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Contested History, Identity, Culture & Heritage in Times of War & Peace - WB 22nd April 2022
275 Plays2 years ago
Welcome to Watching Brief. As the name implies, each week Marc (Mr Soup) & Andy Brockman of the Pipeline (Where history is tomorrow's news) cast an eye over news stories, topical media and entertainment and discuss and debate what they find.
0:00 Introduction
1:53 Links of the Week
2:51 News to Keep an Eye On
10:48 James Madison’s Montpelier Row
15:39 The Nature of the Conversation & Claims
20:45 People are Passionate about the Past!
21:40 History is ALWAYS Contested
24:33 Stroud Council to Remove ‘Racist’ Clock
26:26 Considering Context & Stakeholders
31:59 People are Allowed to Choose!
37:52 Contested Heritage in War
41:49 Check your Sources!
43:35 UNESCO’s Perspective
44:57 Attempts at Erasure
45:25 Antiquities Coalition Recommendations
53:45 Conclusions
Link of the Week:
Disasters Emergency Committee:
Links:
18 April 2022 | Heritage and Climate:
World Heritage Day 2022: History, theme and significance; here's all you need to know:
CBA: Festival of Archaeology: https://www.archaeologyuk.org/festival.html
Government blocks Oxford Street M&S demolition until plans can be scrutinised:
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/government-set-block-oxford-street-153417571.html
M&S Oxford St demolition scheme halted by Gove:
https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/ms-oxford-st-demolition-scheme-halted-by-gove
Gove blocks plans to demolish Oxford Street M&S:
https://www.building.co.uk/news/gove-blocks-plans-to-demolish-oxford-street-mands/5117103.article
Highways: A303 Stonehenge:
https://infrastructure.planninginspectorate.gov.uk/projects/south-west/a303-stonehenge/
James Madison’s Montpelier:
Montpelier says it's open to parity with slave descendants. Descendants call foul:
SAA Issues Statement on Action by Montpelier Foundation Board of Directors:
Is there really a ‘woke war’ at the National Trust?
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Soupcast
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to Soupcast, coming to you from Archaeosoup Towers. By popular demand, we're taking selected videos from the Archaeosoup back catalogue and bringing them to you as convenient podcasts. As the name implies, with Archaeosoup you get a bit of everything thrown into the pot. Archaeology, discussion, humour and debate. You can find out more at archaeosoup.com. So sit back, relax and enjoy our hearty helping of Archaeosoup.
Weekly Brief with Andy Brockman
00:00:41
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to Watching Brief for the week of the 25th of April 2022. I am joined as ever by my fantastic co-host, Mr Andy Brockman, who's been having some gas problems this week as opposed to his normal hot air issue.
00:00:59
Speaker
Mark. I think I better interpret that for our viewer who speaks to a mid-Atlantic and American. By gas, he's talking about the fuel rather than anything biological. Yes, domestic, not biological problem, yes.
00:01:17
Speaker
Exactly that, exactly that. I couldn't recall yesterday because it was the third time lucky in getting a new cooker delivered. Hence, that was my gas problem. In fact, it wasn't even a direct gas problem. Probably the old cooker was the fact that the oven door had fallen off. Oh, okay. It was a hinge problem.
00:01:38
Speaker
Yes, the whole future of House Brotman hinged on a new crooked door. Oh very nice, very nice. But whether we're making terrible pens or not, our watching brief continues. Our weekly, well almost weekly this week, effort to bring to you the archaeological news of the week and to discuss and to encourage discussion in the comments below.
Contested Heritage in War and Peace
00:02:00
Speaker
And this week we have a few lines to keep an eye on. We have a few links of the week, in addition to our long-standing Disasters Emergency Committee link, as you can see on the screen. And also as well, we have a broader theme of contested heritage in times of both peace and war. So I suppose first of all, the links of the week that we want to highlight this week
00:02:30
Speaker
in addition to the Disasters Emergency Committee, include the ICOMOS International Day for Monuments and Sites theme for 2022 that was heritage and climate. Very pertinent and we've actually there's a there's a couple of articles down there with regards to that that came sort of at the beginning of last week when we intended to putting this watching brief out
Climate and Heritage: ICOMOS and M&S Debates
00:02:57
Speaker
but also as well the upcoming council for british archaeology festival of archaeology is uh well it's it's it's it's it's not too far off is it it's a it's a annual event and it's well worth checking out absolutely and in fact uh if you're in the uk and want to register event they're taking registrations for the festival as we speak um details on the website on the link excellent now um
00:03:25
Speaker
I'm going to make sure that you're strict here, OK? We've got some lines to talk about. So what lines are we pointing to? And therefore, what should people keep an eye on for the near future? Well, the first line is actually connected with climate, albeit not absolutely directly. There is a row in London over the demolition of Marks & Spencers, the department stores, flagship Oxford Street Art Deco,
00:03:54
Speaker
building. It has been going through planning, they have planned permission to demolish the existing building and build a new building on the same site. There's been a lot of opposition to it because the argument now is that certainly among many architects and many other people involved in the environmental movement that retrofit is a better
00:04:15
Speaker
climate a better response to the climate emergency than demolition and rebuilding with all the embodied carbon that represents. The Mike suspense has accounted that over the lifetime building the carbon situation isn't as bad as opponents maintain.
00:04:35
Speaker
The situation now is that the government has actually overruled the local authority, Westminster, who gave planning permission and have what's called in the planning application. It will now be determined by Michael Gove, who's the relevant government minister.
00:04:54
Speaker
It's being seen as something of a test case for whether the current planning rules are up to strength in terms of enabling local authorities, planning authorities to insist on more carbon friendly, more climate emergency responsive planning applications.
00:05:20
Speaker
Well, yeah, this is something that we have touched on in the past, especially when it comes to questions.
Conservation vs. Development: A303 and Architecture
00:05:27
Speaker
Initially, I think we highlighted this with regards to museums, for example, and whether or not the fact that you might want a brand new shiny wing for your museum, or even a whole new site, may or may not be the most responsible way of proceeding, and whether or not archaeologists and
00:05:44
Speaker
historians and curators and others should be should be on board with with wholesale reconstruction as opposed to repurposing and I should say considering notions of embodied carbon so yeah okay so that's a test case and presumably because I know that you and I have a climate special possibly in mind at some point in the near future presumably this is this is something that we may be referring to again
00:06:09
Speaker
Absolutely. I think it's something that certainly the whole issue of embodied carbon and retrofit versus new build is something the architectural profession is engaging with. Developers have reasons not to because new build has tax advantages, particularly AT value added tax, which isn't charged on new builds, but is charged on retrofits. But archaeologists, of course, are involved because archaeologists are involved in the planning process.
00:06:35
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. But also as well, I think there are strong cultural, emotional draws as well. The idea of we're going to build a new building to house the exhibition for, I don't know, King Moby Bob and his Saxon entourage or something. That sounds cooler in a press release and sounds more like you're doing something in the community than saying we're going to repurpose this building for the purposes of
00:07:04
Speaker
So I think it's also about moving people's attitudes along as well, away from this notion of seeing each building almost. Yeah, I've certainly been involved in planning cases and observed planning cases where, for example, local councillors on planning committees have seen new as progressive and preserving the past as regressive. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah.
00:07:27
Speaker
And finally, you plonked this in my lap just before we started recording, something from the National Infrastructure Planning gov.uk website. It's riveting, isn't it? I can't quite figure out what I'm looking at. It just says A303 Stonehenge, the responses to the Secretary of State's consultation letter 24th of February has been published. Is that it? Is that what this is about?
00:07:52
Speaker
No, what this is about, new readers start here or new viewers start here. No, people have been following the Watch in Brief for a while. We'll know that we've regularly carried updates on the attempt of Highways England to... Just donate.
00:08:09
Speaker
Stonehenge to build a tunnel and dual carriageway across the Stonehenge, Stonehenge and Avery, or Avery World Heritage Society. It split the archaeological community, it split the local community, it split, well it hasn't really split the environmental community because most environmental organizations are against it, they see it. We talked about carbon earlier in the show, it's seen as an out-of-date 1970s 1980s
00:08:30
Speaker
solution to a transport problem that is damaging in these days of climate emergency. Anything that is likely to encourage traffic and moving faster is seen as a bad thing.
00:08:48
Speaker
The A303 project was stopped just before Christmas by a judicial review which found that the government had acted unlawfully on two counts. The government then, under Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, then asked for further submissions with a view to deciding the future of the project. Those submissions have just been published on the
00:09:15
Speaker
Department for Transport website by the Planning and Spectrate. There are I think 1,206 separate documents that you can look at if you're interested, but we talked about the Marks and Spencers in Oxford Street being a test case for conservation, the environment and building, Stonehenge is building up to be something very similar.
00:09:38
Speaker
hmm yeah um yeah that's right yes there's a documents tab there isn't there yeah that's right yeah that's right okay um well well what i would say i'd just like to um that there is one document on there which is absolute um classic um it uh it's a letter opposing the um the building of the um
00:10:01
Speaker
of the tunnel and your carriageways. But it suggests that the government has a pre-planned response that all those letters will have had, which is along the lines of thank you very much for your response to the Secretary of State's consultation over the A303 at Stonehenge. Your reply will be considered carefully by the Secretary of State before we go ahead with what we wanted to do anyway.
00:10:29
Speaker
Exactly, yes. He'll consider it carefully momentarily. Not that anyone's cynical about this process. No, no. Not that that particular politician has described all of this sort of stuff as deeply inconvenient. Not at all. Yes. Stopping business, business of government moving at the rate that it wants to move.
00:10:59
Speaker
That's right, yes. I think we've done fairly well there. We've got the initial lines out of the way. These are things to keep an eye on. That's a solid 15 minutes of this half hour show, he says.
00:11:15
Speaker
And now we're going to move on to our main two segments.
Montpellier Estate Controversy
00:11:21
Speaker
So first of all, we come to the story of Montpellier in Virginia. This is the home of the United States's fourth
00:11:31
Speaker
president I do believe. James Madison and it is a historic site, the website for example even has a tab which is all about the archaeology on the site and have lots of smiley faces doing digging and looking at artifacts, it's got re-enacting and all sorts of things happening on the site so it's a very very historic site. But the headline that you brought to my attention initially
00:11:57
Speaker
was that Montpellier says it is open to parity with slave descendants, but descendants call foul. What's going on there?
00:12:11
Speaker
Right. This is a very bitter and complicated rail that's going on as we speak. It hasn't been resolved yet. And for anyone who really wants to get to grips with this, we're linking to a national public radio page, which includes a four minute list and explaining the background to the dispute. Basically, the
00:12:40
Speaker
Montpellier Estate, Montpellier Plantation in Virginia, which was the home of President Madison, fourth president of the United States. And Madison's important because he was a key figure in writing the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. He's a major historical figure. The Montpellier Estate is now run by a foundation, which has a board of directors.
00:13:07
Speaker
And as with many historical figures in the last 10 years or so, the involvement of James Madison with slavery and enslaved people who basically ran the estate, worked the estate, kept the estate going, is now a major issue in how the estate's being presented to people, to visitors.
00:13:37
Speaker
cuts of its case. Last year, a group called the Montpellier descendants committee, who represent around 300 descendants of the enslaved people who worked on the Montpellier estate, thought they'd reached an agreement with the board of directors whereby the board would take on
00:14:01
Speaker
to its strength, members of the MDC, so that the effect of this will be that there will be parity between a sort of more, I suppose, a more traditional James Madison focused presentation of the estate and the
00:14:27
Speaker
and the enslaved people who made the estate possible, who supplied Madison with his wealth, who, you know, that made him, that enabled him to be that major political figure, the person who'd been involved in writing the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The current row is that the board of directors are accused of reneging on the agreement.
00:14:55
Speaker
The result of that was that senior members of staff, including archaeologists, complained and were fired.
00:15:07
Speaker
And the situation now is that there is a major rail over the whole issue. Organizations like the Society for American Archaeology, for example, have come out with statements supporting the staff and the MDC. The current board is under a lot of pressure to
00:15:28
Speaker
backtrack and return to what's claimed to be in its original agreement. The latest appears to be that they have agreed to take on members of the MDC, but in a way that means that the current board maintains a majority until at least the autumn, and the protesters find that unacceptable.
00:15:54
Speaker
And this is because they can put things in place in the meantime that might make further work. That's right. And for example, not rehiring the staff that they fired. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, because by then they have to have found another job, probably. Yeah.
00:16:11
Speaker
It is interesting actually to see the Society for American Archaeology and how they handled this actually. They had a statement initially issued on the 13th of April with a PDF version available so people could sort of download it and share it around but then they followed that up on the 21st when the situation had changed again. So they were very much on top of this and then
00:16:38
Speaker
They seem to be, well, as they said here, these firings are completely unacceptable and constitute an egregious violation of freedom of speech and freedom of academic inquiry. So these are archaeologists in the US supporting open inquiry and freedom of speech.
00:16:57
Speaker
It's interesting because similar things are happening at the moment in this country when it comes to, for example, especially national trust properties. There are some people who are being very loud about whether or not we should be learning the full context of the history of a house, as opposed to the fact that it essentially looks like something from a Jane Austen denouement, where the hero and the heroine live happily ever after.
00:17:22
Speaker
Often these conversations they lead to quite a motive back and forth and very rarely actually are they resolved in a way which satisfies everyone.
00:17:40
Speaker
I think it's probably worth illustrating what that comment you just made by looking at some of the quotes that is on the NPR account of what's been going on. They suggest that this is a dispute that's been in the making for a long time. They also quote Elizabeth Chu, who is one of the employees who was sacked by the current board,
00:18:06
Speaker
What she says is, quote, and this is again, this is all in quotes, so it's well sourced. It's not hearsay. Basically what they're afraid of is the MDC, obviously the descendants committee, taking over the board. And she goes on to allege an environment that the NPR describes as rife with racism.
00:18:31
Speaker
they quote that multiple people allege that one current board member described a black person as having intimidated him with a quote, Fredrick Douglas stare. And Elizabeth Chu says that the argument is rooted in what she argues that the current board see as quote, angry black folk.
00:18:58
Speaker
And that's the thing because Frederick Douglass was a famous anti-slavery advocate. He was a former slave. He famously, I believe, wrote a book on the issue. He spoke about it across around the world. He was invited to speak in his day on the issue of slavery. And he was actively seeking
00:19:19
Speaker
cultural, financial, emotional recompense. He was badgering people because he had experienced this himself. Well, as I say, it's emotive. It brings out emotive. Well, in fairness, I need to quote Gene Hickok, who's the current chair of the board.
00:19:46
Speaker
He countered the arguments put forward by the protesters and by the MDC. He said, in quotes again, the Montpellier descendants committee through its leadership has worked relentlessly for months to create dissension and division among the staff of James Madison's Montpellier. Some members of Montpellier staff have as a result spoken disparagingly, even hatefully,
00:20:12
Speaker
of the volunteer board that governs this historic American treasure. The atmosphere at Montpellier had become untenable and toxic, aggravated by misleading public statements made by the MDC and by bias demonstrated by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. That's the ultimate owner of the estate. Work was not getting done. Projects were being halted. Montpellier's leadership could not allow that to continue.
00:20:35
Speaker
Employees say that actually is not true. They argue that the board has actually made misleading statements. They suggest that the board's been underhanded.
00:20:54
Speaker
They present themselves as being kind and caring and then behind the scenes when no one's looking have been simply bullying and trying to intimidate and foster an atmosphere of fear and just a toxic working environment. That's Matt Reeves, who was another one of the staff that was terminated. He was the director of archaeology and landscape restoration.
00:21:18
Speaker
And ultimately, all of this comes about because people really care about the past and they care about the story that they are thinking of as being most important in a given situation or a given site. And for the most part, unfortunately, people tend to think that history tends to be one narrative, one story, one particular strand. And I mean, I certainly don't want to
00:21:46
Speaker
to make definitive statements on what's happening in Montpellier. But I can absolutely understand how it is that you might have some intransigent people who are wanting to protect the legacy of a great figure of history, as they might describe them, and other people wanting to expand and explore the heritage and the history, and also the economic circumstances surrounding that great figure of history. And so,
00:22:14
Speaker
Even with the best of intentions, a historic site is always going to be contested in some way, even if it's just a perfectly friendly professional historian to look at one document and interpret it in two different ways. There's always the potential for interpretive conflict on a site in that sense.
00:22:37
Speaker
But when it is tied to a national figure and also very current issues, still current issues of economics, identity, race, the legacy of slavery, for example, and also perceptions of
00:22:54
Speaker
other people in a modern society, naturally it's going to have the potential to bubble up. There's a case study close to home that we're going to look at in just a second. Do you have any final thoughts on this one?
00:23:11
Speaker
Well, yeah, I mean, I think just to reinforce that idea you just been expanding about contested sites, and Matt Reeves, the archaeologist I spoke about earlier, is quoted further in the article as saying that what they, the board want to do is quote, a complete perversion of everything that is Montpellier, it shows
00:23:33
Speaker
to them what they see as Montpellier is not history, not the work that we've done, that's the archaeologists, the historians, the MDC looking at the history of the enslaved people, and he says it's something else that is terrifying to think and it's terrifying to think what they'll they'll undo and create. In other words that the work that has been done to
00:23:56
Speaker
not foreground, but just include appropriately the lives of those enslaved Africans, those enslaved people, is somehow going to be, again, backgrounded to bring President Madison back to the fore. And underlying it is, you know,
00:24:23
Speaker
These are very, very difficult conversations. I think I'll just finish. The chair of the MDC said, the CEO and chairman of the current board continue to blame everyone but themselves for the sad situation. They're in a deep bubble of denial. And in fact, the MDC's attorney, Jean Workheiser, said quite bluntly, usually racists these days are more competent.
00:24:57
Speaker
Which itself isn't, yeah, it gets messy, doesn't it? It's very, very messy, yes. Yeah, and I mean, this reminded us of a story that's happening at the moment here in a place called Stroud, where Stroud District Council is set to recommend the removal of a clock.
Racism and Historical Relics Discussion
00:25:19
Speaker
And this is a clock that's been in the headline here, it's called the Black Boy Clock.
00:25:23
Speaker
a 248 year old clock, which has been described as an offensive racist relic, end quotes, should be taken down, the council has said, in the context of seemingly at least a year's worth of people calling in the most recent instance for this clock to be removed.
00:25:45
Speaker
An anti-racism campaign was began calling for the removal of the clock that they said glamorizes the slave trade. The black boy clock in Stroud at that point was 247 years old, one year younger, and features a statue that sits on the side of a grade two listed building in Gloucestershire. The clock
00:26:09
Speaker
interestingly hasn't always been there. It was created by watchmaker John Miles in 1774 and has been in various locations in the town, but in 1844 it was moved to its current site and location in what was then a national school for girls and
00:26:28
Speaker
uh it's a clock above which is a recess uh with a little uh almost um an eve a small sort of almost like porch like uh roof structure uh under which is the the figure of um of a child a black child an African child uh who stands ready to strike the bell uh when the clock chimes presumably on the quarter half and full hour um this this this this figure will act
00:26:58
Speaker
And again, it becomes quite difficult because 1844 is a long time ago. It is certainly more than a lifetime ago. So for some people, that is just where the clock has always been.
00:27:11
Speaker
For some people, this is a relic of a bygone attitude. But also for others, it's a very current demonstration of current issues. And for example, one person described the boy as being restrained at the neck by a cord which is attached to the building.
00:27:38
Speaker
But as far as we can tell from images at least, this may in fact simply be there to ensure that the statue doesn't fall over. I don't think this is necessarily part of the depiction of an African person from the 1700s. But that said though, the quality of the depiction, as you pointed out, isn't particularly good anyway, is it? It's not actually a picture of a real human in that sense. You look at the image now with
00:28:07
Speaker
21st century eyes, and it looks like a very sort of rustic image of a fantasy of what a black person actually looked like, created by somebody who probably hadn't met many, if any, black people in their everyday life, but maybe was familiar with the sort of patronizing images that you found on broadsheets and so on.
00:28:31
Speaker
And it's contemporary, and I think one of the reasons it's distasteful to look at now, obviously it was created before slavery was abolished in Britain, the British Empire. It is also from a time when if you look at portraits of aristocrats, you sometimes find, for example, that they're portrayed with black servants, often children.
00:28:58
Speaker
who are almost dressed up as mascots. There is one of the badges of world
00:29:11
Speaker
being followed by a hunting dog. You're followed by a hunting dog and your black child's slave. It's really offensive in modern eyes. Well, almost like an accessory. Yeah. That's right. A fashion accessory. That's a very good way of describing that. These are human beings being treated as fashion accessories and having no choice about it and having no agency in it.
00:29:30
Speaker
So that's the cultural background of this thing. So yes, of course, it's very upsetting and offensive to modernize. It's complicated by a number of things. One is the fact that this is a rare structure, the clock mechanism is in itself rare.
00:29:48
Speaker
And it's on a grade C listed building, which means that any changes, including removing the figure, require schedule listed building consent. Now, that means that any decision would have to be decided by the Secretary of State, current Dean Dorries.
00:30:11
Speaker
Sorry, Nadine Dynamite Doris. Dynamite Doris, yeah. Secretary of State for Culture. Oh, but you say you really caught me out with that one. Go on. And of course, she'd be very sensitive about this, I'm sure.
00:30:29
Speaker
Well, she is one of the leading proponents in the Cabinet, we understand, of the so-called Culture War. Part of the Culture War is to retain and explain. And in fact, Historic England have expressed concerns about
00:30:48
Speaker
the impact of removal on the integrity and significance of the building. They say that, for example, it would harm the significance of the listed building and the character of the conservation area. There are two statutory characteristics of this location that make it more complicated than otherwise to move this piece.
00:31:12
Speaker
The local MP, it also follows the government line, Siobhan Bailey, she says that she quotes, opposes the removal of history and statues. To do so serves no purpose other than to allow some people to decide or be selective with history or decide what is most comfortable and cause no offence.
00:31:33
Speaker
As we've discussed in previous watching briefs, that's not the issue and also you shouldn't conflate history and statues as being the same thing. But in this instance, what's interesting as well is that this is really crucial. This is where, again, these naughty issues have to be really carefully examined.
00:31:52
Speaker
As much as I'm uncomfortable with that image, I wouldn't ask for it to be removed. So the MP can jog on, please. Thank you very much. In so much as, at the very least here, it says, it could not be verified that this is actually supposed to be a slave. It could be a very low paid employee, as it were, being depicted in this instance. Whatever the inspiration or its origin said, Strailed Council, I believe.
00:32:22
Speaker
has to be remembered that without a doubt the boy's image came indirectly or indirectly through the influence of slavery and colonialism nonetheless. So it comes down to then, I suppose, a legitimate question as to what the current culture and society and the
00:32:41
Speaker
the people of Stroud think about these matters and these issues. And then this is where this matter of statues, and as we've touched on previously, seemingly endlessly in some ways in this country, the Colston, et cetera, what point is it okay for a community to decide to change something? Because after all, history is the story of changes.
00:33:08
Speaker
And also, in this instance, the clock, for example, has been in different places at different times. So there's a lot to weigh up and to balance. And so I think we thought, speaking about it, we thought we sort of balanced out somewhat the Montpellier story in terms of complexities that we inherit. Yeah, absolutely. But I think also it
00:33:29
Speaker
talking complexities, it points up the legal complexities, you know, there are issues of governance and representation and so on, and lack of consultation and arguably high handed, inappropriate behavior on the part of, for example, it's alleged that the board here you've got a council that's
00:33:52
Speaker
arguably trying to do the right thing in representing different views and giving different views the opportunity to promote themselves within a civil discourse and within a process you have then that
00:34:09
Speaker
that process interacting with government. In fact, I mentioned that Dean Doris, there's also listed building consent comes from the Secretary of State for Culture, but planning permission is the Department of Communities and Leveling Up, which is Michael Gove. So there are two government departments involved potentially in a government which has a policy of retain and explain.
00:34:37
Speaker
So, you know, it's complicated.
00:34:42
Speaker
We started off talking about contested heritage. It's very much contested heritage. As a part of Brinkley, the Black Country, which is about industrialisation. It's about black smoke and so on. It's nothing to do with skin colour and race. It's the cradle of the Industrial Revolution. It's where Ironbridge Gorge can be found. If people are familiar with the Peaky Blinders, the Black Country Living History Museum, where Peaky Blinders is filmed,
00:35:09
Speaker
was filmed is part of the part of black countries as the name suggests. There's a town in black country called Stourbridge which I know very well and when I first started going there in the 1990s I went to a local pub
00:35:25
Speaker
Victorian pub called The Labour in Vain. And The Labour in Vain had some very beautifully etched glass windows. It was very arts and craft movement style in terms of the imagery. These are probably at least 100 years old. Very, very well crafted. Except that the key image
00:35:54
Speaker
illustrating the idea of laboring in vain was a group of white women surrounding a bathtub in which was a black child whose skin they were trying to clean. Now, you can imagine that even back in the 1990s, that was a very, very difficult image.
00:36:13
Speaker
And I remember sitting actually in the neighbouring vein with a family friend who actually was a producer with BBC Radio 4 at the time, and is of Asian heritage himself. And we were discussing this image and whether we should start talking about it and whether it was possible to do something with the story. So all this while we were trying to watch Manchin United win a football match. He was a Manu fan, I was in neutral.
00:36:43
Speaker
But recently, when I went past the pub again, those windows have been taken out, removed. I'm not aware that there was a rail over it. I don't know where they've gone, whether they've been preserved or whether they were destroyed. But I have to say, I'm not unhappy that they are no longer there, because I think it would even retain and explain
00:37:13
Speaker
would not do other than make them a really uncomfortable and actually offensive image. You can argue that in an exhibition in the museum about race they might be appropriate but not in public in open view at eye level when you walk past on the street.
00:37:36
Speaker
Well, and that's the point, isn't it? You know, the world turns, things change. We are allowed to change how we interact with our history. Most of our churches have whitewashed interiors because in the Reformation, the medieval war paintings were deemed as sacrilegious and had to be covered up.
00:37:59
Speaker
That's true. Yeah. Although there's a wonderful section in the Galilee Chapel in Durham Cathedral where they've managed to take off some of the whitewashing. You can see some of the old artworks. You get a hint at just how riotous the building would have been. But again, that's people changing how they relate to their immediate history, never mind long-standing heritage. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
00:38:25
Speaker
But of course, contested heritage is universal, whether in a time of peace or a time of war. And it seems that wherever there is war, heritage is even more acutely contested and indeed used as a prop in, if you want to call a war a contest, in that friction between at least two or more groups.
00:38:49
Speaker
I remember last year for example I believe in watching briefly touched on the situation in Ethiopia following a conversation that began on the archaeosuit Facebook page where I had shared news that Lalibela and other sites were potentially at risk from troops moving in into those internationally famous Ethiopian religious and historical
00:39:16
Speaker
places. One person in particular responded saying, don't worry, most of the people involved here are Christians and therefore the sites aren't at risk. Never mind the fact that there is a Muslim contingent and never mind the fact that, for example, I suggested, have you heard about the Reformation in England, for example, or the Civil War? People with the same or very similar religious beliefs. Northern Ireland, for goodness sake. You know what I mean? That's not an argument.
00:39:45
Speaker
Yeah, otherwise anti-iconoclasts. You can look at any period in history. Yeah, it's possible for those people to fight and to destroy each other's cultural property. And in this instance, there's an article here, it is from last year, but it's pertinent. It points out that roughly 60% of the population of Ethiopia have an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian faith.
00:40:10
Speaker
But that doesn't stop churches across the country, it hasn't stopped it, particularly in November last year, this article is talking about seeing culturally important places and historically important places being used.
00:40:26
Speaker
as a strategy. The article here asks the question, why would Ethiopian authorities allow for the assault on sites such as the Church of Saint Mary of Zion, or sites from the 7th century, such as the Wukro al-Najashi Mosque, to proceed?
00:40:47
Speaker
And one of the conclusions here is that the most persuasive explanation is that, therefore, that this strategy, quote, is aimed at humiliating and demoralizing populations to break communities' resolve and spirit. In its most extreme form, this is known in international law as cultural genocide. There's a very strong and heavily weighted words, but I think that's a legal definition as opposed to something that's intended to make you go,
00:41:17
Speaker
emotionally. The intended effect is to erase people's attachment to land, uprooting them not only physically but psychologically, religiously and culturally, I would add there. Destroying religious sites is a powerful instrument in this approach. And in this instance, the conflict in Ethiopia is complicated. Like I said, we have touched on this previously.
00:41:39
Speaker
But it's ongoing and we're seeing this year similar things being reported at least in Ukraine. Seeing as we are recording today, I'll cheat a little bit and put a link into the agenda that I saw today where I think the art newspaper was talking about how we need to be very careful when examining people's claims as to destruction of cultural heritage in their countries.
00:42:05
Speaker
because the people who are claiming loss have a reason to magnify that loss and to blame the people who they claim are destroying said cultural and religious heritage. Anybody who watched our interview with Alina a few weeks ago, I think one of the main takeaways from that is
00:42:29
Speaker
particularly an area that's contentious like this. Check your sources, check your sources again, ask who, what, when, where, why, and then check your sources again because it's so easy to be misled by perhaps even something that you want to be true.
00:42:44
Speaker
um that you know falls into your particular comfort zone on a particular area it's so important not to allow that to happen and to to keep the rigor or perhaps to rephrase that not just something that you want to be true but something that adds to your intellectual argument shall we say so you may not want something to have been destroyed but if it has been destroyed it adds to your argument that those people over there are are the baddies
00:43:10
Speaker
Exactly that, exactly that. And for example, people could argue that this week's destruction of the so-called friendship statue in Kyiv, which was a statue that's put up in Soviet times to the people of Ukraine and the people of the Soviet Union fighting together against fascism, was somehow a piece of
00:43:38
Speaker
cultural vandalism. Although as erasing history as a minister here might say.
00:43:51
Speaker
Well, this is the thing. But then on the other hand, when somebody is currently trying to erase your history with shells and guided missiles, are you really supposed to expect something like that to go uncontested? We are in very, very difficult areas here. It comes as part of a developing story, really, of what has happened in particularly occupied areas of Ukraine since 2014.
00:44:21
Speaker
There is a UNESCO report that came out in the autumn of last year, 2021, which looked what happened in occupied Crimea, where it is argued the government of the Russian Federation under President Putin has promoted a
Cultural Genocide Accusations in Ethiopia
00:44:41
Speaker
history of a Russian Crimea over a more complex history of a Crimea that was part of Ukraine until it was taken over annexed by Russia in 2014 and which downplays, for example, cultures like the Crimean Tatas
00:45:05
Speaker
And also it alleges, for example, illegal archaeological excavations, illegal and they're not authorized by the government of Ukraine, which is still under the, you know, legally, internationally, is Ukrainian territory. And the removal of artifacts to museums in the Russian Federation, including Moscow. Now, that is done very deliberately because
00:45:34
Speaker
It is argued under President Putin's Greater Russia policy. Crimea has no independent existence and Ukraine has no independent existence. They're part of Greater Russia.
00:45:52
Speaker
And so this cultural campaign is going on alongside the military campaign. The latest document, the way from the Antiquities Coalition, it's part of a series of briefing notes that have been published by the Antiquities Coalition. They're an organization, an expert organization that seeks to provide information to governments and NGOs and so on about issues of cultural crime, racketeering, illicit trade, and after antiquities and so on.
00:46:21
Speaker
and their interaction with armed conflict. This particular briefing note is by Daniel Shorts, Dr. Daniel Shorts and Dr. Christopher Jasparo, who are two American academics. They have in the past worked for the United States Naval War College and the Department of Defense, so they're very keyed into government thinking. Now, some people will see that as a red flag, but they're arguing from a point of view of bias being pro-West, pro-NATO and so on.
00:46:50
Speaker
I think the document is actually a very well written, well researched academic discussion of the issue of how
00:47:01
Speaker
the Russian Federation under President Putin operates. It talks, for example, about Russia's use of revisionist historical narratives. We're seeing it in Ukraine now where Ukraine is a Nazi regime. And just in the last couple of days, we've seen Russian media propagandists referring to NATO, Western countries and NATO as having supported Nazi Germany.
00:47:31
Speaker
against Russia. Absolutely not true, but there are these attempts to other the opposition.
00:47:48
Speaker
They make a series of recommendations which I'll just outline briefly and then people can maybe go away and think about how these impact on their own practice because I think we've seen observations when we've tried to raise the issue of Ukraine in the archaeological sphere in the UK at least.
00:48:10
Speaker
We only work in England, we only work in Britain. We're too small to have a regard for this. We want to talk about archaeology.
Russia's Cultural Narrative in Crimea
00:48:22
Speaker
In fact, this is absolutely about archaeology. It's about the entire international landscape within which archaeologists operate and the way that what archaeologists do can be manipulated by political actors for good or for ill. Well, and that's the thing.
00:48:42
Speaker
I don't think I had fully identified that thread until a few moments ago whereby, as you say, everything that we've been talking about in this episode, and it has been a slightly longer than planned episode,
00:48:54
Speaker
is about the way in which people alive now, or at any given point in history, relate to their past and use their past to prove various points in times of peace and in times of war as well and conflict.
00:49:13
Speaker
and and so yeah to just yeah sorry go ahead but the very idea that you can separate the two passed from people attempting to prove political points or to win wars is nonsensical. That's what I'd argue certainly absolutely and I think the recommendations that that Shorts and Jasparo come up with they're only five
00:49:42
Speaker
They're quite short, and I think they make sense. So what they recommend to people trying to deal with Russian cultural warfare, and I think it's appropriate to use those terms, but it's not just about Russia. It's about any entity.
00:50:03
Speaker
that seeks to misrepresent history for political reasons and for reasons of conflict. So what they argue is that we should raise awareness, build resilience of propaganda tactics and aims and narratives to help avoid actions that actually support those narratives.
00:50:32
Speaker
They say institutionalise the threat. Countering history-based influence activities should be integrated into exercises, scenarios, planning processes, policy and doctrine throughout defence and security and governmental establishments.
00:50:53
Speaker
They suggest exploiting opportunities to analyze propaganda narratives and understand what the adversary perceives as a threat, along with revealing what those narratives suggest about intentions about future actions. That's when you have people talking about, oh, Ukraine never had a historical identity of its own. It was always part of Russia. It's that kind of argument. That suggests that if you accept that historical argument, then it's very easy to say,
00:51:21
Speaker
have a special military operation to get rid of the Nazi regime and so on. You see how it goes. So the first part's really about building structures resilienced
00:51:36
Speaker
building these issues into planning and then looking at what those narratives tell us about how things might turn out. The last two are practical measures that can be taken to counter. One is counter messaging.
00:51:52
Speaker
which is to basically operate within the narrative framework that you're opposing rather than directly confronting the sort of existential worldviews of the target audience, particularly when they might have been manipulated by years of
00:52:10
Speaker
of propaganda putting forward a particular view. So don't just bash people over the head, basically, work from within the narratives, they're already understanding and then message carefully, effectively within those narrative frameworks. And finally, and again, this is very counterintuitive, I think, for all of us who work in history and archaeology, it says avoid overemphasizing history.
00:52:39
Speaker
And I'll quote directly here, because it's an important point, and I think it's the one I'd like to leave our audience with. They argue, correcting historical fallacies is important, but it must be made clear to audiences that adversary appeals to history are irrelevant to discussions of current state sovereignty, democracy, and self-determination. And what do you think that means?
00:53:08
Speaker
Is it a case of, well, we are actually where we are and we have to have conversations about where we are? Is that what it's saying? Exactly. It's saying basically it doesn't matter if you believe that the fact that
00:53:25
Speaker
the Kievan Rus' and Prince Vladimir existed and went on to be the foundation of the modern Russian nation state. What matters now is that a state called Ukraine was created from the breakup of the Soviet Union in the 1990s and is independent and is a sovereign democracy and does not want to be part of Russia.
00:53:48
Speaker
Right, yes, I see. Yeah. And that's the important
Balancing History and Current Issues
00:53:52
Speaker
point. Because if you start with the former, you're immediately challenging someone's perception of the world, their identity, their, their, their, their, their, theirness, as it were, rather than talking about, you know, well, actually, these people on that street over there simply don't want to be part of your political system. Exactly. That's it. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
00:54:15
Speaker
Interesting, interesting. It's a very interesting paper, I do urge people to read it. Yeah and there are a couple of other links as well we've put below relevant to ongoing efforts, for example the Canadian team that are involved in the global effort to save Ukrainian digital history and so on and so forth. So do check those out. In case it's not entirely clear folks at home, we have been having some technical issues this afternoon
00:54:42
Speaker
And actually, at times, it's felt a little bit like Andy and I have been on slightly parallel tracks in terms of the delay on our calls. So hopefully what our conversation has been about has come across clearly. But please do continue this conversation below in the comments. We are very interested to genuinely examine these issues of contested history and heritage. And this is the whole point of this episode.
00:55:12
Speaker
Absolutely, I would say that there are probably few more important issues facing us as historians, as archaeologists in our practice, but also in our everyday lives, actually, and in our everyday relationships with the people we share the planet with and these issues. Yeah, yeah. We may well share a planet, but we don't necessarily share the best internet connection, unfortunately.
00:55:38
Speaker
Thank you very much for your time this week, Andy. Thank you folks at home for tuning in and for listening. As I say, please do comment below. Please do messages. There's an email below that Andy's DMs are open. I'm contactable in various ways. If you have any stories that you'd like us to examine or to cover. And is there any hint at what might be coming next, Andy, for the watching brief?
00:56:03
Speaker
going to be mysterious as well. I think it's a major marathon by them story coming down the tracks and also there are always stories about metal detecting coming down the tracks. I see. I see. Interesting. Thanks for watching guys. Until next time, do take care. Bye bye.
00:56:31
Speaker
This podcast episode has been produced by the Archaeology Podcast Network in collaboration with Archaeosoup Productions. Find out more podcasts at www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com
00:56:47
Speaker
This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.