Many voices, among them Lord Byron, Ibn Khaldun and Confucius, have urged us to learn from the past. We can certainly learn from our forebears, but we must ask the right questions. Amongst the Ruins is an excursion through archaeology and history that searches for the present and future in the past. The author’s magnifying glass examines seventeen sites around the world, from the borders of the Stone Age to the present. They tell often complex tales of decline and collapse. His definition of such events revolves around the notion that immortality is the successful passing on of ideas. An authority on cultural heritage, Darlington argues that ruins are the heart of his chosen subject. They represent both failures and successes. This is a search for the present and the future in the past, which explores the collapse of ancient civilisations, the demise of ruling elites and the disappearance of modern communities, telling specific tales of decline and collapse.
The seventeen examples are an eclectic array that includes Bronze Age stone circles from Ireland, an Arctic whaling station, an abandoned saltpetre mining community in Peru and moai from Rapa Nui. This book has one fundamental assumption: that nothing lasts forever. Darlington reminds us that ‘we celebrate the architecture of the past in our own moments, seek to conserve that which we value now, and at the same time try to predict what future generations will cherish’.
The chosen locations lie in five general categories: climate change, natural hazards, human disaster, war and economy. Each example is linked to the others in cogent introductions, which, for example, present the reasons why Arctic whalers share space with desert civilisations such as the Garamantes of the Sahara. From the familiar phenomena of global warming, we move on to natural hazards like earthquakes and tsunamis, the drowning of Port Royal in the Caribbean and the destruction of Plymouth on Montserrat. The section on disasters caused by humans includes the little-known Sumerian city of Girsu in southern Iraq, which offers a sobering lesson on the dangers of neglectful conservation. The island of St Kilda off northern Scotland, abandoned by its permanent residents in 1930, is now the most important seabird sanctuary in Europe. Rapa Nui is a well-known World Heritage location. Darlington offers a nuanced analysis of the future of Rapa Nui, in which heritage conservation and tourism will play an important role.
In his Conclusion, the author asks what we have learnt from ancient collapse. He argues that there are rarely single causes for collapse, especially those that are under-represented in the archaeological or historical record, like the poor or enslaved. Second, change is inevitable, which means that our successes in adapting to it must be well grounded in the past. We have much to learn from ancient buildings, but not all the solutions used in the past were necessarily successful. The same applies to restorations and repairs carried out as a sign of returning normality. But conservation often means physical restoration, which has priceless value when considering global development and the social advancement of humankind. Moving major archaeological sites is not necessarily a solution. Finally, loss is inevitable. Conservation is, in the final analysis, the questions surrounding management of change and how this could be done with the help of a strong sense of Place, with a capital P.
The section on war focuses on the Assyrian palace at Nimrud in northern Iraq, ravaged by nineteenth century archaeologists, and by ISIS militants in 2014. This part of the book is, above all, about loss, the accidental and deliberate abandonment of cultural heritage, and how we handle the consequences, a much-neglected issue in today’s archaeology. The essay on Abu Simbel and the Nubian sites in the Economy section again raises the issues of success and failure in conserving the past.
This is an eloquently written and thoroughly researched book that paints wonderful impressions of the issues facing archaeologists today. The author has a refreshing global perspective as he ranges widely, taking a seemingly haphazard but thought-provoking journey through the past. If someone is new to archaeology, or for that matter to cultural heritage and history, this is an excellent place to start one’s exploration. I only wish that it was longer, for some of the cultural heritage discussions could be more comprehensive. This book will entertain and instruct you – and the colour pictures add much to the text.
