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**Tylluan Penry** · 16 Dec 2010, 13:37

Re: The Limits of Archeology

Fascinating thread and absoloutely true. Up until fairly recently it was assumed that grave goods were placede with the body in order to provide for the afterlife. More modern scholarship suggest it was simply status display to impress the neighbours. For me the jury is still out on that one. I would think there are better ways to impress the neighbours than chucking gold and silver into a hole in the ground.

We don't even know whether the grave goods in question were even owned by the people they were buried with....I have visions of ancient burials being an excuse to get rid of all sorts of stuff...for example, 'I've never liked that bracelet, quick, let's bury it with Grandma....'

**cesara** · 16 Dec 2010, 14:15

Re: The Limits of Archeology

[quote author=B. de Corbin link=topic=1218.msg22942#msg22942 date=1292534062]
Let's play a game.

Let's imagine that you've died, and, wether you want it or not, you are given the type of burail which is most common in the place where you live. Then, 2000 years from now, an archaeologist comes along and digs you up.

Based on what the archaeologist finds in your burial, and armed with a reasonable knowledge of the history of the times you lived in, what would that archaeologist be able to tell about you, the live you lived, and your personal life?

I'll start.

Sealed coffin burials in concrete vaults are most common here. Right away, our imaginary archaeologist will be misled into believing that I - for some reason - want my body preserved. False data.

I'd most likely be buried in clothing completely unlike that which I wear in real life. False data.

I'll most likely be buried in a cemetery, surrounded by religious symbols of a religion that I don't even believe in. There might even be a cross on my tombstone, if my wife and daughter have their way (and they will, 'cause I'll be dead). More false data.

If I'm buried with the jewelry I habitually wear, I'll have a wedding ring. I'll assume the archaeologist will know what that means, so score one for him/her. But what will he/she know about what my marriage was like?

I'll also have a ring with a fish on it. In this time period, the most common use of a fish as a symbol is Christian. The archaeologist will probably assume I'm Christian. Actually, the fish means something completely different. False data.

I also have a necklace with a cat on a red background. What will this mean? Will the archaeologist assume that the cat and the color have some kind of meaning? What are the odds that the archaeologist will figure out that red is my favorite color, and the cat is based on a Julie Cruise song (Kool Kat Walk) that isn't even about a cat...

In short - it seems to me that any conclusion drawn based on my "grave goods" is more likely to be wrong than it is to be right. If this is the case, what do we really know about the real lives of ancient people? Maybe King Tut thought gold was gaudy, and prefered lavender...

Maybe there's an archaeologist around who can help me out...
[/quote]

I'm not an archaeologist, but it's one of the several things I aspire to be when I grow up.

In my archaeology classes, my professors were VERY clear that you never, Never, NEVER extrapolate on material culture that is found. If they found you in a tux, they found you in a tux and NEVER just assume that you dressed like that every day. If they found a cross on your marker, they would add that to the other data about other crosses being on other markers and the crosses link to Christianity and THEN they might suggest that society, as a whole, had Christian leanings -- but, they wouldn't necessarily come to the conclusion that you, personally, were Christian -- especially if there was other markers with different symbols on them -- what they MIGHT do, if there was enough material culture to support it -- would be to say that you lived in a Christian based society.

At least that is what a good archaeologist would do.

**Oshii** · 16 Dec 2010, 14:27

Re: The Limits of Archeology

As Tylluan said, fascinating thread! I'm going to have to sit and conjure up something later. Look forward to readong other replies, as well. cheers.

**B. de Corbin** · 16 Dec 2010, 14:32

Re: The Limits of Archeology

^ that's what I'm thinking too. You can tell about the averages (or, maybe get an unspecific overview of what a culture imagines it values) of a culture based on what you find, but you can't tell anything about individuals based on what you find in graves - after all, most people don't bury themselves. I wonder how many Egyptian Pharaohs might have been atheists, buried with more pomp and circumstance than they would have preferred, had they had the luxury of being private citizens?

[quote author=Tylluan Penry link=topic=1218.msg22945#msg22945 date=1292535459]
We don't even know whether the grave goods in question were even owned by the people they were buried with....I have visions of ancient burials being an excuse to get rid of all sorts of stuff...for example, 'I've never liked that bracelet, quick, let's bury it with Grandma....'

[/quote]

LOL - yup... I've got a few items around here that should have been tossed into grandma's grave...

**Ophidia** · 16 Dec 2010, 14:46

Re: The Limits of Archeology

Even though I have high aspirations of becoming a plastinated display in Prof. Von Hagen's BodyWorlds...

What will most likely happen to me is that I will be cremated and my cremains placed in some sort of storage container, possibly with or without identifying marks, kept in a cremains storage facility of some sort & eventually thrown away, discarded or forgotten about.

Eventually, an archaeology team may unearth one of our civilizations' numerous overfilled landfills. If they even find my cremains among the tons and tons of garbage, it would most likely be in an area with several other containers of cremains thrown away by the same cremain storage facility. If the containers are intact, they will only know that whoever I came from burned their dead and pulverized the bones, but no great significance was placed on the status of remains after treatment. If the containers have biodegraded there may be a fine layer of ash and pulverized, burnt bone leavings in that vicinity, indicating that burned dead people ended up there.

Now, if I were an archaeologist who found the discarded displays from BodyWorlds, it would puzzle me greatly, and I would probably wonder what sick **** came up with the idea.

**DanieMarie** · 17 Dec 2010, 01:44

Re: The Limits of Archeology

[quote author=cesara link=topic=1218.msg22950#msg22950 date=1292537721]

I'm not an archaeologist, but it's one of the several things I aspire to be when I grow up.

In my archaeology classes, my professors were VERY clear that you never, Never, NEVER extrapolate on material culture that is found. If they found you in a tux, they found you in a tux and NEVER just assume that you dressed like that every day. If they found a cross on your marker, they would add that to the other data about other crosses being on other markers and the crosses link to Christianity and THEN they might suggest that society, as a whole, had Christian leanings -- but, they wouldn't necessarily come to the conclusion that you, personally, were Christian -- especially if there was other markers with different symbols on them -- what they MIGHT do, if there was enough material culture to support it -- would be to say that you lived in a Christian based society.

At least that is what a good archaeologist would do.

[/quote]

Very true.

Also, a couple more points: 1) former societies weren't as individualistic as ours as well. If an area had a certain religion, then likely pretty much everyone in that society (whether it be a town, or a family, or whatever) would be a part of that. People dressed the same (maybe some differences based on class...these gaps got larger whenever a society gained more wealth), ate the same things, etc. Individualism is a very modern concept and even in our own society the sheer extent of it wasn't really widespread until the 60's onward. That's not to say that no one differed from their society, but it was a lot less common compared to now, when it would be really difficult to make assumptions about a person based on culture as a whole because there are so many sub-cultures and even individuals within a sub-culture often have different tastes.

2) I doubt that, in the future, grave sites will be a main source of archaeological info for our society. We're not buried with much compared to what we have (if anything at all other than clothing and jewelry) and often we're not even buried and a lot of areas have really differing trends. (here there IS no one popular method, for example...cremation, burial....even burial at sea if I'm going by the funeral services I pass often, though I don't know how popular THAT one actually is haha). We do have a lot that will likely last well into the future since plastics and stuff aren't so biodegradable. But few of that will be found in grave sites and I'd like to think that if archaeologists in the future are at LEAST as clever as we are now, they'll be able to figure that out.

**thalassa** · 17 Dec 2010, 02:23

Re: The Limits of Archeology

[quote author=DanieMarie link=topic=1218.msg23077#msg23077 date=1292579093]
Very true.

Also, a couple more points: 1) former societies weren't as individualistic as ours as well. If an area had a certain religion, then likely pretty much everyone in that society (whether it be a town, or a family, or whatever) would be a part of that. People dressed the same (maybe some differences based on class...these gaps got larger whenever a society gained more wealth), ate the same things, etc. Individualism is a very modern concept and even in our own society the sheer extent of it wasn't really widespread until the 60's onward. That's not to say that no one differed from their society, but it was a lot less common compared to now, when it would be really difficult to make assumptions about a person based on culture as a whole because there are so many sub-cultures and even individuals within a sub-culture often have different tastes.
[/quote]

I think this is a huge misconception. Granted that there is no way of *really* knowing for some societies--not enough of a written record, for one. But even if you look back, just in recent times (about 150-200 years), there were (probably) comparable different levels of society, different organizations, movements, etc within society (when taking into context population size). For example...prior to the Civil War in the US, there were several versions of the feminist movement, the abolition movement, vegetarianism and animal rights, the spiritualist movement...and dozens of other philosophies, religions, ideas, etc that the average person isn't aware of...simply because its not taught, because its not part of the mainstream culture, and it wasn't recorded in the same prevalance and magnitude.

In a way, human history--even recorded history--is much like the fossil record. When only a small percentage is preserved...and as time goes on, the amount that is preserved decreases, what you find is more likely to be something that was highly prevalent, than something rarer. Even looking back at a socitey like ancient Greece, there were incredible differences of opinion in religion and science and philosophy--even in diet. 1000 years from now, archaeologists are more likely to find evidence of the *norm* and even 100 years from now, people will be more likely to have forgotten about most of the subcultural elements of our society today (even with all our technology, once something is improved or upgraded, whats left is generally left to degrade)--or to look at them as some sort of abberation, rather than an substantive part of our time.

**B. de Corbin** · 17 Dec 2010, 02:56

Re: The Limits of Archeology

This is actually something which I've been thinking about a lot lately, and I've arrived at the same conclusion as Thalassa - I'm thinking that there was a lot more variation in even small societies than we imagine. This is going to be due (our lack of imagining), in large part, to the limits of archeology. Archeology just can not find the range of difference in individuals, unless those individuals have left a reasonable amount of person record (writing) behind.

Imagine a tribe of, say, 100 people. The tribe has a formal religion, and a mix of societal norms and peer pressure (which is extremely powerful in small groups) ensures that every one in that tribe takes the tribally expected part in that religion and it's ceremonies. Whatever archaeological record might be left will seem to indicate that everybody followed one religion. However, there would be absolutely no way of knowing (from archeology) how many of those people were actually atheists who were only going through the motions.

Also, as Thalassa pointed out, we even make the mistake of imagining that in recent history - history where we actually do have masses of data - that societies were more homogeneous than the data shows them to be. Just as a recent example - make a list of characteristics of "hippies," then go out and see if you can find any former hippies who embodied those characteristics. For example, I never knew any hippies who wore tie tied clothing, and everybody I knew hated The Grateful Dead. And nobody in the United States or Europe had even heard of Reggae - the only music coming out of Jamaica was Calypso, and only old farts listened to Calypso...

**DanieMarie** · 17 Dec 2010, 07:52

Re: The Limits of Archeology

[quote author=thalassa link=topic=1218.msg23078#msg23078 date=1292581399]
I think this is a huge misconception. Granted that there is no way of *really* knowing for some societies--not enough of a written record, for one. But even if you look back, just in recent times (about 150-200 years), there were (probably) comparable different levels of society, different organizations, movements, etc within society (when taking into context population size). For example...prior to the Civil War in the US, there were several versions of the feminist movement, the abolition movement, vegetarianism and animal rights, the spiritualist movement...and dozens of other philosophies, religions, ideas, etc that the average person isn't aware of...simply because its not taught, because its not part of the mainstream culture, and it wasn't recorded in the same prevalance and magnitude.

[/quote]

I think you misunderstood what I meant. I didn't mean that there wasn't variation. I know there was (just even looking into more recent times). But it's not MAINSTREAM like it is now. Since the 1960's, people are more likely not just to belong to a sub-group or movement, but those groups and movements have more factions, and their members display their own tastes a lot more. JUST comparing the first and second half 20th century here (because studying marketing, that's where most of the data I have comes from) society has become a LOT more divergent in the later because individualism has become mainstream. It occurred in the past, but wasn't -mainstream.- In the 40's and 50's (once again, I'm going to use more recent examples and I'm going to use marketing, because that's what I know better) your consumption habits (which would leave a big mark, archaeologically, because that's the "stuff" that you have) would be a lot more about "keeping up with the Joneses" and having the same car, lawn, and fashion tastes as your neighbours. Or if you were living in Greenwich Village you'd be listening to jazz and dressing like your peers. While people (especially teens) still want to fit in with their peers, they're likely to bring a lot more of self-expression into their consumption habits than they did in the past. Maybe a family in the burbs doesn't want the same car as all their neighbours, they want to flaunt their assets by having a fancy custom car. And there are a GAJILLION services out there to customize products from t-shirts to muesli (I'm not kidding on this one: www.mymuesli.de. While some people in the past broke away from the herd too, it wasn't like everyone and their dog (http://www.bloomingtailsdogboutique.com/) were doing it.

**DanieMarie** · 17 Dec 2010, 08:08

Re: The Limits of Archeology

^^^

And of course while it's a little bit social (the 60's really brought counterculture to the mainstream for one of the first times), it's mostly because it's the first time this level of individualism is possible. There's just a much wider variety of products available and they cost less than they ever have at any point in history, and people in western countries have the money to buy them. If you look at the developing world you still see less of it (though emerging middle classes are also bringing these trends to their countries as well).

Anyway what I'm getting at is that it's a bit hard to compare the past to the present, because we live our lives much differently than people ever have before. Anyone looking back at our society now will see something much different than what we see looking back on past societies.

**Dez** · 17 Dec 2010, 10:27

Re: The Limits of Archeology

Very interesting analogy, Corbin.

Don't forget that you can add an entire other layer of confusion if the archeologist who finds you has their own religious or political agenda. Suddenly, your fish ring can become proof that 21st Century Americans were experienced a revival of "true" Christianity, upon which their own faith is based, or the cat pendant is evidence that the Reformed Black Panthers Political party of the 24th Century has been a safe and benevolent organization for 300 years(Black Supremacists? Lies! All lies!).

Just look at the search for "proof" of the might and majesty of David and Solomon from the OT, or the Mormons who view the meso-american plaque showing a guy holding a stick in each hand as evidence of the Lamanites awareness of Ezekiel 37:15-17 talking about the stick of Ephraim and the Stick of Judah.

**DanieMarie** · 17 Dec 2010, 10:51

Re: The Limits of Archeology

[quote author=B. de Corbin link=topic=1218.msg23080#msg23080 date=1292583398]

Also, as Thalassa pointed out, we even make the mistake of imagining that in recent history - history where we actually do have masses of data - that societies were more homogeneous than the data shows them to be. Just as a recent example - make a list of characteristics of "hippies," then go out and see if you can find any former hippies who embodied those characteristics. For example, I never knew any hippies who wore tie tied clothing, and everybody I knew hated The Grateful Dead. And nobody in the United States or Europe had even heard of Reggae - the only music coming out of Jamaica was Calypso, and only old farts listened to Calypso...
[/quote]

actually that's just proving my point. Hippies came about in the 60's and the 60's is the start of the period of "individualism as mainstream" culture that I'm talking about.

I'm not saying, once again, that everyone was the same in the past. I'm just saying that it's nothing like now, where individualism is the norm.

**Maulus** · 17 Dec 2010, 11:06

Re: The Limits of Archeology

This is one of those topics that can be very interesting to think about. Now, i love Archaeology, if i wasn't a computer nerd, i would have loved to have gone to Uni and been a History nerd instead. I enjoy watching those Archaeology programs on TV, namely "Time Team" is a big one over here, however i do get a little frustrated with the whole "We don't know what it was used for, so it was probably for Ritual" thing that goes on there.

Take, as an example, Stone Henge, no-one really knows what it was for, so it has been bandied about as a Temple of the Sun (possible, it is open to the sun and does make specific days) A Giant Calendar (!) A place of ritual burial (they found human ashes under a few of the Bluejohn stones) A Place of Magic (Ley lines are supposed to meet there) But to be honest, most of the ideas that have been put forward are all based on a modern perspective of the world. Until we can understand the world it was built in and bult for, we will never really have a proper idea of it's use.

Most archaeologists are going to have some form of bias, when they are investigating anything, they will have their own modern biases, what has influenced them in their lives, the way they percieve the world, as well as their historical biases, periods of time they know more about than others, Writers and historians they like and whose theories and histories they agree with. this will influence how they interperet what they find, even in our own graves. The number of Pagans i have seen around here, that wear Gothic crosses, if they were found in a grave, the archaeologist could be justified in assuming the body was that of a christian, possible devout enough to have an ornate cross.

[/ramble]

M

**Ophidia** · 17 Dec 2010, 11:14

Re: The Limits of Archeology

This thread has me wondering...

Would archaeologists be able to pick up on the relative isolation that most 'First World' people live in? I mean, for the most part we live in cities with people clustered together in large numbers, but there's no sense of 'communal' life, which I think plays into the great diversity of individuality found today. I don't know hardly anyone who lives in a multi-generational household any more. Even in apartments, condos & townhomes we all live in our own little bubbles, with our own belongings & self-contained storage.

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The Limits of Archeology

The Limits of Archeology

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