Hi everyone,
I reckon this list is a bit too serious sometimes. That's fine, but
sometimes I think we could do with a little bit of fun. I order to do that,
I've written a fictive story about some of the problems surrounding
archaeology. Most likely, some will think it's cynical, some ironical.
That's up to the reader to decide.
Bjorn
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Once upon a time there were a couple of people who called themselves
"archaeologists". One day the archaeologists worked at an excavation. They
were digging in the dirt, trying to find something they called "artefacts".
The artefacts were supposed to have originated from something they called
"prehistory". The archaeologist were very busy, They were measuring the
artefacts, drawing pictures of them, they were making statistics of them,
and they were happy. One day they all shouted HOORAY! "We have found the
objective truth, let us go to the pub, have a pint, and be merry!
- Hey hoo, bartender, pints of Guinness please!
The archaeologists started to indulge in heavy drinking, and the discussion
circulated around, shovels, layers, broken wheelbarrows, prehistory,
interpretations, and of course, jokes about other archaeologists.
All of a sudden, a drunk longhaired guy dressed in black appeared and asked:
- What's the essence of prehistory? What's the essence of interpretations?
Are there any essences at all? What are you on about?
The archaeologists laughed and shouted:
- A postmodernist! Wow, what a thrill! Lets have some fun with Mr. "nothing
at all exist".
- So tell me, what is prehistory?
- Well, prehistory is the past.
- So, prehistory is no longer present?
- It is present, but it's gone.
- How could that be?
- What a stupid question! Prehistory is gone, it's the past, but now, in
the present, we dig it up, so it exist in the present as well.
- But what is it?
- Hm...what do you mean?
- See, is it the artefacts that you dig up, is it the meanings you project
to the artefacts, and are these meanings in some way connected to
prehistory *itself*, or are these meanings values and understandings from
your
social and cultural positions? What is it?
- Hm, what do you mean? The jolly archaeologists started to get angry.
- Are prehistory something that have essence of itself, and in itself, or
is it a your own subjective construction?
- What do you mean "construction"? If we dig up a pot from a prehistoric
culture, then, of course, it is a pot from a prehistoric culture. How could
that ever be a construction? Of course it is an objective interpretation. A
pot is a pot is a pot! get it?
- But everything we know, say, and think, of "pots", are meanings from the
present, not from the past. Therefore, prehistory can't have anything to do
with the "real" past! And even if you had a time machine and went to the
"real" past, and asked people about the pot, you would probably get
different answers depending who you asked. Of course, your meaning of the,
so called pot, are not an objective interpretation, not even a subjective
interpretation, it is an metaphysical illusion of a past that never existed
in the first place! And behind that illusion resides nothing but emptiness.
For example, if you take apart a wagon, what exist? The essence or soul of
the wagon? Not likely. And the same goes with prehistory. If you take apart
your own meanings about it, nothing is left but emptiness. And the
artefacts are nothing else but "materiality", in it self, and of itself.
All meaning around this materiality are meanings that are articulated
through the mode of narrativity, get the picture?
- Hm...lets get the hell out of here, this guy is mad!
The end
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