{"id":2333,"date":"2019-07-19T10:36:28","date_gmt":"2019-07-19T15:36:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/?p=2333"},"modified":"2019-07-19T10:36:28","modified_gmt":"2019-07-19T15:36:28","slug":"necessary-destruction-what-ive-learned-about-the-process-of-archaeology-so-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/2019\/07\/19\/necessary-destruction-what-ive-learned-about-the-process-of-archaeology-so-far\/","title":{"rendered":"Necessary Destruction: What I\u2019ve Learned About the Process of Archaeology So Far"},"content":{"rendered":"

My first week in Turkey has been a sensory and information overload.\u00a0 <\/span>Turkey is hot, dry, and dusty, –\u00a0 <\/span>a bit of an adjustment from the hot, humid, wonderfully verdant summers of my native Virginia.\u00a0 <\/span>Yet while the change of landscape and topography was shocking, I found I was even more surprised by what I learned about archaeology itself.\u00a0 <\/span>Over the course of the week, I\u2019ve come to the conclusion that archaeology is both a destructive and subtractive practice.\u00a0 <\/span>(That, as I hope is clear, is not a \u201cbad thing.\u201d)\u00a0 <\/span>The process of archaeology – removing ground cover, clearing away topsoil, and finally excavating the site – all remove material and destroy the things on the surface of the dig site to discover what lies below.\u00a0 <\/span>As such, nothing can be undone or repeated.\u00a0 <\/span>This destructive work is critical to the process of archaeology.\u00a0 <\/span>Without it, we can\u2019t discover the objects we hope to find which allow us to piece together the lives of the people who inhabited the site we\u2019re excavating. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I initially found this destructive quality to archaeology disconcerting because I had previously thought of archaeology as scientific.\u00a0 <\/span>All the technical terms, tools, lab notebooks and precision seemed to suggest that archaeological excavation was at its core scientific, perhaps even a science itself.\u00a0 <\/span>Yet science is repeatable and archaeology is not.\u00a0 <\/span>Because the very process of archeology destroys both the dig site and its context there is no ability to replicate or repeat the excavation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For me, the knowledge that we can\u2019t redo what we\u2019ve done gives archaeology tremendous significance.\u00a0 <\/span>If archaeology is destructive, then you have to do the best job you can the first and only time you do it.\u00a0 <\/span>Since the point of archaeology, as far as I see it, is to tell the story of people in the past through the objects they left behind, we only get one shot to tell that story.\u00a0 <\/span>While the process of archaeology allows us to tell that story, it means we have a duty to tell it well with the one opportunity we have.\u00a0 <\/span>I hope that through my time in Antiochia I can do just that. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My first week in Turkey has been a sensory and information overload.\u00a0 Turkey is hot, dry, and dusty, –\u00a0 a bit of an adjustment from the hot, humid, wonderfully verdant summers of my native Virginia.\u00a0 Yet while the change of landscape and topography was shocking, I found I was even more surprised by what I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3247,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Iz8A-BD","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3247"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2333"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2334,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2333\/revisions\/2334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}