Anth 3130 - Archaeology and Society
2 Mar 2006
Workshop - What to do with a degree in Anthropology? Weds Mar 8, 9-12, Curtis Lecture Hall J. Breakfast provided! Please email Betty at Yorkanth@yorku.ca if you intend to go.
Major Assignment - Proposal/Essay/Poster Due today. Please ensure that you put your email address on it (so I can send you comments easily).
Focus for today: Be ready to compare the different examples of heritage tourism in Rowan & Baram Ch 5, 6, 7 and relate to any experiences you've had with historical sites.
For Next Week: Rowan & Baram Ch 9, 11, 14, 16, 17. As you read, think about why and by whom some landmarks are restored, destroyed, replicated, and sold.
Issues from last week re: Parthenon marbles.
* Should we make our decisions for the past, present, or future?
* Should the people of 2500 years ago be considered to be the same as the people in the same area today?
* How do we avoid projecting modern ethnicities back onto the past? (Or should we?) (e.g. kings of Greece in the 1800s came directly from Bavaria and Denmark)
* Is it possible to make a sensible decision about heritage in the modern day without an exhaustive knowledge of the history of a region? [e.g. Britain, Russia, and France liberated Greece from the Ottoman empire with military efforts starting in 1827…. and it’s arguable that they were able to raise the funds to do so BECAUSE of things like the Elgin Marbles, already in London]
* Restitution - how far should one go? Is it possible to right past wrongs?
* Should we simply abide by what is legal, or what was legal, or participate in forging new codes and new consensuses?
* Who is best qualified to care for something?
* What to do when heritage becomes a valuable pawn in games of political chess between nations?
* What is the best use of heritage in the present day -- use it in the service of internationalism, or nationalism?
* Do intentions matter — i.e., if one intends to honour heritage by keeping it in a gallery, do others have the right to feel offended?
Heritage Tourism
David Lowenthal, from his book Possessed by the Past, 1996, p xi:
"In domesticating the past we enlist it for present causes. Legends of origin and endurance, of victory or calamity, project the present back, the past forward; they align us with forebears whose virtues we share and whose vices we shun. We are apt to call such communion history, but it is actually heritage. The distinction is vital. History explores and explains pasts grown ever more opaque over time; heritage clarifies pasts so as to infuse them with present purposes.
Critics who confuse the two enterpreises condemn heritage as a worthless sham, its credos as fallacious, even perverse. But heritage, no less than history, is essential to knowing and acting.... [but] Because heritage concerns are passionately partisan, they are also seamed with paradox.
Thus we mourn worlds known to be irrevocably lost -- yet more vividly felt, more lucid, more real than the murky and ambiguous present. We yearn for rooted legacies that enrich the paltry here and now with ancestral echoes, yet also encumber us with outworn relics and obsolete customs. We see what has happened as inalterable... and cleave to timeless tradition, yet we ever reshape what we inherit for current needs.... We acclaim heritage as a universal requisite, yet disdain and derogate legacies that differ or compete with our own. We avow concern for the sanctity of all heritage, yet strip it of context and debase its meaning."
Heritage Tourism in Ireland
Map: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ancientireland/journey_flash.html
Images: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/~tomshoemaker/celtic/Contents.html
Neolithic - Newgrange
Bronze Age - Emain Macha http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/timelines/ni/emain_macha.shtml
Iron Age / Celtic - Tara
(mound of the hostages)
Avebury
http://www.eng-h.gov.uk/archcom/projects/summarys/html98_9/2257aveb.htm#a1
National Film Board of Canada ; directed by Jennifer Holness, David Sutherland ; producer, Peter Starr. Publication info: [Montréal] : NFB, 2000. YORK Video #5913.
Abstract: The Old Durham Road Pioneer Cemetery in Priceville, Ontario, burial ground of the area's original black settlers, lay for many years hidden under a farmer's potato field. In the 1980's, descendants, both black and white, begin to restore the cemetery. As the work progresses, new evidence, resident's memories, and a decision to dig in the cemetery to search for grave stones, divide the community. Now everyone must come to terms with this hidden history.
"Speakers for the Dead
examines a small town in rural Ontario and its quest to restore the history and
dignity of its Black descendants.
This story begins in the 1820s when ex-slaves and Black Loyalists, veterans of
the War of 1812, settled in Priceville, southwest of Collingwood, Ontario. The
area's first non-native settlers, they established homesteads, a school and a
cemetery. Around the time of confederation (1860s), Scottish and Irish settlers
displaced them, pushing them off the land to Owen Sound, Collingwood and further
south. Soon, the only remnant of their existence in Priceville was the cemetery.
Fast forward to the 1930s, when a Priceville farmer tears up their tombstones to
plant potatoes and buries some of the grave markers under a two-ton pile of
stones.
Speakers for the Dead traces the journey of discovery begun in the 1980s
by descendants of Priceville's Black and White settlers. Could they find other
tombstones? Would their search lead to a greater understanding of their origins?
As they delve into the story of Blacks in the Priceville area, new truths are
revealed and the townspeople are divided."
"The dead are not quiet in Priceville.
They have come forward from a forgotten corner of a farmer's field to tell an extraordinary tale. But not everyone is ready to listen.
Filmmakers Jen Holness and David Sutherland travel to the farm country south of Georgian Bay to retrieve the lost history of the first non-Native settlers in the area - and to document the far-reaching repercussions of the full story coming to light.
"At school we rarely had the sense that Black people were part of this country's past," says Holness. "In fact Blacks have a long and interesting history in Canada - but it is often overlooked in the official texts."
The story begins in the 1820s when ex-slaves and Black Loyalists, veterans of the War of 1812, establish a farming community in the area. They are later displaced by white settlers - Scottish and Irish immigrants who arrive around the time of confederation.
For decades, the only sign of the original settlement is a graveyard, but in the 1930s this too disappears when a local farmer tears up the tombstones to plant potatoes. The stones are scattered - and the history of the original settlers slips into oblivion.
Fast forward to the 1980s, when a few determined residents join forces with descendants of the settlers to form a restoration committee. They succeed in finding various fragmented remnants of the burial site, eventually winning recognition for the Old Durham Road Pioneer Cemetery.
But plans for an archaeological dig meet with deep ambivalence. Not everyone in Priceville is ready to confront what further research might reveal about their town's past.
"Official history is usually written by the victors, by the dominant forces in society," says Holness. "With Speakers of the Dead, we hope to ensure that school kids in Grey County - and across Canada - get a more complete picture of our rich and multi-layered history."
Juxtaposing interviews with evocative re-enactments, Holness and Sutherland provide a gripping account of Priceville's past and a fascinating lesson on the nature of history itself."
http://www.cbc.ca/roughcuts/feature_061101.html