animal bones or plant materials) and features (stationary human-made or altered materials, such as a hearth or building foundations) is another way that archaeologists can make sense of the artifacts they find. The age and type of animal and plant remains occurring in the same layer and level as an artifact can give a huge amount of information as to the climatic state, available resources and behavioural patterns of ancient people (for example, an arrowhead found in association with mammoth rib bones gives an idea of how long ago the tool was crafted and to what cultural means it was used – in this case, acquiring a hefty dinner.) Association with features in the same context can also be useful in assessing an artifact’s age (through relative dating methods) and to indicate how an artifact was used in the past.

Now THAT’S what I call learning culturally-meaningful information from artifacts!

One of my favourite examples of the extent of blatant lies and misconceptions in archaeology and anthropology is the movie One Million Years B.C. – depicting a prehistoric world in which humans and dinosaurs lived and died together.

“Travel back through time and space to the edge of man’s beginnings…discover a savage world whose only law was lust!”

Note the dinosaur battle occurring in the background.

Wearing “mankind’s first bikini” and battling the Allosaurus, Triceratops, Pteranodon, Rhamphorhynchus and Ceratosaurus, the beautiful cavewoman from the Shell tribe not only sparked the imagination and excitement of little boys everywhere when the movie premiered in 1966, but blatantly falsified the archaeological record. Modern humans didn’t exist until about 200,000 B.C., and dinosaurs went extinct around 65 million years ago. I doubt anyone has ever, or will ever, find human artifacts and dinosaur remains in the same context.

A cavegirl's gotta look good while defending her life. Just don't ask where she got that mirror.

According to the director, however, the movie wasn’t made for ‘’professors’’ who ‘’probably wouldn’t go to see these kinds of movies anyway.’’ And we wonder why Archaeology is so widely misunderstood?

-Emma G.

In order to figure out why archeology is popularly misunderstood, we need to begin our discussion with the primary source of our education about archeology: namely, pop culture.

Human love for entertainment has caused society to pick and choose the aspects of archeology to portray. We love adventure, and we are very much intrigued by the remote past: to us, ancient cultures are mysterious and exotic, simply because their lifestyles were very different from our own. Humans are often not nearly as interested in the “recent past” (let’s say the past century or two) because the system of values put in place during this time is familiar to us. Societies that contradict our worldview are much more interesting: for example, many are shocked by the ancient Mesoamerican practice of human sacrifice. This shocks us and compels our curiosity; the ideas of vast treasure, ancient rituals, and curses thrill us in the same way. Popular portrayals of archeological endeavors will often appeal to this.

A complementary force at work here is our modern tendency to brutalize past cultures in order to separate ourselves from the “less civilized.” We don’t want to believe that the Native Americans that we so insensitively displaced had such advanced cultures. In elementary schools, the histories of the most advanced Pre-Columbian cultures—such as those of Cahokia and Pueblo Bonito—are ignored. For the sake of fostering patriotism, we teach that this land was mostly uninhabited, and that the few who lived here were nomadic teepee-dwellers with little accomplishment to speak of. The archeological discoveries (the monumental structures, advanced trade networks, and splendidly crafted artifacts) that tell us otherwise are pushed out of sight.

Combined, these two forces create a culture that pushes real archeology off to the side, and invites pseudoscientific, entertaining “archeology” to fill that void. What we are left with is the stereotypical, pop-culture based archetype: an adventurer, decked out in khakis, who braves rough terrain and unspeakable perils to dig for the lost treasures of the ancient world. In the fictitious worlds of these brave heroes, the goal of archeology is to search for wealth or mysterious objects and to take them away to a museum for display.

It’s our responsibility to remember that this image is false, and that real archeology is about studying the trends and behavioral processes that set us aside from other species of homo – that construct our identities as human beings. Additionally, archeology almost never involves removing an artifact from its context, or provenience, without careful study of the context (as Indiana Jones’ go-fetch style might suggest); an object outside of its matrix and away from potential associations automatically loses its meaning ( Ashmore).

The uncovered information can then be used to help us reflect on decisions and issues that we encounter during our lifetimes; for example, if we can look at how past cultures dealt with the changing climate, we can make informed decisions about how to deal with climate change now. In other words, archeology brings the lessons of history to light so that we can actually use them.

Side Note: On the way to visit the Ashokan Reservoir this week, we drove on “Clayton Peg Leg Bates Memorial Highway,” and were curious about the man behind the name. It turns out that Mr. Peg Leg Bates was a black man who lost his leg in a cotton gin accident. He turned his tragedy into a blessing, however, and learned to tap dance on his peg leg (which was carved by his uncle, Whitt Bates). He led a career on Broadway.  Later in life, he and his wife Alice ran a country club in Kerhonkson (thirty miles from here), hence the memorial highway in this area.

When people hear that I am an archaeologist they often say that they or someone they knew always wanted to be an archaeologist. Then they ask me how often I travel to Egypt and what was the most valuable thing I have ever found. Clearly their idea of what archaeology is comes from fiction.

Archaeology sites in this country, in this state, even in this town are destroyed every day by people who do not know what archaeology really is or why they should care. Some of this destruction is from construction – which is a necessary part of every town’s life. But some of it is from people who try to beat archaeologists to “buried treasure” – taking objects out of their context and rendering them meaningless (the opposite of treasure).

Students in ANTH 100, an introductory archaeology course, will be exploring archaeology’s image problem. In this blog, Vassar students will provide their insights into why archaeology may be one of the most misunderstood fields of inquiry. Each post will use content from that week’s lectures and readings to address the core issues. Posts will be either 400-500 words in length or 4 minutes of audio/video. This will allow students to focus on the main issues, as they see them. Links will be used to point readers to supporting or related information such as primary sources.

Comments and debate are welcome.

-Dr. Beisaw