The Archaeological Imagination

Shanks M. 2012. The Archaeological Imagination. Walnut Creek, California: Left Coast Press. 166 p., 4 chapters, an introduction, references and an index. Acid-free paper. ISBN 978-1-59874-362-3.

An archaeologist is someone who works on the past, says Michael Shanks in his new book, The Archaeological Imagination, published by Left Coast Press in March of 2012. By the time I had finished reading this slim volume for the third time, I had become painfully aware that my own typical stiff-necked definition of a (professional) archaeologist was going to have to change.

Most modern humans with the time and leisure to concentrate on the past, in Shanks' definition, are archaeologists. Pulling artifacts out of the ground, counting them, creating catalogues, reconstructing models, preparing papers and books: these are the actions of the archaeologist. Collecting projectile points, building personal and museum displays, telling stories about the collections and what they might mean: also archaeology.

Keeping family photographs in an album, bronzing baby shoes, constructing family trees: archaeology again. Collecting vintage clothing, listening to oldies on CDs, reenacting ancient battles and constructing buildings which weld ancient styles out of modern technologies: I think you're getting the picture. It is the primary success story of antiquarianism, of even modern archaeology today, that this work of the professional supports such activities. It is the primary failure of professional archaeologists (this is me talking here) that limits or constricts archaeology to dichotomies of true/false, science/fiction, good/bad.

The Archaeological Imagination is a thought experiment, in which Shanks describes the stratigraphy of everyday life, unpicking the way the past, present and future are knotted up in artifacts, in memory, in politics, in story-telling. By way of introduction, Shanks uses the writer Walter Scott and the artist Anselm Kiefer to provide the grounding of his discussion: the layered collage of romantic plotline and archaeological ruin of Scott's novels and the narrative of paper and paint and shellac of Kiefer's art in portraying the malodorous failures of the 3rd Reich.

The Archaeological Imagination begins with an introduction in which Shanks acknowledges present and past influences for his ideas--don't get me wrong, he gives voice throughout the book to other inspirations, but his introduction provides a broad brush intellectual background. The first chapter, "We are all archaeologists now" lays out the definitive description of how his notion of what makes up an archaeologist has developed. Chapter 2, "Debatable Lands", provides nine vignettes of how writers and artists and map-makers and poets and photographers in the nineteenth century used antiquarian ideas and ghost stories about ruins to illuminate, depict and revivify events and manufacture thickly nuanced sensations of the past. Specifically concentrated on historical events that occurred within the Borderlands between Scotland and England (that hunk of the UK between Hadrian's Wall and the Antonine Wall, the vignettes are recognizable examples as things I've experienced many times in my own professional career in the wilds of Iowa.

Chapter 3, "An Archaeological Narratology", I found the most difficult to parse--I'm sure I read it and took notes at least a half-dozen times and find I am still unable to be completely coherent about it. Yet of all the pieces of the book, this chapter resonates the loudest for me. In this chapter, Shanks provides several matrices of oppositions, diagrams that break down the duality of present and past, present and absent, authentic and fake, fact and fiction, construction and destruction. The matrices recreate a whole super-reality that allows us to think about not just the present (artifacts), the absent (people and events that no longer exist), but also the not-present (footprints, vestiges) and the not-absent (hallucinations, dreams) that make up an amalgam of ideas about past/present/future. Hmm. Still not particularly coherent. You'll just have to read the chapter yourself.

Chapter 4, "The Archaeological Imagination", is a summing up and recapitulation of all that has gone before.

What I can't resist--and this is explicitly not in Shanks' book--is using the ideas of The Archaeological Imagination to think about crafting narratives, to consider retooling my ideas of what a fitting narrative is, what aspects of the past can be used to forge introductions to obscure pieces of our collective and separate past-present-future. What pieces of information, what flavors and scents and notions about people and places might be addressed in an archaeological narrative: I feel terrifically inspired to go beyond the size of a particular archaeological site, the height of the tell, the years of excavation.

I'm not sure what that means yet. And, truly: I can't think of a better recommendation for a book.