THE ARCHAEOREADER
WHERE A LOVE OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND READING MEET
WHERE A LOVE OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND READING MEET
"Professor Slade said, ah well, after all, authenticity was impossible and not really the goal anyway, the point was to have a flavour of Iron Age life and perhaps some insight into particular processes or technologies." --Ghost Wall, Sarah Moss First up off the ArchaeoReader TBR is Sarah Moss's Ghost Wall. It follows 17-year old Silvie, on a summer holiday, as she sleeps in a roundhouse with her parents on splintery deerskin-lined bunks, wears a scratchy tunic and moccasins, eats a kind of gruel porridge for breakfast and fish and rabbit caught for dinner, helps gather wild roots and berries, and even attempts her hand at basket weaving. The obvious archaeological aspect to the story is experimental archaeology--a branch devoted to participating in manufacturing techniques to better understand how past people lived (like this cool project that experimented with stone tools and abalone shell to better grasp fishing techniques among prehistoric peoples off the coast of today's California). It all sounds innocuous enough, if not even a little boring to Silvie since she's there not for her own interest but to live out some fantasy of her father's who has a passion for early British history. We quickly perceive Silvie's father, a middle class bus driver, is controlling and even violent (Trigger Warning: this story addresses the effects of domestic abuse) towards women. A man that feels slighted by missed opportunities in education and social mobility, that feels out of his time you might say, and desires the idea of one before the Romans and other "foreigners" began invading England. Silvie's own name, short for Sulevia (a Celtic goddess), is another example of her father's desire to uphold some kind of model for Britishness. As the story progresses we see just what kind of toll her father's behavior and his disturbing fascination with bog burial rites takes on Silvie; from her own dark thoughts frequently reflecting upon a notion of just what an innate sense of violence Iron Age Britons would have held to her anxious interactions among fellow participants. With her father and Professor Slade becoming steadily more invested in re-enacting aspects of Iron Age life, an alarming event unfolds that challenges how far is too far in a scientific experiment. Ghost Wall was my most anticipated read for 2019 (a tall order considering its only January!) and it did not disappoint. Moss manages to intertwine nationalism, classism, androcentric ideas of prehistoric divisions of labor, and domestic abuse that proves this short story is so much more than a campfire tale of experimental archaeology gone wrong. To me Ghost Wall is a bit of a love letter, albeit a dark one, to my archaeologist heart for touching on two important dialogues in archaeological scholarship: gender and critical theory. In a nut shell, a critical theory lens applied to archaeology recognizes how ideology influences our interpretation of the past and acknowledges that studying the past is not neutral or an objective science. Intentional or not, there have been lots of ways archaeology has been used to promote some religious, economic, or political beliefs over others, legitimize one group over another, or uphold contemporary societal viewpoints. "[As archaeologists, we] can properly be accused of being acolytes...to our culture, unaware of what we have been doing, and whom we serve" (Leone 1973:132). Since the 1970s many archaeologists, like Mark Leone, have applied critical theory to their research--leading to a common understanding in the field that writing about the past cannot be separated from the context of the present. In Ghost Wall, more than once the professor is caught by Silvie's father's opinion that early Britons excelled over others: "Aye, said Dad, maybe so, you're thinking of the carnyes, but they had their horses and swords as well, didn't they, put up quite a fight and after all sent them packing in the end, there weren't dark faces in these parts for nigh on two millennia after that, were there?"--Sarah Moss, Ghost Wall (page 36) Archaeology of GenderMoss doesn't just toss around an idealized national myth but goes further in spotlighting gender myth (roles) too. Assumptions about gender roles in the past, especially the deep past, have been problematic for archaeology. These assumptions run the gamut and we've all heard 'em: that men are naturally dominant and women passive, men's place is the public sphere and women's is in the private (domestic), and of course, Man-the-hunter. It comes as no surprise to find stereotypical assumptions in the division of labor playing out among the group in Ghost Wall. Silvie's father, unsurprisingly, is the primary agent but luckily Moss contrasts him with Molly, the only other female participant besides Silvie (and her mother) and the only female college student. Numerous studies criticizing gender stereotypes and an androcentric view of human development arose in the 1980s and 1990s. This has led to fascinating research into gender since then, exploring female and male identity more fully and reconsidering gender-specific features and material remains as it relates to division of labor, power and social hierarchies, and even gender ideologies themselves (Mother Goddess anyone?). Check out these six foundational scholarly reads if you want to get into the marrow of Gender Archaeology: The Archaeology of Gender: Separating the Spheres in Urban America by Diana diZerega Wall Engendering Archaeology: Women and Prehistory by Joan Gero and Margaret Conkey Reader in Gender Archaeology Kelley Hays-Gilpin and David S. Whitley (Eds). Ancient Bodies, Ancient Lives: Sex, Gender, and Archaeology by Rosemary A. Joyce Historical Archaeology of Gendered Lives by Deborah Rotman Historical and Archaeological Perspectives on Gender Transformations Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood (Ed.) Needless to say, Ghost Wall is utterly brilliant. References CitedLeone, M. P. (1972) Issues in Anthropological Archaeology. In Contemporary Archaeology, edited by M. Leone. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press.
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