Category: Education

On the Importance of Archives

On “The Nobody zone” and the importance of archives

I have recently enjoyed listening to the podcast “The Nobody Zone” by RTE Doc on One and Third Ear Productions. Enjoyed is a relative term, as the podcast uncovers the harsh and lawless life of the homeless in London, and especially the life of many Irish migrants. But the podcast is brilliant in so many ways, and it inspired me to write about the importance of archives. If you haven’t listened to it already (and you should!), it centers on Kieran Kelly, a homeless Irishman who killed at least two people, probably more, in London. He was in and out of prison and mental institutions and was acquitted of murder and murder attempts, before being convicted of two murders in the early 80’s and sentenced to life. He died in 2001.

One of the things I loved most about the podcast, is that they talk a lot about HOW they find information. The series is well-researched, and we are taken on a journey spanning several decades, from the rural Midlands of Ireland in the 1930s, to descendants of Irish immigrants in today’s London. The podcast would not have been possible without the information gleaned from public records and archives. Luckily, some of the institutions have well-kept records that allow the journalists to find long-forgotten pieces of important information. Other lines of inquiry simply come to an end because the relevant archives have been thrown away. This is the case with some supposed suicides on the London underground from the 60’s and 70’s: Coroner’s reports have been destroyed to save space.

National Archives, London

How is this relevant to archaeology?

Most of us archaeologists will work with archives at some point in our career. We might work with finds and excavation reports from the 19th century or even earlier, and it is crucial that these are preserved and accessible.

I spent a lot of time researching the Irish Viking-age silver hoards and their locations. Finding information about the exact location was crucial to prove that the hoards were in fact found in connection to Irish and Norse settlements, and not in remote locations away from settlements. This would not have been possible without reading the descriptions of the finds in archives. Much time was spent in the Royal Irish Academy library in Dublin and the topographical archives at the National Museum of Ireland. The topographical archive is typical of museums, where finds and information are sorted by counties and placenames. Many of the finds were never reported to the museum, and the only information about the find is a short description in 19th century publications by the Royal Irish Academy. If these records and archives were lost, the research would not have been possible.

Reading Room in the Royal Irish Academy library, Dublin

Why is destroying archives a bad idea?

The destruction of archives should simply not happen. If keeping the actual physical records is not possible, it should be mandatory to digitalize the documents so that they are preserved that way. One might say that being unable to do archaeological research is not the end of the world, but this has repercussions for everyone. Documents pertaining to your social welfare and health might be destroyed or not kept or made in the first place.

A tragic example is the destruction of documents relating to immigration to the UK from the Caribbean Commonwealth colonies. Many people lost their only proof of entry to the country, and now risk not having legal status and citizenship in the UK. All because their disembarkation cards from the 50’s and 60’s were purposefully destroyed, despite the warnings from caseworkers at The Home Office. The Immigration Act of 1971 granted indefinite residency to people who were in the country at that time, but a registry of who this concerned was never made. A person’s arrival date is crucial to a citizenship application, but according to the more recent, stricter immigration rules people need to prove their residency. But how can they when the government destroyed the proof? People of the so-called “Windrush-generation” have been denied passports and even cancer treatment. Read more:

Home Office destroyed Windrush landing cards, says ex-staffer | Commonwealth immigration | The Guardian

Sometimes archives are deliberately destroyed to hide the truth, as with the willed destruction of sensitive papers from Britain’s late colonial era to hide knowledge of crime and repression from post-independent governments and prevent this information becoming public, as reported by The Guardian:

Britain destroyed records of colonial crimes | National Archives | The Guardian

Revealed: the bonfire of papers at the end of Empire | National Archives | The Guardian

Conclusion

Archives matter to all of us, especially to those already marginalized. They matter to journalists and they matter to researchers of all disciplines. Archive destruction can have dangerous effects on people’s lives. Archivists make decisions as to whether to keep or throw away all the time, and archivists in Norway have already warned that they need help from researchers, such as historians, to decide what they/we need to keep, in order to do research in the future. Especially considering that most archives now are digital. Read more: Teleskopet til fortiden (forskerforum.no)

Sometimes, the documents in the archives can be the only source of information. A fire in the Danish national archives in Copenhagen in 1728 destroyed important documents, including the archives from the great Norwegian monasteries on their property and holdings. One of the reasons we can research monastic history today, is because the Danish steward in Norway at the time realized the need to create a registry of the old monastic documents. He contacted the Danish king, who sent two scribes to make a registry of the monastic archives before they were sent from Oslo to Copenhagen in 1622. This record, “Akershusregisteret”, survives and is an important source to monastic history in medieval Norway. Archives for the win!

Linn Marie Krogsrud is a Norwegian archaeologist. She works as a heritage advisor for Buskerud County Municipality and is a member of ArchaeologistsEngage.

Open Address

Tuesday June 2nd 2020 was a day of solidarity around the world.

However we at Archaeologists Engage are aware that we must not show allyship on just one day, there must be a commitment in the international heritage sector, which facilitates access to the interpretation of history to do more, ongoing.

Yesterday we posted a statement about what we believed we could do to be better in our field of archaeology and cultural heritage. We wanted to share this on a more permanent platform with you all, as something of a mission statement.

As ARCHAEOLOGISTS and cultural heritage professionals we have a particular opportunity to bring about change in the narrative. We work internationally, across the world, cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary. We can help stop discrimination.

What can we do?

  • We can ensure diversity in our research institutions.
  • We can ensure diverse excavation teams.
  • We can be inclusive of community groups and indigenous communities when planning projects.
  • We can be inclusive of community groups and indigenous communities when planning projects.
  • We can amplify the voices of local archaeologists.
  • We can counter misinformation.
  • We can ENGAGE more with our communities.
  • We can ENGAGE more with our communities.
  • We can acknowledge the politicisation of our work.
  • We can become involved in education programmes.
  • We can highlight and work with charities to provide access to heritage and about heritage to minority or disadvantaged communities.
  • We can highlight misinterpretation in past work.
  • We can call out problems.
  • We can tell the stories that need telling.
  • We can empower individuals.
  • We can empower communities.

As educators, researchers, institutions, cultural centres, community activists, volunteers, professionals…..

  • We can do more
  • We can make discrimination out of date

#makediscriminationoutofdate

Thank you for reading and engaging!

Dr Tathagata Neogi, Dr Belinda Tibbetts, Linn Marie Krogsrud, Emily Wapshott

Science Communication as a chance to Shape Research Perception

News from science and about research has become a regular part of today’s mediascape, and public outreach is considered an important component of universities’ and research institutions’ communication strategies. Hinting at the peculiar importance of science communication thus must seem like a platitude. Yet still there is quite noticeable debate about the question whether or not scientists should actively participate in the communication of (their own) research. It would be absurd and surely counterproductive to construct ‘communication pressure’, but the benefits (for both sides) of active science communication are worth pointing this out again.

In archaeology our work and research are enjoying particular and remarkably large public interest – as proven by a quick glance into any newspaper stand and bookstall or respective TV shows. The market for popular scientific contributions to archaeological and historical topics has become almost unmanageably large. However, all too often next to this interest in archaeology in general, lots of clichés and stereotypes seem to dominate these popular accounts. The public image of archaeology and archaeologists is characterized by object-focussed treasure hunt, romanticized adventure, and bravado.

It seems that there is no lack of communication of archaeological subjects. It is just not necessarily coming from the researchers themselves and not always covering the topics we would prioritize or emphasize. Of course it is absolutely reasonable and most welcome to have journalists covering matters of science and reporting on the work of researchers. Actually, this is explicitly desirable. But journalists are very much depending on the willingness of said researchers to cooperate – and to communicate. Actually, this is where active science communication starts. It is absolutely legitimate (and sometimes even necessary) to leave this task of translating research results into comprehensible language to professional communicators.

Concisely conveying complex topics (especially those occupying a significant period of one’s time) can be a challenge – to scientists as much as to everybody else. Problems arise when specialists start drawing back from public discourse, leaving depiction and discussion of research data to others completely. This creates a gap. A gap that is being bridged by others then. Interest in and demand for information remain – indifferent of an active communication offer coming from science itself (or not). Research data will still be mediated and interpreted … but now without the active reflection and (where necessary) correction of those who produced these data. If this is the case, science and researchers are voluntarily and incautiously giving up relevance in shaping the perception of their own research narratives.

Archaeology may be looking back into the past, but it never seems to lose relevance for present topical debates – as repeated coupling of archaeological / historical data and current events in daily media reporting suggests. Yet monocausal models proposing essential impact of, for example changing climate, on social systems up to (allegedly) failure of past cultures are reducing complex data to occasional single occurrences. Or the correlation of current discussions about migration with the results of ancient DNA analyses from a limited number of prehistoric burials which are – often not further commented – brought up to provide historical depth to an otherwise momentary debate, but leave out many other relevant (and from case to case rather individual) factors. Instead this conjunction revives nationalist images of a 19th century archaeology, narratives the discipline believed to have abandoned long ago. Narratives of this kind are often based on over-simplified explanations, but once more they also emphasize the general interest in such reporting. And there always remains a chance to correct such narratives.

More serious than ideas going back to deficient information are those blank spaces which are seized by communicators with a specific agenda. In the worst and most extreme case the partial, uncommented, and out of context emphasis of single cultural phenomena or hyper-diffusionist analogies establishes and deepens pseudoscientific narratives. Narratives for instance, claiming that (pre)historic or indigenous cultural achievements were not coming from these peoples themselves, but from mythical super races of the past or from extra-terrestrial beings – as was proposed for the Neolithic megaliths of Stonehenge, the Egyptian pyramids, or the colossal Moai sculptures at Rapa Nui to just name a few. The subtext of all this mystification in the end always leads to racism; ‘Alternative’ explanations would be the only logically right ones since such ‘primitive’ cultures hardly could have been able to accomplish these achievements.

Such made-up theses are particularly dubious from an ethical point of view, since they can be, and actually are, used to justify and legitimize political-extremist positions. This was illustrated for instance recently with a revival of the (highly controversial and problematic) ’Solutrean Hypothesis’ among the US Alt-Right movement. According to this hypothesis the first human occupation of the American continent during the Upper Paleolithic about 13,000 years ago was emerging from Europe and not from Asia via the Bering Strait – thus ethnically white Europeans were the real Native Americans, including all related rights to land etc. Of course, such claims can hardly withstand a scientific examination, but the narrative exists and is being spread. Replacing the vague concept of ‘white European’ with Vikings or Germanic people or Aryans in other variations of this lore opens up an even larger canon of related examples – effectively illustrating that scientists are not relieved from their obligation of publishing and delivering raw data, but that there also is need for an interpretational framework to provide these data with some context.

Science communication means social responsibility, science communication means to help avoid misunderstandings, to counter unknowingly, but also especially purposefully, misleading narratives. The public does have an interest in our work. Which is not only good, but essential for legitimizing research – which, at least in the humanities, is often paid for from public funds. Naturally this means that the public also has a right to be informed about this research, that science and scientists on the other hand have the obligation to inform, to communicate about their research. If not directly to a public audience, then necessarily through mediators like journalists. It is time to understand science communication as a genuine part of research, and to plan research staff and projects accordingly. Science communication is not a chore, it is a chance. The chance to shape and change the perception of our work, of research in general and archaeology in particular – and its relevance for society.

Jens Notroff studied Prehistoric Archaeology, History, and Journalism in Berlin. His is in particular interested in Neolithic and Bronze Age archaeology and cultural heritage protection. He is currently working on his dissertation about the miniature swords of the Northern Central European Bronze Age and is a research assistant in the German Archaeological Institute’s Göbekli Tepe research project.

Oliver Dietrich studied Prehistoric Archaeology in Berlin. His research focus lies in the Near Eastern Neolithic and the Bronze Age particularly of southeast Europe. He is currently writing a dissertation about the socketed axes from Romania and is a research assistant at the German Archaeological Institute’s Göbekli Tepe research project.

(This text was first published 9th November 2018 in German at wissenschaftskommunikation.de)

Introducing Confusion2.0: Who owns our heritage?

One of the most ambitious projects that Heritage Walk Calcutta has been itching to take on is engaging students in heritage conservation. As a part of the three-day FUTURE (T)HERE International Youth Conference On Sustainable Living 2018, Heritage Walk Calcutta’s team worked with kids from Calcutta, Guwahati, and Kharagpur, discussing the legalities of conserving Calcutta’s built heritage. This conference, hosted by the Goethe Institut, Kolkata, was a perfect opportunity to help the students question the definitions and facts and rote learning that are often the bane of history classes. Asking individual students about their own understandings of words like ‘heritage’, ‘community’, ‘sustainability’, ‘conservation’, or ‘ownership’ — and even ‘old’, ‘ancient’, and ‘modern’ – brought to the fore the general confusion around what heritage means. The fact that Grandma’s old recipe book can also be a part of an individual’s heritage helped them come to terms with ideas of private and public ownership of heritage, and how ‘old’ things or ‘ancient’ artefacts are not the only ones worthy of being ‘heritage’.

On a personal level, it amazes me how little I learned about the general history of Bengal and Calcutta in school. We knew all about the Indian Independence Movement, the Harappan civilization, and even bits and pieces about Hitler and the World Wars. What was sorely lacking from my education was the concept that being a part of history was not an honour meant only for the nobles or elites, the gallants or villains. Instead, it is about you and me, our grandparents, our families, our letters, and the spaces we inhabit. The area now known as Calcutta was not transformed in the span of a day by the efforts of Job Charnock.  Beginning from fishing hamlets, rivers and creeks, and a Pilgrim’s Path that goes back centuries before Calcutta got its name, the developmental history of the region has often taken a backseat in the face of its colonial and postcolonial narratives.

During the conference, we introduced the students to the city, its history, and why it is how it is – all through visual mediums including maps, old photographs, and paintings. Before they could doze off to the hum of the projector, we led them out into the open and headed to Dalhousie Square on the first day of the workshop. They were suitably impressed on learning how St. John’s Church was built on an old burial ground, how it was overcrowded because of the high mortality among the first waves of Europeans visiting Calcutta in the 1700s, and how malaria, one of the many killers of the time, would be treated using mercury and bloodletting, often killing the sick anyway. St. John’s Church also happens to house Job Charnock’s Mausoleum, whose architecture is anything but European. We were pleasantly surprised when the kids correctly surmised that the local architects of the time probably did not know how to build European-style architecture, and that was the reason for its Indian design.

Heritage walk at Dalhousie Square on Day 1 of the workshop

The next morning the kids were excited about the prospect of another walk, this time to the sites around Kumartuli. The workshop was designed to let them observe the differences in the state of conservation of the built environment in various sections of the city. Our primary aim was to show them places they would not normally have access to, or even notice; by walking the streets, they learned to be more observant and empathetic to the needs of the spaces they populate.

The questions started pouring in once we started walking around Upper Chitpore Road, beginning near Bagbazar Ghat and ending at the Bhagyakul Roy Family Mansions. One of the children’s questions that stayed with me was: “Why should we preserve this building which apparently has no significance other than this woodwork sculpture on top? Why not keep that in a museum, and make the housing conditions more liveable?” This leads us to a larger question – what about creating community museums in Calcutta, or even a Calcutta Museum? Is the single gallery in Victoria Memorial sufficient for our future generations to fall back on? Why should we expect them to fall back on dusty papers and government documents in corridors full of bureaucratic red tape? Should the history of our city, the one we live in, not be available to the people of the city in a form that is relatable, understandable, and memorable?

The author simplified important aspects of the city’s heritage law for the students

On returning to the Goethe Institut, we had the children dissect the Kolkata Municipal Corporation’s mandates on heritage buildings, including snippets from the KMC Act of 1980. The task was to determine the specific legalities that could be used to improve the situation of the buildings we had seen on the walks, and how the law could be modified to be more flexible and sustainable in the long run. The students were divided into groups of threes and fours so that each could work on a different aspect or site for their final presentation.

It is sometimes distressing when innovation and creativity has to end in an action-oriented audience presentation in a short period of time, but the students masterfully dealt with the twin challenges of time and content. During the prep hour, their questions and concerns started pouring in: who owned the buildings; who owned the artefacts; should there be a dedicated museum for the communities; why are some buildings well-restored while others are falling apart; how can an estate be owned in the name of a god; why do the authorities not accept help from private citizens or involve the community; how can the community come together to achieve the sustainable conservation of sections of the city; and so on and so forth. It was humbling for me to see how much they had understood and unearthed in the short span of one and a half days. Amidst the volley of facts and stories and the sensory overload, the students had found breathing space from their rigorous academic pursuits to pursue lines of independent questioning about their own heritage.

To tie all of the lessons together, the last day of the conference included a visit to the community associations and Taoist temples in the Old Chinatown near Tiretti Bazar, Poddar Court. The community here draws their lineage from five different villages in the Guangzhou region of southern China. The descendants of people from each village have their own club and temple. As a classic example of community engagement, Mr. Lee from the Sei Vui temple and community association talked to the children about the origins of the club and the history of the Chinese immigrants, who were historically an important trading and industrial community in Calcutta. The club dormitory, which served as a resting place for new immigrants from Sei Vui village in the early 1900s, has recently been repurposed into a restaurant. As an excellent example of the reuse of heritage spaces, this visit reinforced the idea that heritage conservation is very possible for the people of this city and those who care about it.

Mr Lee, the Secretary of the Sei Vui Club in Old Chinatown discusses the history of the Chinese community and how the Club members plan to preserve their heritage

For their final presentations, the three groups of students created: a quiz; a legal review of the current state of certain buildings; and a status report on the state of conservation of different sections of the city. While Group 1 worked on a trivia quiz on historically significant structures, they also came up with questions like “Who owns heritage? And what is our role in conservation?” They did a great job of putting our thoughts into words and presenting them to the parents and teachers who came to participate. Group 2 did a review of Madan Mohan Tala, buildings in various stages of dilapidation on Fancy Lane, and a house located on Upper Chitpore Road. They worked with the varying aspects of ownership and how certain legal functions of a temple estate are different from those of a corporate or private owner. I am glad they decided to work on an oft-misunderstood aspect of the conservation efforts around the city. The members of the third group presented a grading of sites according to their level of risk, regardless of their ownership. They focused on the relevance of heritage sectors in a city, where magnificent structures with forgotten owners deserve to be saved too. Highlighting places like Bishnuram Chakrabarti’s Shibtala and St John’s Church in various stages of the conversation spoke to how much they had retained, both in terms of facts and figures and their visual impressions, including architectural details.

Group 2 worked with varying aspects of ownership and how certain legal functions of a temple estate are different from those of a corporate or private owner

It is difficult to put into words how glad I am to have met these children who worked hard and convinced the general populace that ‘doing’ heritage and heritage walks is a gratifying and necessary objective for a concerned citizen. While it was fun to work with the kids, I have concerns about whether our social bias of pushing children to study science and technology will let them accomplish their own goals of heritage conservation, however small they may be. It also brought forward how the legalities involved in heritage efforts need to be simplified, and that the communities around heritage structures can themselves engage in collecting funds, formulating plans, and giving shape to conservation efforts. A lot remains to be done in terms of heritage identification and mapping, before steps can be taken to ameliorate the condition of the built heritage in the city. Bringing the people of the city together by creating a common digital platform for them to locate and document our built heritage is a very real dream for us. Petitioning the municipal body to disentangle the legalities of grading heritage buildings, or even clarifying the community’s role in sustaining any heritage conservation efforts will help the community come to terms with their heritage and rights to it. This city and the people have a lot of fight left in them. We would like to give their and their children’s hopes a place to find fruition.

Acknowledgements: Goethe Institut-Kolkata, Suvodeep Saha, Srinanda Ganguli, and Chelsea McGill.

Disclaimer: All images used in this post are the ownership of Heritage Walk Calcutta and may not be used without proper permission.

Pritha Mukherjee is a Research and Development Associate at Heritage Walk Calcutta.

In this great Future, we cannot forget our Past

My first experience with archaeology was through the Young Archaeologists Club in the Netherlands: as a young teenager, we could actually go excavate every weekend, discover artefacts and document those, while the lead archaeologist would turn all of that into a good story. I remember spending weekends in a castle, cleaning sherds, and trying to reconstruct pots. The best thing was having the area around the castle for ourselves in the evenings. This way of working with archaeology was about getting a personal thrill, a satisfaction, discovering and learning new things. It did not take long until we started explaining to passers-by about the exciting things from the past we had just found out. Maybe we were attention seekers in the beginning, but our stories improved and so did our methods. We learned to try out how we believed people in the past had cooked, fought, worked, not just to test our ideas, but also to tell others.

Open-air museum at Oerlinghausen, Germany

I then went to university and there it hit me: many people do research (that is what they teach you there), but the question “why do you do this?” is not often asked. Is it personal satisfaction? I got the question at my next university, though. After gaining my MA, I started working in a museum. I was eager to go tell complete strangers about what I had learned at university, from books and excavations. My museum colleagues however had different methods to do research and also different stories with mixed qualities. Now, I learned very fast not to become the Authenticity Police but help these colleagues in doing simple but effective research. It is very important that literature has become more accessible in recent years, and is not monopolized by scientists. Many archaeologists have become more approachable for the public. Even if ten percent of those approaching scientists may be difficult cases, we should not turn ourselves away from the other ninety percent.

These museums are good at quite a lot of things, but if it would be a bit better structured, so much more value would come out of it. I feel that these museums are very much in the air, not linked well with science on the one hand and with the public on the other. So I went back to university, and did a PhD in archaeological open-air museums. On my first day there, I got the question: “do I want to do research to pursue an academic career (ivory tower) or is my intention to use what I learn in the real world?” I believe there are enough archaeologists out there doing research, but if we do not make the insights we gain from that available to the public, then why do research, except for personal satisfaction?

My position, I feel, is in-between: sitting in a museum, I can help get the message across to the public, but without underlying research, these stories are worthless. That is why I am part of an international network, called EXARC. This is an international networking organization for Archaeological Open-Air Museums, Experimental Archaeology, Ancient Technology and Interpretation. EXARC aims to improve professional standards and promote professional ethics. We provide advice, information, practical tools and learning opportunities to our members. We issue publications and provide opportunities for members to meet. Finally, EXARC actively represents the interests of its members.
Experienced people or newbies, all are working with reconstructing the past. Our membership (300 members across 40 countries) includes Lofotr in Norway, Guédelon in France, Saalburg in Germany, and Butser in the UK. We are a very mixed group of people and organisations including scientists, museums, craftspeople, teachers and actors. More information about EXARC, including an open access Journal with hundreds of articles, can be found at: https://exarc.net.

As EXARC director, I facilitate our members, showing them where in our network to find the answers, the resources and ideas for quality research and dissemination. We believe in open access, not only online, but also the chance for outsiders to step into our bubble and ask questions, join us in conferences, workshops or writing their first serious research article and publishing with us. The strength of EXARC is our diversity. We decided very early we do not want to be an exclusive club of museum directors only, but an inclusive network, somewhere at the edge of the establishment and those who rather step off the beaten path.

Our aim is to improve the stories told to the public: not just making sure the latest archaeological research is reflected in the museums and at festivals, but also how professionally these stories are told. One can have a brilliant professor orating for an hour but he should be a good researcher, actor and teacher, all in one person. You do not find such people easily. And there is more to it: it is not just about the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which in a museum context means that if there is no good coffee and toilets, people will not be able to pick up the message you try to share with them because physiological needs are not met. It is also about simple things, like you may have a great story to tell, but how do you reach your potential audience, how do you convince them to come and see you?

I started with archaeology because of the great stories about the people who were here before us. I however believe there are much greater researchers and better storytellers in this world. With EXARC, we create the tools; we master the logistics of how to get these stories across. Janus Bifrons was a Roman god. He was the patron of our Young Archaeologists Club; god of beginnings, transitions and endings, he looks in two directions.

I am fully convinced that if you look in only one direction, you will hit your head hard, very hard. We should work together towards a well-informed presentation of the past to the public, with relevance to the present. That is the only way to catch the attention of the audience and enable them to learn something useful from the past.

Roeland Paardekooper is Director of the ICOM Affiliated Organisation EXARC (International Organisation of Archaeological Open-Air Museums and Experimental Archaeology).

Heritage Walk for Hearing Impaired Children (UNESCO)

On 27th March 2017, Heritage Walk Calcutta, in collaboration with Made in Bengal and ArchaeologistsEngage, hosted the year’s first GoUNESCO Make Heritage Fun event in Kolkata, India. Make Heritage Fun is a global initiative by GoUNESCO, aimed at celebrating local culture—simultaneously, across the world. This campaign provides a platform for heritage and culture enthusiasts to share local heritage with others in their community. In Calcutta, we organized an event to help children with hearing-related disabilities explore Calcutta’s history through a guided and assisted 2-hour walking tour inside the compound of St. John’s Church, one of the oldest in the city. For this event, we were proud to work with the Ideal School for the Deaf, located in Salt Lake, Kolkata. 26 of their students from 6th to 10th grade (12-17 years old) and 6 teachers actively participated in this event. The tour was led by Tathagata Neogi, an archaeologist and the co-founder of Heritage Walk Calcutta, and translated into sign language by the accompanying teachers.

After the walking tour, we asked the children to create a work of art about what they learned during the walk.  When ready, these paintings/sketches will be shared through our online platforms and displayed during an exhibition at the Ideal School for the Deaf later this year.

VISION

The accessibility of historic sites is an issue that has not been widely addressed globally. While some countries have recently passed legislation to ensure the accessibility of major historic sites for various groups with disabilities, this issue has not been systematically addressed in India, despite the country’s rich tangible and intangible heritage, and large population of people with disabilities. By conducting a heritage walk specifically aimed at children with hearing-related disabilities under the GoUNESCO Make Heritage Fun umbrella, we at Heritage Walk Calcutta wanted to start a discussion about the issue of accessibility in India’s historic sites. Heritage Walk Calcutta and our collaborators believe in a common, shared heritage, which members of disabled communities have an equal right to access.

PREPARATION

Heritage Walk Calcutta approached GoUNESCO about hosting this event under the Make Heritage Fun umbrella at the end of February. The original plan was to provide a bus tour of several major heritage sites for school children. When GoUNESCO approved our application to host an event, this idea was further refined in the hope of addressing accessibility issues in Indian heritage sites. At this time, our collaborators, Made in Bengal and Archaeologists Engage, came on board to provide support for the event. The idea of a bus tour was abandoned in favour of a walking tour to increase the experiential value of the event, and to give ample time for the children to connect with a single historic site in a deeper way.

The St. John’s Church complex was chosen as the venue because of its central location and historical importance as the first Anglican Cathedral of Calcutta. The church compound also houses the graves of Job Charnock, the “founder” of the city, and some other important East India Company personalities from the city’s very early days. The Church complex is also a protected site under the Archaeological Survey of India, which is a perfect setting to start discussions about the accessibility of heritage sites, and which does not have any restrictions on entry. Finally, since the children have hearing-related disabilities, the church compound provided safety from the fast moving traffic on some busiest streets in Kolkata, just outside the walls.

After this plan was finalized, we approached the Ideal School for the Deaf through a common friend. Their authorities were very enthusiastic about the event. We discussed our plan with the head of the institute and other faculty members to come up with an accessible narrative for the children. The school requested that the event be done on Monday, March 27th, rather than on Sunday, which was the day of the international event. GoUNESCO very kindly agreed to let us host the event on this alternate day to make it easier for the children to attend, since many of them come from very far distances to attend the school. The Friday before the event, Tathagata made a presentation at the school to give the children some historical context through pictures and paintings, with translation into sign language. This also provided us, the students, and the teachers with a warm-up run for the event.

To ensure the accessibility of the information during the walking tour, we prepared visual aids for the children. This included print outs of important names, dates and numbers in large fonts and visible colours. Tathagata also spoke slowly in Bangla so that the children, who are experts in lip-reading, could get some information immediately, without waiting for the translation. Both Tathagata and the teacher who was interpreting stood on higher ground whenever possible throughout the tour so that all of the children could easily see them. A small welcome kit was also provided for the children and their teachers, which included a bottle of water and some snacks.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

The issue of the accessibility of historic sites is very close to our hearts at Heritage Walk Calcutta. We believe that, while one-off events like these can spark a discussion, this talk will die out if it is not regularly followed up by similar events and workshops. Heritage Walk Calcutta is therefore committed to making significant contributions to this discussion by organizing follow-up events for various disabled groups and by working with different stakeholders to make heritage sites more accessible for disabled communities.

Heritage Walk Calcutta is an academic-run company in Kolkata that aims to increase awareness of heritage in the community by connecting scholars and the common people through walking tours and workshops.

OUR COLLABORATORS

The event would not be possible without the active support of our various collaborators and GoUNESCO. Here, I briefly introduce our collaborators and thank them for their support.

Ideal School for the Deaf: Established in 1967 by the Society for the Deaf, the school functions as a not for profit institution to provide free education for hearing impaired children. The organization is based out of Salt Lake Sector I, Kolkata, India. The school caters to students from all backgrounds in the Kolkata area and beyond.

Made in Bengal: ‘Made in Bengal.in’ is a digital platform for any product/service made by the people of Bengal..in Bengal…for the people of the world. The Made in Bengal team constantly work with artists, artisans and weavers to innovate in order to keep traditional techniques intact! The aim is to bring on more artists, manufacturers, designers, weavers, musicians, theatre artists, and so on, to this single e-platform and reach out to the world with our products, culture, art and cuisine.

ArchaeologistsEngage: An independent non-profit group of archaeologists who came together to enable engagement between professionals and the public.

Archaeology and Heritage on the Way to Sustainability


This content was presented at the European Association of Archaeologists Conference in Vilnius, 2nd September 2016.

Sustainability has become one of those terms within heritage studies, with its meaning seemingly reducing the more it is used. It has become an all-encompassing tick-box term that provides enough justification in itself to gain the approval of funding bodies and those who want to keep heritage practice and research socially-relevant. As such, I was not necessarily expecting a lot from this session; at best hoping for a few interesting case studies that could be transferred, adapted or used in my own work. However, TH2-21 was much better than this: it had a common, if subtle, thread that linked the papers, and touched upon a broad range of issues that are actually critical for the future of archaeology and heritage as both a profession and a wider societal activity.

The session started with an interesting presentation from Anna-Carin Andersson of the University of Gothenburg. Her paper, Sustainable heritage and archaeology – a blessing or a curse? focused on archaeologists and the profession, and came to the somewhat unexpected conclusion that the concept of sustainability is not useful for archaeology: instead we should think about feasibility. It is not often that archaeologists approach the concept of what is professionally sustainable, and so this was a welcome break. Andersson left us to consider whether the EAA should move more towards being a Pan-European trade union; I am not sure about the benefits of this, but it is certainly a worthwhile discussion following the important work done in Discovering the Archaeologists of Europe.

A further discussion on practice was provided by Jan Vanmoerkerke of the French Ministry of Culture. Various legal frameworks affect the scale, scope and nature of archaeological work in France, and in the case of this paper we could also perhaps read sustainability as feasibility, but from a different perspective. If archaeological authorities only have finite resources and cannot investigate all building works, what should be prioritised? Land use and planning, as well as the law, need to be considered and connected in order to minimise the loss of archaeological sites and give heritage a sustainable future.

To papers from colleagues in Poland moved us back towards our interaction with the public. Anna Zalewska of the Polish Academy of Sciences introduced the concept of archaeological social responsibility, looking specifically at how we should address dark heritage and painful memories. This examination of the ‘memory boom’ was taken further by Kornelia Kajda of Adam Mickiewicz University; archaeologists should show that there are multiple pasts and histories and contribute with detail to enhance ‘public’ understandings of the past. Kajda looked particularly at the concept of Urbex, the exploration of abandoned places by the public: here-and-now experiences that inspire people to engage with heritage.

Sofia Voutsaki of the University of Groningen examined the use of the past in Laconia, Greece. To a certain extent, there were some similarities between this paper and that of Zalewska, in that it explored ideas of an appropriated and/or authorised past. Nationalism and identity were key elements here; but is seeking out and portraying a glorious past a sustainable strategy?

In Here I Live – interpretations of the past, present and future, Anita Synnestvedt from the University of Gothenburg introduced us to a project centred on a stone age monument situated within a residential area that is today home to many asylum seekers and people with immigrant backgrounds. The project shows how it is possible to use archaeology and heritage as a motor for integration and as a focal point for community-building. Engagement, involvement and giving the community a stake in the area’s heritage is critical in order to ensure a sustainable future for both the monument and those who live around it.

The final presentation was led by Andrea Travaglia from the University of Amsterdam and introduced a European portal for the blending of natural and cultural heritage management. It is in many ways a paradox that despite the World Heritage Convention connecting natural and cultural sites on a shared list of global significance, there is often little actual practical or administrative link between natural and cultural heritage managers. This online tool, then, is an attempt to give natural heritage professionals a better understanding of cultural heritage, and vice versa, with the hope that it will lead to better and more holistic thinking and practice. To a certain extent, this paper brought us back to the start and thinking about the sustainability or feasibility of our profession. Is a sustainable future to be found as nature-culture experts or is it essential that we stand in on the cultural/human/social side?

Sustainability, then, is not always an empty term. This session showed that it is perhaps best to see the concept of sustainability as a vessel which can be filled with multiple interpretations and meanings. The wide range of papers here testify to the fact that sustainability does not need a one-size-fits-all definition, and nor can we give it one. Archaeological sustainability is central to the discipline, and is arguably unconsciously present in the thoughts and actions of every archaeologist – although in different ways: from thinking about the feasibility of the profession, to the wider impact of one’s research, to the creation of a realistic excavation budget. Examples and ideas relating to sustainability lie latent and unconnected. Perhaps, then, in order to make the broader public aware of heritage and give archaeology and archaeologists a louder voice and role in society, we need to be more active when thinking about sustainability. How do one’s actions help make archaeology – at whatever scale – more sustainable? The lessons of this session suggest that we need to be more audible, more visible, more engaging, more engaged, more open and more collaborative.     

Mark Oldham is an archaeologist with a keen interest in outreach and the role of archaeology in society. He works in Norway.

Engaging archaeologists from the ground up. Beginnings

How can we help archaeologists to increase and improve communication with the public? That was the question Emily Wapshott, Belinda Tibbetts and I were left with after a discussion of a paper we presented with our anthropologist friend Veronica Buffon, entitled “Gender and Commodification of the Past: The (mis-)representations of Viking women in cultural production.” We were in Glasgow, it was September, and we had just rounded off a final session at the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) annual conference. The session was Conditioned Pasts: On the sociopolitical dimensions of current archaeologies. I mention this because the session was one where societal influences on archaeology where discussed in various forms. Suffice it to say that we did not expect the eruptive discussion that ended the session overtime, only really concentrating on our paper. At the end of it, we were all kindly asked to leave by security, who wanted to close up shop.

But let us start with the paper. Why was it causing so much stir? We presented an analysis of current fiction films about Vikings. In the presentation, we showed how Viking Age women are presented as sexy, bikini-clad, exceptional, caricatures of what we must expect a real Viking age woman to have been like. The women presented in the films hardly ever seemed to live through a normal everyday life. Yet of course, the Vikings had mostly that, farming and trading, building and eating, and yes, they used latrines, too. Even women must have done so. Still, we showed that the caricaturist sex-symbol representation did not really change between the 1920’s and 2000’s. Due to this total misrepresentation of the female role in the Viking Age, which frankly, we find an unhealthy ideal considering that archaeology is active in building identity, we suggested that archaeologists start talking to the public more. We suggested that we can prevent such commodification of women and other social roles to take place, by communicating better with the general audience, and that we specifically do not shy away from tackling Hollywood and other producers of popular fiction. Either we should never have said that, or we should say it even more often (we of course lean towards the second alternative). The discussion was loud, active, accusatory — and engaging. We were so pleased when we walked out of that auditorium, and possibly a bit stunned. How could a group of archaeologists who were there to listen to papers on the dynamics between current society and archaeology, react like this?

That night we started discussing how we could do something in relation to the neglect and unwillingness we see amongst archaeologists when it comes to talking to the public. (For the sake of definition: when we say ‘public’, we mean non-archaeologists.) The three of us have a variety of opinions on why we should do so, ranging from getting the actual research out there and ‘correct’ unhealthy misunderstandings like in the case of Viking Age women, to purely ethical considerations. Common between us was the aim to actually make something happen! All that night we kept revisiting the idea and the next morning we started our initiative with a formal “yay” and a name: ArchaeologistsEngage. We wanted archaeologists to engage, and we wanted our name to reflect what we want.

The next few days we kept throwing out ideas in a massive brainstorm, all the while starting work on our website.  The concept went from being a simple petition to all archaeologists to being an interest organisation for all archaeologists who want to do more for public outreach. We worked on mission statements, regulations, organisational structure, web design, texts, blog posts and pictures all at the same time. Phew, that was an intense month! But exactly a month post-formal-yay we launched our website (archaeologists-engage.org) and our petition. We cut a ribbon in front of a projected image of the website at a postgrad seminar in Exeter, UK, and so it began. And it never stops. There is more to this story, and you can read the iteration of our first few months in the next segment. Until then, go out there and engage! Talk to someone, don’t frown or sigh, and feel free to ring up Hollywood, we will not hold it against you!

Tine Schenck is a Norwegian experimental archaeologist and an archaeo-sociologist.

Why Engage? We can all change a life – We can all change Archaeology!

We have all had a pivotal moment, or moments in our lives which have led us in a certain direction; for me, it was the tireless and patient mentorship of a group of archaeologists. I therefore, as founder of Archaeologists Engage am passionate about furthering engagement between archaeologists and our wider audience as I believe if we willingly descend from our Ivory Tower, we may be surprised how much can be achieved at ‘ground level’.

As a toddler, I was notorious, for digging in my parent’s garden and having found a small rusted tin of lead soldiers, the fact that ‘interesting things’ came out of the ground was confirmed in my young mind. However, this may have developed no further than a hobby, to be enjoyed on the weekends, if not for the Archaeology Field Unit, of University College London (UCL), at Bignor Roman Villa. The Roman Villa comprises a large courtyard building, of complex sixty-five room plan, expanded over a period of time in the 3rd-4th centuries.

Emily’s first find was a box of lead soldiers – in the back yard

One August trip in 1992 coincided with the annual excavation by the UCL team, focussed at the time, to the east of the known excavated portion. The trenches were taped off but the visitors could talk to the archaeologists as they worked. I asked lots of questions of the site director, David Rudling and his staff and recognising more than average interest, they very kindly talked us through the finds. The site ran short training courses for interested members of the public, alongside their students and despite my young age, the archaeologists agreed to let me attend the next week, accompanied by a parent. In what I was to later learn was a pivotal moment in my life, I was taught the concept of stratigraphy, the importance of straight-sided sections, marking finds bags and drawing with a scale ruler. The archaeologists were patient and informative and never failed to pause and seriously answer a question….and believe me, there were many incessant questions!!

Bignor Roman Villa: The site where Emily took her first trowel scratches

To be surrounded by students, working professionals and the university academics I thrived and requested to return the next year. In fact, I attended the site every year for a week/two weeks in the summer, on my own, parent’s long forgotten, until the excavations were wrapped up. I was always included in the lessons the students were given; taking levels, collecting core samples, dating of pottery. During this 6-7 year period, I was mentored constantly by an available member of staff, never patronised but included to the best of my ability and within what safety regulations would allow. David Rudling also took the time to talk through my stated desire to be a professional archaeologist, with my parents, advising on University departments and subject choices at GCSE and A-level. The engagement of David and his dedicated staff at the UCL Field Unit was vital preparation for my career. I understood ahead of my peers, the pitfalls of a profession of long hours and low pay, that archaeology is often as much the choice of a lifestyle, as it is a career. When applying to university, throughout my studies at Exeter and Reading, and in job interviews I have been able to draw on a depth of experience my peers couldn’t match and a confidence and determination in my chosen field, fostered in the trenches of a West Sussex field.

So I ask you all, Take the Challenge! You too could inspire a child and change archaeology………..ARCHAEOLOGISTS ENGAGE!!!!!

Emily Wapshott is a lifelong field archaeologist, with a specialism in buildings, and one of the founders of ArchaeologistsEngage.

Using primitive technology as an educational tool

I have been teaching primitive technologies and ancient skills for over twenty years; working with schools, the general public, Native Awareness, and the Universities of Chester, Edinburgh and York. Throughout this time, the feedback from participants has always been extremely positive, they enjoy learning skills that would otherwise be lost to society, they enjoy working through the same problems as our ancestors. They enjoy the fact that something, e.g. a stone bead that may have just been recovered from the ground, is now being created by them using primitive technology, placing the artefact in a ‘creation’ context.


A key part of my PhD (Mesolithic fishing and shellfish procurement strategies on the west coast of Scotland) was the involvement of students. I taught them to make and use their own primitive fishing gear. A clear distinction developed between the experiences gained through individual activities and group activities. Students collaborated in small groups throughout the manufacture of portable traps, and, though working individually when making lines and hooks, sat together and were able to share their feelings and experiences. Through this the students gained an important social interaction and interestingly in some cases developed their own vocabulary as a way of communicating a new task.

Teaching flint knapping with Native Awareness School of Primitive Survival and Earth Living Skills.


Of course this experimental work can only benefit archaeologists if it is evaluated. Aspects of procurement, manufacture, the activity itself, evidence of learning and understanding, together with social interactions, are all important in unravelling how our ancestors might have lived.
This use of experimental archaeology to give an active living context to archaeological artefacts is an important educational bridge, linking often speculative theories with actual physical experience and increasing our understanding of the past.


The use of primitive technologies and ancient skills as an educational tool found a passionate advocate in Cutts (2004, 45) who believed that such skills beckoned “us to reach across the eons to touch the core of humanity”. Not only do they open up the past to us providing an insight into the lifeway’s of our ancestors, Cutts believed such skills could also engender a genuine respect for our environment and our place within it. Important considerations when conducting a primitive skills workshop are;
1) Can the task be completed in the time allocated?
2) What is the skill level of the participants?
3) What are the facilities?
4) What resources are required?
5) What are the health and safety implications?
Remember, participants will want to go away enthused and inspired, not confused and frustrated.

Primitive fire making in winter.


Finally, ensure that the site is suitable for your activity. I can well recall a workshop at a University where I was teaching primitive fire making. Moved from a classroom which had a sprinkler system to a more suitable outdoor location, I discovered (once we had lit the fires), that we were directly outside the main air intake for the entire building. The students with me were tremendously enthused by their newly acquired skills, however some of the staff in the building were less so.


Cutts, R., 2004. Public Education and the Paleokit. Bulletin of Primitive Technology 28: 45.

Dr Peter Groom is Course Manager of the Environmental Archaeology and Primitive Skills Programme at Reaseheath College, Nantwich, Cheshire, and a director of the Mesolithic Resource Group http://mesolithic.org.uk/