Schrire, Carmel. 1996. Digging through Darkness: Chronicles of an Archaeologist. University Press of Virginia. ISBN: 0813916925
The very best that archaeologists can do, to better the state of the human race that is, is to make the lessons of the past unescapable to the world at large. The study of our collective cultural past ought to provide depth perception to the present. It ought to provide us with the ability to see beyond the hysteria of the modern press and politicians to understand the deep roots and underlying causes of the situations in which we find ourselves and our world. That's not by any means an easy dictum to follow, of course. The past is not a pleasant place, by and large, and most people don't want to know that.
In her 1995 book, Digging through Darkness: Chronicles of an Archaeologist, South African archaeologist Carmel Schrire presents a vivid and disturbing look at the dehumanizing effects of colonialism and racism on both colonized and colonizer. The book is eight chapters--chronicles is what Shrire calls them--in which she presents personal narratives based on her life practicing historical archaeology in South Africa and Australia.
In her 1995 book, Digging through Darkness: Chronicles of an Archaeologist, South African archaeologist Carmel Schrire presents a vivid and disturbing look at the dehumanizing effects of colonialism and racism on both colonized and colonizer. The book is eight chapters--chronicles is what Shrire calls them--in which she presents personal narratives based on her life practicing historical archaeology in South Africa and Australia.
The chronicles are both exhilarating and terrifying as they depict the view points of both Dutch sailors and of the Khoikhoi hunter-gatherers who watched as they landed in South Africa; of the strange life of Saartje Baartman, the "Hottentot Venus," and that of the prurient scientists who eventually dissected her and left parts of her in a jar in a museum; in her own viewpoint as an archaeologist and in the viewpoint of her aboriginal field workers as they disinter human remains from a site near a leper colony.
Schrire's writing is clear and vigorous. In 1980, she went to work in Australia, during the early Native Rights movement. She watched the immense changes toward aboriginal control of land and,
"I began to feel what it was like to witness, even perhaps, to preside over the transformation of indigneous societies. The longer I watched, the more grew the desire to explore the concrete expression of such change. I wanted to taste dispossession in the material elements of invasion, the clay pipes, stone flasks, and bottles. I wanted to stumble through ruined outposts, where north European bombast once boomed over the sharp, soft clicks of aboriginal opinion.
Schrire's writing is clear and vigorous. In 1980, she went to work in Australia, during the early Native Rights movement. She watched the immense changes toward aboriginal control of land and,
"I began to feel what it was like to witness, even perhaps, to preside over the transformation of indigneous societies. The longer I watched, the more grew the desire to explore the concrete expression of such change. I wanted to taste dispossession in the material elements of invasion, the clay pipes, stone flasks, and bottles. I wanted to stumble through ruined outposts, where north European bombast once boomed over the sharp, soft clicks of aboriginal opinion.
I dreamed about lancing old middens and retrieving the garbage of settlers and indigenes. I wanted to run my fingers through the very same beads, pipes, and coins that once lubricated the loss of land, and to pore over the documents announcing the hegemony of the European enterprise. What was more, I wanted to go home." (p. 46)
This is an honest book; it is not a comfortable one. The European colonization of the world was not made by gentlemen in pressed suits, but by "seventeenth century grunts, enlisted men drawn from the ranks of the poor and dispossessed, who were probably every bit as violent and unthinking as their twentieth century equivalents, at play in the fields of Vietnam and Somalia" (p .8). Shrire doesn't shrink from the harrowing depiction of the atrocities of colonialism.
Extensive footnotes and a bibliography attest to the scholarship in this most unusual work. It's difficult, it's informative, it's wonderfully written, it's deeply unsettling. Shrire has set a standard in archaeological interpretation that will be hard to duplicate.
This is an honest book; it is not a comfortable one. The European colonization of the world was not made by gentlemen in pressed suits, but by "seventeenth century grunts, enlisted men drawn from the ranks of the poor and dispossessed, who were probably every bit as violent and unthinking as their twentieth century equivalents, at play in the fields of Vietnam and Somalia" (p .8). Shrire doesn't shrink from the harrowing depiction of the atrocities of colonialism.
Extensive footnotes and a bibliography attest to the scholarship in this most unusual work. It's difficult, it's informative, it's wonderfully written, it's deeply unsettling. Shrire has set a standard in archaeological interpretation that will be hard to duplicate.
