Archaeology is a Brand! by Cornelius Holtorf and illustrated by Quentin Drew

Mar 25, 2007 Alun Science, The Past 4 Comments Archaeology, Book, Cornelius Holtorf, Pop Culture, Review

I did have some qualms about review­ing this book before it arrived. It’s a free review copy, so I was won­der­ing what to do if it turned out to be awful. I tend not to write neg­at­ive reviews if I can help it, unless some­thing is sur­pris­ingly bad, because I prefer to spend my time talk­ing about things which deserve atten­tion. For­tu­nately this remains an unsolved puzzle, because Archae­ology is a Brand! by Cor­nelius Holtorf and illus­trated by Quentin Drew is (unsur­pris­ingly) good.

In fact I shall be cheer­fully tak­ing ideas out of this book for a few posts in the future. The reason is that this book tackles an under-appreciated aspect of archae­ology, it’s pub­lic per­cep­tion. Holtorf argues that archae­ology is in an envi­able pos­i­tion com­pared to other aca­demic sub­jects as it is one of the few fields which seems to enjoy mass appeal. Yet des­pite this the pub­lic per­cep­tion of archae­ology seems to remain a major prob­lem for some in the pro­fes­sion. In one of the many quot­able pas­sages he says:

I have given up count­ing the num­ber of exhib­i­tions, edu­ca­tional events and pub­lic­a­tions that are shout­ing into the reader’s face that “the real archae­olo­gist works prac­tic­ally never like Indi­ana Jones/Lara Croft.” Trans­lated, that means as much as “If you hap­pen to be inter­ested in archae­ology because of Indi­ana Jones/Lara Croft, then this isn’t for you!” Archae­ology is thus sud­denly outed as a dif­fer­ent kind of ‘per­son’ that you thought and hoped it was, a per­son that lacks some of the traits you found most appealing.

Well so what? He con­tin­ues:

It is the equi­val­ent to Green­peace begin­ning a pub­lic present­a­tion about its work by stat­ing that “the real Green­peace act­iv­ist works prac­tic­ally never in a small rubber-dinghy fight­ing illegal whalers.” Although true, this would achieve noth­ing except ali­en­ate an ini­tially favour­able audi­ence before it has had an oppor­tun­ity to hear what you actu­ally want to convey.

p134

Cor­nelius Holtorf argues that the pub­lic per­cep­tion of archae­ology is of huge value, and that under­stand­ing how archae­ology is received by the pub­lic could be a major asset in pub­lic com­mu­nic­a­tion. Archae­olo­gists simply don’t know how well-loved they are.

Thus the open­ing couple of chapters are spent explain­ing in simple terms to aca­demic archae­olo­gists what any fresh under­gradu­ate could tell them. Archae­ology is a source of an aston­ish­ing amount of imagery in our soci­ety, and that the imagery is over­whelm­ingly pos­it­ive. This is undoubtedly a case of stat­ing the obvi­ous but it’s done well and, as later chapters show, it is argu­able that archae­olo­gists do need to have plainly obvi­ous facts put in front of them.

The third chapter exam­ines how archae­ology escapes from ivory towers into the wild. One of the strik­ing fea­tures of this chapter is the sim­il­ar­ity in present­a­tion of the past in the three coun­tries he uses as case stud­ies, Sweden, Ger­many and the UK. Holtorf’s ana­lysis of some archae­ology pro­grammes as a hybrid of his­tory, travel and adven­ture would seem to be shared by those work­ing in the industry. He also brings out a detect­ive strand in both the UK and Sweden in archae­olo­gists examin­ing the local past.

Holtorf then moves on to how people think about archae­ology and his find­ings are bad news for me. I’ve quietly been refus­ing to talk to TV for around the past year fol­low­ing a couple of tedi­ous and time-wasting exper­i­ences. I didn’t put a note up about it, because it seems a bit arrog­ant for a grad-student to be announ­cing a boy­cott of tele­vi­sion. The com­pan­ies have played their part by not con­tact­ing me recently either, so it’s going well. Unfor­tu­nately Holtorf argues that tele­vi­sion is by far and away the major con­duit for pub­lic con­sump­tion of archae­ology. The news­pa­pers are the second most pop­u­lar method. The con­tri­bu­tion of the inter­net in his study is min­imal. I could argue his find­ings are dated as they’re a couple of years old. Yet exper­i­ence shows that if I want a boost of vis­it­ors then writ­ing about a history-themed pro­gramme is an easy way to get them, which sug­gests that the pop­u­lar view of the past is still TV-driven.

What archae­ology is is also bad news for me. Archae­ology is dig­ging in the pub­lic mind, and I much prefer sur­vey. Encour­agingly Holtorf also argues that the other major asso­ci­ation is with find­ing how people lived in the past. Again this may seem obvi­ous, but so would other options like dis­cov­ery or find­ing treas­ure. This would seem to tie with per­sonal exper­i­ence in that when people visit a dig it’s not enough to tll them what you’ve found as the follow-up ques­tion is always “How do you know?”. The aver­age mem­ber of the pub­lic with an interest in the past is not stu­pid, and it’s nice to see a reminder of that.

Another find­ing is that people want to do archae­ology. People can be sur­prised that the pay for dig­gers is so low, but man­agers of other jobs rarely get let­ters like:

Dear Sir,
We are two tour­ists seek­ing adven­ture on our hol­i­days. Can we please wear big rub­ber boots and clean out your sew­ers? We’re will­ing to pay for the experience.

Yet give people a trowel and an ancient sewer to excav­ate and they’re delighted. The fact that archae­ology is hands-on is part of what Holtorf calls archaeo-appeal, espe­cially if you don’t think too hard about what you have your hands on.

Chapters five and six were the chapters I found most thought provoking.

Chapter five is The Archae­olo­gist in Pop­u­lar Cul­ture: Key Themes. This exam­ines how Indi­ana Jones, Lara Croft and Dr Cor­nelius (Planet of the Apes) are por­trayed. Holtorf has iden­ti­fied four major themes found in the pop­u­lar image of an archae­olo­gist: Adven­ture, Detec­tion, Rev­el­a­tion and Caring for the past. Review­ing this sec­tion is a chal­lenge, because stated baldly like that it seems another exer­cise in stat­ing the obvi­ous. Cer­tainly I found it obvi­ous after he’d writ­ten it.

The attrac­tion of this model is that this doesn’t just apply to fic­tional archae­ology. My ini­tial reac­tion when I read the first report of Homo Floresi­en­sis was: “Wow, that’s amaz­ing. It’s a pity that it won’t get the atten­tion it deserves.” With this model the attrac­tion becomes obvi­ous, the adven­ture of dig­ging on a remote island in the trop­ics, the case being built on close exam­in­a­tion of the bones and the rev­el­a­tion of recent cous­ins for mod­ern human­ity. Add in the later argu­ments about the care of the bones, and it clearly hit sev­eral major themes.

Chapter six is about Strategies of Engage­ment. Why pub­lic archae­ology? The answer isn’t clear and there is no con­sensus among archae­olo­gists them­selves. Edu­ca­tion is the most obvi­ous model. Archae­ology is a pub­lic good which improves a nation by its con­sump­tion. A second option is Pub­lic Rela­tions. This model asserts that Archae­ology relies on the good­will of the pub­lic and this needs to be cul­tiv­ated. This may or may not be com­pat­ible with the Edu­ca­tion model. Holtorf also pro­poses a third model, which is the one I agree with most, and yet also the one with which I dis­agree the most.

Holtorf fol­lows Fey­e­rabend in arguing that there is a need to demo­crat­ise sci­ence, and that mor­ally people should have a right to par­ti­cip­ate in archae­ology. This fol­lows from the asser­tion that all world views and think­ing tra­di­tions should enjoy equal social status and state sup­port. I dis­agree with his route because I’m not sure how equal­ity can mean­ing­fully exist in a soci­ety. Equal­ity is equal­ity of what? Politi­cial equal­ity, social equal­ity, eco­nomic equal­ity, phys­ical equal­ity? Without these then a stable sys­tem of equals may not be pos­sible. Instead I’d argue that rather than enabling demo­cracy, par­ti­cip­a­tion is a symp­tom of demo­cracy. One of the key fea­tures of sci­ence is that it is open to chal­lenge. If you don’t believe the Earth is round, then you can test your idea with some obser­va­tions and simple geo­metry. If you dis­agree with Particle Phys­i­cists then you can build your own multi-billion dol­lar particle accel­er­ator and test your ideas. Ok, so that doesn’t work so well, but archae­ology is not so dif­fi­cult to par­ti­cip­ate in. Indeed loc­ally there are plenty of field­walk­ers find­ing new sites and adding data that may dis­prove cur­rent ideas and no sound philo­soph­ical reason to exclude the pub­lic from archae­olo­gical prac­tice. Real­it­ies of fund­ing may inter­vene, but this is not an argu­ment against par­ti­cip­a­tion in itself.

The final chapter brings the vari­ous themes together. Again Holtorf seeks to emphas­ise the pecu­li­ar­ity of archaeology’s pub­lic image:

It is deeply ironic that noth­ing seems to be harder for archae­olo­gists to get to grips with in their rela­tions with non-archaeologists than their seem­ingly lim­it­less and vir­tu­ally untain­ted over­all pop­ular­ity that is unri­valled among aca­demic disciplines.

p134

There has been a phase in archae­ology where people have sought to emphas­ise their schol­arly cre­den­tials by reject­ing pop­ular­ism. If you have a simple per­cep­tion of schol­arly versus pop­u­lar then writ­ing texts which are inac­cess­ible must by their sheer unpop­ular­ity be schol­arly. If pop­u­lar is bad, then what hap­pens when archae­ology which was con­sidered schol­arly becomes pop­u­lar? Efforts to make some­thing access­ible would also appear to cheapen a work, which could make the half of the book I haven’t talked about problematic.

“This week we will be look­ing at some more — er — archae­ology thingies; but best of all there will be lots of close-up shots of my latest McQueen and Prado tight, but dur­able out­door range.“

p96

The book is extens­ively illus­trated with car­toons by Quentin Drew. It’s a mixed suc­cess. Some of the illus­tra­tions are incon­sequen­tial, though make the pages look friendly. Some are both funny and apt, adding more to the text. How­ever I won­der of the illus­tra­tions fol­lowed the text, because there are also illus­tra­tions which raise ques­tions which aren’t really tackled in the text. For instance gender roles in pop­u­lar archae­ology is a big issue, and a few of the car­toons hit this. It is some­thing which isn’t so much con­sidered in the text, though Holtorf notes the import­ance of beards. I would also have liked to have seem some multi-frame strips to develop ideas. Archae­ology: the Graphic Novel doesn’t seem like such an bad idea after this.

I think this is an area where archae­olo­gists have been some­what slow to exam­ine. Des­pite the self-conscious politi­cism of archae­ology in the 80s and 90s, it’s Clas­si­cists which have done more with what they call Recep­tion. Clas­si­cists have been happy to work within Film Stud­ies for quite a while. Though the name of the forth­com­ing con­fer­ence on pop cul­ture may be Clas­sics Hell, there’s no short­age of speak­ers. In con­trast I can’t recall the same extens­ive treat­ment of archae­ology as pop­u­lar cul­ture. In Archae­ology the pub­lic is treated as a resource in museum stud­ies, or stake­hold­ers in her­it­age affairs. This book is a step in redress­ing that bal­ance. There’s plenty to dis­cuss, is Archae­ology really a brand? To what extent is Archae­ology per­ceived as a pro­cess, and how do Archae­ology and His­tory dif­fer in the pub­lic ima­gin­a­tion? Finally archae­olo­gists are also mem­bers of the pub­lic; to what extent are unex­amined ideas absorbed from pop­u­lar cul­ture embed­ded in their own work? This book provides a step­ping stone into Holtorf’s other recent book From Stone­henge to Las Vegas.

Like Holtorf’s pre­vi­ous book Archae­ology is a Brand! suf­fers from the same prob­lem in terms of aca­demic cred­ib­il­ity in that it’s a pleas­ure to read. Des­pite this is it a good book? For me a good book is one which brings to light new inform­a­tion, new ideas or new ques­tions. If you’re inter­ested in the pub­lic per­cep­tion of archae­ology, then by that meas­ure this is a good book.