CAN PAST TALK TO US

INTRODUCTION

1. A few years back a movie titled ‘Jurassic Park’ was released and soon became box office hit. When I saw the movie I was astonished and impressed by the on screen appearance of the huge creatures, the dinosaurs, of different variety. The object of appreciation was, of course, the computer generated graphics and animation. But more than that, I was really amazed by the knowledge the people had about these wild monsters, who are the species extinct for almost 65 million years. How do these people come to know how did these creatures look like, what were their food habits, how did they live and how did they evolve? A question came to my mind, ‘CAN PAST TALK TO US?’ . 2. A few years later another movie was released, ‘The Mummy’. This time it was the Egyptian culture that was depicted. Incidentally this culture has also been extinct for thousands of years. It is believed that this culture was in existence some 4500 years ago. Where did the knowledge of the life style of the ancient Egyptians, their religious practices, their culture, their language and their houses, clothes and weapons come from? Could the past possibly have talked to the producers?

3. I am sure these questions must have surfaced in your minds also. If I was to answer these questions, I would say, yes, the past can talk to us. But only through an interpreter. This interpreter is called an ‘ARCHAEOLOGIST’.

4. Good morning lady and gentlemen, today I shall talk briefly on the subject ‘Archaeology’. Although the subject of digging into the past of the planet earth has extremely wide scope, I shall restrict myself to the history of man, only.

AIM

5. The aim of my talk today is to explain to you in brief, what is meant by archaeology, to give you a brief idea about the work of an archaeologist and the manner in which he goes about his business. At the end of my talk you will have a reasonable idea about the field of archaeology.

SCOPE

6. I shall be covering this topic in the following manner, (a) What is archaeology? (b) What are the related fields to archaeology? c) How does an archaeologist go about his work? d) How are the relative time periods of the artefacts found, fixed? (e) How does he interpret the exhibits found? (f) What are the problems he faces regarding the artefacts?

ARCHAEOLOGY

7. Archaeology is the art or science or both which makes possible the recovery and understanding of much of the human past. The word archaeology has been derived from two Greek words, namely,

(a) Archeia, meaning the ancient things and, (b) Logos, meaning the theory or the science.

8. Thus archaeology is the theory or science of the ancient things.

9. The archaeologist develops his understanding of past from the traces of the things which ancient men made; tools, weapons, utensils and other objects of daily use. In the language of archaeology these things are called the ‘artifacts’. These artefacts may range from the exquisite vessels of gold from the tomb of a king, to the charred remains of wood from a hearth in a cave. Both the types of artefacts are equally important to the understanding of how ancient men lived.

10. It has been said that there are two varieties of archaeological interests. The first is concerned with the western cultural heritage from classical times. It is called ‘classical archaeology’. For the archaeologists of this tradition the things of greatest interest and value, from the past are to be found in areas subjected to greek and roman influences. The second kind of archaeology is called the ‘prehistoric archaeology’. The archaeologists of this tradition concern themselves with remote prehistoric men and the traces of peripheral or exotic people whose history had nothing to do with western cultural origins.

RELATED FIELDS

11. Quite a few archaeologist are able to read some of the ancient languages. Some archaeologists are also able to assess age, sex and general physical condition from human skeletons. However, the archaeologists are not generally trained to interpret ancient languages and writings or human bones. What former men wrote about themselves or about their world is the concern of conventional historian, the philologist or the epigrapher; and the bones of ancient men are dealt with primarily by the physical anthropologist or human palaeontologist. 12. A new field ‘Human Palaeoecology’ is beginning to form with interests in the climates, land forms, animals and plants that have served as environment for man during his half million years of existence.

13. ‘Anthropology’ or simply called ‘study of man’, is able to come to some understanding of both biological and cultural behaviour of extinct human groups, by the means of the archaeology.

14. Apart from these a wide variety of fields, e.g. Botany, zoology, geology, art and history, physics and nuclear science, assist archaeology in achieving its objectives.

HOW DOES AN ARCHAEOLOGIST GO ABOUT HIS WORK?

15. A brief description of an archaeologist is that , a descriptive worker who describes, classifies, analyses and interprets the material remains of the man’s past. The main aim of the archaeologist is to place these material remains or artifacts in their historical context and apply his knowledge towards the interpretive description of man’s past.

16. The most direct findings of the work carried out by an archaeologist is the history of art and technology exhibited by a wide variety of the artifacts found. This he follows up by the interpretive findings such as social, religious and economical aspects of the man’s past. It is these inferences drawn that demands a high degree of skill of the archaeologist.

17. Now let us see the typical flow chart of the activities of an archaeologist. The activities can be broadly divided into three categories. They are,

(a) Field work. (b) Interpretation. (c) Publication of the results.

Field Work

18. Field work is further divided into,

(a) Preliminary work. (b) Actual field work or excavation.

19. Preliminary work is nothing but the survey, popularly known as the archaeological survey. It is directed towards discovering and recording of archaeological sites and their examination by methods other than spade and trowel. This helps the archaeologist in many ways. If he is interested in a particular period of occupation and the survey of the site indicates the occupation at different periods, then he can go on with next site; saving him a lot of time, money and efforts. With surveys the extent of a culture area, estimates of areas population density and the centre of greatest concentration can be made without digging at all.

20. Some of the methods adopted by the archaeologist in finding a site are as follows,

(a) Study old records and maps to identify and correlate the sites mentioned in these records to the present day geographical area. (b) Deliberate reconnaissance of the probable site area. (c) Tapping ground for different sounds from underground structures. (d) Ariel photography. This specially in the early morning or evening gives very dramatic results revealing most of the ground features. (e) Accidental.

21. Once the survey is complete and the site is identified and located the archaeologist go for digging the site. These excavations fall under three categories,

(a) Planned excavation. This is a planned activity over an identified site. (b) Rescue excavation. The site is identified and located, but the excavation has been undertaken as a rescue mission rather than planned. The site might be under the threat of destruction at the hands of natural or artificial forces. (c) Accidental excavation. It is excavated accidentally by farmers, construction companies or amateur archaeologists.

Primary Evidence Of Archaeology

22. Culture, as defined by Robert Redfield, manifests in art and artifacts. This clearly implies that each culture has artistic and artifactual manifestations which are peculiarly its own. The primary evidence of archaeology consists, then, of the things made and used by man and of the elements of space and time. Just by comparison of the different assemblage of artifacts, the archaeologist can say that,

(a) Human cultures vary within themselves over a period of time, and (b) Different human cultures vary between themselves in space, even at the same time.

23. There are two principles concerning the primary evidence of archaeology. They are, (a) Horizontal style. The similarity of objects found in two different assemblages indicate the existence of the trade and contact between these two and establishes a near contemporiness of the two cultures. The more technologically or artistically complicated and unique appearing these commonly held artifacts seem to be, the more certain the archaeologist is of his presumption of contact, trade and near contemporiness. Statistics also helps here. More the number of such artifacts, the more convincing the proposition for contact and contemporiness. (b) Seriations. The assemblages depict the evolutionary development in a serial fashion. They depict the development of a culture over a period of time. For example, the weapon objects of past 200 years shall show the technological development from swords to rifles to machine guns. This shows the development over a period of time and other objects can be correlated to the known technological seriations and time periods can be identified.

24. Primary evidence of archaeology is thus made up of things. To be most useful these things should have association ship, they should be seen as part of an assemblage and not a single object. The object looses much of its archaeological meaning if it is lifted out of its context without record of the assemblage of its time and space.

INTERPRETATION

25. The process of interpretation is divided into two sub processes,

(a) Classification and analysis of exhibits. (b) Interpretation of exhibits in their historical context.

26. What comes from the field i.e. The photographs, maps, house plans, section drawings, notes and observations, potsherds, tools and other bulk categories, needs to be carefully classified to facilitate handling. Such classifications are usually done by the material and type. They may be classified as all the artifacts that had to do with a common process, e.g. Utensils that were used for cooking, weapons and tools used for hunting etc.

27. For interpretive reconstruction, an archaeologist apply the principles of stratigraphy and seriations. Seriation has been explained earlier. The stratigraphy is another primary evidence available to the archaeologist. The tendency of a particular site to be occupied over and again over a period of time results in different layers. Earlier occupation gets buried under a layer of earth and a new occupation begins and so on. When the site is dug vertically, it shows various occupations at different layers. The obvious interpretation is that the topmost was the most recent occupation while that at the bottom was the earliest occupation. It establishes a relative time element for the archaeologist. Now coming back to interpretive reconstruction, the archaeologist turns to experts in the natural sciences; traces of wood, grasses, grains and other food plants go to botanist, the bones of animals and shells of snails go to zoologist. Soil samples and specimens of minerals go to geologist. The data which all this material is made to reveal answer many questions concerning palaeoecology of the culture to which the assemblages and its particular layer in the site belonged.

28. One of the most critical and the most difficult part of the interpretive study is that of the time fixing. The assemblage received from the site has to be dated correctly so as to reveal its correct belonging to the peculiar and particular culture. In this course, he has to apply various techniques of time reckoning to arrive at the approximate time period of existence of these artifacts. Some of these techniques are listed below,

(a) Historical time. The archaeologist uses of what is conventionally called historical time because the written records exist for it. These written records go back to about 3500 BC in Mesopotamia and to about 3000 BC in Egypt. That in China goes back to 1500 BC and about same in Crete and Greece. There are lists of kings and dynasties and tomb inscriptions giving dates of some important events. This method generally results in relative dating. (b) Dating by tree rings. It is also called as ‘Dendrochronology’. This method depends on the fact that in some cases the rings of growth which trees add each year quite sensitively reflect minor climatic and rainfall variations. Charts of the characteristics pattern of annual growth extending back to about the beginning of the Christian era have been developed for certain trees in certain geographical areas. The annual growth pattern of logs found in a site in one of these regions can be compared with master chart and the fit indicates the date when the tree was felled. (c) Dating by verve. This is also annual growth type of chronology that is based on verves which are thin bands of silt laid down by rivers and streams. The pattern made by these verves as well as the fossil pollen of plants available in these verves can indicate the approximate time period. With this method one can go back up to 10000 years. (d) Radiocarbon dating. This is quite interesting method, in that it can indicate the actual date. It is based on the fact that all the organic matter when alive has a standard amount of radioactivity. Upon the death of plant or animal, the radioactivity begins to disappear. As the rate of disappearance is known, by knowing the amount of radioactivity still available in the organic exhibit, its actual date of death can be found out. This method can accurately date back to about 50000 years.

29. Once all the data is made available to him, the archaeologist analyses all the data and comes to the interpretive conclusion of the historical context of the artifacts.

30. The archaeologist then publishes his results and that’s how the past talks to us.

31. Before coming to an end, i would like to tell you some problem areas regarding the state of artifacts. As the time element progresses, things get deteriorated and destroyed. For an archaeologist it becomes increasingly difficult to collect, classify and interpret the artifacts those had deteriorated over a period of time and are getting deteriorated with every passing minute. The factors to be considered in context of preservation of these artifacts are,

(a) Strength and durability of materials. E.g. stone tools last much longer than that of bone or wood. Similarly iron objects rust and deteriorate fast whereas pottery items although break easily, the potsherds last longer. (b) Climate and other forces of nature. E.g. in the dry climate of Egypt dessert almost everything dries out and lasts for a very long period. In contrast, tropical forests are less friendly. (c) Cultural factors. E.g. Egyptians left plenty of assemblage well preserved in the tombs whereas Urn field people (Central Europe) left almost nothing due to their cultural factors. (d) Treasure seekers.

CONCLUSION

33. The scope of archaeology is immense. It embraces many and diverse fields such as history, art, anthropology, botany, zoology, geology, physics and nuclear science, finance, accounting and management. The archaeologist is a descriptive worker who painstakingly classifies, analyses and interprets the remains of man’s past. He has to concern himself of finding the site, excavation, collection and classification of artifacts found, careful and exhaustive analysis of these exhibits and finally the interpretation in the historic context. The most important factor in his interpretive study is that of fixing of the time element. For this he employs various methods such as dendrochronology and radiocarbon dating. A number of factors affect the way the artifacts are being preserved and he has to take this factor into consideration. What keeps him going on is the insatiable thrust of human being to know about himself and his predecessors.