Social Lives of Places and Things
Social Lives of Places and Things
6 March 2008
Anth 3520
Welcome back!
A boot-print on the Moon
Plan for class
Admin
Continuing on from Urban Exploration (from last week)
PLUS
To Boldly Go: Archaeology in Space
Admin
- attendance
- upcoming readings for next class - online.
Reading for Today was
March 6: Industrial Heritage and the Abandoned, cont'd, and To Boldly Go: Archaeology in Space
These articles deal with human made objects on the Moon, Mars, and in space, and with related sites on Earth. Don't worry too much about the legislative aspects about heritage regulations (although these are interesting); focus primarily on these as examples of the 'archaeology of us', and new landscapes, new places. There's so much human stuff in space!
Greg Fewer: Towards an LSMR and MSMR (Lunar and Martian Sites and Monuments Records): recording planetary spacecraft landing sites as archaeological monuments of the future. (pdf, 1003 Kb)
Alice Gorman: The Cultural Landscape of Interplanetary Space (pdf, 567 Kb)
Beth O'Leary: The Cultural Heritage of Space, the Moon, and other Celestial Bodies. Web page: http://antiquity.ac.uk/ProjGall/oleary/index.html
Optional:
Check out the trouble with space junk: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/solarsystem/earth/spacejunk.shtml
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0119_060119_space_junk.html
Google Mars: http://www.google.com/mars/
Google Moon: http://moon.google.com/
Mars Exploration: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/
Moon exploration (nice links under Resources): http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Moon
From last week
For Feb 28: Digging into ourselves: Arch of the Contemporary Past
Ch 1: The absent present: Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past. pp 1-18 (899 Kb)
Ch 7: Hart & Winter: The politics of remembrance in the new South Africa: pp 84-93 (725 Kb)
Ch 8: Ludlow Collective: Archaeology of the Colorado Coal Field War 1913-1914: pp 94-107 (861 Kb)
Ch 14: Buchli and Lucas: The archaeology of alienation: a late twentieth-century British council house pp 158-168 (606 Kb)
ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE CONTEMPORARY PAST
Ch 1: The absent present:
- aspects of the engagement with the contemporary past - science and left-leaning politics combine.
This started for the scientific reason of testing archaeological methods on a 'known' population... to discover laws/develop models that could be applied to ancient people.... but then discovered that we were learning new things about ourselves.... and realizing that the dividing line between 'the past' and 'the present' is arbitrary... and that the way in which we relate to our material world is worth knowing about. The emphasis on relations between the social and material worlds comes partly out of a Marxist approach.
- but the process of 'archaeologizing ourselves' is uncomfortable - looking at familiar objects in this distancing way makes them alien, makes us detached from our own world... there's a sense of transgression... and, of course, the focus on the discarded objects from someone's life is distasteful to some... and, finally, it's uncomfortable because this kind of analysis can make things clear about our lives and relationships that we may not be used to seeing.
Ch 7: Hart & Winter: The politics of remembrance in the new South Africa:
- what we decide is worth remembrance reveals a lot about our politics and the national myths we ascribe to... who/what deserves a memorial?
Ch 8: Ludlow Collective: Archaeology of the Colorado Coal Field War 1913-1914:
- http://www.du.edu/anthro/ludlow/cfarch.html
- archaeological investigation of a key moment in labour history in the USA
- archaeology as explicitly political, as a form of memorializing/remembrance, and being done in the interests of the working class
Ch 14: Buchli and Lucas: The archaeology of alienation: a late twentieth-century British council house
And Industrial Heritage... another kind of 'archaeology of us'
- the trend in Urban Exploration.... (not 'professional'/academic archs... another way of relating to the past)
e.g. Infiltration magazine, history of Urban Exploration
(don't try this at home)
Clips from the film, Echoes of Forgotten Places... about 'industrial archaeology' and 'urban exploration'
Archaeology of Space
How did we get into space, anyway?
Clips from James Burke, Connections, showing the trajectory of technological development involved - links between technological invention, social history, economics...
Space is now a cultural landscape!
There is 'human stuff':
- in orbit around Earth (e.g. Hubble)
- in orbit around the Sun http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit
- on other worlds (Mars, Venus, Moon, etc.)
- and journeying through space, leaving our solar system (e.g. Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, Voyager 1, Voyager 2).
Humanity's Stuff in Space - ppt
Google Earth http://earth.google.com/showcase/
Google Mars www.google.com/mars/
Google Moon: http://moon.google.com/
Voyager 1: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/
e.g. of landers:
The Viking Landers, mid 1970s.... still up there! The first images sent from the surface of Mars back to Earth... making Mars into ... a place!
Questions: What should be done about these exploration sites? Should they be considered cultural heritage and preserved for the future? If so, how? What should be the rules?
Should the Moon and Mars be preserved as spaces for all humanity, or should it be 'finders-keepers'?
And what about other connections between archaeology and space?
1) SETI
2) Astronomical Observatories