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I like Archaeology.  In fact, so much do I like archaeology that I used to be head of finance for an archaeological consultancy.

I was reading a post from f4f3 about his recent visit to Kilmartin Glen and it set me thinking about what I find interesting about archaeology.

I am interested in the archaeology of the classical period, mainly Roman, but if you’ve got Hellenistic I’ll take Hellenistic.  I’m also interested in the archaeology of  pre-historic Britain (mainly Britain).

I like them for different reasons.

One of the things I like about Roman history is that they were pretty similar to us.  I could imagine living in the Roman Empire.  People lived in houses that I would recognise. They bought and sold goods and services that I still use today. Some of the jobs that people do today are the same as jobs that Romans would have had.  Carpenters, butchers, book keepers, bath attendant, commodity brokers, estate managers. I see lots of similar economic activity. Many jobs were done in ways that the people doing them today would find recognisable, perhaps even exemplary. The politics feels very familiar. The role of religion seemed similar. Some people pious, some not. Some believers, some atheists. A formal role for religion in society, sometimes as a custodian of public morals, sometimes as a prop to the Establishment.

The social, political and economic ecosystem feels similar to the one I live in.  People seemed to do and build things for reasons that I would recognise. The landscape of Roman streets makes sense to me.

So I can walk around a Roman archaeological site and picture myself there a few thousand years ago. I can even picture myself having a pretty similar life to one I currently have.

Not so with neo-lithic Britain.  When I look at sites like Avebury, Kilmartin Glen or Neo-lithic Orkney I think I just don’t see the landscape the way the people who embedded their buildings in it saw the landscape.  The landscape clearly meant a lot to them. They seem to have placed their buildings with great care. Perhaps greater care than insula in a Roman city. The buildings are hugely economically valuable.  Silbury Hill is estimated to have taken 18 million man-hours to build. That’s

Did they live in a magical realm like the Dream Time where the real and the unreal inhabited the same landscape? Did ordinary people see the landscape the way the people who commissioned the stone circles and howes see them?  Are the buildings religious? Are they used by many people during acts of collective peopleness or reserved for the elite or for the strange?

Did the Iron Age kings who stood in Dunadd’s footsteps really believe that this created a mystical connection between them and the land or did they believe it was only symbolic? 

When I visit Orkney and go to the Stones of Stenness or the Ring of Brodgar I struggle to imagine what these places meant to the people who built them. Are the places sacred or do they mark places of flow in a sacred landscape. Are they the words of the hymn or the punctuation?  Scara Brae is much easier to understand. Homes, small and cosy, near sources of food and water and friendship.

How did these people who lived in a home I can recognise as a home live in a landscape that seems richer to them than it does to me?

I just don’t know.  

When I used to work the archaeologists they would often talk about ritual. I once asked them what they meant by ritual. Ritual, it turned out meant “anything we don’t understand.”

I can’t connect to the neo-lithic landscape in the same way I can connect to the Roman Forum, the Kaiserthermum in Trier  or Chedworth Villa.  What were these people doing when they went to Avebury? Did they even ever go? This is what makes neo-lithic archaeology fascinating for me.  I am baffled by the lack of connection to a world view that seemed to be so important to the people who build neo-lithic Britain.

Roman archaeology satisfies my desire to see how people who I think were similar to me lived when their technology and their geo-politics was somewhat different to my own world. In my mind I can inhabit that world and stand in the place

Neo-lithic archaeology shows me something that I can’t connect to.

Date: 2012-02-02 09:35 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] f4f3.livejournal.com
I feel much the same as you do about Roman ruins. I spent a decade and a bit in Newcastle, and spent a lot of time tramping around the Wall. And yes, I could see myself there pretty easily.

Walking around the prehistoric sites is different. I always try to remember that basically we are the same as we were 10, 000 years ago, but that's not quite true. Some of the wiring was different. But I can still see large sites as places were different tribes could come together to trade or celebrate, with a caste of priests or bouncers to keep the peace. And I can't believe there wouldn't be games, because we all play games.

Mostly, though, I like old sites because of the groove they've worn in the world (I feel a bit of Pratchetness coming on - all rubber sheets and marbles).

Date: 2012-02-03 09:25 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] danieldwilliam.livejournal.com
The grove *is* worth paying attention to.

The first time I went to Mais Howe on Orkney I was struck by the presence of Viking graffiti (and the banality and the wit of it).

Something that has been there long enough to be found, grafittied and then lost again by people I consider ancient leaves a bit of a shape on the landscape. That’s just pretty cool.

An old pal of mine, whom I must get back in touch with, was an archaeologist in Newcastle, working on the Walls End digs when I first met him.

I think imagining them to be much like us is probably a good starting point but we don’t know what comes next. I imagine, like you, that they wanted to spend time together in community contemplating the spiritual (for a given value of spiritual) and the probably did this under the “guidance” of an elite but what I don’t know is whether they were joyous celebrations with sharing of mead and food and jokes or more like the Wicker Man. We don’t know if they were segregated by gender or age or whatnot. That’s what makes them fascinating for me – these huge structures with no user manual left over frombeforethedawnatime.

I’ve seen two different archaeologist construct two very different atmospheres about a particular site based on a little bit of evidence and some extrapolation.

What we have from the Roman world is a huge amount of writing both important and mundane which I think helps us to put their landscape in context and that’s missing from the ancient British stuff. I particularly like the postcards from Vindolonda on Hadrian’s Wall.

I wonder if the advances in brain imaging technology we are seeing at the moment might give us some insight into how the different wiring patterns of in the brain affect our world view. Not sure how we use that to gain any insight into the attitudes of neo-lithic people.

Date: 2012-02-03 09:56 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] f4f3.livejournal.com
I've had roughly the same conversation with anthrokeight, of this parish (find her on my friends list, and follow her). She's an anthropologist, and has more insight to the thinking of different peoples than anyone I know. She also quoted the anthrologist's guide to interpretating field studies - "One's a rock, two's a wall and three's a ritual structure".

Mae's Howe is great fun - all of Orkney is (hey, they make one and a half of the finest malt whiskies in the world, and their fudge is a great tablet variation.

I think you've hit on a great point about writing and how that changes our view of the world. I can believe that kind of knowledge does re-wire the brain. There's a lot of work going on now about how computers, and the net, and social media are re-wiring our brains just now. I must admit, most of my reading in the field tends to be works by William Gibson, Iain Banks and Rudy Rucker.

Hmm, maybe we can get Kate to drop by and give us some informed thought. Though I do like the un-informed stuff.

Date: 2012-02-03 10:49 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] danieldwilliam.livejournal.com
To cross the streams of two posts if I had a lot of money I might be tempted to open a distillery – mainly because I think it would be cool and I know two people who would love to run a whisky business and would be good at it and are at a bit of a lose end. If I did I would be very tempted to put it on Orkney, just a few hundred yards north of the current distilleries.

Date: 2012-02-03 11:04 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] f4f3.livejournal.com
Owning a distillery seems a bit like owning a pub to me - too much like hard work. Also a bit like owning a sausage factory. I like sausages, but...

If I did have to own a business (and I'm completely aware of how I just phrased that) then a distillery would be one of my favourites. Along with owning a giant train set. No, I mean a film studio.

Date: 2012-02-03 11:51 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] danieldwilliam.livejournal.com
I think most of the thinking and doing in running a whisky business is in the selling of the product. I picture myself in the office thinking about marketing more than actually distilling.

Selling the sizzle of the sausage or the viscimetric swirls in the scotch.

I'm not sure how much work there is in running a distillery compared to running a pub.

I reckon running a pub would be pretty grim. Long hours, having to be pleasant to drunks, not a huge opportunity to get rich and retire early.

Date: 2012-02-03 09:26 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] danieldwilliam.livejournal.com
all rubber sheets and marbles).

You just feel free to keep that sort of thing private.

Date: 2012-02-03 10:01 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] f4f3.livejournal.com
My view of the universe was formed mostly from two sources.

The Space Opera of E.E. "Doc" Smith, where planets and black holes became handy projectiles in space battles, and the Lensman series has its origins in the collision of two galaxies, and 1970's BBC and Open University science shows, where rubber sheets and ball-bearings featured extensively.

Date: 2012-02-03 10:50 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] danieldwilliam.livejournal.com
Those Open University programmes were fabulous.

Here, have education for free.

Date: 2012-02-03 11:05 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] f4f3.livejournal.com
They're still out there.
If I didn't have to work, I'd spend a lot of time attending classes at Glasgow University - as far as I know, you can still do that for free.

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