I was listening about the Thornborough Henges in Yorkshire, which look interesting. Three very large and very widely spaced and entirely identical henges. The presenter was discussing what it would have looked like then, with its trenches fully dug and white gypsum lining the side of them, which would be a spectacular look. I included an artist's rendering of what Avebury might have looked like in my Wayfinding and Stonehenge posts over the years. Also, one of the henges is in forest at present, which would have been unlikely then. Why can't they do that? I think. Why can't they get as close to that in appearance so that we can all have a look at it? I knew the answer, that they are not going to dig the trenches until they can properly excavate them and have some assurance they have gotten all the scientific information they can out of them. There is much deploring among archaeologists of what previous archaeologists destroyed when they were first digging stuff up.
They try to be charitable. The first archaeologists are better described as antiquarians and were looking for something different than we do now. They wanted to find objects that they could bring back to their universities or manors or museums, so that they could look at them, and let others look at them. In doing so they destroyed valuable scientific material. I was taught in school how terrible that was and how important it is that we use better methods now. I absorbed this message fully and learned to be properly horrified. Be careful with old bones because we might get some new techniques and learn even more in the decades to come.
But for the first time I understand those 19th C amateurs. What care I for posterity? What have those people ever done for me? I'm old. If I had my druthers I'd rather walk around in it looking like it did at some important part of its history. I am humorous, but I am bordering on seriousness as well. CS Lewis notes in The Abolition of Man that one of the values of the Tao, the universal values that pop up in every culture, is that we owe something to posterity. Well okay. Something. But how far does that extend. Environmentalists are horrified that some man-made substances will not decompose for 10,000 years. But...what do I owe them, really? What do I think my own ancestors from 8000BC owed me? On what basis should they have cared about me? Retreating to discussions of what the we owe the earth, is something that I associate with people who have no descendants. I care even less about that. Humanity? Say what you mean in simple sentences,as Ransom translated Weston in Out of the Silent Planet and it might not looks so special. I care greatly about my children. I think I feel about the same about my granddaughters, but if you press me, not really. There's a discount. I have no guarantee I will even like any of my great-grandchildren, and grandnieces even less. I want The Church to survive and thrive but that's in the abstract, when I really look at it. If I came back in 100 years my whole denomination, and 99% of the church in America might be prize idiots who I have no desire to assist whatsoever.
If you are a 25 y/o grad student in archaeology or evolutionary genetics or whatever, I completely get why you want to protect those ditches so that the information can be extracted with New Techniques.
By you, and your pals, and your class in general. That's fine. But maybe it's not sacred, you see?
The antiquarians were conserving what would otherwise have been plowed away or discarded if near the surface, or never recovered at all if buried deep.
ReplyDeleteWere it not for them, we'd not have those vaunted better techniques--who'd bother developing them?
The heirs weep for what was lost, but forget who taught them to care.