Archaeographer

This is a mirror site of my weblog on all things archaeological. (And still in process of transfer.)

It ran for a couple of years between June 2003 and October 2005. As well as a commentary on items in the archaeological news, it was a way I found to explore aspects of our contemporary archaeological way of thinking - a kind of archaeological sensibility we all share.

We are all archaeologists now - working on what remains of the past.

The original site can be found at archaeolog.com

My home page is at michaelshanks.org

Fascinating website of photographs found undeveloped in old cameras - [Link - westfordcomp.com]

Camera c 1947.

(Thanks again to Sam (Schillace) for this link.)

Press release from the Ministry of Culture in the UK

UK National Museums Get New Powers To Return Human Remains

Nine national UK museums, including the British Museum and the Natural History Museum, have this week acquired powers to move human remains out of their collections as the Government brought section 47 of the Human Tissue Act 2004 into force.

The nine national museums listed in section 47 now have the power to move out of their collections human remains which are reasonably believed to be under 1,000 years in age. This means that these national museums can respond to claims for the return of human remains by indigenous communities.

Culture Minister David Lammy said:

“This announcement is the right response to the claims of indigenous peoples, particularly in Australia, for the return of ancestral remains. It fulfils the terms of the joint declaration made by Tony Blair and John Howard.

“We have established a fair and equitable framework for the holding of human remains in UK museums, and for museums to consider claims for their repatriation. I hope that this will lead to renewed and mutually beneficial relations between our major institutions and claimant groups.”

The guidelines are sound on ethics and the responsibility owed to human remains.

The 1000 year guideline for when repatriation is supposed to become an issue got me thinking.

Saxon (?) - before the Normans arrived, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 11th century

Back at the beginning of my career in 1980 I was an archaeological fieldworker in the NE of England. Our work at the Castle, Newcastle-upon-Tyne revealed for the first time the remains of the Roman fort and a pre-Norman community. I dug, drew and photographed scores of Christian graves. It was a much-used cemetery and many interments had been cut through by later. This was one skull that had lost the rest of its body. The policy was to focus on complete burials, and many fragmentary remains were discarded. I hung on to the remains of the skull and pieced them back together.

The community had been completely lost to history. Though we are very aware of the early medieval north of England, the building of the Norman castle in the wake of conquest had obliterated the earlier community and its church, buried under six feet of clay laid down as foundation.

I have been fascinated by this material trace of someone who was lost to history and has returned to look at us again. I felt I had rescued something, someone who had been lost.

But is it that simple?

In the last twenty years we have become much more sensitive to the associations and connections of human remains and I feel distinctly awkward about having this skull as part of a small teaching collection.

“Part of a collection”, to be taken as a memento of the loss at the heart of history, as a prompt to think of that community wiped away by history; its scientific value as an access to ancient demography, disease, whatever, is minimal. Should I be feeling so guilty about these uses of someone’s mortal remains?

And that it is 1000 years old seems irrelevant.

Abram (Stern) has put me on to the recent Boing Boing link to photos of the rotting Jesusland built by Jim Bakker.

Illicitohio.com spcializes in urban exploration in and around Ohio, photographing abandoned buildings and structures. They have a gallery devoted to “Heritage USA” and the PTL Club - 2000 acres of a Christian evangelist theme park in South Carolina.

Extraordinary.

Heritage USA - Fort Mill South Carolina

Based first in Charlotte, North Carolina, and then in Fort Mill, South Carolina, the PTL Club was one of the most successful ventures in televangelism for much of the 1970s and 1980s. PTL stood for both “Praise The Lord” and “People That Love.” Jim Bakker (b. January 2, 1940) and his wife, Tammy Faye (b. March 7, 1942), used the popular program as a springboard to develop a Pentecostally-oriented resort, theme park, shopping mall, cable network, and entertainment center called Heritage USA in Fort Mill. The complex drew more than five million visitors annually by the mid-1980s.

Bakker, once affiliated with the Assemblies of God, began his career in religious television in 1966 working with Pat Robertson. After leaving Robertson’s employ in 1972, Bakker helped form the Trinity Broadcasting System in California. In January 1974, the PTL Club was launched in Charlotte. The Bakkers combined the traditional talk show format with lively religious entertainment, personal testimonies, and frequent pitches for financial support. Personal religious experience, usually of an emotional nature, was touted as the panacea for all problems.

The Bakker empire endured several run-ins with tax authorities, but when a sex scandal involving Bakker erupted in 1986 and 1987, he resigned in disgrace. Bakker turned over the PTL Club and Heritage USA to Jerry Falwell, who remained at the helm only briefly. Bakker later served a prison term for income tax evasion. His wife divorced him and married one of his associates. Parts of Heritage USA endure, but by the 1990s it had ceased to be a monument to televangelism and evangelical popular culture.

Fore, William F. Television and Religion. Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg, 1987.

Frankl, Razelle. Televangelism: The Marketing of Popular Religion. Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987.

White, Cecile Holmes. “Jim and Tammy Bakker.” In Twentieth-Century Shapers of American Popular Religion, edited by Charles H. Lippy. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1989.

(Charles H. Lippy)

[Link]

The Fort Mill site was over 2000 acres. To give you an idea of the size, you could fit the original Disneyland, UK’s Blackpoll Pleasure Beach, Six Flags Great America, and Universal Studio’s Florida all inside the grounds together, and still have enough room left over to add Cedar Point, Knott’s Berry Farm, and little old Geauga Lake Ohio… In other words, it’s big.

The size of Heritage was impressive, but the quality of the park was equally noteworthy. This wasn’t a thrown together mess of false facads on cheap little buildings like many parks, but instead, a well built, well planned, well landscaped, and well thought out resort. The quality was Disney like… and this was all done on a very fast paced schedule. The results reflected the time and effort put in to the build, and the attendance numbers were proving it to be worth while!

At one point during the ‘life’ of Heritage, over 6 million people were visiting the park during the year. If I’m not mistaken, a well known park like Cedar Point here in Ohio gets around 3 million. I think Disney gets more like 12 or 15 million, but obviously 6 million is a huge number for an upstart like Heritage.

While I’m only touching on the park’s history, the PTL was actually much much more. Without getting in to everything, there were TV shows, studios, a church, a theater, basically an entire city …

Steve Mithen of Reading University is in the news again about his forthcoming book - another on cognitive archaeology and evolution.

The BBC have picked up on his argument about neanderthals, language and symbolic behavior [Link]

Prof Mithen thinks the cave- dwellers would have enjoyed the rhythms and sounds made by rap artists.

He said: “People often portray Neanderthals as dull and grumpy but they had a strong sense of music.”

Their songs would have covered emotions such as embarrassment and happiness.

More than words

Prof Mithen told the BBC News website: “All people are musical in the sense that they appreciate it in some way. We all respond to it.

“Music and language developed together. The Neanderthals would have had set songs and phrases, which could not be broken down like modern language.

“They would have used singing, clapping and dancing to communicate their state of mind. They didn’t have words.

“In a sense they were more musical than we are.”

Neanderthals would have sounded rather “nasal” in their singing because of their larger noses, Prof Mithen said.

Their get-togethers in caves helped group bonding.

Prof Mithen said: “There would have been a lot of singing together. Music is still used for a bonding groups today. Just look at football crowds, church choirs or kids in the playground.

I love the picture of the neanderthal (looks as if he’s wearing a denim shirt though) :

Neanderthals - they sang their way through history (photo BBC)

Contrast my comment of another account of dumb neanderthals and this fascinating topic of the coevolution of biology and culture - [Link]