More Lovely Bones
February 10th, 2010
The first years of an undergraduate course in archaeology are as dry as a salt lake in a drought. This is how they filter the students. Those who understand the serious disciplines involved, and those whose heads are full of lost civilizations, discovery of.
Anthropology is the same. Years ago I joined the happy throng of first years in the Anthropology lecture hall at university, pen poised and eyes bright. But dreams of Margaret Mead type investigations of some isolated human group rapidly dissipated as the first half of the year was devoted to the study of traditional Aboriginal kinship systems. These systems are as complex as their material culture is simple, and for one such as I – firmly wedged into the unrealistic/daydream slot – quite a struggle to come to grips with.
I like the big picture, details trip me up and I increasingly found myself alienated from both subjects. As students it was driven home to us that archaeology is the study of material culture and any speculations on what the remains of the material culture may signify should be left to those who’d studied and worked for years in the field and were able to formulate educated, cautious theories as to what had happened and why. For example, it is impossible to truly know the inner world of a Neolithic farmer from the fossilised remains of wheat seeds.
You are courting ridicule in the archaeological world if you do publish these speculations. Archaeology has aligned itself, in the last hundred years or so, with science and the objective observation model, (there’s a lot more to it than that, but you can read a book about it if you like). I have a lot of respect for that model – it weans out the charlatans who tell people the Pyramids were built by aliens or that Jesus really wore the Shroud of Turin. I like to use my imagination however, and rightly or wrongly, became wildly impatient with the pure, objective fact approach.
I came across the above picture the other day. It mesmerised me and I tried to find out as much as I could about it. The picture shows the skeletons of two individuals buried together around 5000 years ago near Verona at the base of the Italian Alps. They have been identified as adolescent by their teeth. These are the facts. Any other clue as to their identity, or the reason they were buried in this unusual arrangement has not been found. There are only the dry bones. Of course we can’t say who they were, but it doesn’t take much imagination, (by some of us less disciplined types), to see a very moving image of human love and tenderness.
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Categories: culture | Tags: antiquities, desire, imagination, Italy, love
2 Comments
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The photo of the intertwined figures is very moving. I can imagine many scenarios for their demise, or their lives, but would love to know their true story.
Loved this. The bones are fascinating. As was your gentle dig at academia. I remember taking first year English and wondering why I had to go read what other people thought of Dickens instead of saying what *I* thought of Dickens. I didn’t take second year English.