CU șù«ÍȚÊÓÆ” archaeologist Sarah Kurnick addresses some common myths about archaeology at the 50th anniversary of the discovery of Chinaâs terracotta warriors
March 1974 was particularly dry in Chinaâs Shaanxi Province, so at the end of the month a farmer named Yang Zhifa and several brothers who lived near Xiâan .
For two days they hacked into the hard, red earth, and on the third day, March 29, Yang struck something terracotta in the soil. It would eventually be discovered as one of the greatest archaeological finds of the century, and arguably of the modern era: the , Chinaâs first emperor, guarded by thousands of life-size terracotta warriors and horses.
In the 50 years since its discovery, the terracotta army has captivated visitors to what is now an archaeological complex in Xiâan and, perhaps less thrillingly, contributed to one of the enduring myths about archaeology: that the main goal of the field is to make huge discoveries like the terracotta warriors.
âI think itâs common for people to assume weâre only interested in the very distant past and only interested in things that occur in exotic locationsâdeserts and jungles or in places like China or Egypt,â says Sarah Kurnick, a șù«ÍȚÊÓÆ” assistant professor of anthropology and an anthropological archaeologist who specializes in . âWhat you tend not to hear as much about are historical archaeologistsâpeople who are studying plantation sites in the American South, for exampleâor even projects where people are doing archaeology of the contemporary world.â
Thanks to swashbuckling characters like Indiana Jones and Lara Croft and the broad attention given to just a small handful of archaeological discoveriesâthe terracotta warriors, King Tutâs tomb and Machu Picchu, for exampleâarchaeology has become a field in which myth and reality often dramatically diverge.
At the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the terracotta army, Kurnick addresses some of the most common myths about the field and science of archaeology.
Myth: If youâre not hacking through jungle vines with a machete, youâre not doing archaeology
People donât really think of archaeologists teaching classes or doing research in libraries, doing data analysis. Thereâs the idea that itâs all field work and that field work is entirely excavation. I donât think itâs commonly known how much technology has changed and advanced the field. Thereâs ground-penetrating radarâwhich doesnât work in all environments, but it can find anomaliesâand a whole bunch of aerial survey methods. is a big one. The idea is to rent a plane and fly over a survey area back and forth in straight lines while youâre sending a laser down. That creates what are almost photographs of the topography, and itâs a way of looking at large swaths of land and getting rid of levels of trees, essentially.
But field work, if youâre a field archaeologist, is just part of it. Archaeologists work in labs, they write code to analyze data, they do text-based research. Unfortunately, thatâs not very glamorous.
Myth: Archaeology is for men
I do think thereâs a common misconception that archaeology is this masculine endeavorâthat archaeologists are men and itâs all hardship and ruggedness and strength and alcohol. Thereâs a famous archaeologist, , who said in the early 1940s that there are two types of archaeologists in popular imagination: the hairy chested and the hairy chinned. Youâve got the hairy chested, rugged explorer with his shirt unbuttoned, with the pith helmet and bullwhipâthe Indiana Jones typeâand then you think of his father, an older gentleman with a beard and a jacket with elbow patches, decoding ancient texts. Those are the two typesâor mythsâof archaeologists people think of, and theyâre both men.
Although much has changed since the 1940s, women in archaeology still deal sometimes with this macho, masculine feel to archaeologyâthis sense that archaeologists are the cowboys of science and itâs not a field for women because we canât carry buckets of dirt or cut vines down with machetes, which is obviously not true.
Myth: Archaeologists deal in the supernatural
Thereâs a lot of pseudo-archaeology stuff out thereâthis notion that the past was significantly influenced by aliens or people from the lost city of Atlantis. If I meet a random person on a plane sitting next to me and they ask what I do and I say Iâm an archeologist, a lot of the time theyâll start talking about something related to pseudo-archaeology. Almost everybody gets information about archaeology from television and movies, and if you look at the types of movies and TV shows, youâve got things like Indiana Jones and Lara Croft, and on TV thereâs âAncient Aliensâ and âAmerica Unearthed.â Youâve got âAncient Apocalypseâ listed as a documentary on Netflix.
Thereâs this disconnect between what archaeologists are saying and what people want to know. In some instances, I do think people might be geared toward the wrong questions, but on other hand, I think archaeologists do a pretty poor job of communication and are not really meeting people where theyâre at.
For archaeology, like most science, itâs still the 'publish or perish'Ìęmodel, and generally the peer-reviewed publications are considered much more important than public outreach. Thereâs still sometimes a stigma associated with public outreach. But itâs important not to turn people off. We need to do a better job of engaging people in the science in a way thatâs interesting and relevant.
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Myth: Archaeologists are treasure hunters
Unfortunately, this is something thatâs still being perpetuated by the History Channel, National Geographic and other organizations. There was a documentary several years ago that was all about LIDARâwhich makes sense because LIDAR is awesome and the images it produces are amazingâand they interviewed real archaeologists who work in Central America. But whoever wrote the narrative for the documentary kept talking about LIDAR-facilitated treasure hunting and about how you have a map and XÌęmarks the spot and LIDAR shows you where that X is.
Also, I think thereâs not a great understanding of what happens to artifacts once theyâve been excavatedâhow complicated and difficult and ethically fraught the next steps are. The notion of who owns the past is a huge question. I also think people assume that archaeologists pocket some things they find, or that theyâre insisting everything belongs in a museum. Archaeology has historically been a colonial endeavor, and weâre doing things very differently now than in the past. Iâm on the , and part of our work is recognizing that yes, our past is problematic, but weâre working to do things differently now.
Myth: All archaeologists want to work in Egypt
Ancient China, Egypt, ancient Mayaâthese are the things that people assume archaeologists should do and want to do. But it would be so disappointing if that was all we wanted to do. Thereâs so much exciting historical archaeology and contemporary archaeology happening. Thereâs a famous archaeologist named who said we should be looking at trash to learn about ways of life and suggested excavating landfills in the present. Because of his work, we learned all sorts of insights about consumer habits, about what people recycle and donât recycle, what does and doesnât degrade in a landfill.
There are really cool historical projects in Coloradoâone that Bonnie ClarkÌęand her colleagues are leading is learning more about a Japanese internment camp at , and I donât think people commonly think of doing the archaeology of World War II. Another project by Dean Saitta and his colleagues is looking at some of the early labor movements and the violent interactions between labor and capitalists in the region, and an aspect of that is looking at the and the history of miners.
One thing thatâs really exciting about archaeology is itâs in many ways democratizing. If we look at history, oftentimes the people we know the most about are the most eliteâthe 1%. When we have the extraordinary findsâthe terracotta warriors, King Tutâs tombâweâre learning about the top echelons of those societies. But for a lot of archaeologists, weâre interested in the 99%. Finding these aspects of daily life in households can be just as exciting, if not more exciting, than the huge discoveries. Weâre finding out about how things were for most people, rather than just the upper echelons. Thereâs an emerging field of household archaeology thatâs excavating houses and figuring out what daily life was like, how did people interact. Weâd be getting a really warped picture of the world if the only things we knew about our past came from royal tombs.
Myth: Archaeologists look for dinosaur bones
No, thatâs paleontologists.
Top image: Terracotta army in Xi'an, China (Photo: iStock); Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones (Photo: Paramount/Everett Collection)
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