I originally planned to use this blog to record my experiences of studying archaeology at the University of Glasgow, as a kind of diary of my impressions of the course and the new things I discovered during my time there. Well I'm rapidly heading towards the end of my second year at the university and this is my first post.
Shame on me. (and a pox on deadlines!)
My time so far at Glasgow has been, so far, an enriching, lively and enlightening one. The department is fantastic and everyone there seems genuinely enthusiastic about their discipline from lecturers to post-grads and my fellow students. That enthusiasm is catching, more than one of my fellow students only took archaeology in first year as a tertiary subject, something they were vaguely interested in, and have since decided to take it on to honours.
Research interests in the department are extremely diverse; which is of little surprise given a discipline that is as multi-faceted as archaeology. Being based in Scotland there is obviously an interest in local archaeology and so the department contains specialists in everything from the neolithic communities of northern Britain through to the medieval and later periods. We also have specialists in the archaeology of the classical world, of the fertile crescent where western civilisation was born 10,000 years ago. We have experts in the use of modern technologies in the survey, excavation and analysis of sites, of the ways in which humans interact with and are part of the landscape and environment that surrounds them and much more besides.
I'm personally looking forward to studying the ancient Near East and the origins of the very thing that makes us human, civilisation. I'm planning on writing my dissertation on the use of new and emergent technologies in the presentation of archaeological heritage to the wider public as well as studying the rural and peasant communities of ancient Italy. I'll hopefully be able to fit in the study of Viking Scandinavia. Thankfully I know that, with the department as it is, I will be able to study these diverse topics.
Unfortunately, under the guise of austerity measures, the university Senior Management Group(SMG) has hatched nefarious plans to possibly merge the archaeology department into the History department. A move which makes no academic sense. Archaeology is not history and history is not archaeology. There is some overlap is that both have some concern with human past but that overlap is not so great as some, well the economists who run the university, think.
I am not a historian and so can't comment at any length about the subtleties and the, no doubt, massive amount of variation between different facets of the discipline. History though is the study of the things that humans have written down, that we have recorded since we created the tools to do so. History begins at many different points in time. A classical historian for example will look at the works of Hesiod and Homer to try and divine what they can about the society of the time or they will read Herodotus, Thucydides, Pliny, Tacitus, Josephus or any of the other array of classical literary sources. At the same time a historian of the British Isles will begin their research from a much later date, after the Roman invasion at the earliest. In Scotland that history begins much later still.
Where history is about what humans write down and record archaeology is about what we leave behind, it is about human cultures and the way that they change and influence one another. It's expanse is wider than that of history both spatially and temporally. This isn't to denigrate the study of history in the slightest, history can tell us things about the past that archaeology never could – and vice-versa, merely to illustrate that the two disciplines are only similar on an aesthetic level.
The SMG has claimed that merging archaeology into the larger history department would offer it some protection from the 'inevitable' cuts. This rings hollow however since this is just what was promised with the recent reorganisation of the university into colleges. It is equally worrying given what happened to the Anthropology department which was merged into the Sociology department a number of years ago and now faces being completely shut down after years of the SMG chipping away at it.
There are a wealth of problems with the proposed cuts at the university, archaeology is 'lucky' to only be facing 'reshaping' rather than complete destruction like anthropology and the modern languages department, but the major problem is one that is symptomatic of the problems we have with our society in general. It is being run by economists, it is run as a business. People who see society as a source of profit are never going to have the best interests of their fellow citizens at heart. There can be little doubt that the proposed cuts are ideologically driven and that the SMG wants to turn the university into a profit driven enterprise focussed on international students.
A university is not meant to be a profit driven enterprise, it is an institution dedicated to the generation and dissemination of knowledge.
Ostensibly the plan for these cuts was developed after the University Court asked the SMG to develop a strategy to cope with expected cuts in university funding from the Scottish government, no such cuts have yet been announced, yet the SMG had drawn up these plans as early as June of last year. Confidential documents leaked to the press, link below, confirm this.
These cuts are not necessary and are a result of the monumental cock up of the financial sector. Because of their mistakes the government has been given the perfect chance to attack wholesale those things that, despite being vital for the functioning of a healthy society, are not profitable.
Knowledge, the arts, the study of humanity in all it's technicolour glory does not have a price tag, it cannot have a price tag but it is far more valuable for us than those in positions of power can imagine.
Archaeology is as central to the study, and understanding, of ourselves and our place in the universe as philosophy, physics, biology, history, sociology, anthropology. As the great astronomer, and populariser of science, Carl Sagan said “we are the universe, trying to figure itself out”.* How can we do that if we only educate ourselves in the subjects which can turn a profit for a tiny proportion of the population?
By understanding how we came to be, how our civilisation emerged and spread and changed we can better appreciate the commonalities we all share, as people, as the human race. Biology shows us that we are all related to every other creature on the planet, chemistry shows us how we are all related to the very planet itself and physics teaches us how we are all composed of the product of exploding stars. Archaeology is more humble than that but it does teach how ephemeral our societies are, how fragile our civilisations can be unless we are careful. Archaeology teaches us that, on the scale of human existence, things that we assume are monumental and ever lasting are but blips in the record of our existence. Nations, countries, religions, ideologies are all transient. The only thing that lasts is humanity in all it's riotous colourful wonder. If we do not learn this then we are doomed to a future of barbarism as we allow divisive nationalism, racism and bigotry to overshadow the one thing that is a constant in the archaeological record. Us.
For this reason the attacks on archaeology, and the humanities at large, fills me with a cold dread.
Please show your support for archaeology and all the departments under threat. To show support for the archaeology department you can 'like' the Facebook page below and you will be kept informed of what will be done to resist this attack on the dissemination of knowledge.
Leaked SMG document: http://tinyurl.com/49rffnn
*ok, so maybe I'm paraphrasing slightly but you get the gist.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comment away :)