Culture Heritage – Heritage and Destruction

Is there a difference in the destruction of the Great Wall of China verses the destruction of the Berlin Wall?  When is it ok to destroy heritage?  Does restoration justify destruction?  This post will explore some of these issues.

Everyone knows that archaeological excavation is destructive in nature.  The Rose Theatre here in London had its excavation stopped by the Arts because they feared the destruction of whatever remains there are of this important theatre where Shakespeare walked.  What remained?  Foundations only.  However, the remains of these types of theatres are very rare and the excavation of the remains would have provided much needed information about them.  For example, it is still not known how people reached the upper levels.  They obviously had to use stairs or ladders, but there is no physical evidence for either.  The excavation of the Rose might have provided that by revealing the existence of the suspected stair towers.  (For a modern example of these supposed towers see the reconstruction of the Globe Theatre on London’s River Walk).  Instead the remains were buried under dirt, concrete, and water.  You can visit the site but all you will see is a pond.

Most people (outside of the Pinheads in the Arts who stopped the Rose excavations) understand that responsible excavation is necessary destruction.  But what about the destruction of modern buildings to reconstruct the ancient as was done to build the Globe?  We all understand that the Berlin Wall was a simple of oppression and entrapment.  But few people realize that the Great Wall of China was the same to the people who lived then.  The atrocities connected with the Great Wall of China are astounding!  However, to touch it would be near anathema to most – me included.  Why?

The destruction of Saddam’s Palaces and statues was destruction of heritage because of what it symbolized, yet Auschwitz where millions were exterminated still stands.  To argue that ethically bad symbols need to be destroyed is not reality but is censorship and sanitation of history similar to what the Taliban did when they destroyed the Buddhas in Afghanistan or the Serbians who intentionally targeted more than 400 shells to the National Museum and Library in an attempt to erase evidence of other people’s culture.

While it is not realistic to save everything a decision needs to be made regarding what is “worthy” to be kept for posterity.  Some have questioned whether museums are really “temples where sacrifices are offered up as a way to apologize for the destruction of the past”.  This is certainly salvage language, but is it wrong?

Destruction is unfortunately a very real part of Ancient Egyptian history not only in the ancient past but also in the archaeologically more recent past.

There are two terms usually associated with heritage destruction: iconoclasm and iconoclash.  These were defined in our class in the following way…

Iconoclasm = when one knows what is happening and the motivation for the destruction is clear.

Iconoclash = when one does not know, one hesitates, or one is troubled by an action for which there is no way to know without further enquiry, whether something is destructive or constructive.

Unfortunately, issues in heritage studies are not clear.  We need to keep asking these questions and dialoguing in an effort to make better decisions for when history is destroyed for any reason it is lost forever.

Theory – Evolution

At the beginning the point must be made that this is not a post about the theory of evolution.  Archaeological evolutionary theory is not interested, per say, in biological evolution (although most archaeologists might assume this and work within that paradigm).  Rather archaeological theory is a look at social evolution and how it is used in the dynamics of culture.

 

Evolution may rightly be called the “ever-present” idea.  A look back over archaeological theory will demonstrate that it has gone in and out of fashion a few times.  This post will explore briefly how archaeological theory has used or not used evolution to explain social change.

 

The late 18^th century and early 19^th century saw the adaption of Darwin’s theory of evolution as an explanation for the change that occurs in culture.  This was called “Social Evolution”.  This was also the era of Enlightenment and Antiquarianism.  Archaeological theory moved away from this during the industrialization of the western world.  The end result was the rise of Cultural Historical approaches.

 

In the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries the problems of industrialization and conflict saw the beginnings of a move from Culture History back toward evolutionary ideas.  By the mid-20^th century New Archaeology became informed by Neo-evolutionism.  This continued with Processualism.

 

From the 80’s until the present, Post-Processual archaeology tried to move away from evolutionary theory but recent trends are starting to show a return to what is called Neo-Darwinian Archaeology, which is mostly Processual with a mix of some Post-Processual ideas.  However, everything begins to overlap at this point.

 

I’m not so sure that social evolution is a solid theory.  I have nothing fundamentally against it, just that I don’t see that it ever has happened in history.  I can see technologies in cultures improving but evolution assumes that there is a process that progresses something from simple to complex and each step along the way is an adaptation that is also an improvement on the earlier form.  The end result is naturally a better product then that, which at first existed.

 

However, is this really what happens?  Evolution suggests a natural process.  However, humans are not  robots.  They are thinking and unpredictable.  Sure they adjust somewhat to the environment that they are in, but they also rule the environment that they are in and shape it.  Evolution was originally (as promoted by Darwin) against the concept of huge jumps and yet we see this over and over again in human culture.  Just because there is process, doesn’t mean that it is an evolutionary process.  This is the fundamental mistake that I see with this cultural theory.

Archaeological Photography – Darkroom Development

Most archaeological photographs, when taken with film, use a black and white media.  I have had no experience in the actual development of film, since I am used to the digital method of using a printer with photo paper, so I was looking forward to learning about how this was done.  This post will share what we were taught about how film is developed.

I always thought that darkrooms used red light and so was disappointed to discover that many dark rooms do not use a red light since that is still light and will damage film.  So how does the actual film go from being in your camera with a latent image on it to a photo in your hand?

The film has a silver powder on it that reacts to light: lots of light equals lots of silver and little light equals only a little silver.  This is what makes the negative image on the film.  Thus, the film must be rewound in the cartridge before the back of the camera is opened (so as not to overexpose it).

Once this is done the film needs to be extracted from the cartridge and wound around a specially designed spool.  This needs to be done in complete darkness.  The cartridge is ripped open and the film extracted (be sure not to have wet hands as this can cause some swelling in the film).  Then the spool is dropped in a canister and the canister is filled with a liquid chemical solution that fixes the silver onto the film in a permanent way so that the film can be exposed to light.  All of this has to be done in complete darkness, which means that sometimes things can go wrong (like if you drop something and can’t turn on a light to find it).  However, once the film is in the canister and the lid on then the lights can be turned on.

Once the negatives have been made permanent you will need an enlarger to impress the image onto photo paper.  The enlarger is like a projector that shines light through a filter and through one frame of the negative at a time onto a flat surface below where the photo paper is.  This has to be done in near darkness as the photo paper that is used is naturally sensitive to light as the film was.

When the image has been exposed to the photo paper, the paper needs to go through a few washes (this is usually the part where you see the red light used in movies).  The first bath is in the developer liquid for about 1½ minutes.  Then the photo has to be put in a stop bath to stop the development.  Then it has to be washed in water to get the stop agent off of the paper.  Once this is done the paper needs to be dried.  This can be done by hanging the photo paper from a line with clothes pins or by putting it through a special drier.

The whole process is not complicated.  However, where it begins to get complicated is in the various methods used during the enlarging process.  Just like when the original picture was shot there are lots of variables to account for, in this process there are also many variables: the amount of light used to expose the photo, the strength of the filter used, the amount of time the paper is exposed, etc.

I came away from the process with a healthy and newfound respect for the professionals that make a living this way.  Certainly the world I came from (point and shoot, upload digital photos, manipulate image in Photoshop, and print digital photos on a desktop printer) takes skill, but to do it the old fashioned way takes skill and a ton of talent that I had not realized before.