Teaching Trigger Warnings

Image: wikimedia commons

Trigger warning: this post will contain some upsetting descriptions of other people's life experiences.

That's one sentence- are you going to stop reading? There's been a bit of scrapping on Twitter and elsewhere recently about using trigger warnings in university teaching. One academic I deeply respect argued convincingly that she does not and will not use them in her practice: she sees them as alienating students from the realities of the world, and pointed out that so much of her teaching is centred on disturbing events she would need to issue a trigger warning every week.

However, looking back, I do think I should have used trigger warnings in my teaching. If and when I am lucky enough to get my hands on more innocent undergraduate minds, I will make sure to do this. And this is why.

I taught a course that was designed to blow open those first year undergraduate minds- Social and Cultural Anthropology for Archaeologists. We (my brilliant co-lecturer and I) tried hard to get everyone thinking about their own ethnocentricity- their rootedness in a particular culture - and the way this affects archaeological interpretation. By exploring both the theoretical underpinnings and fascinating case studies of social anthropology, we tried to show the infinite variety and meaning in human behaviour. I hope our students enjoyed the experience.

BUT, one lecture in particular could have been deeply distressing for some students, and I'm ashamed that I never thought of this until recently. For this week of work, we looked at sexuality, and our case study was Gilbert Herdt's work with the Sambia people of Papua New Guinea. Among the Sambia, the only way for a boy to become a man is for him to ingest semen, which he receives orally from older men. The young boys are also toughened up with beatings, and ritual nosebleedings (shown in the picture at the top). Our point (linked to Mary Weismantel's brilliant paper on Moche pots) was that you cannot define easily what is sexual, and what is abuse. From a Sambia perspective, one could argue that Western boys are abused as they can never fully become men. There is also an uncomfortable argument to engage with about abstract concepts of morality, and respecting indigenous practice vs feeling pity for the children involved. The lecture never failed to spark debate and get people questioning themselves, which was our hope.

AND YET. What if someone in the room had been sexually abused as a child? Beaten and forced to perform fellatio? How profoundly distressing and uncomfortable the experience of learning about the Sambia would be, what dreadful memories could have been dredged up, what damage could we have done as lecturers where we had hoped to inspire?

So, in short, we needed to let students know what was coming. We needed a trigger warning. With that session in mind, I think I'll always be more aware of this in my teaching. For the sake of a single sentence, it's better to avoid a lecture with potentially disastrous consequences.

Blogging Carnival : Grand Challenges

Ominously, this appears when you google image search Etruscan challenge. Ouch. It's Charun, Etruscan death demon, supervising the death of a bound captive. Cheerful stuff.

So, in the past I've taken part in the fab Doug Rocks-Macqueen's Archaeology Blogging Carnival, and I'll be doing it this year too. Two posts on this year's theme are coming right up.

And what a theme it is. Grand Challenges of Archaeology. The question is, what are the Grand Challenges of YOUR archaeology?

Well, to me MY archaeology is my own personal archaeological journey (vomit vomit x-factor language) and Etruscan archaeology (my preciousssssss, in best Gollum voice).

So this post is about the Grand Challenges of Etruscan archaeology, or rather, THE Grand Challenge as I see it.

And (drumroll please), I think the challenge of Etruscan archaeology is....

The production of new archaeological narratives for Etruscan people's lives. 

We really, desperately, need to come up with and share new interpretations of the Etruscan past. Time and again, in the past few years, we have seen remarkable developments in Etruscan archaeology. New discoveries of tombs barely damaged or even untouched by tomb robbers, new data coming out untainted by antiquarian excavation techniques. We also have incredible scientific advances: an intricate and carefully controlled study of Etruscan DNA which, for the first time, has some real answers of where these people came from and who they were. At the Milan Expo, Etruscan scholars shared their work through new digital technologies, bringing the Etruscans to a wider audience through 3D reconstructions.

Yet some very familiar stories are still kicking around, in and among (and in spite of) these new discoveries, methods and opportunities. The idea of the Etruscans as mysterious and unknowable, a frustrating mirage which obscures these wonderful leaps forward. The idea of princely tombs, linked to monarchial systems of government I've critiqued here before, a conception of Etruscan life which is more akin to a child's tale of princes and princesses than it is to a real evaluation of these people's life stories. These are old ideas with a venerable heritage- we can understand where they came from and why they are compelling. They continue to capture the imagination.

In my opinion though, these ideas are no longer an acceptable option for the Etruscological community, and to me it is wrong for us to continue to parrot them to the general public. It is almost ten years since Vedia Izzet (the person responsible for letting me loose on the unsuspecting Etruscans) wrote her seminal text critiquing these interpretative tropes. In that decade, little has changed. Her words remain as cogent now as they were on the day they were written. Perhaps, in the year before the ten year anniversary of its publication, the stories we tell as Etruscan archaeologists might change- we can look again at our data, new and old. We can experiment with ideas from anthropology and philsophy. We can think ourselves a new version of the Etruscan past, using objects and ideas. In this way, we might just be able to catch up with the excavations, the genetics, the technology. That is our grand challenge.


** There are signs that the challenge is being accepted- I'm very excited about a new journal in Italian archaeology, Ex Novo. It's open access and explicitly theoretical- a brave new voice. I have high hopes.**

Writing for normal people

Normally, I write for weirdos. Other archaeologists, to be precise. We're an odd bunch, and I say that with utter respect and love. I adore reading academic archaeology, the more theoretical, the better. I love to attack an article, pull it to bits, figure it out and build it back together. I enjoy writing this way, too.

But currently I'm writing for the real world. For those who aren't totally obsessed with the dead, and who wouldn't dream of applying some bizarre social theory to a set of graves and coming up with an out-there-but-it-kinda-works interpretation.

I'm halfway through writing my second book (the first was my PhD, now available wherever good archaeological works are sold- so mostly on the internet then), which has an informal subtitle of "why you should give a damn about the Etruscans." Approaching the midpoint of the first draft, I've come to several conclusions about writing for a non-academic crowd, and I'd like to hear other thoughts.

1) Keep it snappy, sunshine. Endless clauses just annoy people. If you can't say it clear and concise, why are you saying it at all?

2) Don't get preachy. Nobody likes to read moralising tomes of self-improving blah. If you have an ethical point to make, do it straight.

3) Admit your own fallibility. Just because you're writing this book, doesn't mean you know everything. General readers can sniff out a self important phony as well as the academic crowd.

MOST IMPORTANTLY

4) Don't be afraid to have fun. It should be an enjoyable read, and so should be enjoyable to write. You can always edit out the bad jokes later, but I feel that a non fiction book for a general audience should be rollicking good fun while also making you think.

Any tips and pointers anyone? Thinking it through, I feel that these four points probably apply to good academic writing too. Especially the last one.

I'll stop skiving and get back to the grindstone now, before the baby wakes up.

Sight for sore eyes... proof reading

Somebody fetch me some new retinas (retinae?)

I thought I was a pro at proof reading. Smug statement, but based on fact. I proof read at work a LOT, and try and snag and snip and be as pedantic and annoying as possible to spot every last little typo or weird caption or funky line break.

But this week, I have proof read so far:

- a chunk of things for work
- two articles
- the entire text of my first book

The first two were ok. The work bits and bobs are concise and printed out and easy- you can't miss a page break in the wrong place when a caption is smeared across two pages instead of one. Even I can't miss that, and merrily curse myself and fix it.

The articles were also fine- a little harder to spot things amiss, on a screen and all. They were still neat, contained, and I could go through methodically line by line and section by section- the journal editors of one had organised the article in that way, and the other... well, I printed it off, just to be safe.

The book. That was a different kettle of leaping, jumping, flapping fish- too big to print, tricky to compartmentalise, so familiar that I finish its sentences for myself and have to FORCE my attention on every word, every letter. It's done- and it's fine, and I did find things wrong (always reassuring- if I don't spot a mistake, I assume I've missed one- that way lies paranoid madness).

But is there anyone smarter than me at this? (I really hope so, as I am pretty damn dumb). How do you fight your own lax mind, when it's striving to ignore what you can see and insert what should be there?

Let me know if there's a genius tip- hypno-proofing (can you tell I've been reading about hypno-birthing?), proof yoga, a 1000-words an hour proofing rule? Initiate me, o proofing priests and priestesses!

By the way, humble brag alert. The book (the first book) will be out soon. I'll no doubt post some gushy mushy yuck on here when it is, emoting about how the cover makes me feel. And all of you will leap from your computer screens weeping tears of joy at the chance to read about Etruscan pottery from a phenomenological perspective**. Yeah, you will.

** In an aside, Melvyn Bragg and company on In Our Time talked about phenomenology today. I think anyone studying philosophy or archaeological theory should have a listen- NOT to learn, but to feel comforted that Melv can't pronounce phenomenonmenonololology either.

Christmas 2013: #mulledwines and Ian Hodder

Hello all, a Merry Christmas to you. I've blogged for work about some Christmas festivals in the past, if you fancy a read of that here for some classy blogging (ahem) about pagan Roman and Norse goddesses that got turned into witches and child-eating trolls (no, really) after the Christian takeover.

But what I really want to blog about is that one of the most irritating, senseless, sexist bullshit songs of the year has had a Christmas makeover... and is now almost utterly delightful.

Mulled Wines... by Greg James and Chris Smith, off of BBC Radio 1. If the link doesn't work (and I suspect it won't as it's being rubbish) click here to have a watch.

However, just so as you know, while the original song drove me nuts, one single lyric saved it for me- because it made it so funny I couldn't help gurgling like a happy toddler each time this overplayed piece of disgusting misogynistic nonsense came on the radio.

This redeeming line? "Try to domesticate ya, cos you're an animal, baby it's in your nature."

Okay, maybe this is one of the worst lines in the whole sorry business, as it reduces women to animals (huge rage, not ok, fury burning fury). UNTIL it made me think of Ian Hodder's Domus theory. The idea that Neolithic humans had to deliberately make a decision to make the wild world of animals and plants safe, domesticated and everyday. So everytime over the last year I've heard that piece of shit song, I have a terrifying mental picture of Hodder himself singing out to a recalcitrant aurochs and waving an improvised halter around... on top of a Catalhoyuk style house.

So yeah- that mental picture, and saving you from an impending hernia each time Blurred Lines gets played (even though it should have been put in a bin long ago), is my Christmas present to you.

In the meantime, #mulledwines. And Happy Christmas. See you in 2014.

Stones: Don't be so bloody processual!

Your days are numbered, Wheeler! That dashing moustache won't save you!

Well, do. Cos it actually gets things done.

It's been a while since I wrote a "Stones" post, so I hope you are all excited and thrilled to be about to read a chunk of archaeological theory. I know I am! In the last post on Levi-Strauss I arrived at a depressing conclusion- we can never shed our skins, our histories, our biases and preferences and take a good clear look at the past. There's not really such a thing as truth, just opinion.

Except, well, a school of archaeological theory that grew up in the late 1950s and 1960s says that there is. It's called processualism- because it uses structured, logical, sort of scientific processes to find out the most secure information possible about the past. Now, a lot of people who continue to employ this kind of archaeological theory are the people that go "Ugh. Theory is pointless- what a waste of time. It's just idiots arguing about semiotics, when they could be doing good science." But do you know what? They themselves are proponents of a this particular school of thought and way of doing things- they are evangelists for processualism as a way of thinking about the past.

But how do you apply science to archaeology, and call it theory? In a world of radiocarbon dating, intricate osteological analysis, CT scans and all that jazz (let alone the world's most exciting archaeological science, consulting the vole clock*), using new methods to interrogate the past feels second nature. But think back to the first Stones post, and the second- go outside your own head and into the late 1950s. This was a time in which the majority of archaeologists lined up rows of similar pots and called them cultures, arguing for diffusion of ideas and the steady evolution of culture. It took some bright, rebellious thinkers to break away from this kind of practice, dragging archaeology out of Victorian speculation and into the light of the scientific and technological revolution that was coming.

One of Binford's amazing drawings- the anatomy of a kill site

Chief of these young rebels (strange though it seems now) was an American called Lewis Binford. I was gutted when he died in 2011. Binford in later life was kind of a big deal- and rightly so. Because when he was a graduate student, he got very fed up very quickly with the kind of culture history being peddled as archaeology- particularly after early radiocarbon dates proved that most of this speculation was wildly inaccurate. And, unlike me and thousands of other moaning PhD students, Binford actually did something about it. He was interested in the Mousterian, a period of the Upper Paleolithic. But rather than drawing endless pieces of flint and arguing about the position of hearths, he wanted to know why these objects were made, and how they related to the people who produced them. Binford's thought was that the environment of Ice Age Europe had encouraged the creation of particular kinds of site- but how could he make this argument? By going, in 1969, to an area of North America with similar climactic conditions, and seeing how people their used tools, lived in their landscape and organised their seasonal lifestyles. The results were fantastic- assemblages and sites, seen in a similar context, suddenly made sense for the first time.  Binford's research methodology more or less changed the archaeological world. He made the connection between archaeological study and what people actually do- their behaviour, and he proved beyond doubt that sociologists and social anthropologists had a great deal to offer.

Top bloke, Lewis Binford.

Ironically, by developing a more objective approach to archaeology, and spawing the processual movement that adopted his ideas and can be found in any pub bashing poor old Ian Hodder, Binford also laid the ground for modern archaeological theory. He made it safe and acceptable for archaeologists to engage with the ideas of philosophers and thinkers from outside our world of pots, stones and bones. So in the next few Stones posts, I'm going to look at a series of sociologists, anthopologists and thinkers, all of whom have influenced archaeology- but none of whom would have had a chance without Lew Binford and his ability to get up off his arse and change the world.

Stone: The Past is a Foreign Country

Lost in the rainforest. By me.

 I am guessing that you will most of you heard the quote I've used to title this post, the second in my series on theory. It gets thrown around all the time in various forms- "the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there." It's actually a quote from the novel "The Go-Between" by L.P. Hartley in 1953. This little snippet has survived the 60 years between now and then to become a trope, a cliche, of archaeological thought. If I had a quid for every time this little phrase has popped up (in the first year of undergraduate study alone), I would probably be able to treat myself to some pre-dig pampering. In the rush of repetition, the meaning of this phrase gets lost. It's actually got some quite deep links- back to some serious ideas about who we are, how we think, and how we perceive other people.


Have you ever got lost abroad? I have. Lost in Merida, Mexico. Lost at night in Rome. Lost (for a very panicky minute or so) in the rainforest in Guatemala in a thunderstorm. Do you remember those feelings? The rush of nerves, the separation of yourself from all the people around you, the sense of your own body as an island in the middle of an ocean of strangeness? And all this in a modern world, where so many of the objects and thoughts around us are familiar- the cars, the electric lights, the universal humiliation of the tourist.

Levi-Strauss looking mournful in the jungle. Image: anthrotheory.

One man who took this feeling to the extreme was a French anthropologist, Claude Levi-Strauss (just for the record, he's not responsible for the overpriced jeans). Levi-Strauss was convinced that, underneath surface differences, human experience was structured by the same principles. He was certain that the same series of contrasts would be picked up by any human brain- separating light from dark, day from night, male from female, cold from hot etc. He termed these sets of differences binary oppositions, and considered that all human societies would have conceptualised them. As a good anthropologist, Levi-Strauss then set off for the field. Dashing to Brazil, he wanted to find people as alien to him as possible, to prove himself right. Accompanied by his wife, Levi-Strauss steadily moved through different cultural groups in the Mato Grosso and Amazon- yet each had been, in his view, tainted by the modern world. The very presence of interpreters, imported clothing, cigarettes- any imported idea or object alerted Levi-Strauss to the fact that these groups were impure- and so could not be used to test his ideas. Finally, heading deep into the Amazon in 1938, Levi-Strauss made contact with the Nambikwara, a community which at last seemed to be relatively untouched by the outside world. Yet he couldn't understand his informants. They couldn't understand him. There was nothing, no common ground, for the two to share. The language, the material culture, the behaviour of the people- Levi-Strauss just could not (in the short weeks he spent there) observe or make use of any of the underlying similarities he was sure were there.

I want to leave Levi-Strauss to one side now- I will come back to his structuralist beliefs another day. My point is that his story demonstrates a real truth in archaeological theory- the same truth that squats underneath the glib little phrase that titles this post. Levi-Strauss could not leave his own body, his own beliefs, his own cultures, his own biases behind. No matter how much he desperately wanted to understand the Nambikwara, how much he cared about their culture, how much he believed that he shared a universal set of cultural building blocks (his binary oppositions) with them- he couldn't talk to them. He couldn't understand them. He could never leave behind his Frenchness, his European identity. His white skin. His penis. He couldn't cast that off and instantly understand what it was and what it meant to be Nambikwara. And nor could I, and nor could you.

As archaeologists, we are continually trying to do what Levi-Strauss did. At least the man actually got to visit, live with, attempt to speak to the people he was studying. The feeling of being lost, of being confused, that everyone experiences in a new situation in a strange culture, might have gone away after a few months- yet continual moments would have brought it back. There's no way of living in the past, to lessen the shock. We are stuck in our own skins- we have our own histories, our own stories and experiences. Everytime I write about the Etruscans, I am doing it as a white, middle-class, English woman. I'm not doing it as an Etruscan. I'm not seeing things an Etruscan might have thought important. And I've had to get over that. Nobody is objective- we are all tied firmly to our own culture. You don't need to get lost in the Amazon to figure that out- Levi-Strauss did it for you. As long as you're honest about who you are, and where you come from, and you use the evidence in a convincing way, your view is just as valid as anyone else's on what happened in the past- because it's a foreign country with no airports and no access where you can't even get lost. You can only do archaeology as you- but that doesn't mean you can't think outside the box you were born into (ouch, horrible cliche). In the next "Stone" blog post, I want to explore this more deeply- the methods we can use to try and wiggle away from our own skins and expand our interpretations of the past.

Let me know what you think of Levi-Strauss and company. Have you been lost abroad? How do you feel about the "foreign country" quote? Please do get in touch with your view!

Stone: Let's talk about Theory, baby

First off, apologies for not blogging for the last couple of weeks- I've been working pretty hard to finish the second draft of my PhD thesis. It's done now, sent off to my supervisor and advisor for their thoughts, and hopefully will soon be transformed into the final version. Phew! So I'm back blogging, and, looking at the loose cycle of Pots-Places-Stones-Bones, I realised that this post needed to be a Stone post. In the past, I seem to have used these posts for a bit of a whinge, a bit of a gripe. Sometimes (I hope mostly) those moans are constructive and about relevant topics that need to be questioned. However, I want to do something a bit more productive with these posts over the next couple of months.

You may not think that talking about archaeological theory is productive. When I was an undergraduate, there was a strong feeling that theory was "dead" and was a surplus requirement to the practical business of digging things up. I'm not sure if the proponents of this idea (who were many, and who were vocal), were responding to an internalisation of theory, or were just being mischievous. Either way, when a member of academic staff starts your "Introduction to Archaeological Theory" module with a soothing (read patronising) little monologue on how "theory is tough" and "it's ok not to understand," the chance to change those people's views went down the toilet.

So here's what I think. Theory isn't tough. Sometimes the language that the people writing it use is tough, obscure, downright daft. But theory is about ideas, and the ideas are usually devastating- because they are, at their heart, relatively simple. When I taught an undergraduate module with a good friend on "Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology," because we were theorists, we filled the course with it. Students lapped it up- we got stellar feedback ratings. Because you don't teach theory by whinging on about how tough it is- you make the IDEA clear, you find a fabulous pair of case studies that illustrate the point (usually one ethnographic and one archaeological for our purposes) and then you make the students apply the theory, go back to the original work and demolish the crap presentation to get at the central concept.

Because (and drum roll here please) you are applying theory all the time. ALL THE TIME. Theory is alive and well, because you are using it. You can't wipe your head clean, you can't empty out your mind. This is what Ian Hodder was talking about all those years ago about "theory at the trowel's edge," a phrase that's often smirked at. Every time you pick up a trowel, every time you read a source, every time you trawl through a museum store, you are doing something pretty special. You are simultaneously combining preconceived opinions and physical evidence to make a new idea. You can't turn off that process- that's what we're in it for. Even if you're watching archaeology on telly, you are still doing this. You are theorising- having and making ideas about material culture. That's archaeological theory.

So, if you are going to do this all the time, it seems like a pretty good idea to organise those ideas. To find out who thought of them first, and how their thoughts differed to yours. To discover the flaws in your own arguments and be able to make them (harder) better (faster, stronger). To find new ideas that are exciting, that transform your thoughts about objects, words or people. That's what learning archaeological theory is for, and, taught correctly in fully contextual and applied manner, it's f***ing brilliant.

So, over the next lot of Stone posts, instead of faux-positive whining about how I can't get a job*, I want to talk about the big ideas in theory. The thinkers, the case studies, that have changed how I approach objects in my professional life, and most of my actual life. Once you're familiar with these arguments, which aren't just about archaeology but about people, you see them everywhere- you can bust them if they're rubbish, or use them if they work for you. BUT YOU HAVE TO KNOW THEM FIRST! To make up for my absence, there will be two posts this week- probably tomorrow I'll be back, and I want to start (almost) at the beginning of archaeological theory.

See you tomorrow for some cultural Darwinism.

Don't look so worried Charles! It's just some ideas!

*Although you never know- as a colleague and I discussed on Twitter, I think a BBC4 series on theory in anthropology/archaeology could actually be pretty damn good: thinkers, ideas and case studies every week. Like the recent Richard Miles doc on the history of archaeology, which was well presented and fun and accurate- the Holy Grail. If you're reading this, O Hallowed Producers, give me a shout.