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The Importance and Future of Archaeology: a personal view with John Barrett - Ep 40
720 Plays3 years ago
Archaeology & Ale is a monthly series of talks presented by Archaeology in the City, part of the University of Sheffield Archaeology Department’s outreach programme. It's our honour to welcome Professor John Barrett speaking on the 'The Importance and Future of Archaeology: a personal view.' This talk took place on June 16th in-person and online via Google Meets.
John is an accomplished archaeologist with many decades of experience. He graduated from the University of Wales (University College Cardiff) and taught at the Universities of Leeds and Glasgow before joining the University of Sheffield in 1995.
John was appointed to a Chair in Archaeology in 2001, was Head of Archaeology 2002-2006, Dean of Arts 2007-2008, and Acting Head of Department of Biblical Studies 2009-2011. In 2005, he was invited as a Visiting Professor to the University of Heidelberg and has served on the various UK and overseas advisory boards in connection with commercial, museum and university-based archaeology. He is currently an Emeritus Professor at Sheffield's Department of Archaeology. John is currently involved in several research projects and writing programmes.
John continues to be interested in designing new archaeological methodologies that are theoretically sound and capable of empowering field archaeologists. He hopes that this will engage the wider community to participate in the archaeological investigation of historical processes.
In this talk, John will speak on his views about the future of commercial, academic, and community archaeology. In addition, he discusses the study's history and the contribution that archaeology can make to the ongoing climate crisis.
John Barrett, the Uni of Sheffield
https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/archaeology/our-people/academic-staff/john-c-barrett
Save Sheffield Archaeology
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Guest
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello and welcome to episode 40 of Archaeology in Ale, a free monthly public archaeology talk brought to you by Archaeology in the City, the community outreach program from the University of Sheffield's Department of Archaeology. This episode's talk is entitled, The Importance and Future of Archaeology, A Personal View. The talk is given by Sheffield Archaeology's own emeritus professor, John Barrett.
Personal Significance of Archaeology
00:00:52
Speaker
Due to current COVID-19 restrictions, this talk is taking place online via Google Meets, so there may be some background noise or audio feedback in our recording. Enjoy! Thank you very much indeed.
00:01:20
Speaker
I'm surrounded here by a technology I don't understand, but people are looking after me and looking after that technology. So, I'm assuming you can all hear me. This is very much a personal view. So I want to talk about why archaeology matters to me.
00:01:46
Speaker
And why it's always mattered to me, and perhaps I've formulated it now in a way which after so many years involving an archaeology, it has suddenly become much more clearer to me why it matters.
Structure: Importance and Future of Archaeology
00:02:00
Speaker
It also matters, I think, in the fact that archaeology here at Sheffield is under threat, and I'll say something about that towards the end.
00:02:11
Speaker
There will be questions, although, as I say, they won't be recorded. If you have questions, then send them through the chat line.
00:02:25
Speaker
However, I hope that really in some ways there aren't be too many questions, but there should be comments about your own views regarding archaeology, importance in the future. And I'm not laying down any particular line here. What I want to do is talk about my own view, and then I'm happy that others of you will have alternative views. So let me start.
00:02:53
Speaker
There are two parts, obviously, to this, importance in the future of archaeology.
Analyzing Archaeological Frameworks
00:03:00
Speaker
So I think I have to ask for the next slide, yes? Right. So let's see why it's important. Now, can I have the next slide, please? Yeah, yeah, can I have the next one? Sorry. OK. So what I want to look at is the way in which analysis might be undertaken in archaeology.
00:03:22
Speaker
and what the product analysis might be. And in speaking about importance of archaeology, what I want to do is I want to question the underlying framework of archaeology as it currently stands. So if I can have the next slide, please. I think that what this will do, yes, it will show us how archaeology is currently thought about. And the way in which the archaeology is currently thought about is there was a past which was dynamic and complex.
00:03:52
Speaker
and it's produced a residue, a material residue, which is the archaeological record. And what archaeologists do is they recognise some kind of pattern in that record, and they try on that basis to reconstruct some aspect of the past. And that past is very much a human past, so it's very much a concern with humanity as a formation of that archaeological record.
00:04:20
Speaker
And this was a point that Lou Binford made many years ago. The past is dynamic, but the archaeological record is static. It doesn't move around. It's there. And what we're trying to do is reconstruct dynamics from that. So the interpretation moves from the statics to a past, and that is assuming that we know what we're doing. Now, what I want to do is I want to question this whole arrangement.
20th Century Archaeological Thought Overview
00:04:48
Speaker
Let me start by just going through the history of archaeology in the 20th century. So if I have a next slide, please. What you'll see here is, I hope, the way in which archaeology has been thought about in the 20th century. So up until about 1960,
00:05:07
Speaker
The pattern which Archimedes recognized in the material was a pattern which it contained within it human actions. And those human actions were of a particular kind. They were very different. And they were assumed to be actions of human beings that were performing to some kind of cultural requirements. And culture was the way in which human beings built solidarities.
00:05:33
Speaker
So they built social solidarities on the basis of adhering to a simple cultural procedure and that cultural procedure determined the way in which they built houses made pottery or buried dead.
00:05:47
Speaker
Now, what happened in 1960 was there was a move against this because basically the algorithm was put forward that it was very simple and that actually the past was far more complex and it contained a variety of actions, actions which were concerned with economic processes.
00:06:07
Speaker
which are concerned with social processes, actions which are concerned with the way the dead were buried. And so really what the Archaeology Record should be doing is it should be telling us something about those actions. So in the 1960s, 70s and 80s,
00:06:24
Speaker
What archaeology started to do is think about archaeology under different headings, and those headings had a functionality to them. And in a way, that I suppose is where this diploma really came in. This diploma really made an impact in the way in which that was thought about. And in particular, for example, the diploma was constructed as a development of prehistory by Colin Renfrew initially, and then for
00:06:52
Speaker
further constructed by Keith Bannigan who succeeded college as head of department here at Sheffield.
00:07:02
Speaker
So that was the department, that was what we were looking at. And then in the 1980s, there was a further change. And that further change was to say that what people were doing was they were thinking about their conditions, thinking about their conditions, but actually they were thinking about them strategically. So that what you were looking at was a strategic change in the way in which people behaved.
00:07:29
Speaker
and their strategic to change was designed to facilitate the way in which particular political situations or political formations could be maintained. So ideology became a very big component within that analysis. So those were the three procedures
00:07:52
Speaker
The first one was that people behaved in a way which they did because they were culturally informed. The second one was that people behaved the way they did because there was processes of systemic organization and that systemic organization adapted to particular environments.
00:08:11
Speaker
And the third one was that actually what people were doing was maintaining particular social requirements, and they were maintaining those requirements by the ways in which they were using ideology.
Material Conditions and Human Behavior
00:08:25
Speaker
So if I'm going to have the next slide, please, as an example, Ken Holley won.
00:08:30
Speaker
There on the screen can only one, how would you interpret that? Well, if you were using a cultural archaeology to interpret that as a burial chamber, which was designed by certain cultural norms, there were treatments of the dead, which was a certain cultural norm.
00:08:47
Speaker
And then, by new archaeology in the 1970s 1980s, where you'll be starting to do as you say well, actually, that was a part of a process which adapted to certain environmental conditions.
00:09:02
Speaker
And then in the 1980s onwards, you had an archaeology which says that actually what that was doing was creating an idea of authority. The authority of the dead, the authority of ancestors contained within that tomb was then being used to facilitate the maintenance of certain kinds of political structure.
00:09:25
Speaker
Now, that idea is all very well, I suppose, but then there was the reaction. And I've taken as an example of that reaction a comment from Bjarne Olsen, who is the Professor of Archaeology. Can I have the next one, please? Professor of Archaeology at the University, the Norwegian University of the Arctic Circle.
00:09:47
Speaker
And he says, he objected in 2003, he wrote that he was, and I've got the quote here, tired of the familiar story of how the subject, the social, the episteme creates the object, tired of the story that everything is language, action, mind and human bodies. I want us to pay more attention to the other half of the story, how objects create the subject.
00:10:13
Speaker
And this really was an appeal to our cultures to understand the material much more closely and to understand the material as creating the kinds of people that they were studying. So instead of saying that people create material conditions, what it was saying is the material conditions create people.
00:10:38
Speaker
I think that shows, I mean, I've got this very simple argument here, that what you're looking at is the way in which those material conditions have created a particular kind of human behaviour, made a particular kind of human behaviour possible.
Architecture's Influence on Social Behavior
00:10:57
Speaker
So what I would suggest to you is firstly that really the point of our archaeological investigation is it's investigating the material ways in which human beings have been formulated, created by the material conditions in which they live.
00:11:17
Speaker
So if I can have the next slide, please. What should be on this screen now is that the material is actively involved in creating a state of affairs. And that creation of a state of affairs is the state of affairs in which a particular kind of humanity is able to live, is able to find itself, is able to define itself, is able to come to terms with its own conditions. And archaeology is the study of the residue of those states of affairs.
00:11:48
Speaker
So the purpose of archaeology is to gain an understanding of how different forms of humanness have emerged, living within different stages of affairs. And this, for me, is the importance of archaeology. The importance of archaeology is it begins to understand why humanity is different. And the reason why, one reason why humanity is different, why its variability is so stark, is because it's inhabited different kinds of material conditions.
00:12:18
Speaker
Now, the problem then comes, what does somebody do about this? Well, let's just consider for example, if I can have next slide please, the way in which architecture operates to create perspectives, it creates vistas, it breaks up space into regions, and it links those regions by pathways between those different regions. Now, these are all facilities which human beings use.
00:12:48
Speaker
They might think about this facility in different ways, but they have to use them according to a certain procedure. And they have to come to terms with that. And the facilities which the architecture allows, it allows movement and communication. In other words, it allows performance.
00:13:08
Speaker
So the way in which we're the human beings we are is because we perform in a certain way. Now the importance of this, and this is a point that Roland Fletcher noted in 1995 in his important book as far as I'm concerned, the limits of settlement growth.
00:13:30
Speaker
The importance of this is that you behave in a way which you do within the material conditions that you've confronted you, but you behave in a way which other people understand. So it's inherently social.
00:13:43
Speaker
Now, if I can give you an example of this, and I'm going to borrow an example from Michael Boyd. Can I have the next slide, please? And this is an example he published in a book which he and I produced in 2019. So I've taken it from what he's written in that book. And he's written about the sauceboats of the Socratic Bronze Age. And he says that the point about these vessels is, if you look at them, you don't know how to use them.
00:14:13
Speaker
And the vessel, for example, do you drink from it? Do you pour from it? The handle is particularly useless in most of the ways in which you could use the source boat. So how do you use that? What is etiquette and using that object? And etiquette is behaving in a way which other people will understand and accept.
00:14:36
Speaker
And that's what's important, and that's what all of us know about, really. I mean, when you walk into an area where you are unfamiliar, or when you walk into an area where you feel in some way out of place, then you become clumsy, and you don't know how to behave. So the point about something as simple as a saucepan is you have to know how to use it, and you have to use it in a way which other people will understand and other people will recognize.
00:15:04
Speaker
And that's really what you're dealing with in terms of etiquette. So it's how to proceed correctly, how to perform meaningfully in the few of others within the particular kinds of material conditions which are available to us.
00:15:20
Speaker
So if I can have the last slide of this section, archaeology is important because its investigations remind us of the ways that we live depend upon the ways that we can gain understanding of and engagement with the material conditions around us, our material worlds.
00:15:38
Speaker
That's why archaeology is important for me. It's the understanding of the fact that human beings are different because of that materiality. And that has a certain political implication because what you're doing then is you cannot decide that there is a correct way and another correct way of behaving. You have to decide that there is a correct way of behaving given those material conditions, given that social construction, given that social world that people occupy.
00:16:10
Speaker
Okay, so why might we think about this then in terms of the future of our culture? Can I have the next slide, please? And I want to consider this within three components. So if I can have the next one, please. The commercial field of our culture, the university of our culture, and community archaeology. And in many ways, these blur into one another. So let's start with the commercial side, if I can. Now, the importance of this is that
Paradox of Commercial Archaeology
00:16:40
Speaker
Firstly, the development of commercial archeology, and it's a major field now, and it's a major field of employment for archeologists, and it's a major field of employment for archeologists, which is running out of people. So actually, basically, you can't now run these commercial units in a way in which you want to, because you haven't got enough excavators. So there's work out there, and there's work out there for people to do.
00:17:09
Speaker
But the problem with this is that the development of commercial archaeology depends upon the development of roads and development of various facilities which are destroying the planet. So commercial archaeology in some ways is actually dependent upon the persistence of a capitalist economy which is itself destructive. So there is a problem.
00:17:37
Speaker
Now, if I can just go to the next slide, please. So, let's just take as, I'm going to take as an example, the Boyd and Renfrew excavations and others excavations at Descalo, which is on the promontory from Keros, the island of Cichlidin, island of Keros. Now, what archaeology does is it reveals very great complexity.
00:18:03
Speaker
And one of the things that archaeologists believe they're doing is they're recording that complexity. Now, as I've tried to argue, what the archaeology looks at is the material conditions within which people perform a certain kind of humanity, perform a certain kind of humanness.
00:18:23
Speaker
So one of the ways in which you can begin to think about this, perhaps, is by the new methods of recording. And those new methods of recording are machine-based recording and are the availability of machinery, which is computer-based machinery, to record the detail. Now, if we look at the way in which the Keros explanations are being recorded, and if I have the next slide, please, this is a screenshot taken from one of the laptops at Keros.
00:18:52
Speaker
and you see the enormous detail which our recording can produce.
00:18:57
Speaker
Now, what I'm saying is, okay, that details great and that details important, but that's not what this is about. What this is about is understanding the way in which performance can occupy those spaces. So in other words, what we need to do is develop a methodology by which we can begin to think about the way in which machinery, the new machinery which is available to us can begin to think about the way in which spatial relationships are constructed.
00:19:30
Speaker
So if I can just say the next slide, this is a quote from Karen Barrett's paper which she published in 2003. I think yes. And she writes in this, a performative understanding of discursive practices challenges the representation of belief in the power of words to represent preexisting things, performativity, properly construed,
00:19:57
Speaker
is not an invitation to turn everything into words. On the contrary, performativity is precisely a contestation of the excessive power granted to language to determine what is real. In other words,
00:20:15
Speaker
Maybe we should be looking at this from the perspective not of a record which describes the straf, but understanding the way which spatial relationships are constructed. And there's a huge, I mean, I have no idea really how this can be developed, but there's a huge area of research which is pertaining to this archaeological problem.
00:20:39
Speaker
problem of understanding the way in which human beings construct themselves through their performance in relationship to other material conditions. And if I can just take the next slide, please. This is a quote from Judith Butler. You know, gender
00:21:00
Speaker
She says gender is not something that one is, it is something that one does an act of doing rather than being. So gender is something which in which you make yourself in a way in which I make myself male or you make yourself female or you make yourself other.
00:21:21
Speaker
So this whole idea of something which is inherited and fixed is open to negotiation. And the negotiation is according to the way in which you use material, a way in which you perform that identity that you want. And the way in which that identity is recognized, or the way in which it's accepted or unaccepted, the way in which it's regarded as deviant, or a way in which it's regarded as acceptable, and the way in which performance should continue.
00:21:51
Speaker
So there is a huge amount of work here to be undertaken.
Threats to Sheffield's Archaeology Department
00:21:59
Speaker
Now, this brings me finally to the question of Sheffield Archaeology and if I can just stand next by. How remarkable that the Archaeology Department at this stage of our understanding of humanity should be under threat.
00:22:20
Speaker
How remarkable it is that the Arkhildy Department of Sheffield, which as I say, formulated the way in which Arkhildy should be practiced in the 1970s and 80s, could now be in such a reduced state.
00:22:36
Speaker
If I could just take the next slide, please. This is from a quote from Michelle, is it? Yes, Michelle Dolan, who is the Minister of State for Universities. And she says, she's talking here about staff in the universities and how remarkable their resilience has been over the period of this pandemic. And she said that the changes in delivery and accessibility of higher education have now changed forever.
00:23:04
Speaker
So that's an interesting indication, I think, of the way in which perhaps government is thinking about teaching. I mean, if I can address you like this, why can't I teach like this?
00:23:20
Speaker
Why is it that you have to come to a university like Sheffield to do archaeology, whereas you could have access to a wide range of teaching from other universities, both from this country and in the continent and elsewhere? Why is it that we constantly think about the idea that a single department should produce all the aspects of a discipline?
00:23:44
Speaker
when there are other departments locally which could produce aspects of that discipline in a way in which you could have access to as a student. Why is it that I think that I accept obviously the students need a life on the campus, they need to go out, they need to get drinking, they need all that other aspects of life which has been denied us.
00:24:12
Speaker
over this period of pandemic. We need all that. But why is it that in terms of thinking and teaching that this is restricted to this university and
00:24:26
Speaker
Why indeed is it restricted to this community? Why can't this leak out beyond the walls of the university into the wider community? Why can't other people cash in on the teaching that takes place given the fact that there is this technology which is available to us? Why can't that now be used?
00:24:49
Speaker
So the first point is, so we need to think about a possibility of different ways of delivery and the way in which we can do that, I think, through technologies which are available to us.
00:25:11
Speaker
If I can just have the next slide please. This is taken from an email which many of us will have received from the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield, and in response to our protesting at the threat of the department, and he says in this email that the University Executive Board
00:25:34
Speaker
fully accepts the importance of the arts and humanities subjects, both within and across faculty and across whole university. And they understand fully the value of archeology, which is a remarkable claim, given the fact that archeologists don't fully understand the remarkable value of archeology, but nonetheless, apparently the UAB does. And then having said all these nice things, there's then the killer, however,
00:26:02
Speaker
You always know when you get a letter, I suppose, which, however, you know that then whatever's nice has been said is just about to be trashed. And he goes on to say that he cannot ignore the fact that the department is facing multiple challenges, including the difficult external environment and a significant reduction in undergraduate student numbers, and that this action needs to be addressed. The status quo, it says the status quo cannot be maintained. Well, I would agree with him there. The status quo can't be maintained.
00:26:33
Speaker
You can't have a department run down in the way in which this has been. You cannot have a department which has no funding, which has not replaced staff that have left, retired or unfortunately in some cases died. You cannot have that and stay a reasonable active department.
00:26:55
Speaker
So instead of bemoaning the situation we're in at the moment, let's make a series of demands. I would suggest to you, the one demand is that the headship of the department be appointed, and it'd be appointed by an external head who is going to rebuild our heritage effort. Now, nobody doubts the enormous burden that Caroline Jackson as head of this department has carried over the last few years.
00:27:23
Speaker
and the fact that she has managed to maintain the teaching here at Sheffield and that she's managed to behold the whole process together as it's been threatened and as it's been run down.
00:27:36
Speaker
But the time has come, I think, for her to put this headship to one side and for a new head to be appointed. And that new head ought to be given the task of rebuilding our culture in Sheffield. Now, whether it's rebuilt under the terms of which I've described it or not, I don't know.
00:27:55
Speaker
That's not the point. The point is that we need an archaeology which is 21st century archaeology, not an archaeology which looks back at the mind-numbing nonsense of the 20th century, but looks forward to an archaeology which is optimistic and which is going to change the way which human beings think about themselves.
00:28:18
Speaker
And to ensure that that's the case, if we have an external head of department who is appointed, then they should also have a couple of posts, I think. So the university should invest and the university should invest for the new head department and perhaps two posts.
00:28:37
Speaker
And the task of that headship of department should be very clearly stated. It is to rebuild archaeology. And everybody who comes to Sheffield, students and others who come to Sheffield, should see that that's their role. Their role is to rebuild archaeology here and to take it forward as a vibrant ongoing discipline.
Call to Action for Innovation in Archaeology
00:29:03
Speaker
And this brings me to my final point about the university as a whole. University is, if you like, is the community. It's the community of students, it's the community of staff, support staff, technical staff, all those other staff who work here. Everybody who works here is part of that community. They own the university. Now I realize that the fees environment has started to erode that.
00:29:30
Speaker
And I realize that many of you listening, the students who in this department and elsewhere will be graduating with enormous debt burdens associated with your name. And I've heard disgracefully academics refer to students as customers, as though you're buying your degree. Well, actually you're working here as part of that community, I think.
00:29:59
Speaker
And as part of that community, let's take it that what Sheffield should do is they should rebuild archaeology as a going concern, as a going concern which has responsibilities towards this community and responsibilities towards students elsewhere within the environment of this technology, which is now available to us and which we've had to start to use because of this pandemic.
00:30:29
Speaker
I said at the beginning, I'm not trying to lay out for you a particular path of archeology. I'm not trying to claim that there is one way that archeology should be practiced. For me, archeology matters because it's the way in which human beings have made themselves within material conditions and that the construction of their humanity is what matters.
00:30:55
Speaker
And it's to understand that and what are the challenges there, for example, to understand the diversity of humanity, given the fact that humanity has spent most of its time killing each other and destroying the lives which should actually be worshipped and should actually be accepted. So it's to understand that,
00:31:19
Speaker
And to understand it in a new way, in ways in which, for example, fieldwork or excavation begin to think about performance and the facilities that allow that performance to take place, rather than simply logging stratigraphic relationships.
00:31:40
Speaker
So that is for me why archaeology matters. That is for me the future of archaeology is to find new methods by which that archaeology can be put forward and understood. And for me, one place that should be doing that is University of Sheffield.
00:32:01
Speaker
So let's stop apologizing for this. Let's stop complaining about the situation we're in and let's decide that we'll make demands and let's make those demands in such a way that the University of Sheffield cannot deny them, cannot turn away from them and has to accept that those demands matter and they matter considerably to all of us.
00:32:25
Speaker
in this university and they matter to all of us in the various faculties of this university. So I'm going to stop there.
Conclusion and Next Episode Preview
00:32:37
Speaker
Thank you for listening to Archeology in Ale. For more information about our podcast and guest speaker, please visit our page on the Archeology Podcast Network. You can get in touch with us at Archeology in the City on Facebook, WordPress, Instagram, or Twitter. If you have any questions or comments, we'd love to hear from you. Our next episode will be Sheffield Archeology's own John Collis speaking on teaching and training in archeology, a historical perspective. See you next time.
00:33:14
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV Traveling America, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, and the Archaeology Podcast Network. 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 chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.