Noninvasive Evil

When you think of archaeology, the typical image of someone with a tacky hat and khaki pants digging in the dirt comes to  mind. Nowadays archaeology can be seen as someone sitting at a desk analyzing data on a computer. More time is put into digitizing history. According to Dr. Schafer, 99% of history can only be revealed by archaeology, since written history only occurred recently and we have little to no documentation about the past.

Archaeology is one of the four branches of anthropology - the study of all aspects of humankind-biological, cultural, and linguistic:extant and extinct - employing a holistic, comparative approach and the concept of culture (Kelly). Specifically archaeology is the study of the past through the systematic recovery and analysis of material remains. This means that archaeologists rebuild forgotten history by going out and finding places where history has been literally buried and reconstructing the past so we can define our cultural heritage.

3D Model of the Interior of the Temple of Quetzalcoatl  at Teotihuacan, Mexico

So why is noninvasive archaeology evil? To put it into perspective, first you have to realize that a lot of the culture you know has been passed down through generations. Why is it you do the things that you do? How did your people end up where they are now? Archaeology works out these definitions by finding the key points of transitionary history. Noninvasive archaeology takes away the digging part of the equation.

What history could we have about Egypt if the pyramids had not been uncovered? Would we have ever found the artifacts that resided within and been able to reconstruct the evolution of technology being used? Most likely not. Would you feel inclined to go to Egypt and listen to a tour guide explaining that three great, enormous pyramids were hidden under the sand and enjoy the visit? Noninvasive archaeology is leaving sites underground hidden away from the world. Sure, you can see a digital model of the site. Three dimensional software has greatly improved the ability to see a site and never have to dig it up.

Why are sites staying underground? First, noninvasive archaeology began as a method for finding sites. Ground penetrating radars help pinpoint locations of sites before opening up the ground. So a site is found and dug up... what next? If the team has money for preservation, it stays out in the open. If the government has money and the team doesn't, they step in and preserve the site. Sites are a tourist attraction that will bring in money for the national economy. So why has noninvasive archaeology taken a turn toward evil?

Buried Structures at Cerros, Belize

Over the summer I was at La Milpa in Belize. This was the first site I saw that had been excavated and reburied. Unlike Altun Ha, with beautiful restored and open pyramidal structures, La Milpa was piles of dirt. There is not enough money to keep it open and maintain the site. This site is not open to the public... but Cerros is. Cerros had one restored pyramidal structure and one partially excavated one you could climb. It is very boring to go to a site you cannot see. The guide said there was not enough money to maintain the site and very few people came to visit. I have two comments about this: first, no one wants to see big piles of dirt and imagine what something looks like, and second, of course no one comes to visit because they can only see one structure!

Noninvasive archaeology is slowly stripping the general public the ability to see their cultural heritage. Archaeology has been reserved purely for archaeologists who are granted the privilege to excavate and then rebury sites. Archaeology has also become a computer game. If archaeologists only have enough money to recover data, they choose to digitize sites.

In order for archaeology to progress as a science people can see results from, archaeologists, like myself, need to help cause a global awareness of how important it is for everyone to visit sites so there will be enough money to preserve them. If there are more grants from people, archaeologists have more money to spend on preservation. Also, there will be less of a need to spend all the budget of digitization.

BermudaQuest has been created to promote public awareness in archaeology. I want to ask all of you to help so I can give you the history about your heritage in the future. I do not want to see archaeology when I graduate as only another computer science. I want to be able to take people to the sites I have worked on and let them see what was there. I want to continue to provide photographs of beautiful places I have been if you cannot see them for yourself. I ask you to tell your friends and family as well to promote archaeology. It is our global history that must be rediscovered so we can work out the current problems in our lives. By understanding past lives we can make our future greater.

References:

Kelly, Robert L. and David Hurst Thomas. Archaeology. 5th edition. 2010: USA, Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

Image, Temple of Quetzacoatl, courtesy of 3D|Heritage Key in "Teotihuacan Tunnel found under Temple of Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent" by Ann.