Letters: British Archaeology 101, July/August 2008

Star Letter – Remains of the dead

Bernard Mulholland

The playwright Harold Pinter sums up the archaeologist's predicament:

...we are faced with the immense difficulty, if not the impossibility, of verifying the past. I don't mean merely years ago, but yesterday, this morning... If one can speak of the difficulty of knowing what in fact took place yesterday, one can I think treat the present in the sameway. What's happening now?

What steps could we take that would help tomake tomorrow's artefacts more verifiable for future archaeologists? If artefacts could speak, what questions would archaeologists like to ask of them?

Some supermarkets are implanting microchips in products for security and marketing purposes. This data should be particularly useful for future archaeologists, and they should surely be consulted as to what information needs to be incorporated. Similarly most modern cars have computer systems installed. These will have ample memory in their chips to accommodate data that will be useful to those future archaeologists, but which should they include? Because some of these computers and microchips are periodically monitored, whether during car servicing or remotely, they can have their memory updated.

In wrestling with such "future" problems we might gain a better understanding of how to verify the past, which artefacts are the key to rebuilding past environments, and what questions will better illuminate the past – what do we need to know, and why do we need to know it?

This is "future archaeology" – using today's technology and knowledge to help tomorrow's archaeologists.

Bernard J Mulholland, Belfast

No automatic rights

Simon Mays (Letters, Mar/Apr) seems unaware of how far debate and practice regarding human remains in museums have moved on. An intellectually and morally robust alternative framework for decision-making around human remains, which takes into account how people engage with them and is not based exclusively on narrow criteria of lineal descent, is used successfully at the Manchester Museum and has been presented and debated at academic conferences and published. This process deliberately brings together all interested parties and alternative views to debate and establish the wider public benefits – and the ethically appropriate action – on a case by case basis. It is more equitable, more transparent, and it works.

We must finally put one old ghost to rest. Just because archaeologists have research interests in human remains does not mean they automatically have rights over them. They have no more rights – and can demonstrate no closer links – than any other groups. The interests of archaeologists should be taken into account, along with their own perceived benefits of their research: but only relatives and cultural descendants have a priori rights, with more weight compared with the views of others.

The Manchester Museum's current exhibition on Lindow Man (until April 2009), created through extensive public consultation, challenges the orthodoxy of displays of archaeological human remains. Seven different voices present quite different perspectives of Lindow Man – including science, archaeology, spirituality and nostalgia – with none privileged above the other.

Empty space

John Schofield is not alone in experiencing the melancholy sight of artefacts without their users, or of personal possessions, such as the cardigan, which will never be reunited with their owners (Heritage and archaeology at Fortress House, May/Jun). However, one thing needs explanation. He refers to the inevitable move away from such a prestigious address "by the noughties". Was this a coded reference to English Heritage management? Perhaps we should be told.

I worked for the press office at Fortress House on the fourth floor from 1999 until 2003, covering mostly the archaeology stories (Silbury Hill, the Kent gold cup, the Priest of Cybele in Catterick etc). The article brought it all back: the lift with the mirror which confirmed on a Monday morning that you did look as bad as you felt, the cafeteria bacon butties oozing in fat...

In 2005 I returned, this time to the first floor for a placement at the SMR as part of my MA archaeology of London course at UCL. There I saw EH from a different viewpoint: quiet studiousness instead of manic ringing telephones and definitely no cashmere cardies.

I had a horrible jolt a year ago when I passed along Savile Row and looked behind the boards. There was a completely empty space, as though neither English Heritage (nor indeed myself) had ever been there. This has happened tome before. My first job in London in the 70s was as a lawyer on the Sunday Mirror in Holborn. Again, I worked on the fourth floor. Again, the entire building, from palatial editors' offices at the top, down through enormous editorial rooms to deafening printing presses in the cavernous basements, has vanished. The space is occupied by Sainsbury's.

Hunting limpets

Spoilheap takes Terence Kealey to task over his use of archaeological research (May/Jun). It is therefore unfortunate that in this research archaeologists do not fully understand the biology.

The work by Stiner et al states that themain cause for limpets getting smaller over time was people eating the bigger ones. There are many processes that naturally cause average limpet size to change, such as climate change. On many shores, limpet average size naturally cycles from large to small and back again over several years, without climate change. Finally, limpets are biggest and fattest (but most sparse) around the high tide line, and get smaller (but more copious) down the shore, so you get a better yield of limpet flesh if you know to let the tide go out first. It's just as likely that deposits rich in big fat limpets were made by people unfamiliar with (or nervous about) the sea (as you would expect in the early palaeolithic), and deposits rich in middle-sized limpets were made by people more familiar with the distribution of food on the shore (as you would expect in the later palaeolithic).

The very low human densities in the palaeolithic make it unlikely that people were the main force acting on populations of tortoises, hares or hedgehogs. It's much more likely that remains of hares and hedgehogs increased, and tortoise remains decreased, because the climate was changing.

Beard in the bush

I was puzzled to read in Richard Hayman's article, Greenmen and the way of all flesh (May/Jun), that "May celebrations are well-recorded in later medieval Britain, from the prose of Chaucer, the poetry of Spenser and Herrick and the plays of Shakespeare... There are also contemporary accounts of 16th century May day celebrations". This would seem to suggest that Spenser (d 1599), Herrick (d 1674) and Shakespeare (d 1616) are medieval writers, pre-dating Stubbes (d 1610 or later), and that Chaucer's accounts of May-Day celebrations are to be found in A Treatise on the Astrolabe, or The Parson's Tale (prose) rather than in the poetry for which he is better known. I am also interested to read that the Green Knight in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, "has no foliage around him", when he carries "a holyn bobbe/That is grattest in grene when greuez ar bare" [a holly-branch/That is most green when groves are bare] (2067); the poet compares his plentiful green beard to a bush (183).

I must differ with Richard Hayman. Firstly the image in many cases has nothing to do with either sin or death. Several were placed in high places (eg externally on tower friezes, or internally, carved in wood on the ceiling, often difficult to see). Ancient superstition saw averting evil as of paramount importance, and identified vulnerable parts of a building where "evil" might enter (openings such as belfries and windows, and sensitive areas like the chancel or crypt). Placing such a figure would help avert evil.

The greenman would have had an apotropaic (protective) role, within the church, and for the individual (the baby being baptised, the dead awaiting potential resurrection). Foliage symbolised the need to flourish in life or death (Christ refers to himself as the true vine, and there are frequent biblical references to the "righteous will sprout").

Hayman is incorrect on other points: most greenmen in parish churches appeared in the Early English and Decorated periods (mainly 13th and early 14th century), not 15th and 16th centuries; and the Victorians did not ignore the figure – artists and craftsmen saw the image as a challenge and symbol of the medieval era, as can be seen by the number carved, not just in churches, but on public buildings.

Richard Hayman omits the poetry of Thomas Campion (1567–1620), who recorded the down side of May jollity:

Upside lidar

It was great to see the hillshaded image of the Stonehenge landscape (feature, May/Jun), but I was surprised to see it illuminated from the south-east. Having produced many hillshaded images myself and shown them to a lot of people, in my experience images lit from the south tend to appear inverted – pits become mounds, ditches become banks and vice versa. Can I suggest to help readers fully appreciate the wonderful two-page spread, that they look at it again, but this time turn the page upside-down? Things may become a little clearer.

Special case

Knowledge is power, and understanding the past can only help us in dealing with the present and the future. Harrison Ford, on election as a director of the Archaeological Institute of America just before the launch of Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Please send your ideas for the magazine: we may not publish them all, but we will read and take notice. Ed

We welcome letters from readers. They may be emailed to Mike Pitts the Editor at editor@britarch.ac.uk or faxed to 01904 671384. They may be edited.

British

Archaeology

The voice of archaeology in Britain and beyond

Issue 101

July / Aug 2008

Contents

news

features

on the web

letters

CBA correspondent

spoilheap

Mick's travels & more travels

in view

my archaeology - NEW!

letters

Star Letter – Remains of the dead

No automatic rights

Empty space

Hunting limpets

Beard in the bush

Upside lidar

Special case

CBA web:

British Archaeology

CBA Briefing

CBA homepage