Between a Rock and a Hard Place
AKASH
The challenging research process of an archaeologist
I consider my research process a difficult conversation. It is a conversation I have with the object/subject at hand – be it a bone, teeth, fossil or stone-tool from the paleolithic era…. from more than even a million years ago! I have a broad attribute list, which serves as a prompt to try and engage in a conversation with the element(s) in question. What I hear the material say to me forms the crux of my analysis and papers - I am but a mere translator, speaking a long-forgotten language of many unknown species - Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo neanderthalensis, and our own, Homo sapiens - amongst other possible species we may not have even uncovered, identified or named yet. I ask questions which help me uncover the answers to life’s big curiosities - who are we? where do we come from? and what makes us, us?
This then moves into a more challenging conversation about what ‘it’ is, and where it is situated in the body. This depends on the state of preservation of the object, making teasing out all these details from the object/subject sometimes difficult - like talking to a media-savvy guest on a talk show - might need some coaxing and linguistic gymnastics.
I also ask the material about its’ lived experiences, such as diseases, stress markers, modifications from injury or cultural practices, etc - often left as traces on the bone. If someone had broken their arm as a child because they fell from a tree - the fracture and healing marks on the arm bones would tell this tale; if someone had leprosy or tuberculosis, their bones would have tell-tale signs of their medical conditions!
The conversation starts with asking the element all the necessary questions related to its provenance–where it came from, when did people come across it, in what context(s), and any other such geo-locational questions. Sometimes, these details cannot always be ascertained, especially with really old collections and places with ‘interesting’ curatorial practices. Many times, some of these elements have had their own journeys after their discoveries. In one instance, I had to trace down a collection all the way to a small town in southern Germany! How a collection from western India landed in Germany was a curious detective hunt!
Image 1 credits: Medhi jyoti, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Image 2 credits: TanikellaRKR, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The conversation then evolves into a discussion on the taphonomic processes the element has witnessed. Taphonomy traces the entire life history of the element from its cause(s) of death, burial, post-depositional modifications, and eventual recovery. I also consider curatorial and conservation management processes that the recovered element witnessed since its recovery. Many times, the various traces of conservation and preservation that have been made on the element can be identified and traced - broken pieces mended together, missing gaps filled in by plaster, or even pieces which were drilled into to obtain bone powder for DNA or other scientific analyses. Each of these marks tells its own stories about the previous researchers’ conversations with the element as they were coaxing it to speak to their own research questions, processes and interests.
The final stage is the taxonomic and other relevant ascriptions – identifying species - either hominid or animal (depending on the fossil), age, sex and other characteristics. It is then situated within the broader site and regional context of finds, relevant to the study being undertaken.
The next stage of the process is to incorporate these individual site and regional records into the broader archaeological, anthropological, and evolutional discourse.
This helps reconstruct the socio-economic and environmental setting of the population in question. The aim of this stage is to contribute towards the broader evolutionary questions of who we are, where we come from and what makes us, us - a primary drive within all of us to know ourselves, as depicted by the many popular depictions of amnesia where the first question anyone asks is ‘who am I?’.
These questions relate to the various aspects of human and cultural evolution, including questions related to bipedalism, dexterity and handhold, dentition and the evolution of the dental architecture, diet and nutrition, subsistence strategies, hybridisation, dispersal and movement through time and space, and more!
We must always remember that all the details the material tells us depend on the questions we ask them. As such, the answers are always incomplete, contextual and biased, sometimes based on what we want to hear. All information gleaned, thus, is always conditional and subject to revision with new conversations with other ‘guests’. So, best be on your toes at all times and embrace the many conditional unconditionalities of research. Nothing is set in stone, ironically!
Illustrations by Ipshita
Note:
Akash co-hosts an exciting podcast, 'Chippin away', which dedicates itself to “Unscripted dialogues on archaeology and anthropology of South Asia”. He generously shared relevant podcasts and descriptions that may throw more light on some of the ideas he has discussed in his article:
Episode Description: Why do archaeologists need to traverse from the library to the laboratory!? Let's discuss the various stages of envisioning an archaeological project from asking the research question to shovelling the earth, in this second episode of Chippin' Away. Your hosts Durga and Akash take you on a 15-minute audio journey of field methods in archaeology with examples from South Asia.
Episode Description: Getting the rock game on for this episode, your hosts Akash and Durga discuss bits and pieces (or shall we say rocks and pebbles?) of the Stone Age in South Asia. Join us on our journey going back a few million years! There is so much more to discuss, and this is just a tiny sliver of our discussions on rocks, stones, and the riveting lives the ancient humans led!
About Akash
Akash Srinivas is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Archaeological Research (CIAR), Ashoka University. He is a prehistoric archaeologist, and his research interests primarily concern with palaeoanthropology and palaeolithic archaeology, incorporating a multidisciplinary approach. He was awarded his Doctorate from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Mohali. He has a Masters in Ancient Indian History, Culture and Archaeology from Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute, Pune, and an Erasmus Mundus International Masters in Quaternary and Prehistory from a European consortium of institutions based in Italy, Spain, France and Portugal. He has carried out fieldwork at various sites in India, Italy, Germany, Spain and Tanzania, including prominent sites such as Hathnora (India) and Atapuerca (Spain). He also engages in public archaeology and science communication, and is the co-host of the podcast ‘Chippin’ Away’.
Related Posts
Chasing Plant Fragrances
ANUPAMA
"People often ask me, “Why go through all the trouble of collecting floral scents directly from the field? Can’t you just pluck the flowers, boil them, and extract the essence?” Well, sure, I could do that—but it would only give me a chemical snapshot of the flowers, but not the story behind the fragrance."
Share this page: