Month: June 2017

Here is Nic’s blog post, which weaves together the works of Benjamin and Sebald, the idea of the angel of history, and how archaeology is essentially a process of reconstruction of abandonment. — Kate

An angel brought me to the Ontario Field School this spring. That angel is the one Walter Benjamin saw with ‘horrified fixity’ while gazing upon a painting by Paul Klee. This is the “angel of history” whose

“face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is brewing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.”

This is a famous passage from Benjamin’s Thesis on the Philosophy of History from 1940, and it is an image which creates a vision of time and humanity in opposition to the material determinism present in modern Western thought. For many authors and historians living in the wake of the horror of 20th Century Europe it captured the meaninglessness and chaos hanging in the air as the rubble piled high in the streets. It was his last published written work. Benjamin was a Jewish refugee hiding in Vichy France at the time and in June as the Wehrmacht entered Paris with a warrant for his arrest Benjamin fled to Spain with hopes of reaching the United States.

He carried with him in his briefcase a manuscript of the Thesis, and another unknown manuscript, which has never been found. After the Franco government in Spain cancelled all travel visas and trapped escaping refugees he rightfully feared being sent back to France where arrest and deportation to a concentration camp awaited. On the night of September 25th at the Hotel de Francia in Portbou, Catalonia, he committed suicide with an overdose of morphine.

One European author in particular influenced me to look through the eyes of Benjamin’s angel of history. W.G. Sebald devoted his short writing career to unearthing and steeping in the rubble of humanity, the ruins of great undertakings, and the personal aspirations and tragedies of esoteric and seemingly universal dimensions. In his world the dead are always returning to us and as a German emigrant born in 1944 he fixated on the “archeological excavations of the slag-heaps of our collective existence” in resistance to illusory or determinist thought about the past and present. Few public figures have done more to allow Europeans, and especially Germans to confront their own past.

In his first published work The Rings of Saturn, an autobiographical character awakes in the Norwich Hospital after undertaking a walk through coastal Suffolk county. His quaint late summer walk through the English countryside becomes a kaleidoscopic viewfinder through the physical and metaphysical stratigraphy upon which his feet traverse. As he saunters on his vision leads him in and out of a chaotic mix of destruction and regeneration present in small snippets of history. A plaque, a ruin, a turn of phrase once used, all keyholes into a dream-like state, where the dream is humanity. Through this process he is overcome with a “paralyzing horror” which awaits within “the traces of destruction, reaching far back into the past, that were evident even in that remote place.”

Through his eyes the ruins of Dunwich, a great English port from the middle ages which collapsed into the sea, is connected to the deforestation of England over millennia through fires and the production of charcoal. This leads to a rumination on Western civilization that “combustion is the hidden principle behind every artefact we create. The making of a fish-hook, manufacture of a china cup, or production of a television programme, all depend on the same process of combustion. Like our bodies and like our desires, the machines we have devised are possessed of a heart which is slowly reduced to embers.”

Such a view of history and humanity is not simply a melodramatic appeal as a literary device, but poetically connects our personal realities to a broader movement of time. In a civilization entranced in ideas of progress and technological determinism, these traces of destruction are often obscured or rejected entirely, as one can attempt to bury a traumatic memory. After excavating the rubble what remains is what some have seen in Sebald and Benjamin’s work as a vision of creaturely life, one of daily toil and repetition, forever swept up in the storm.

While visiting the Hope Mill in order to view a functioning saw mill I felt this vision of the angel, of creaturely life blend with why I was here learning about the process of archeology in Ontario. As we were on the side of the country road about to pack into our vehicles, James stopped everyone for a moment and got us to look at a barn or shed right next to the road. It had visibly decayed over time in contrast to the living, resuscitated, much older Hope Mill and its appearance evoked the smell of the animal excrement you could imagine filled the structure.

I remember James trying to get us to visualize what it was used for, the potential human toil that would go on in and around the structure and the clues and materials which could lead you there. But most importantly, in order to access this creaturely life one had to first imagine the “process of abandonment” through which the structure had travelled in layered form into our moment. What struck me is the immensity of the process of abandonment in comparison to the usage. It can be a much longer period of time than the initial usage but it is also hidden from view as abandonment runs contrary to dominant, more easily accessible ideas. In order to access it and sort through the wreckage that is
hurled at our feet I expect you have to employ a practical vision and try to recreate the unbecoming through these traces of destruction. As I was searching for the north rock wall corner of our Nassau Mills structure I was digging into this abandonment, into the work of a bull-dozer operator hastily preparing a sports field for a university soon to be built.

Since I am new to archeology as of this field course I don’t have very much to say about the intricacies of the process itself, which Kate, James and Marit have so personably laid in front of me. But what I have been struck by is the reliance and development of your own vision, of seeing in 4 dimensions, of being able assemble and disassemble, to rotate, to age. To access the mind of someone performing an action, which has lead you to a clue of their existence, and then returning, moving on, always making whole what has been smashed.

VIDEO:  “Assembling, counting, forwards, backwards” by Nic van Beek

Throughout the 6 weeks of the Field School I found myself lost in rumination as I troweled into the stratigraphy of our ‘deserted’ Nassau Mills house structure. When finding a harmonica in a clinker pile of charred debris I imagined the life of the person who may have sat there trying to master the instrument. The people they tried to impress, the sound that may have emanated from it after years of practice, the endless nights and sunny moments of song swept away into a plastic bag, labelled and boxed onto a shelf. It sounds morbid, but for me this space is somehow open and freeing, bringing on a feeling similar to what George Simmel in 1911 described as the “profound peace,” which surrounds a ruin.

After the usage of a structure or a space ends something else occurs. As Simmel continued in his essay The Ruin “it is as though a segment of existence must collapse before it can become unresistant to all currents and powers coming from all corners of reality.” As a structure is abandoned it is no longer used as directly in accordance with the rules outlined in ideology or in law or otherwise, and enters into a space in some respects sheltered from the storm. Avoiding a kind of ruin mysticism is important for a rational approach to archeology, but through the actual materiality of the site you can enter a world of imagination and observation in relation to the past which rivals, and in my mind supersedes, any imaginative potential of the future.

Finally, for me the meaning of physically digging deep into the past also stems from a horror show in which I was immersed while completing my undergraduate degree in History. I had the opportunity to work on the Montreal Life Stories Project where I recorded, organized and viewed the life stories of people who had come to Montreal from situations of genocide around the world. Some of the stories and details I heard in these life stories still flash up involuntarily in my mind as people would spend up to 5 hours trying to excavate their own memories and make sense, or simply convey, the things they had witnessed and the subsequent trajectories of their lives.

For me it centered history in a moral frame and divorced technological development or progress from any kind of humanist trajectory. When early in the field school we found a commemorative Nazi pin from a May 1935 seafaring rally in Hamburg this world flashed up. I could imagine Benjamin in September of 1940 travelling with his briefcase towards the border only to find his own demise. I could imagine my Oma, as she described to me, hiding with our family in the cellar of their village home as nightly air raids shook the ground. I could imagine the owner of the pin throwing it into the bushes, out of fear, out of shame, or just to be rid of it and leaving it for us to find this trace of destruction reaching far back into the past.

— Nic van Beek

Today’s student blog is by Brianne, and relates her reflections about her field school experience this year — Kate

With field school ending, and having procrastinated writing this blog post to the very last second I’ve decided to end with some observations and random thoughts I have encountered throughout the past month.

You Might Make a Good Archaeologist If:

-Gardening is a meditative pastime opposed to a chore

-You don’t hate washing dishes

– Puzzles are less frustrating than they are amusing, and you don’t give up halfway through and put the puzzle back in the box before it’s complete

-You enjoy turning chaos into order and generally get satisfaction out of organizing things

– You like photography or keeping a detailed journal of your daily happenings

-You enjoy drawing or sketching nature (aka rocks)

-Enduring various types of weather makes you feel connected with the earth (or in our case you just really, really like rain)

– You like yoga ( as I’ve come to learn, everyone refers to the many digging positions as “archaeology yoga”)

– You have an interest in cartography or map making

– You enjoy field trips and adventures/excursions to super cool places

– Worms, slugs, grubs and ants while maybe not lovable, don’t fall under your category of fears

While the field of archaeology is realistically more complicated than this list may lead you to interpret, the point is that archaeology encompasses so many different interests and facets of life. Anywhere from osteology, forensic anthropology, or environmental archaeology, all the way to archaeoastronomy.

The versatility of archaeology is one of the things that makes it so great, especially for anyone with a lot of interests. A question I get a lot when I tell people that I’m studying archaeology is “what kind of job will you be able to do with that degree?” Or “are there any jobs in that field?” And I think one of the reasons for this is that people don’t realize archaeology isn’t restricted to digging a hole in the dirt. Archaeology is a very broad field with numerous specializations (and specializations within those specializations). In reality, digging is only one of many lengthy stages in an archaeology project. While this field school was a stage three excavation and did focus on the excavation/digging part of archaeology, it did open my eyes to all the work and preparation that needs to be done before getting to this stage as well as all the work still left to be done after artifacts have been recovered and catalogued.

Coming into this course I had zero field experience, making me extremely excited but also very nervous, because no one wants to find out halfway through their degree that they don’t like the program they’ve been studying. Looking back on the past month, I’m very happy as well as relieved to say that this field school has been one of the best experiences  I’ve had at Trent thus far. I would highly recommend this course to anyone wanting to explore archaeology as a possible career path, especially if they are unsure like I was about how they would enjoy archaeology in practice. This small glimpse into the world of archaeology that the field school has given me makes me excited to see where the field of archaeology takes me next.

— Brianne Glaves

Trevor brings us his perspective on learning surveying and mapping during the field school. — Kate

When thinking of archaeological work the first thing most people think of is probably digging. While this does make up an integral part of the process, there is far more to it than that. I didn’t realize it before starting the course, but archaeology involves a lot of surveying and mapping. The work is tedious and some people might find it boring and repetitive but I find it quite satisfying.

Mapping involves both surveying and drawing in the field as well as digitizing the hand drawn maps in the lab. Within the first week of the course I had learned how to use a theodolite and total station, which are surveying tools used to measure distances, angles, and elevations. At first, it was difficult trying to set them up properly on the tripod, making sure they were perfectly level and centered precisely over the known datum point, but I eventually got the hang of it. Using these I could precisely measure the coordinates of any point on the site and transfer those points onto a paper map. I also learned how to draw smaller, more detailed maps using planning frames. To me, the planning and problem solving that goes into trying to find the best way of ensuring these maps are as accurate as possible is the most engaging and intellectually stimulating part of the whole archaeological process. In addition to this field mapping though, I also learned some basic digital mapping. It’s a little less engaging than mapping in the field but it’s perhaps more satisfying once it comes together since it produces and very clear visual representation of the layout of the site which we can then use to interpret the structure of the architecture.

The map above shows the outlines of the rocks along the top of the walls of the structure. With this, we can clearly see how the overall structure is shaped and we can make inferences about it based on this. For example, we have speculated based on our maps that the overall structure is a large rectangle with a smaller rectangle in the middle which we think is a small basement or cellar underneath it. The main advantage of having the map in digital form is that we can add layers corresponding to different depths beneath the surface which gives us a visual representation of the site at multiple points along the progression of the excavation. We can also tie specific regions of the map to the digital catalogues of the artifacts that came from them and quickly and efficiently compare the assemblages of artifacts of different regions. Having this visual representation of all the data makes interpreting the site very intuitive. I hadn’t gotten to that point yet with my map, but that would be the next step and it’s something I’m very interested in learning more about in the future.

Before taking this course, I had no idea just how important mapping would be to the archaeological process, nor did I know how much I would enjoy it. If there’s one important thing I can take away from this experience it’s the knowledge that I love surveying and mapping and that I want to do more of it. Knowing this will help to guide my choices throughout the rest of my time at Trent and beyond.

— Trevor Tyo

Here’s an interesting interweaving of philosopy and archaeology contributed by Bjorn. Making connections is definitely a most essential part of the practice of archaeology. Thinking about why and how we make those connections in reconstructing the past is a vital part of the process. — Kate

Today’s student blog post comes from Selena Barre, and illustrates what happens to artifacts once we have dug them up! The most important part is taking these artifacts and situate them in the broader context of space, time, and human behaviour. — Kate

As we get into the later stages of investigation at our site, we’ve found a lot of artifacts. Many of us have been spending our days sifting through masses of clean ceramic and glass sherds. In lab, we can take our time to examine each small sherd carefully and – if we’re lucky – some may even fit together (like the spittoon)!

While sorting through massive piles of glass from context 6, Kate pointed out a particular pattern on some manganese-tinted pieces (a chemical present in the glass that gives it a purple tint). As you can see in pictures below, it’s a vine and leaf design, possibly with some berries. We decided to set them aside, and I got lucky in recognizing a piece of a base that refitted. It has embossed lettering! Individually, the lettering on the two pieces was not clear enough to track down this maker, but with the pieces together the name “T.A Lytle /  Toronto” is visible.

A quick Google search is often enough to find all kinds of information, and T.A Lytle is no exception. The company operated, as advertised on their bottle, out of Toronto. Mr. Lytle was an Irish immigrant who had first found work in Canada at a vinegar factory, and apparently he took to the trade because a few years later he created his own company in 1882. They had a factory (still standing!) on Sterling St in Toronto and sold vinegar, pickles, preserves, catsup, club sauce, and maple syrup.

All these products would have been essential in a turn-of-the-century era worker’s household like the one we are investigating. In times past, and in rural areas, many people would have made their own pickles, jams, and sauces. Preserved foods were essential for making it through the difficult Canadian winters. However, these were labour intensive processes and easy to get wrong. Processing fruits and vegetables would have been a long and difficult task to begin with. As well, mistakes could be costly. Bad jam, for instance, can harbour the bacteria that cause botulism – a seriously toxic illness. It is no surprise that people would have turned to factory made products to save themselves not only the labour but also the risks of home making preserved food.

Returning to our example, which we know was produced by the “pickle packers” at T.A Lytle’s factory, one might wonder what specifically it contained. Though we have many pieces with the same pattern, only the bases refit. That leaves us with the base as the best clue to the bottle’s size and shape. It is less than 10cm in diameter. Based on the curvature of the other sherds of glass we have, it seems likely to have been a tall, sort of narrow bottle. This means it was probably not for pickles, but perhaps for one of T.A Lytle’s sauces or other liquid products.

There are some pictures of examples of T.A Lytle’s bottles that had maple leaves in a similar sort of design. These bottles would have contained maple syrup, as indicated by their exterior. The design that looks the most like ours is one from a bottle that has been identified (on the internet, anyway…) as containing lime juice cordial. Although this bottle is from a different manufacturer, a similar product was reportedly produced by T.A Lytle & Co. Nowadays, lime juice cordial is used most commonly in cocktails, but it was originally invented to give to sailors to prevent scurvy on long sea trips! It was often mixed with a ration of rum, which probably gave it its original association with drinking. This drink seems to have caught on with the general population, because this particular Rose’s brand lime juice cordial has been produced commercially since 1867 in the U.K and the company is now owned by Coca-Cola.

While the pattern on our sherds seems to resemble the lime cordial bottle, we don’t have enough to be certain. Without an exact match, my guess is as good as yours as to the contents of this particular bottle!

— Selena Barre

One of the best parts of the field school is having the chance to experience many different facets of archaeology. Some people quickly learn they love the technicalities of excavation, while others become enamoured of surveying and mapping. Still others discover their true interests lie in the lab, or with certain kinds of artifacts or time periods. Here’s a peek into Emily’s experience in this year’s field school. — Kate

As the field school comes to a close, it’s nice to take a look back at what I’ve learned. Over the course of the program I’ve had the opportunity to learn about archaeological techniques in both the field and in the lab. When most people think about archaeology, they think about the excavation process – where artifacts are removed from the ground. Of course finding artifacts is important, but an equally important aspect of archaeology is organizing and cataloguing artifacts so we can make sense of what we’ve found. In order to do this, we must be familiar with the types of artifacts found at our site.

In the first week of the course Kate and Marit gave us a lesson focusing on the types of glass, ceramic, and other artifacts we would be finding. While I enjoyed learning about these material types (and being able to identify them in the field and in lab), the thing I most enjoyed working with were the animal bones found on site. Since I haven’t had the opportunity to take a course focusing on human or animal bones yet I was excited to learn everything I could during the field course. As it turns out I think I’ve learned quite a bit!

Kate is amazing and identified every bone I showed her, telling me which animal it probably belonged to and what bone it is. In my limited experience with bones in a biological anthropology course I took, I had a tough time siding bones. Kate showed me how to side ribs during the course, and I was really excited when I got it! I also learned how to identify bird bones, which are hollow unlike mammal bones, and was happy about that too! I’m excited to continue learning how to identify bones in the future!

Animal bones found at a site can be used to understand the people who lived there. While not all of these applications are relevant to the Nassau Mills site, I enjoy learning about what certain artifacts at a site mean – specifically bones!

A faunal assemblage can sometimes be used to determine what the environment was like when the site was occupied. This can be done because specific animals require specific habitats. This application would typically be useful for sites much older than the Nassau Mills site. Animal bones found at a site can also be used to determine subsistence strategies of the people who lived there. For example, a major indicator of an agricultural society is a large number of young male animals being butchered. Male animals would be killed to eat as soon as they were old enough, while females were kept to produce milk and offspring.

Although interesting, this application wouldn’t give us too much new information about the Nassau Mills site because we already have a large amount of historical documentation for this period. Even though the animal bones being found at the Nassau Mills site may not be the most important artifacts for dating and determining the significance of the site, I still enjoyed applying the concepts I’ve learned about in class to a real archaeological site!

— Emily Finbow