Moving Moments

[Steve-B]

I recall a few years back helping out as a volunteer at the Hampshire County Museum (Kay Ainsworth was the County Mounty then, a real influence on me back then).

Anyway, I was helping Kay to tidy up some of the store rooms, and I think the most poignent thing I have ever seen was the cremation remains of a baby from the Bronze Age.

The remains had been mounted on a board behind perspex for display, and amongst the ashes and bits of pot there were tiny bones.

Kay talked to me about what I was holding and opened my eyes to the reality of the find... up until then a B.A. was just an abstract thought, I never connected to them as real people, but as Kay said, these people had feelings like us, the cremation showed that this tiny person was important enough to them to go to the trouble of cremating and laying to rest this child... I guess love is timeless.

Can I ask the other board members what has touched them the most or most connected them to the past during their archaological careers.

Sorry if this sounds trivial, but I am interested.

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Homer (Simpson)

[uncle andy]

Have to agree Steve, nothing puts archaeology into perspective like being exposed to past human treatment of their deceased.

Mine was rumaging around in BA tombs in Cyprus. Follow up work included the sorting of a massive amount of bone, both adult and infant. The connection between the sterile academic work of research and essay writing and the 'real' past of a people definately gave me a new outlook on archaeology. Perhaps more important however, was my attempts to create a conceptual framework that put the archaeological evidence into perspective given the political differences between the two ethnioc communities living on the island, and the relative value that each placed on the culture.

It is an interesting situation whereby Greek Cyprus holds international recognition of the country's heritage to the extent that it is a transgression of international law to excavate in Occupied Cyprus. However, the archaeological evidence suggests that the most stiking innovations (Philia culture of facies) apparent in the archaeological record from the BA onwards were provided by Anatolian immigrants. It is certainly a complicated and intriguing situation that raises many questions for the archaeologist.

I like to think that I have developed an outlook that views cultural remains from multiple angles (the philosophy of Hodder I suppose)and have transferred this outlook to my dealings with the present day Australian Indigineous communities. However as anybody involved in contract archaeology will understand, this is not always easy.

[m300572]

Tends to be the human remains that have the most impact - excavating in a bit of Roman cemetery where there were several children buried, the Anglian village cemetery with women and children buried together, three children in one grave or the baby buried in the fill of a woman's grave (mother who died in childbirth and the baby that only lived for a short time after its mother died?).

[uncle andy]

I think that unless you have a direct cultural association with something like stone tools or pottery, it is definately the human element of the human remains, or perhaps also the anthropomorphic representations, that evoke the most powerful feelings of connection. This should not be surprising though, given the nature of archaeology: understanding OUR past through the material culture of past people.

It would be interesting to hear the opinions of those involved in paleo excavations or those specialising in rock art or lithics. Perhaps someone who has worked at Olduvai or some other such site.

[tom wilson]

Flint scatters can connect one with the actor in the way that you suggest, for example the occasional excavations of a large flat rock with several worked-out cores in a little pile to one side and a flare of waste flakes demarking the shape of two legs and feet. Footprints in general nicely embody the single act of a person, lost shoes and horseshoes even more so: we all know what it's like to get a boot stuck in the sod, and it's a fair bet what the person in history was thinking when it happened to them.
I don't know about Olduvai, but Laetoli always does it for me.

[oldgirl]

On a similar theme, finding roman coins at the bottom of a cess pit struck me the same way. You could just imagine them trying to decide whether it was worth going after them.....