Crisis

It has been said that if America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold (or worse), and the crisis has certainly caught up with us all, even if the effects seem more pronounced in Britain than in most other European countries. Archaeology has been hit hard. The Institute for Archaeologists (IfA), an independent professional organization, reports the loss of 670 archaeological jobs in Britain since the summer of 2007 (that is, 17 per cent of all jobs in commercial archaeology), approximately 540 between October 2008 and April 2009, with further losses expected in the upcoming months (see http://www.archaeologists.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=376, accessed 7 August 2009).

Commercial archaeology is doing better in those European countries that have invested in infrastructure programmes. Actually, this is one of the reasons archaeology has been doing well in periods of economic crisis – it can be used as an ‘economically neutral’ job-creation program – putting men (and women) into work without producing competition for existing private firms. That it also produces ‘pride in past achievements’, be they local, regional or national, possibly more attractive than usual in times of crisis, is part of the heritage complex rightly criticized by Dawdy, though it is quite difficult to gauge the degree of intentionality there.

State of commercial archaeology

So what will be the impact of the current crisis on commercial archaeology?

Planning Policy Guidance 16 (PPG16), the 1990 British legislative document that made archaeological excavations part of the general planning process and thus forced developers to fund archaeology (http://www.planningportal.gov.uk/england/professionals/policy/policydocuments/englandppgpps/7916pppg16, accessed 26 October 2009), has certainly led to a boom of commercial archaeology in Britain. This has had a profound influence on the development of archaeological methods and the outlook of archaeology. Commercial archaeologists are providing a service, getting prehistoric and historic remains out of the ground, or, even more welcome, demonstrating that there is no archaeology at all. Basically, this is not different from the removal of toxic waste. In principle there is quality control by county archaeologists and the Institute of Field Archaeologists (IFA; see www.archaeologists.net) that oversees individual units and strives to develop and defend professional standards, but these are rather weak tools in the face of ‘economic realities’. My impression, admittedly based on extremely limited personal exposure and conversations with, again, only a limited number of colleagues, is that excavation standards in general have gone down since the introduction of PPG16. Commercially funded digs seem to be led by concerns of time efficiency and cost-effectiveness rather than by the ideals of ‘good archaeology’.

This has led to increasing specialization, meaning that the actual digger is not necessarily interested or indeed versed in the identification and dating of finds, as this is the job of the finds specialist, and the write-up of the site will be done by somebody else altogether, who may have never seen the actual excavation. But if the ‘dirty digger’ is not required to interpret the features, but simply fill in a form, he or she may approach this procedure in a less intelligent and thoughtful way (cf. Bradley 2006, 3). Things get done by rote. The MOLAS system (http://www.museumoflondonarchaeology.org.uk/NR/rdonlyres/056B4AFD-AB5F-45AF-9097-5A53FFDC1F94/0/MoLASManual94.pdf) has been almost universally adopted, even if by now every unit probably runs its own, slightly different version. Single-context recording is seen as the state of the art, and indeed the knowledge of other ways of excavating and recording seems to gradually get lost. I have marked numerous essays by students utterly baffled by other traditions of excavation, more than once amusingly termed the ‘culture-historical excavation method’, which made me realize that not enough theoretical justification for excavation methods is being taught; they are simply learned by rote as ‘the’ system for doing things.

There has been a degree of dissatisfaction with the state of affairs, and many TAGs have seen sessions on the state of field archaeology and the development of excavation and recording systems, normally with a lot of interesting discussions, but no perspective for change or, indeed, even a way forward.

Publication is one of the other big problems. The problem of grey literature has received ample attention, even if it is no nearer to a solution. Archaeological archives, their upkeep and their accessibility present a similar or even bigger problem (see, for example, Merriman and Swain 1999; Swain 1998).

In theory, the present crisis might provide a breathing space, the chance to look at developments since the introduction of PPG16 in 1990 in more detail with a view to systematic restructuring, rather than the usual run-of-the-day haphazard additions and ‘improvements’ that are not led by any systematic perspective. But this is not something to be achieved by those hanging on by their fingernails. It would require the input of a professional body with financial security and the chance to develop a long-term perspective.

There is also the question whether those made redundant in the present crisis, presumably now retraining for other professions, will return to archaeology once the crisis is past. Jobs in commercial archaeology are badly paid, there are not many possibilities for promotion and it is badly linked to academic research and the theoretical development of the discipline. Thus what may be a chance for stocktaking and the development of a new agenda and perspectives will probably rather lead to a loss of experienced practitioners.

Academic archaeology

Although a number of British universities have commercial units, the connection between university and unit is often not very close (Bradley 2006). Discussions of methodology seem to be very rare, in any case. On the Continent, technical innovations are often introduced by the antiquities services, not the universities which do not teach much on practical matters. As a matter of fact, it was proposed some time ago that in the current crisis university departments of archaeology would become more and more redundant, as the need for archaeologists would drop with the declining building industry and practical teaching could be taken over by the antiquities departments themselves (Oexle 2004, 266–67).

Bologna

Probably the biggest threat to Continental archaeology comes from the Bologna Process, which reorganized academic education and introduced the BA as the first academic degree (Kellermann, Boni and Meyer-Renschhausen 2009). The new structure is partly based on the British model, although Britain (wisely, in my opinion) never joined the Bologna Process. Britain has a much lower lecturer–student ratio than is common in Europe, where many archaeology departments have to stretch resources to make sure a complete curriculum can be taught. Either several departments with different specializations (prehistory, archaeology of the Roman provinces, classical archaeology, western Asiatic archaeology) had to combine or joint courses are offered with disciplines outside archaeology proper, for example history, history of art or classical studies. This leads to a degree that has a wider scope but is not tailored to produce professional archaeologists.

While in Britain a degree in archaeology can be a basis for a career in the army or in banking, in Germany, and probably in most parts of Europe, a degree in archaeology qualifies you to be an archaeologist, and nothing else – and a BA in archaeology qualifies you for nothing, and certainly not a job in archaeology, as most employers would expect an MA, if not a Ph.D., even for a field archaeologist.

Should archaeology be useful?

This was actually the first question I came up with when I saw the Archaeological dialogues forum, and my immediate answer was ‘no’.

I entirely agree with Dawdy on the problems of archaeology as heritage, although I do not think we need the example of Nazi Germany to make that point. Indeed, the dumbed-down history of research that is often used in this context is not very helpful. The relationship between archaeology and nationalism is far more complicated than usually acknowledged in tertiary accounts commonly used in overviews. In retrospect, the divide between the Good and the Bad – and the consequences of their actions – is made to look far too clear-cut. While we may all righteously disapprove of Kossinna and his nationalist and irredentist politics, there may be some of us who have used the occasional politically loaded expression in a grant application – whom does it harm, after all? It is far more fruitful to look at present-day uses of archaeological research.

At a closer look, the question about the usefulness of archaeology should rather be: useful to whom? One of the core questions of Shannon Dawdy's essay is whether archaeology is necessarily linked to nationalism. Again, there is a problem with the question itself, because it assumes that nationalism is unchanging and monolithic. The question is rather, which nationalism – and is all nationalism necessarily a bad thing? The nationalism of the emergent nations of 19th-century Europe or of the nations that tried to free themselves from European colonialism is certainly different from that of the imperial and colonizing powers of Old Europe.

When Frantz Fanon (1967, 154) described the psychological effects of colonialism on the colonized, he stated that the ‘claim to national culture, history in the past does rehabilitate that [African] nation and serve as a justification for the hope of a future national culture’ and thus a new, self-assured black identity (negritude). This statement rings uncomfortably essentialist in the present-day postprocessual climate and immediately invites the suspicion of manipulation and abuse of the past, but Frantz Fanon makes the point that colonialism not only rules the present, but the past as well. ‘By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures and destroys it’ (ibid.).

Now there is no doubt that both colonial and anti-colonial ideologies distort the results of archaeological research. But I have to admit that I get tired of the complaints of archaeologists about evil politicians who twist the results of our pure research towards certain insidious ends. No research is value-free, and we constantly manipulate the interpretation of the past by the selection of the sites we dig, the methods we use and the interpretations we put on them. There is no neutral interpretation of the remains of the past, and neither should we strive for it. The point was forcefully made by Shanks and Tilley (1987a; 1987b). Two very different conclusions were drawn from these books:

1. 1) that there is a need for an archaeology that is more aware of its inevitable ideological burden,

2. 2) that everybody's interpretation is as good as our own.

Now I call the second one, which seems the more generally accepted, professional suicide and intellectual cowardice. But the first conclusion should lead, in my opinion, to a more responsible and politically aware archaeology.

Unfortunately, there still is no lack of people looking for origin stories. Many of the new postcommunist states want to reinvent their national identity, but a lot of the ‘old’ nationalism as well is still alive and kicking, looking for arguments that ‘our nation is older than theirs’. The Internet is a fertile source here, though its influence is difficult to gauge. Certainly a lot of effort is put into the pursuit of this aim, characteristically ignoring source criticism and the history of research. Ideas one would have thought safely dead for generations dependably resurface in Wikipedia and related sites. A lot of the stuff produced looks rather pathetic and almost funny, but the problem is that ‘cold’ nationalism and its armoury can be activated at very short notice (cf., for example, Kohl, Kozelsky and Ben-Yehuda 2009) and then these things stop looking funny at all.

Archaeology not only works on the national level, it has also been used to bolster local, regional, ethnic and supranational identity (for example, of the European Union; Gramsch 2000). So it would be more appropriate to ask if archaeology is necessarily linked to identity formation.

Heritage

In order to justify its existence, presumably any science has to show its relevance to the present. But it certainly need not make this perceived relevance the core of its agenda. Dawdy underlines the self-serving nature of many outreach projects. I would add that it has also led to a certain neglect of the bodies and people already interested in archaeology: the traditional archaeological societies, volunteers and fieldwalkers. That is not to deny there have been interesting results in community archaeology – but probably the same results could have been achieved in projects containing no archaeology at all. For some reason, archaeology has been keen to present itself as inclusive in the sense that everybody can do it. This has nothing to do with inclusion and outreach, but rather with short-selling our professional experience and expertise. Why not encourage some more do-it-yourself surgery or nuclear physics instead.

Heritage is normally not an issue of our own choosing or making. But it seems a rather harmless concept easily exploited for more academic aims. We might feel guilty, but not very much: what harm is done, after all? But if we do not agree with its basic tenets – admittedly never expressed clearly anywhere, which is part of the problem – it is not enough simply to walk away from it. We have to show up what is wrong and why it is wrong.

There are several ways of constructing continuity between the past and the present, of which biological descent is only one (Sommer 2007). But the latter has dominated the discussion in the 20th century. ‘Our common heritage’ changes all too easily into ‘the work of our ancestors’.

But even a narrative that avoids biological links and concentrates on the ‘general progress of mankind’ can easily slip into the colonialist/imperialist mould, as the ‘First World’ is normally presented as the apogee of all human progress and the rest of the world is classified as ‘less developed’. This is a problem that also besets the idea of ‘World Heritage sites’: while the UNESCO claims that ‘World Heritage sites belong to all the peoples of the world, irrespective of the territory on which they are located’ (http://whc.unesco.org/en/about/), the selection of sites is still severely biased towards location in Western Europe, and the monumental remains of ‘ancient civilizations’ dominate the humbler remains of more egalitarian populations presumably practising a more sustainable lifestyle. Indeed, I wonder which message sites like Hadrian's Wall or the German–Roman frontier (Limes) are supposed to present. A highly visible barrier to keep out and control ‘less developed’ barbarians built by an aggressive and exploitative empire seems hardly a monument to celebrate.

Any discipline that tells stories about the past is implicitly political.

So let's not only not do it, let's also be explicit about why we don't want to do it! There is a certain intellectual laziness in approaching some basic questions of archaeology. What is the relation between similarities of material culture and self-defined groups of whatever nature? Kossinna's well-known answer was that similarites in material culture equal (mainly) biological and cultural affinities, a point of view shared by Childe. This is anathema now, of course, and individual agency and the active use of material culture have taken centre stage, somehow to the detriment of the social side of agency theory. Often, we are not clear about that question ourselves, and definitely have not made enough effort to think about the presentation/explanation to outsiders/the general public.

Inside archaeology, the discussion of the concepts of identity, ethnicity and ethnogenesis (and to a lesser degree the dissolution of ethnic groups, which does not seem to have a proper name of its own) has reached a rather high level of theoretical awareness, if not always terminological sophistication (Shennan 1989; Olsen and Kobyliński 1991; Graves-Brown, Jones and Gamble 1996; Jones 1997; Pohl 1998; Smith 2003; Hakenbeck and Matthews 2004; Casella and Fowler 2005; Lucy 2005; Rieckhoff and Sommer 2007). Most of it is based on a constructivist approach, taking the work of Frederik Barth (1969) as its starting point. We interpret the definition and formation of ethnic groups as contextual and potentially very changeable, and we can take a long-term perspective on cultural cohesion.

Prehistoric ethnicity has huge implications for present-day ethnicity if it can show the different ways ethnic identity has been formed, and the different categories employed. Archaeology is also the only discipline with the time depth to show the changes in ethnic identity, which seems to be important in some periods of history and rather negligible in others.

But there is the implicit assumption that this is too complicated for the general public and that they require some dumbed-down version of it. Of course, to explain theories of identity formation is more complicated than simply selling heritage, continuity down the ages and unchanging tribal identity. But then, who claimed that public archaeology was easy? Neil Faulkner's (2008) recent scathing criticism of Holtorf's Archaeology is a brand (2008) (‘patronizing snobbery’ and ‘good old-fashioned elitism’ – the assumption being that the masses are stupid and only interested in cheap thrills) might well be extended to many people practising heritage: it is an archaeology ad usum infantis. And it is hurting the public image of archaeology (see also Kristiansen 2008). I claim that we can be accessible without oversimplifying matters – but it needs a lot of thought and commitment. Public archaeology is not simply selling archaeology, but should be an academic subject with a proper academic background in its own right.

While I utterly agree with Shannon Dawdy's point that archaeology cannot change the world, or, as a student of mine succinctly expressed it, ‘if you want to change society, you need a gun, not a fucking trowel’, we should not restrict ourselves to ‘safe’ subjects.

While Neo-Druids and ultra-feminists may be mainly seen as eccentric and highly entertaining, demands for the reburial of Neolithic remains utilizing legislation intended for the remains of members of the First Nations (Blain and Wallis 2004; http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/ aveburyreburialconsultation) are threatening archaeological research in a rather clever way. While postcolonial guilt has softened the discussion of reburial claims and the biological, rather than cultural, definitions of ethnicity used in parts of the relevant legislation, there seems to be no reason to avoid confrontation here. Maybe we have become too cautious, too polite. I am tired of this politeness, which also involves not really taking the other seriously, not seeing them as worthy of true opposition – and, in a way, cheapening the very real suffering of colonized people. The end of politeness also means that we are forced to define our own positions more clearly.

The interpretation of the prehistoric past by right-wing groups has not stopped with the Second World War. Re-enactment and reconstruction, theoretically still insecure, despite numerous attempts to the contrary (for example Exarc; see www.exarc.eu), and still not represented as an academic subject – but highly visible – are especially exposed here. In Germany, at least, demonstrations and re-enactment were definitely below the academic radar ten years ago. Gerhard Bosinski at Cologne University termed experimental archaeology the ‘retreat into the practical sphere’ (‘Rückzug ins praktische’), implying that it was the resort of the academically challenged. While the attitude has changed, there is still no chair of experimental archaeology in Continental Europe. The belated enthusiasm of some academic archaeologists (e.g. Lüning 2005) has managed to ignore most of the theoretical discussion that has already taken place.

The recent scandal around the group Ulfhedar, which was employed by major German museums for public events, and which openly displays fascist symbols banned in Germany, is only one example here (Mölders and Hoppadietz 2007; Schlegelmilch 2007). What is needed is not retreat into useful applications, but open confrontation on a sound theoretical basis (Mölders 2008). What we need is a more publicized informed discussion of sources, of archaeology's political implications and of the ways the past is constructed. In other words: talk about methods and problems instead of presenting badly researched ‘pictures’ full of unreflected stereotypes.

I remain doubtful about the kind of ‘useful archaeology’ advocated by Dawdy. While we should strive to address questions of current importance – and there is no question that we have a lot to contribute – we should not let ourselves be reduced to that area. And it is not as if we can escape politics this way: was New Orleans destroyed by Hurricane Katrina or by George Bush Jr?

In conclusion, I would claim that archaeology always is political and always should be political. I suspect that Dawdy would agree with that, as her final reference to Benjamin seems to indicate. I wish she had expanded a bit more on that theme. Archaeology needs to be more political, not less. But the very necessary loss of innocence (Clarke 1973) seems to have changed into a loss of confidence at the moment.