Archaeology and Education – Learning from Objects

Archaeologists are detectives.  That is one of the appeals of the discipline.  It is, however, an unfortunate state of reality that the public sees archaeologists as treasure hunters.  The two tasks could not be further from each other.  Treasure hunters seek to find objects for their monetary value.  Archaeologists seek to learn from objects.  (The fact that archaeologists must also seek the objects for study might be where the confusion comes in.)  This post will discuss how to learn from objects as discussed in our class – Archaeology and Education.

To the archaeologist, objects have value not in the material they are made out of but in the information they can relate about the past.  An archaeologist is just as excited about an object made from clay as they are about one made from gold.  Both contain information that needs to be extracted that can help us understand the past better.  An archaeologist doesn’t care about the value of the material because the archaeologist would never dream of “selling” the object.  Its worth is far beyond any amount of money – as it is irreplaceable.  (In a much later post I will discuss the topic of the illegal antiquities trade as part of a culture heritage lecture.)  The information contained is not duplicated in any other object.  Each object has its value in this way.  A group of related objects also has a value.  And any object connected with its original context has an even higher value (something illicit diggers fail to understand).  The task of the archaeologist is to educate the public regarding this. 

It is also important to get adults and children to think from an archaeologist’s point of view rather than from a historian’s.  What is the difference, you might ask?  (And just by asking the question the point is made.)  An archaeologist deals on the level of evidence.  The historian deals on the level of interpretation of the evidence.  Both work with evidence (and both can be the same person).  However, while interpretation is important for presentation reasons, it is still (at least in some part) speculation.  Interpretation depends on a paradigm to interpret.  This falls into the realm of theory (which is constantly changing as ideas change).  The paradigm is just a tool to work with to help in interpretation (very much like a pair of glasses that one might put on to see through).  The public needs to understand that what is “fact” is not the interpretation but the actual evidence upon which the interpretation is based.  The public must also understand the bias (good or bad) of the paradigm used for that interpretation.

One way to help in this might be to have our historians write in a different way by presenting the evidence that they are using to interpret and to explain why their interpretations were made the way they were by revealing the paradigm used.  Another way might be to teach the public to be the detective themselves and to recognize the difference between evidence and interpretation.

Objects can help in this educating process.  Dr. Corbishley suggested a few games that could be used.  One, he called the “Skeleton game”.  In this game a person is selected at random from a group.  They are made to stand before the group for “investigation”.  Purely through observation, the group must try to “discover” all that can be learned from this person (as if the person were buried and found in their present condition).  The teacher (archaeologist) guides the questions.  The group should notice material (metal eyelets on shoes for example), height, girth, distinguishing features, etc (the evidence part) and try to work out who this person might have been or done from only the evidence available (the interpretation part).

Another game might be to present “odd” objects to the group (trying to pick unfamiliar objects so that the group would not already know what it was).  The group could then try to work out the objects use (interpretation) from whatever clues they might be able to discover (evidence) before the teacher (archaeologist) reveals the “truth” about the object.  In this way it should become clear how different evidence is from interpretation (as quite often the interpretation is not close to the actual reality because of lack of available information/evidence).  Buildings are objects as well (albeit usually unmovable) and can also be used in this way. 

It seems that a more responsible way to treat history would be to look at the past from evidence instead of from interpretation by recognizing and stating the limitations of evidence.  (All of us have learned something in school that was taught to us as “fact” only to discover later that it was not actually true but only someone’s interpretation.)  To accomplish this will certainly involve a lot more work.  Books will have to be written and classes redesigned.  It might even be necessary to completely rethink how history classes are taught and consider having a class on archaeology instead of history or to find a way to combine the two in a clear way.  Part of this will also certainly involve reeducating the public concerning the role of an archaeologist (for treasure is out there to be found – just not the type of treasure that is in most people’s minds).  To not do this is certainly irresponsible.