#PeaceforFriedrichBrandt and the debate on displaying human remains

The remains of a soldier, widely believed to be 23-year-old hunchback, Private Friedrich Brandt from Hanover, Germany, have been the centre of debate amongst historians lately.

The skeleton of the man who died during the Battle of Waterloo 200 years ago is currently on display in a Belgium museum as part of a commemorative exhibition after having been found under a car park near the battlefield in 2012.

Campaigners, including many military historians and archaeologists, are calling for the remains to be reinterred with the “dignity and respect [of a] proper burial that has been denied him for so long.” German historian, Rob Schäfer, who has created a Facebook and a change.org page in order to petition and raise awareness about the controversy surrounding Private Brandt’s remains, has stated that: “It is accepted that his remains should be studied for serious archaeological purposes but, after the data has been collected, the man should be allowed to rest in peace, instead of being viewed as a morbid object of curiosity by thousands of paying tourists - particularly when in an enlightened and technologically advanced world it is perfectly possible to laser scan the remains and produce a 3D replica for display.”

Tony Pollard, historian, archaeologist and Editor of Journal of Conflict Archaeology, tweeted: “He was a soldier. He died in battle. He deserves a grave. End of.” Comedian and keen historian, Al Murray, also contributed to the debate by tweeting: “#PeaceforFriedrichBrandt this soldier's bones shouldn't be on display, he should be at rest.”

Those in opposition to this campaign have made reference to the display of Egyptian Mummies and Bog Bodies to support the exhibition of Private Brandt’s remains. The Memorial has defended the exhibit, stating that “ultimately, it seemed to everybody that the greatest homage that could be paid to him was to consider him, with the respect to which he is entitled and that the museum exhibit has sought to ensure.”  

Should the remains of Friedrich Brandt be given a proper burial? Is there a gain to keeping his bones as part of a commemorative exhibition? Let us know your thoughts.

Read more about the human remains in museum collections in these two free articles from Public Archaeology:

The ethics of displaying human remains from British archaeological sites

The Value of Human Remains in Museum Collections 

INTERVIEW WITH THE EDITORS: Suzie Thomas and Carol McDavid, Co-editors of Journal of Community Archaeology & Heritage

What are your main research interests?

Suzie Thomas

ST: I’m interested in the ways in which non-professionals engage with archaeological heritage. This spans, for me, all the way from the public participating in events and activities provided for them by museums and other heritage institutions, through community groups carrying out their own archaeology and heritage-based research, through to the more controversial activities of hobbyist treasure hunters. For my PhD I looked at the relationships between archaeologists and metal detectorists in England and Wales, and I have also worked as Community Archaeology Support Officer for the Council for British Archaeology, which saw me trying to get a handle on the wider picture in the UK concerning how many people might be actively getting involved with archaeological activities, and in what ways they were doing this. I’ve also worked on research into the global trafficking of cultural objects before, which of course is a vitally important facet to consider when looking at the impact of treasure hunting.

Carol McDavid

CM: In general terms, I am interested in process -- how archaeologists and other academics can make their work more meaningful to the public, and how we can find ways to make our research more accessible as a tool for community collaboration and reform. I am especially committed to finding ways to use historical and archaeological information (in my case, about the African Diaspora) to dismantle still-existing structures of white privilege. I am also interested how people in the present deploy archaeology and heritage for their own agendas. My training is in the historical archaeology of the African Diaspora, but I also categorize my work as “public archaeology”.

What or who inspired you to work in this field?

ST: I first became interested in the public-facing end of archaeological work while volunteering for the National Trust at Corfe Castle in Dorset, southern England, during my undergraduate degree (at the University of Sheffield). I was placed to work with the education officer, Pam White, and she was pretty inspiring and helped convince me that this was the area of archaeological work for me. During a course on heritage management at Sheffield as part of my degree, I also became familiar with the work of Peter Stone, and resolved to do my Masters degree at Newcastle University so that I could be taught by him. Peter was also my PhD supervisor, following my Masters, so he has been a big inspiration to my work over the years.

CM: I was exposed to the social contexts of archaeology while doing my master’s degree in Anthropology with Dr. Kenneth Brown, as he studied the Levi Jordan Plantation in South Coastal Texas. Ken recruited me to work collaboratively with both black and white descendants to discuss and publicly interpret the lives of their ancestors. At that point (the early 1990s), no one had really tried that sort of thing at a Southern slave plantation, or within historical archaeology more generally. His vision made me see where I could fit in and do work that counted to real people. I was also influenced by Dr. Parker Potter, whose seminal work in critical public archaeology showed how public archaeology could have a meaningful connection to contemporary social issues. Later, for my doctorate in Archaeology, I worked with Ian Hodder at the University of Cambridge, where I looked at how the Internet (at the time, Web 1.0) could be a tool to create multivocal, democratic, relevant and open conversations about archaeology – especially “hurtful” archaeology. Both Ken and Ian gave me enough rope to make my own way, while providing the support I needed. I learned a lot about being a good teacher and scholar from both of them.

Tell us a bit about your role as Editor and your overall goals for the publication...

ST: As Co-Editor, alongside Carol, I work as part of a larger team which also includes John H Jameson as our Assistant Editor – we are also in the process of calling for even more team members, with a call for an extra Assistant Editor and a Technical Editor currently underway. Carol and I deal with incoming papers, making initial reviews and, where it would be useful, suggestions for modification ahead of the peer review process. We also select reviewers for the papers, based on their own expertise, as well as selecting reviewers who may know less about the paper’s specific subject area, in order to make sure that papers make sense to non-specialists as well. As part of this we often invite non-professionals, for example members of community archaeology groups, to act as reviewers for us alongside academics and practitioners. As we are still a very new journal, I think all of the Editorial team take every opportunity they can, through conferences, meetings, and just conversations, to encourage potential contributors to send papers in to us. We are getting a great variety of papers already, but we can always have more. This goes also for guest blog posts to journalcah.blogspot.com – the journal’s blog – and suggestions for books, conferences, events, exhibitions and websites to review.

My overall goal, personally, is for the journal to become the key meeting place for debates and knowledge exchange around activities that can be described in some way as ‘community archaeology’ or ‘community heritage’. For this to happen, we must welcome papers from non-academics as well as academic researchers, and be welcoming of different styles of writing, for example through creative approaches such as poetry, or more fluid ‘dialogue’ articles as well as more traditional papers. Current economics for the arts and humanities are not such that we can make the journal entirely open access unfortunately, but through partnership with the Council for British Archaeology, and in time perhaps more archaeological organizations with a broad membership, I hope we can offer at least an accessible subscription rate for our readers, as well as encouraging contributors to support open access options for their own papers where this is possible.

CM: I agree with Suzie – our goals are much the same. To build on what she said, for me, it is satisfying to have an active part in establishing and building a wider, and somewhat different, discourse in public/community archaeology than I “grew up” with in the discipline. I enjoy helping to forge new ways for people to write about public and community work, and hope that over time JCAH will be seen as raising the bar for such writing. And doing all this in a collaborative way, with an editorial team of really smart and interesting people, is a lot of fun.

How did you get involved with the journal?

ST: I believe it was a chance conversation with Liz Rosindale from Maney when I worked at the CBA! We were discussing something else entirely, but the conversation turned to community archaeology itself, and whether the time was right for this growing aspect of archaeological work and research to have its own dedicated journal. I then contacted first my colleague Dr Adam Gutteridge who was at the time at the University of York, and we also invited Carol due to her expertise and outlook (also realizing we should have a Co-Editor from outside of the UK to expand the journal’s reach and perspectives), and I guess the rest is history. Adam is no longer involved with the editorial team, but his input at the development stage of the journal (which first had to be proposed and then approved by a range of reviewers), remains invaluable.

CM: Suzie summed it up really well. I seem to recall that at one point she and Adam had asked for input on some things, and being a rather opinionated person, I probably gave them more than they wanted! So they maybe they figured I should actually do some work!!

Why is research into community archaeology so important?

ST: Research into community archaeology is research into the importance of archaeology to people. As practitioners and researchers, we ultimately have a responsibility to the wider public, not only because their tax dollars (or pounds or euros or whatever) fund our work, but because archaeology, and more broadly cultural heritage, belongs to and is of interest to everyone. On a practical level, it is vital to discuss both successful and less fruitful initiatives, and to reflect on what works and doesn’t work in community archaeology and heritage projects.

CM: Yes, discussing what didn’t “work” is just as important as sharing what did. That’s what we mean when we ask for papers to be critical and reflexive – our submission guidelines go into this in detail. “Research” about public and community work has to take a variety of different “ways of knowing” into account (anecdotal and experiential, as well as formal). So we ask our writers to share details about the “real” interactions they have with communities, and to reflect upon what their work actually did – in society, in archaeology, or even just in one individual community. That’s when the research starts to really matter.

What advice would you give to postgraduates who want to get into this field?

ST: I guess the main thing is experience. Find out where you can participate in a community archaeology project, outreach service or other initiative, and get involved. That said, don’t do so much that you get distracted from completing your degree programme! And use opportunities at conferences and other events to meet people in the sector and find out about their perspectives and experiences. If what they are doing fits with your own research interests, make sure to keep in touch with them!

CM: First, that context is just as important in public contexts as it is in archaeological ones. There is no “one size fits all” way of doing public and community work, but understanding what others have done before will help a community-engaged person create the new tools they need for any particular context. Understand the literature and seek out the people who did work you admire for advice and support (yes, this is a poorly disguised commercial for our journal, and others!). Second, that theories are tools to think with. Understand them well, and use them instrumentally. They will help you connect the ivory tower ideas you learn in graduate school to real, everyday situations. Third, every public interpretation, site tour, display, or other interpretive device is, in effect, a contingent, situated conversation about both past and present. It’s keeping the conversation going, even with those who disagree, that matters (that’s why Suzie’s work with metal detectorists is so important).

Tell us a fun fact that no one else knows?

ST: Research with colleagues at Helsinki University and Espoo City Museum for an article just uncovered photographs of a Finnish archaeologist using a metal detector for field work…..back in 1954! For me, with all my years of researching metal detecting, such an incredibly early example of an archaeologist making use of the machine, in Finland (where I now work), is a mind-blowing discovery, and something I want to research further.

CM: Not sure if this is all that fun, but I’m an artist, I used to be a caterer, and also used to run a public housing agency. A somewhat checkered past!

INTERVIEW WITH AN EDITOR: Robin Skeates, Editor of European Journal of Archaeology

This week we are launching our new feature ‘Interview with an Editor’ and our first editor in the spotlight is the lovely Robin Skeates (Durham University, UK), editor of European Journal of Archaeology. Robin is a friend of C-U-D-I and wrote out first ever blog post!

Enjoy!

Here's Robin in a cave in Sardinia

What are your main research interests?

My interests are broad and multi-faceted: on the one side, Central Mediterranean prehistory; on the other side, public archaeology, and museum and heritage studies. But they sometimes come together, particularly under visual and sensual culture studies.

What or who inspired you to work in this field?

I've always been close to archaeology, in one form or another. I grew up in a house next to a ruined Norman castle, where my brother and I used to play every day. We used to swing on tree creepers across the moat, like Tarzan ... until a creeper broke with me half way across.

Tell us a bit about your role as Editor and your overall goals for the publication.

My role as Editor is to keep the show on the road, and at a fast pace, since I need to bring out a new issue on time four times a year. I keep in close contact with our authors, our Editorial Board, peer reviewers, Maney - our publisher, and the European Association of Archaeologists (to whose members the journal belongs). My email account is always busy, and I have to travel regularly to international meetings and conferences, which means getting to know lots of interesting people. The main goals are to enhance the quality, breadth and reputation of the journal. It's taken a lot of hard work, but all the signs are that we really are succeeding.

How did you get involved with the journal?

Five years ago, my Durham colleagues, John Chapman and Marga Diaz-Andreu, suggested that I put my name forward to be the new Editor of the EJA. I'd already gained a fair bit of editorial experience and I am pro-European, so the decision wasn't hard. But I did ask my wife first, since I knew that it would involve a fair bit of work and time away from home.

Why is research into European archaeology so important?

In Europe, we're fortunate to have a deep and rich past all around us. Archaeological research comes with the responsibility to help people understand that past, in new, interesting, and scientifically rigorous ways.

What advice would you give to postgraduates who want to get into this field?

Come along to the annual conference of the European Association of Archaeologists. It's a great showcase for current archaeological research in Europe, and a good place to make contact with like-minded people.

Tell us a fun fact that no one else knows?

I once bit a medieval coin in half. I was working on an archaeological dig, and I found what I thought was a coin.  But I wasn't sure. So, like they used to do on Western films, I bit it to see if it was metal. It was ... but I bit too hard!

You can follow Robin on Twitter at @RobinSkeates
Visit the European Association of Archaeologists website. 

Call for papers: TAG 2014 Debate on the Instrumentalisation of Archaeology

Welcome to the TAG 2014 debate on the instrumentalisation of archaeology! 

This year the Theoretical Archaeology Group conference will be hosted by the University of Manchester between 15 and 17 December 2014.

Starting with the motion ‘This House believes that archaeology should NOT be instrumentalised’ we anticipate a lively debate!

This session takes the form of a House debate focusing on the instrumentalisation of archaeology, which has always been an aspect of the discipline but that has grown apace in recent years with the popularity of Public Archaeology, Community Archaeology and archaeologies with a ‘social purpose’ at their core.

There is much to extol in archaeological projects and practices that benefit communities and individuals in the present, as will be demonstrated in this session by those who position themselves in favour of the instrumentalisation of archaeology. Nevertheless, caution is required in ostensibly subjugating archaeology to political, economic, social and even psychological ends. Contributors arguing that archaeology should NOT be instrumentalised will take to task the role of archaeologist-as-social-worker and the potentially deleterious effects of aligning archaeological enquiry with political agendas (aka, archaeology-as-agitprop). In so doing, questions will be raised concerning the ethics of archaeologies that are primarily driven by national socioeconomic agendas and the institutional policies of funding bodies. Should archaeology be independent of these agendas? Or is an archaeology that is more integrated into societal issues and engages with contemporary discourses a more relevant one? Ultimately, the debate over instrumentalisation has at its core what we as archaeologists believe is the role of our discipline in the contemporary world and how this might change in the future.

Deliberately provocative, the purpose of this session is not to dismiss or discredit social-purpose archaeologies but rather to encourage critical appraisal of the parameters of praxis.

Contributors are invited to present ‘For’ or ‘Against’ the House in order to progress debate in an open, inclusive and mutually respectful arena. Please be aware, speakers need not feel constrained to present a personal position: devil’s advocates most welcome! In addition to formal papers active participation will be sought from the floor and delegates are encouraged to come prepared with ‘points of information’.

The session will be live tweeted #instruarch and proceedings of the session will be published; to this end, discussion is under way with the editors of the Journal of Community Archaeology & Heritage.

Confirmed contributors:
John Carman, University of Birmingham
Gerry Wait, Nexus Archaeology
Sarah May, Heritage for Transformation
Kenneth Aitchison, Landward Research Ltd
Paul Belford, Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust (Discussant)

Expressions of interest should be directed to the session organisers by Friday 10th October with confirmed paper titles and abstracts will be required by 31st October. 

Tara-Jane Sutcliffe and Sarah Howard
Session organisers

What can you do with an archaeology degree besides be an archaeologist?

It's a tough time to be a graduate. Jobs in any sector are scarce and the chances of being able to actually apply what you have learned through your degree in the workplace are slim.

This is a very real problem for students of archaeology and Beatrix Arendt addresses options available in "Making it Work: Using Archaeology to Build Job Skills for Careers Other Than Archaeology" in the latest issue of Public Archaeology.

"A recent online article in The Daily Beast listed archaeology as one of the thirteen most useless undergraduate degrees. The article failed to identify transferable job skills gained while engaged in archaeological work. Further, archaeological field programmes and labs offer an alternative learning environment that benefits some students.

 

This article reviews two archaeological projects that used archaeology as a form of social activism to provide employment and education to an under-served community as a fundamental aspect of its goals. The Hopedale Archaeology Project is an archaeology field project based in a north-east Canadian community that provides education and work opportunities for Inuit students. The Veterans Curation Program based in the United States provides temporary employment to recently discharged military veterans in an archaeological and archival curation lab. These programmes assist individuals to

re-establish themselves within the workforce and add to their academic and professional growth, as well as incorporate a public outreach component that makes archaeology and history more accessible to the public.

 

Most archaeologists engage in a wide range of administrative and management skills to conduct excavations as well as computer and digitization skills, which are applicable in practically all work environments. Harnessing these skill sets and using them for alternative education and work opportunities can make archaeology and history more accessible to the public, while assisting individuals to re-establish themselves within the workforce by adding to their academic and professional growth.

 

Engaging in archaeological projects lends itself to the development of specific learning situations, particularly incorporating active learning where individuals have the opportunity to explore and experiment. Many other researchers have explored the educational value of archaeology via activities that require analytical thinking, problem-solving, and cooperation; however, few have analysed the potential for using archaeology as a tool that provides transferable job skills in fields outside of archaeology."

 

Read the full article for free >

Cannon you believe it? The time and money it takes to conserve artefacts salvaged from shipwrecks

You may have seen in the news last week that further diving at the Elizabethan wreck that sank off Alderney in the Channel Islands, UK in the 16th Century has been carried out by the Alderney Maritime Trust and staff from Bournemouth University. They have uncovered three cannon and "substantial ship timbers" in addition to over 1,000 artefacts that were salvaged from the first dive to the wreck in 2008. The unnamed ship sunk in November 1592 and was discovered by local fishermen Bertie Costeril and Fred Shaw in 1977.

Mike Harrison, coordinator trustee, said more work on the site was going to go ahead next summer and explained the large lapse in time between dives by stating that "[t]hings move very slowly with marine archaeology, the work we've done in the last few years... has been conserving objects." However he also noted that "it's very, very expensive... we've got a lot of fundraising to do, it's tens of thousands of pounds, conserving a cannon is £10,000 for example."

I took a look in our online archive to read more about conservation in maritime archaeology and came across the article 'In situ conservation of cannon and anchors on shipwreck sites' by Ian Donald MacLeod in a 1996 issue of Studies in Conservation. In the article the author explains how a wrought iron anchor and a cast iron carronade from the wreck of HMS Sirius (1790) received In situ electrolysis treatment using sacrificial anodes in the shallow waters off Norfolk Island in the South Pacific Ocean.This pre-treatment stabilises the artifacts and ensures that they can be safely recovered and transported.

Monitoring on the seabed and in the laboratory showed that approximately 80% of the chlorides had been removed from the carronade before excavation. The cathodic
pre-treatment results in a significant improvement in the quality of the surface of the metals. He argues it is possible to maintain artifacts on the seabed by continued use of sacrificial anodes.

>> Read the full article for free

Register Now! CHAT 2013 ‘Experience’, London, 8th-10th of November 2013

Register Now! CHAT 2013 ‘Experience’, London, 8th-10th of November 2013

 

The 11th Annual Contemporary and Historical Archaeology in Theory (CHAT) Conference will be held at University College London from the 8th-10th of November 2013. Hosted by UCL Institute of Archaeology and jointly organised by UCL Institute of Archaeology and Atkins, the international conference will explore the experience of archaeology and the archaeology of experience in the present and recent historical past.

 

The conference will present a wide range of innovative new research on contemporary and historical archaeology, heritage and museum studies, as well as film screenings and artworks, to a broad interdisciplinary and international audience. A preliminary conference programme is available on the CHAT website.

 

‘Experience’ represents a significant concern across a wide variety of academic disciplines. We might think of the importance of ‘experience’ to sociological studies of everyday life; it’s central position as a concept within phenomenological approaches to landscapes and the past; the emphasis on the lifeworld in ontological perspectivism and the ‘new’ materialism; the role of experience within certain spiritual and intellectual traditions; the focus on emotional experience in studies of affect; the place of experience in the study of craft and in ethnoarchaeology; and the role of experience within contemporary educational pedagogy.

 

‘Experience’ is central to studies of modernity, which emphasise the peculiarity of the experience of progress, speed, time and place it produces. In The Experience Economy, Pine and Gilmore argued for a late modern shift from a service-based economy to an experience-based one: goods and services come to be valued not so much for their function, but in terms of their engagement of the senses and the experiences that surround their purchase and use. It could be argued that this experience economy is simply a reflection of a broader experience society in which there has been a shift in focus from ‘exhibition’ to ‘experience’, from the ocular to the embodied, in relation to processes of consumption, learning, knowing and ‘being’.

 

Increasingly, ‘experience’ determines the viability of heritage sites and dictates their interpretation: the contemporary heritage landscape—heritage-themed destinations, heritage-led regeneration and branding of place through the enlisting of ‘the past’—explicitly reflects a new concern with experience. In doing so, it exposes major differences in philosophies and taste amongst ‘professionals’ (archaeologists, architects, public historians, heritage managers) and the public. The practice of engaging with and ‘capturing’ oral history, which we might think of as memories of experience, plays an important role in contemporary archaeological narrative. Recent ethnographies of archaeological practice have similarly emphasised the experience of archaeology and its accompanying field and laboratory practices in understanding its history as an academic discipline.

 

Registration for the conference is now open. Fees of £40 for waged participants and £20 for unwaged participants will be used to cover the cost of room hire, tea/coffee, refreshments and lunches. Payments may be made using a credit or debit card. Participants should register in advance of the conference by following the link on the conference website.

“Practising Archaeology – as if it really matters”: Archaeology and a responsibility to the public



A solar energy farm is planned for locations near Peterborough, UK

Last week the BBC reported that plans for a solar energy farm near Peterborough, UK have been put on hold after the city council agreed to have an archaeological survey conducted in the area. English Heritage recommended the survey and referred to evidence that there could be “presence of nationally important buried Bronze and Iron Age landscapes in the vicinity". The article states that "[c]ampaigners hoping to halt plans for a solar energy farm near Peterborough are celebrating" but also that the project "would help achieve renewable energy targets and profits would keep tax bills low". This raises an interesting question - just how much do archaeologists take into account the needs, wants and expectations of the community around them when conducting excavations and surveys that potentially could stop development of areas all together?

K Anne Pyburn considers this question in her article "Practising Archaeology - as if it really matters" published in the August 2009 special issue of Public Archaeology entitled 'Archaeological Ethnographies'. In the article Professor Pyburn surmises that "People care about archaeology for a variety of competing reasons" and that "Archaeologists no longer ignore this as they once did, but few have come to terms on a pragmatic level with their responsibility to the public" and recommends "Participatory Action Research (PAR) as a method that archaeologists untrained in ethnography can use to expediently develop ethnographically sensitive and respectful relationships."

The following is an excerpt from the article:

"I base my work on several preconceptions. First, all fieldwork, whether it is archaeology or palaeontology or geology or something else, has an impact on living people. The degree of the effect is related to various factors including the mere presence of the researcher as an outsider, or at least as someone with a defined agenda, the attention the research draws to the local area, and the political implications of the interpretations the researcher makes...The repercussions of the research can be positive, negative or neutral but most of the time any research programme has some positive, some negative and some neutral effects all at the same time."

Professor Pyburn goes on to conclude that:

"From my perspective, ethnographic knowledge is the result of sharing information rather than simply extracting it from a community to which the ethnographer does not belong. Respecting the people who will be influenced by archaeological research does not amount to learning their habits and language well enough to coax them into supporting what the archaeologist wants to do. The archaeologist does indeed need to know the people interested in her work, but the interested people also need a chance to know the archaeologist, and her culture. Arranging for these processes to happen in tandem is not going to result in the ethnographic excavation Radcliffe-Brown accomplished in the Andaman Islands, but archaeologists need more breadth than depth in their ethnography and for our purposes it is as important to be known as to know."

>> Read the full article for free

>> Read the BBC article "Peterborough solar farm: Archaeology puts plans on hold"