The Destructiveness of Archaeology

After last weekend's trip to Pompeii (an ancient town that was covered in ash during the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D. which kept it well preserved until its excavation starting in 1748), Herculaneum (another ancient town preserved in a mudslide that resulted from the same eruption of Mt. Vesuvius), the National Archaeological Museum in Naples (where much of the orginial artefacts from the 2 previous sites can be seen), and Mt. Vesuvius itself, I finally feel like I have enough to say about archaeology to make a post out of it. For my non-anglophone readers, I've decided to make this a multilingual post; for my uni-lingual readers, you can always add a bit of humour to your day with an online translator.

Alors, pour commencer, depuis que j'ai commencé mes fouilles ici en Italie, j'ai entendu dire a maintes reprises que l'archéologie est destructive. La première fois, j'étais un peu surpris, mais j'ai vite compris ce qu'on voulait dire: en faisant nos fouilles, on enlève les trouvailles de leurs contextes originaux faisant en sorte que l'information que quelqu'un d'autre peut tirer des trouvailles est minime. Si, par exemple, en faisant nos fouilles on enlève un morceau de céramique d'une chambre sans s'en rendre compte, dès qu'elle se trouve dans notre tas de refus, on ne peut m^eme plus savoir si la jarre vien de l'édifice dans laquelle on faisait nos fouilles. Elle pourrait provenir de n'importe où dans le champs dans lequel on travaille et avoir été déplacée par une charrue.

At the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum, I saw another way in which archaeology can be destructive: once an archaeological site has be excavated, it is prone to decay (buildings falling over, frescoes losing their colour because of UV damage, etc.) and, I am disgusted to say, grafitti. Unfortunately, there seem to have been economic reasons, such as tourism, that have driven the excavation of a larger area that could preserved and protected at both sites and so every day, the less and less of the original ruins are available for viewing, and more importantly, for study.

Por esta destructividad, dicen que en la arqueologIa del futuro no van a excavar nada. En vez, estAn desarollando tecnologIas que permiten sacar la misma informaciOn sobre ruinas y artefactos a travEs la radiolocalizaciOn, etc. PuEs mientras que la tecnologIa se mejora, la misma informaciOn serA siempre disponible.

Well, that was only the first of a few archaeological topics I hope to touch on, but I have to run so the rest will have to wait until another time.

Europe?

During my month on the dig, I have 2 days during which I don't have to work and instead, I stay home to clean the appartment and prepare lunch (somebody different does it every day). Today was my first one of those days and, having finished all my chores, I have a bit of extra time to write another post.

In Canada, I've often heard people talk about how different European culture is from North American culture: they're more socialist, they more environmentally conscious, they're more fashionable..., they're about 20 years ahead of us. Had I thought about this a little bit, I'd would have surely realised that these are broad generalisations and that even if these they were true across Europe, these unifying characteristics are few and far between compared to the infinite number of distinguishing characteristics of individual countries. However, I did not think of this, and in my mind, I had a rather unified picture of Europe - simply with different languages in different countries. Of course, rural, Southern Italy, is not much at all like Wien so Gravina came as a bit of a shock to me.

To begin, it's so formal and traditional! Where Wien seemed like the modern and open-minded place I imagine much of California to be like, I imagine Gravina is much like rural Northern Ontario would have been 50 years ago. The first big shock was the presence of machismo I am all too familiar with from my time in Costa Rica. In Wien, I was so impressed at people's apparent maturity towards sex and nudity: they had billboards for some sort of cream with an entirely non-erotic picture of a topless woman (there was also a male equivalent) that simply wouldn't pass in Toronto; I was at a party where a new mother casually hiked up her shirt, and began to breast-feed her baby making no attempt to conceal her breast (for example, with a little blanket, as women often do in Canada); at a swimming pool (where nudity technically wasn't allowed) there were women comfortably walking around topless, without getting any unwanted attention - nowhere did I see a woman get any unwanted attention!

In Gravina, it's the complete opposite. Men stand on the street and whistle or shout at young women, and the guys are all sooo "cool". During our trip to the beach, I spent some time chatting with the bus driver, a middle-aged, married man with 2 children, who after failing on his own, tried to get me to arrange him a date with one on my 25-year-old collegues. The strangest manifestation of the very traditional gender roles here was when I attended mass last Sunday morning: for every woman there, there were nearly 10 men! When I brought it up with Alesia, an Italian student working at one of the other sites, she told me that women usually go to mass just as much as men, but because there are masses at various other times, women probably wouldn't be at the Sunday morning one because they would be preparing lunch.

Speaking of religion, I also learnt from Alesia that most young people here are baptised, confirmed Christians, that, like in many other parts of the world, go through the motions of their faith without feeling too strongly about it. However, in contrast to what I encountered in Wien, people apparently go through the motions without really questioning or reflecting on them, and very few reject them. I certainly got a vibe of this passive acceptance at the mass I attended.

Another, more pleasing, characteristic of the culture here is the camaraderie that exists between older women. They always seem to be sitting out on their front step or balcony looking out on the street for somebody to give them a little piece of gossip. And if they happen to miss something, not to worry: most of the billboard space here seems to be used to announce deaths in the town.

As you may have noticed, my comments on Gravina are a bit more superficial than my ones about Wien (I think so anyway). This simply reflects the different way in which I am experiencing the culture. Most of my time here is spent on the site and so my interactions with and observations of the people here are quite limited. So if you actually want to know what Italy is like (or any other place I write about), please refer to aircanada.com...

Goodbye Wien, Hello Gravina!

I had so much more I wanted to write about Wien: the Fujimo hip hop concert I went to in a room packed with 5000 people; all the museums, plays, concerts, operas (I saw Mozart's "Die Zauberfloete" (The Magic Flute) in the Statsoper (National Opera)!!!!!!), and art exhibits I saw, and how the portrayal of white and coloured people in them might affect the culture there; the interplay between modern and traditional culture as manifested in places like the Museumsquatier; different attitudes towards nudity; and the effect having such a long history (compared to Canada) may have on the culture. Still, having been in Gravina in Puglia for almost 2 weeks, without letting you know anything about this place and my experience here, I feel like that should come first. If any of the aforementioned topics about Wien are of particular interest to you, please let me know, because chances are I won't get around to writing about them otherwise.

So... after my 2 weeks in the wudershoene city of Wien, I hopped on a train on a Thurday afternoon, en route to Venezia. I was so glad I decided to travel during the day instead of overnight, because the trip through the Alps was breathtaking! When I wasn't looking out the window, I spent most of my time going through the Italian phrasebook of my electronic English-French-Spanish-Italian-Portuguese-German dictionary and I asked some British tourists in my wagon to teach me a few basic verb conjugations.

I arrived after 11pm in Venezia and I took me a little while to find my hostel. Around midnight, I settled down in a packed restaurant for an apparently not-so-late dinner. The following day, I saw a bit of the city but spent most of my time at the Biennale world-renowned international modern art exhibition. Aside from the stunning (and surprisingly easy to appreciate) art, it was fascinating to see the variations between the pavillons of the different countries. At one point, I found a fine arts class from the University of Prague that was having some great discussions (in German) about the art. I followed them around, discretely listening in on their engaging conversations for close to an hour.

In the evening, I saw some modern dance performances put on by the Biennale's 5-year-old international modern dance festival, which, together with the art exhibition, really opened my mind to the unlimited possibilities of modern art. In fact, I now have a little modern art project of my own I can't wait to try out...

The next day, after 10 more hours on the train learning the present, past, imperfect, future, and conditional of a dozen Italian verbs and "conversing" in Italalian for a couple of hours with an old Italian couple and some Armenians, I arrived in Gravina in Puglia, a town of about 40,000 in the South of Italy (if you search "Gravina in Puglia" on maps.google.com, you can see where it is, and if you search it on images.google.com, you'll find some pictures of it and its famous ravine).

Here, I'm living and working with 15 other students and 2 profs on an archaeological dig. The others are from Mount Allison University; Acadia University; and University of Nevada, Reno. There's also a group about the same size living in a different appartment and working on different nearby sites whom we travel and have dinner with. The site I'm working on is believed to be some sort of Roman Villa from the 1st to 2nd century A.D. and the other projects include a survey of the area (to find other good places to excavate) and the excavation of a cemetery a few centuries older than our site.

Every morning, we get up at 5:30 to be out the door at 6. It's about a 20 minute drive to the site and there we work pick-axing, shovelling, trauling, sweeping, etc. until 10 am when we break for a little snack. Around 12:30, we head home for lunch and a siesta (since people know better than to do anything but sleep in weather hotter than the morning and late-afternoon 23- to 33-ish degrees Celcius) and then go back to the field at 3:30 pm for another 2 and a half hours of work.

Upon our arrival back home in the evening, we all rush to be first into one of the 2 showers and to get in a hour of internet, reading, postcard writing, relaxing, etc. before our communal dinner at one of the town's best restaurants (which I'm going to be late for!!...). After finishing dinner around 10:30, it's straight to bed (sometimes after a quick stop at a gelatto shop).

On weekends, we're off work. Last weekend, we all went on a trip to the beach at Metaponto, this weekend, we're off to Naples and Pompei, and the following weekend - my last one here - we can either stay in Gravina or travel on our own.

Break

Dearest readers,
Unfortunately, I will only be able to write in my blog weekly AT MOST. I am now in Gravina in Puglia working on my archaeological dig.
Warm regard,
Nicholas