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Language, according to a dictionary, is a body of words and the systems for their use common to a people who are of the same community or nation, the same geographical area, or the same cultural tradition.
As an archaeologist, there are times when your language is not the common language of the people you are working with. In these cases, it is important that you consider other methods of nonverbal communication. Even then, there can be obstacles.
Field expertise can potentially be considered a universal language. Scientists can communicate with mathematics. Biologists have Latin taxonomy -- even if biologists cannot speak the same language, they can use taxonomy to communicate with each other. In archaeology, one expert in pottery can work with another easily. Same goes for actual digging. An archaeologist may be unable to speak to another, but both understand how to excavate and document their finds -- language is not a barrier that prevents progress.
Communication is essential for effectively accomplishing something with a group of people. However, nonverbal expression and experience can overcome the obstacle of not knowing a language. Field expertise can go beyond language and into the core of your field and even perform better than language. When one expert encounters another, that moment of true unspeakable understanding can fill the pair. Expertise is a language that goes beyond words.
Take the very first Maya meeting encounter back in the seventies as an example. For the first time, a group of archaeologists met and discussed their progress about the Maya culture and the decipherment of the hieroglyphs. In this case, yes they could communicate with language, but their encounter went beyond words. Suddenly, all these different people with different backgrounds were working together with one common passion - what do these gylphs mean? Back at the archives, they sat on the floor staring at a rubbing from a site. Four individuals were working together looking from different angles and suddenly everything made sense. If they hadn't known the same language, they could have drawn their interpretations. Language was not the factor that led them to success, it was field expertise.
Language is a commodity in each culture. We have a set meaning for different symbols and sounds assigned to those symbols. The essence of communication is understanding what is in front of you. If you are in Paris and do not know French, you can still drive a car, identify a train, tell the difference between a house and a tree, etc. That common cultural significance of something is a field expertise. Westerners have their set of meanings for things and Easterners have theirs. We all are a part of some field of expertise - the key is to know what yours is and embrace it.
About the Author
I'm Melanie, the founder of BermudaQuest and an archaeology undergraduate at the University of New Mexico. I love writing about ancient and modern cultures. My goal is to make information about our origins available to everyone [in simple English!]
2 comments:
Follow Up Discussion from LinkedIn (22/Jan/2012):
Roger Werner • I think if you intend to work in a foreign country on a regular basis, then one should be required to learn the language of the profession. Archaeology is a lot more than fieldwork; in fact in my experience it is less than 50% if one seeks involvement at a level above square supervisor. But even a square supervisor is apt to be supervising folks who speak the native language. And so they should learn the language of the supervisor when working in their own country?
Eva Hopman • I think it really depends on what country you are planning on going to. In some countries English is well-known to most people so as long as you know that language you should be okay. But still it would be very difficult since archaeology in every country is very different. There are different laws/rules, different methods used and different terms to describe something. So although not impossible, I think if a commercial company in a foreign country would hire you, you would have to be willing to learn the native language soon and you would have to be VERY good at what you do.
I am from the Netherlands myself and recently spent some digging time in the UK. Although only one small sea is crossed, the methods were very different, not to mention the type of archaeology and soil composition. You need to be quick to adapt and learn fast to make a living in such a way.
Roger Werner • Eva's comments bring to mind my experiences in Israel and Wyoming in the 1990s. In California most work is completed under contract with deadlines and cost containment rather significant. Many California sites occur in extremely hard clay and much of the digging is undertaken with pick, shovel with smaller hand tools for clean up and working around features. I worked as a volunteer at a Paleoindian site in eastern Wyoming. We were excavating in a loess deposit that was so soft one could dig it by hand with fingers. Typical California methods were inappropriate for loess and on a project that was funded as research. I worked in Israel and found that American methods were for the most part not used. In some instances, heavy equipment was employed to scrape away recent deposits to expose those subject to study. In some instances, shovel broadcast techniques were used and in all instances excavation was conducted by a modified Kenyon stratigraphic method of control. In complex historic site the Harris Matrix is sometimes employed in California but never the Kenyon method. I've been exposed to field work in many regions and I'd have to say field methods and techniques are no more uniform than language.
Follow up discussion from LinkedIn (24/Jan/2012):
Lluis Bermudo • Could be the matter easyer if Melanie is thinking about archaeology as JUST shovel/mattock/weelbarrow and all this kind of physical work, or field archaeology as (minimum) the significance of a mound of post holes, diches and all kind of feature in a site and what they are meaning. The first, in UK, is a job for GO's, general operatives (that means just not qualified workers). So, please, Melanie, I think that an archaeologist need ALLWAYS TO DO UNDERSTANDABLE WHAT HE/SHE IS DOING, what he/she is digging/drawing/recording. So, ¿is not a matter the language? or ¿what you are talking about?
Kind regards, anyway
Perry Tourtellotte • Speaking with over 40 years experience, I would say both are very important. Experience on many different types of sites and soils is very important. Excavating glacial gravels is not like excavating alluvium or loess soils. What artifacts are collected can be very subjective based on the research interests of individuals. Bulldozing off layers of "recent" deposits to get down to earlier layers is common is many parts of the world. Done either because of lack of interest in those layers or time/money constraints.
Experience from excavating at a variety of sites and soils can be applied anywhere in the world no matter what language is spoken.
Foreign language is important to speak to the workers and the locals. Its important to be able to direct the workers but also know enough so you can shop by yourself and not need an interpreter. Knowing a local language is important if you conduct field walking surveys-- asking the locals questions, showing them what you are looking for often takes you to sites known by locals. While working in northern Greece, shepherds often lead us to areas where there were sherd scatters. Uighur farmers who were planting potatoes wondered why we were walking their plowed fields- so we told them and showed them Iron Age sherds.
Roger Werner • Honestly, I don't find anything comparable between field expertise and a foreign language, at least not when one reaches a certain level of responsibility. As a mapmaker, there was little need for me to learn Hebrew or Arabic while working in Lower Galilee but if I were a principal the need would be more pressing. To some extent, English has become the international scholarly language (try telling that to the French).
There's more to knowing language and local customs then the practical issues Perry notes. Practical issues are of course important so is respect for the culture within which an archaeologist works. I wonder how Americans might feel if a group of foreigners 'invaded' a well known site because they had a lot of money. Perhaps they never bothered to learn English or local customs and offended most everyone they interacted. However, they never discovered the extent of animosity until another group from their country tried to follow them. My experiences in the less developed world suggest that anyone intending to lead a project therein had better make learning the language and local customs a priority, least they be judged an 'ugly westerner.' When one attends graduate school, the language one learns is usually predicated on the scholarly language(s) used to published literature relevant to his or her work location. A secondary language might be encouraged if the scholarly language is different from the language of the nation within which he or she intends to work. Further, when one eventually publishes, one might consider it a priority to do so in the language employed by a majority of those working in the region.
I'm not sure how any of this relates to field expertise....
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