In both French and Italian, the words for “story” and “history” are the same.
I’m Emma, a graduate student chasing after an M.Sc in anthropology. I began my program because I thought it was the right thing to do, career-wise, and because I figured that my desire to study humanity was so insatiable that the only way to do it was through school. Don’t mistake my irreverance for unhappiness: I love my department, I love what I do. It’s just that, occasionally, I daydream about what things could look like if we weren’t writing within the strict confines of academia. What would archaeology look like beyond them?
I love stories. I have worked in bookstores for a good chunk of my adolescent/adult life. I find my way back to it, Forrest Gump my way into it like a stream on a mountaintop finds the river below. Inevitable, but not in a scary way. It feels, sometimes, like I go off for a year to play grown-up at some museum job on a fixed-term contract before finding my way back to the waiting arms of a bookshop. I could insert here a romantic history of my nerdy childhood, my devotion to Percy Jackson and propensity to seek refuge in the pages of a classic novel, my inability to focus on things which bored me and a habit of weaving loose paragraphs into short stories like some fledgeling literary Penelope with a unibrow. But I don’t have to, because my story is essentially identical to those of my peers.
For me, literature and archaeology are a perfectly obvious marriage: at their hearts, it’s just rabidly curious people who love humanity trying very hard to understand it. Scientists and novelists both spend their days observing and imagining; theorists and poets are both looking for the right language to describe specific behaviours. Landscape archaeologists would easily find themselves buried in the nature writings of Mary Oliver, and fans of Cormac McCarthy might find parallels between The Road and one woman’s hurried journey across quick sands in ancient New Mexico some 22,000 years ago. (It’s no shock that Ursula K. LeGuin studied anthropology and was indeed the daughter of one of the discipline’s most well-known sons.)
Stories are the heart of humanity. Archaeology concerns itself with true ones and mythology refuses to comment. When archaeologists dream, magic and wonder go hand-in-hand with academic rigour.
But then, I have to point out that archaeology is a science, and thus prizes truth above all else. (This is inconvenient for telling a good story.) That’s a problem by itself, because while we archaeologists might aspire to truth, we can’t quite produce it. Like, for example: it’s true that Stonehenge was constructed by hauling stone hailing from quarries within a radius of 200ish miles. (And +100 points for the archaeologists who figured that out through years of meticulous lab and field research!) That’s true, sure.
But to talk of the Truth behind Stonehenge, to tell its True story - science alone can’t do that. Because see also: what was Stonehenge built for, specifically? How could we ever really know? Wasn’t it probably a multitude of reasons anyway? Who did the hauling? Why choose that specific stone? What prompted the design? What did this place mean to each individual? And so on and so forth… To tell a true story, you still need mythology. Imagination. To quote Dr. Oppenheimer (or at least Cillian Murphy’s interpretation of Christopher Nolan’s Robert J. Oppenheimer): “theory only takes us so far”.
To me, archaeology must be the middle ground where science meets story. If there’s a hill I would die on in today’s essay, it’s that archaeological theory is a form of storytelling - meticulously-researched, well-founded, scientifically-backed storytelling. (The science is what sets us apart from the Anc*ent Ali*ns.) Take, again, the odyssey of our courageous woman in Ice Age New Mexico: we know her foot size, so we can guess her stature and sex; we can topographically map her footstep, so we can determine the child-sized weight she was carrying on one side of her body; we’ve studied the paleoclimate of the region, so we know what kind of weather she was facing; and we’ve found the giant sloth and mammoth prints trailing near her own. From there, there’s not much else to say, and so we can’t help but tumble into myth. All of these stories could be equally True: a heroic young mother hauling her baby across the wet barren sands, escaping untold tragedy to build their a life in a new tribe. Or wait, no - an older sister, carrying her sibling across the plains to spend the week with their divorced dad. Or better yet, the world’s coolest babysitter taking her charge on a field trip to see some wildlife. And actually, I’ve been using she/her this whole time, but who even knows what this person thought of their own identity?
Point being: imagination has a role to play, whether we strive for academic objectivity or not. Pretending otherwise is just silly. Find the facts and let your mind run wild!1
This has been a rambling sort of introduction to my whole deal. I have thoughts on pseudoarchaeology, ancient gender and sexuality, popular depictions of archaeology, public engagement, storytelling (duh), travel, and so much else. They keep me up at night and I talk about them to my sister’s dog when she’s not home. (Winnie is an exceptional listener, and I like to think that her bulging eyes and furtive stares are indications of her curious nature.) I think writing them all down is more rewarding, though, so if any of this interests you, perhaps you might consider following me along.
À +,
Emma
within reason
love love love this!! especially winnie’s cameo