Dr. Martin Rundkvist is a Swedish archaeologist, journal editor, public speaker, chairman of the Swedish Skeptics Society, atheist, lefty liberal, bookworm, and father of two.
[More blog entries about archaeology, media, journalism, sciencejournalism; arkeologi, media, journalistik, vetenskapsjournalistik]
As mentioned before here on Aard, archaeology is not a single science but innumerable regional disciplines with little relevance to each other. For instance most archaeologists know absolutely nothing about ancient Egypt, simply because most archaeologists do not work in that country. This can make me sad sometimes, when other scientists go off on international post-docs or collaborate with colleagues in far-off countries. Chemistry is the same everywhere, but myself and a Tokyo archaeologist would have nothing to talk about professionally except meta-subjects such as excavation technique and heritage legislation. If the entire archaeological record of Japan were lifted off the planet, it wouldn't impair our understanding of Scandinavian prehistory at all.
This is a big problem when archaeologists communicate with the media and society at large. Not only does everyone expect an archaeologist to know about ancient Egypt, they often also think we're really good at dinosaurs. And everyone believes that most archaeologists travel to exotic locations to dig in some worldwide quest for knowledge.
This was driven home to me Friday evening during a bar conversation with a science journalist. He really wanted to report more about archaeology, but he was finding it hard to locate a story in most of what we do. Our ploughed-out 2nd century settlement sites excavated for highway development don't seem to have any links to the world history he feels we should be contributing to. It all seems so petty and provincial to him. He complained, why don't we publish more in Science and Nature? Little does he know that no Swedish archaeologist aims at contributing to world history. We're busy elaborating on our picture of the history of places the size of the Lake Mälaren area: that's the scale we work at. Zooming out to world scale, Scandinavian prehistoric archaeology dwindles to a dot on the map, labelled "millennia of lo-tech tribalism whose details need concern no-one".
This man asked my opinion about some apparently quite fascinating finds of early cave art in South Africa, and he couldn't believe that I had never heard of them. "They're really important to the big questions about how humanity became what it is!" Yeah. Well, because of Ice Ages and our peripheral location on the globe, Scandinavian archaeologists can't contribute to that sort of debate at all. We're confined to the past 14,000 years or so. And I told the journalist that the reason that the South Africans are working on those big questions is that they happen to live near a cave full of relevant source material. They too are just digging whatever's around.
Comments
"And everyone believes that most archaeologists travel to exotic locations to dig in some worldwide quest for knowledge."
Don't forget your access to Ancient Alien Technology that They don't want you to know about. All achaeologists commute to work by Stargate.
Posted by: M | May 14, 2007 10:48 AM
Here you can become at least little more update concerning the important findings in south Africa:
http://www.svf.uib.no/sfu/blombos/
and Botswana:
http://www.hf.uio.no/iakh/for-ansatte/avis/2006/oktober/botsw.html
if some media-type would ask you.
Posted by: Lars | May 14, 2007 11:57 AM
Obviously the Norwegians are less provincial. Or are they just desperate to find fjords in Africa, to prove we're on Earth Mk II?
Bob
Posted by: Bob O'H | May 14, 2007 1:39 PM
There's a handful of Third World archaeologists in Sweden as well, working on the same small regional scale as us homebodies do, only in Laos and places like that.
Posted by: Martin R | May 14, 2007 5:15 PM
Well, because of Ice Ages and our peripheral location on the globe, Scandinavian archaeologists can't contribute to that sort of debate at all. We're confined to the past 14,000 years or so.
You could always discover some extremely questionable Neanderthal remains... (*cough*Susiluola*cough*)
Posted by: windy | May 14, 2007 7:56 PM
Is it really abstruseness which is characterising Scandinavian archaeology? Is it not rather a tradition of restricting the limits of the subject too much? - Or maybe there is an abstruseness regarding the limits of the subject?
Posted by: JG | May 15, 2007 3:55 AM
Scandinavian archaeology is no more abstruse than any other area's. But non-archaeologists' ideas of the past are strongly conditioned by written history, which means that they tend to look at areas with early written records (Mesopotamia, the Mediterranean, China) as much more important than areas such as Scandinavia where written history starts very late.
If I dig 100 square meters in Rome, then this is seen as relevant to world history. Not so if I dig the same acreage in Söderköping.
Posted by: Martin R | May 15, 2007 4:59 AM
Very good. There are misconceptions about many professions among non-professionalists. What could e.g. be expected that a geologist must know about?
Do you accept the description of archaeology in Wikipedia: "Archaeology, archeology, or archæology (from Greek: αρχαίος, archaios, combining form in Latin archae-, "ancient"; and λόγος, logos, "knowledge") is the study of human cultures through the recovery, documentation and analysis of material remains and environmental data, including architecture, artifacts, biofacts, human remains, and landscapes.
The goals of archaeology are to document and explain the origins and development of human culture, understand culture history, chronicle cultural evolution, and study human behavior and ecology, for both prehistoric and historic societies"?
There are no doubts, I think, that every object found is considered in terms of where it was exactly locally found among other finds of the excavation. - Should it be any fixed borders between the field of archaeology and other arts och sciences, which deal with historical periods, art history and knowledge of material properties and/or production techniques?
This is the reason for my question about limits of the subject archaeology. - Formulated a bit differently: Should such arts and/or sciences be included in the field of archaeology or should they be considered as sometimes suitable fields for co-operation with archaologists?
I do like what you have written elsewhere that the object for archaeology is to find out about life conditions of humans who have lived in the past. Therefore I would like to find out more about the reason you used the word "abstruse".
Posted by: JG | May 15, 2007 1:33 PM
It's a reasonable definition, just a bit too long. And "explain the origins and development of human culture" would not be part of it if I had written it. In fact, hardly anyone in the discipline works with the origins of human culture, which must lie with pre-sapiens hominids in Africa. The first H. sapiens picked up human culture from her H. erectus mother.
I think archaeology is currently too nebulous in its definition, at least at Swedish universities. Interdisciplinary work should take the form of close cooperation between specialists, not amateur dabblings in other fields by archaeologists.
I used the word "abstruse" because the journalist I talked to clearly felt that what most Swedish archaeologists do is completely abstruse. That is, relevant only on a regional scale and impossible to connect to the text-based grand narrative of world history that formed his view of the distant past.
Posted by: Martin R | May 15, 2007 2:00 PM
Do you think Indiana Jones is to blame? Can we boycott the next movie?
Posted by: Anatoly | May 15, 2007 8:21 PM
I blame Austin Powers.
Posted by: Martin R | May 16, 2007 2:53 AM
Ha! You archaeologists aren't alone in being misunderstood. When I have said that I am aiming for a research career in mathematics, I have met the reaction: "So you will spend your days computing primes numbers?"
Posted by: Johan Richter | May 26, 2007 7:20 AM
Haha! Just tell them "no, actually, what I plan on doing is to see how far I can count. I'm starting now: one, two, three ..."
Posted by: Martin R | May 26, 2007 8:12 AM