Sleepy in Seattle

Archaeologists are really strange, you know? I once heard us described as scientists who are fascinated by humans, but don't relate well to people. I suspect that that is why the repatriation movement has baffled many of us. Because now, non-archaeologists want to know what we have to say, and we are being forced to hear their opinions for the first time in our history. Oh sure, Lew Binford chased some Aleutians around for awhile, to trivialize the whole concept of ethnoarchaeology into a single one line joke. Ethnoarchaeology, which was pretty much invented by Lewis Binford, involves studying all kinds of living people, from modern hunter-gatherers to urban residents of American cities, and comparing their garbage to the activities they do which produce the garbage. One famous study is le Projet du Garbage, by William Rathje, which involved excavations in modern landfills.

But ethnoarchaeology is still separate from people. An ethnoarchaeologist talks to the people he studies, sure, but does he really listen to their interpretations of his work, let alone include their interpretations into the body of his work?

In April of 1998, the annual meetings of the Society for American Archaeology were held in Seattle, Washington. The temperature was a springy 50 degrees; it rained three days out of five; the entire city seemed scented with coffee beans. I had a great time.

Oh, well, okay, there were a few bad papers. And, for some reason, many archaeologists feel compelled to speak in a well-modulated, clearly enunciated manner that is quite easy to sleep through. Sitting in a darkened room, watching the slides come and go, one finds the perfect scholarly voice as soothing as the tidal movement of Elliott Bay, as peaceful as the sound of raindrops on the roof. Even the most astonishing breakthroughs in interpretation come across as dull doings.

But there were astonishing breakthroughs, and they were quiet breakthroughs, and I heard them as single papers or moments in diverse sessions in all kinds of research. And, I think, they are a direct reflection of the effects of the repatriation movement.

• An archaeologist doing research in South America finds that using environmental determinism to explain the collapse of a civilization or well-being of a society, fails to consider the ability of humans to create and control their local environment through technological ingenuity and indigenous knowledge systems.
• Several Asian researchers are beginning to realize the effects of racism and nationalism on both the interpretations of the past, and what gets funded.
• An archaeologist in Scandinavia suggests that choices of raw source material may not be necessarily be a function of whatever is the highest quality or most available, but rather an expression of political strength and resistance.
• And one in the American southeast discovers the joy and anguish of bringing both black and white oral histories to a civil war site.

You'll notice that none of these papers have anything to do with what you would think of as directly dealing with Native Americans or Native Australians, who are after all, the core of the repatriation movement. And that's not to say that there isn't work that unites indigenous people's voices with archaeologists in these places. But what the four papers referred to above represent, is the coalescence of multiple voices. If you ask me what Radical Archaeology is, it is this grass roots movement toward integrating other voices into our archaeological texts

I came back from Seattle exhausted, but refreshed.

PS: Anybody going to Seattle, send me back some more smoked salmon.