Some Mundane Archeology- By Joeseph Renow

Hello, my name is Joseph. I am currently a graduate student at Loyola University in Chicago, and I have been following some of your fellow archeologists around in the hot sun for the last three summers. I am writing to you today because I was told I might have an interesting perspective to add to the discussion here. I suppose that I do offer a different perspective on archeology, having trained as a sociologist and all, but I am less confident about the “interesting” part. As a sociologist, I typically want to explain how a particular group emerges, functions, grows, and changes, and asking these sorts of questions about science inevitably leads me to examine its more mundane parts. Admittedly my perspective lacks the dramatics that other tales of science possess, but it is my hope that by examining the more familiar parts, we gain insight into one of our most trusted institutions.

Below I have taken the time to write about what I believe are three particularly significant, but also very mundane, practices observed at the field school this summer. The first practice is that lowly skill of troweling. This skill is not entirely overlooked by archeologists; many name their trowels and report a strange fondness for the act. Having never used a trowel I cannot speak about any pleasurable sensations, but I can tell you about the epistemic authority embodied in its use. After troweling, I then turn your attention to a well-known device called a Munsell, which I have learned archeologists use to resolve a particularly difficult problem found in all of science (reliability). In philosophy reliability might be a perennial problem, but in archeology a very simple, ubiquitous, and unassuming collection of cardboard, colors, and holes keep things moving forward. I conclude my bit here with a brief discussion of my more immediate interest in archeology (how does scientific knowledge move through society?). The idea that scientific knowledge spreads out like radio waves might suffice at an abstract level, but in actuality it is a truly absurd notion. Scientific knowledge might retrospectively appear to spread through society, but such appearances are only made possible through a great expenditure of labor and resources.

The Way of the Trowel: An Embodied Epistemology

When I think back on what mundane act I was most impressed with this summer, it is without a doubt the ubiquitous troweling which one observes while in the presence of archeologists. To be honest, I was surprised by just how physical (embodied) archeology is. I mean, would it be incorrect of me to assume that science is thought to be a particularly (if not entirely) mental practice? We obviously assume some level of a corporeal state, but when one thinks about scientists witnessing nature, do we often think of all the examining, discussing, and reconfiguring of dirt one experiences in the company of archeologists? Just from a few observations one rightly concludes that troweling is a critical skill. In fact, if one observes long enough one will learn that without the invention and transmission of several embodied skills, the archeology we know and love today would look quite different. How the trowel does what it does is probably better understood by the readers of this blog than anyone else, but at the risk of sounding silly I want to discuss the practice just a little further, as I find it somewhat remarkable that something so simple can at the same time be so critical to the creation of archeological knowledge.

At the field school this summer I was introduced to troweling immediately. In my set of notes I recall a rank of young recruits, who after being pointed in the direction of a trench wall, were told to start digging. When it comes to troweling there is no recipe from which to transmit the skill into new practitioners; it is a skill that can only be learned through a great deal of practice. In one of my many conversations with students at the field school this year, I was told that troweling is something that everyone has to figure out on their own. Interestingly, the absence of a standardized formula does not appear to be much of a problem for archeology, as students are quickly and efficiently converted into highly tuned scientific instruments. Through blood, sweat, and tears (not how we normally talk about the transmission of knowledge) new practitioners eventually gain the necessary skill to create that most wonderful of archeological phenomenon (a feature!). I suppose I should not be too surprised to learn that such an important phenomenon is produced through a craft-like skill, but is it wrong of me to suggest that such an idea runs counter to our idealized understanding of science? At a time when high-tech is synonymous with progress, would not most folks find it surprising that a craft-like skill is at the heart of a scientific discipline? In the end, archeologists navigate that narrow, but all too important boundary between archeological significance and insignificance through the use of their trowels. In the hand of a skilled practitioner the trowel gives shape and qualities to what only moments ago was a handful of dirt. Archeology has for the moment developed a reliable means through which to do what it does – how could we expect more?

Munsell Vision: Disciplining the Human Eye

Okay, so troweling is like a hidden art that makes modern archeology (partly) what it is, but I want to be careful not to overstate archeology’s reliance on embodied skills. There are times (for whatever reason) that archeology is unable to rely upon the embodied skills of its human practitioners. At times the human element of archeology breaks down or is found to be in need of repair. A few weeks into the field school this year I noticed just such a case, a kind of intervention on the part of archeology to overcome what is a very serious philosophical problem. My field notes tell of a young woman holding up a small chart next to a bit of soil sitting just at the end of her trowel. The young woman moves her trowel across several holes which appear to be systematically dispersed before finally settling on a particular slot. For those of you who practice archeology on a daily basis you have likely identified this device as the Munsell chart, which, like the trowel discussed above, is a mundane and ubiquitous object at any archeological field site. What is well understood, familiar, and commonplace for archeology, however, is actually a very interesting device for a sociologist to stumble upon, as it is devices such as these that hold answers to the questions we like to ask (how do individuals work cooperatively?).

The presence of the chart suggests that the reliability of the human eye to recognize changes in color is not adequate for the demanding needs of modern archeology. However, with the aid of a Munsell chart, the young archeologists I observed effortlessly assigned an impressive array of information to many bits of soil. For philosophy and sociology, this simple, almost invisible device is quite the hero. For centuries philosophers have argued over the problems associated with observation, while sociologists have nearly pulled out all their hair trying to explain how cooperative action is possible. Here, though, in the heat and dirt of an archeological trench, one can witness how these seemingly monumental obstacles are overcome on a daily basis by nothing more than some cardboard and ink. The archeological eye alone (for whatever reason) does not reliably transmit the amount of detailed information that archeologists must convey to one another, but with the aid of a small device the unruly (or untrained) human eye is disciplined into a powerful scientific instrument once again.

Moving Science: How Archeology Travels

Well, it is getting late, time to wrap things up here, but before I go I want to briefly discuss one of the issues I am grappling with in my dissertation. The general problem I am dealing with suggests that knowledge which cannot escape the moorings of its birth is doomed to a death of irrelevancy (often a very rapid death). Using the work of Pasteur to make his case, one scholar tells us that the problem for Pasteur (like the rest of science), was how to move his (then) newly created microbes beyond the walls of his laboratory? For as long as the things he called microbes were unable to leave his laboratory, they would remain irrelevant; it could even be argued (which it was) that they did not exist! Of course, most of us know that Pasteur was successful; his microbes do exist, and now surround us all (no matter how much scientists in the future might laugh at the notion). How Pasteur successfully moved his microbes beyond the walls of his laboratory took an entire book to explain, but suffice it to say, it took a lot of work, and more than a little luck to have the microbes we have today!

So how does all this talk of traveling knowledge and Pasteur’s microbes relate to my interest in archeology? Simple really, I think one could make the case that archeology is a particularly place-bound science, and if we are in agreement on this point, then it would seem only logical to suggest that archeology should have greater difficulty moving its knowledge beyond the fields from which it emerges. Philosophically speaking, how does archeology move away from its objects of study (field sites), and yet remain empirically grounded? As it is, this turns out not to be a particularly difficult problem for archeology, because while it is true archeological phenomena are embedded in specific locations, archeological knowledge appears to travel efficiently through society. To be sure it resides in some places more than others, but there is still a great deal of traveling being done. In the end, moving archeological knowledge through society has become just as mundane a practice as the use of a trowel. When archeologists desire to move their research away from a trench in Southwest Indiana, they do not sit around and ponder how to overcome such a philosophical obstacle, they simply utilize what you might call an epistemic infrastructure, a preexisting system of people, ideas, and things through which the transmission of knowledge is made possible. What is an open question in philosophy is simply an ordinary practice for archeology.

To bring this point home, a feature often begins as nothing more than a scratched-in line on a unit floor or trench wall. If the scratched-in line remains long enough, it will eventually be given an identification number and a location on a field drawing (something akin to a social security number and a birth certificate). Treatments and noteworthy details about the feature are then recorded on sheets of paper (like a medical record), and on some occasions it even gets its picture taken (like when we went to school!). At some point later, the feature is carefully dug out and then placed into some kind of plastic container (no easy metaphor for this one). From here the story gets a little more tragic, as the still heavy feature is water tortured into a dramatic new form (the screams!). Eventually what remains of a once robust feature is dried out and stored in plastic bags, and it is at this point that our feature is finally mobile enough to be transported through the preexisting infrastructure put in place to move knowledge around. Philosophers may debate whether this new object can truly represent the former, but for archeology the epistemic value of their newly configured feature is not in doubt. For now, I cannot say more about how the infrastructure in place is capable of both transporting and grounding scientific knowledge (this is something I hope to explore further in my dissertation). I can however tell you that the infrastructure in place allows our archeologists to continue on with the business of creating more archeology.

I think I will close my discussion with part of a conversation I had with Dr. Monaghan one morning. We were discussing what exactly I hoped to achieve with my study when he treated me to a delightful explanation of his job. His exact words escape me at the moment, but he basically said that a lot of what he does is logistical. He was not diminishing the conceptual demands of his job (being a scientist requires a lot of creative thinking); what he was doing was pointing out the mundane, but very critical aspects of science which we tend to overlook or ignore when we think of, talk about, and sadly, fund those responsible for bringing scientific knowledge into society.