Communicating Archaeology Words to the Wise

8/10/2019 Communicating Archaeology Words to the Wise

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Copyright 2006 SAGE Publications (www.sagepublications.com)

ISSN 1469-6053 Vol 6(1): 100118 DOI: 10.1177/1469605306060569

Journal of Social Archaeology A R T I C L E

100

Communicating archaeology

Words to the wise

JOE E.WATKINS

Department of Anthropology,University of New Mexico,USA

ABSTRACT

As archaeologists, we are often called upon to discuss our work withvarious groups that share our interest in human culture and humanadaptation, to communicate with those whose heritage we study, or toexplain our findings to other stakeholders in the archaeologicalenterprise. As communicators, however, we are less adept at accu-rately portraying our thoughts to those groups. All too frequently weenter into opportunities to communicate with groups and then borethem with jargon, try to dazzle them with technological brilliance, or

lose their attention all together. And, even when we do not confusethem with acronyms, we take it for granted that the words we chooseare understood in our intended manner. The following article beginswith a few examples of misunderstandings involved in communicat-ing archaeology and then goes beyond these topics to the core of theWestern scientific process of naming and categorizing, to the politicsof our profession and to the implications of our archaeology oncontemporary populations.

KEYWORDSarchaeology communication indigenous perspectives New Worldorigins


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101Watkins Communicating archaeology

INTRODUCTION

Imagine walking into a classroom, sitting down with paper and pencil, and

waiting for the professor to begin. After a few hesitant noises, the professorspeaks, but in a language mostly incomprehensible to you. You understandthe words and get the gist of the lecture, but somehow the real meaning ofthe lecture does not come through. You speak to the professor after thelecture and are immediately struck by the difference between the professoras a lecturer and the professor as a person. When asked why the lecturewas unintelligible, the professor merely states: It was intended to be under-stood only by those who already understand what I am saying. If I have toexplain it, you do not need to know it.

Of course, such an event is not likely to occur or at least we are notlikely to admit to doing such a thing. But when we fail to communicate ourideas in clear, commonly understood language, we run the risk of negativelyimpacting the public, sometimes even beyond our own comprehension. Areal-life example might prove my point. I was at a workshop where anarchaeologist was giving a brief culture history of the Four Corners regionof the Southwestern United States, where the Arizona, Utah, Colorado, andNew Mexico borders meet. When she started discussing the time of greatcultural movement in the area at about AD 1150, she spoke of it as the

time when people abandoned Chaco Canyon. I raised my hand andobjected to the choice of the word abandoned and she said she understoodmy objection. I offered an alternative phrasing, perhaps we should talkabout the time when people no longer occupied the area on a more full-time basis, to which she objected to the idea of full-time, arguing thatthere was no evidence that Chaco Canyon was ever occupied year-round.The rest of the people in the room, including the archaeologists, did not actconcerned about our mutual objection, and so we both dropped thediscussion and moved on to another topic.

Does it matter that her use of the term abandoned did not meet withmine, or that we both offered other phrasings that should have clarified thematter, but did not? Yes, it does, and I want to work with this point toemphasize the importance of the words we choose, the ways we use them,and the ways that other people might misconstrue their use.

WORD USE

The discussion that follows is vital in our ability to understand the ways weas archaeologists fail to communicate to all the publics that we should bedrawing in to our field of study those who find archaeology fascinating,


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102 Journal of Social Archaeology 6(1)

those who find it insulting, those who find it to be nothing more than a wasteof time and money, and those who have no opinion of archaeology at all.It is important that we move beyond the elementary idea that merely

talking with or telling the public is enough; it is important that we move onto actually communicating with them.Are we as archaeologists inept at communicating, or are there other,

more subtle issues at work that act to lessen our abilities to say what wemean? In looking at the ways we communicate with non-anthropologists,perhaps we should take some lessons from theories that relate to inter-cultural communications.

Edward T. Hall (1976) differentiated between low- and high-contextcommunication as a means of explaining cultural differences in the waysthings are presented and accepted by human populations. While these are

arguably generalizations, high-context communication occurs when mostof the information is either in the physical context or internalized in theperson, while very little is in the coded, explicit, transmitted part of themessage (Hall, 1976: 79). Low-context communication, on the other hand,occurs when the mass of information is vested in the explicit code (Hall,1976: 70). High-context and low-context communication is used in allcultures, but one form tends to predominate, with high-context messagesand indirect communication used by members of collectivist cultures whilelow-context messages and direct communication preferred by members of

individualistic cultures (Gudykunst, 2005: 8).As noted above, high-context communication tends to be less explicit,

less direct and more implied, and it is generally up to the listener to filterthe valuable information from the conversation. People rely less on theliteral meaning of the words. Indirect communication also ensures thatthere is less likelihood of conflict. People in low-context communications,on the other hand, tend to be explicit, fact-filled and often repetitive, withmore direct communication and higher likelihood of conflict. According toStella Ting-Toomey (2005: 216), Native Americans . . . who identify

strongly with their traditional ethnic values, would tend to be grouporiented (and therefore more comfortable with high-context, indirectcommunication styles), while European Americans who identify stronglywith European values and norms (albeit on an unconscious level) wouldtend to be oriented toward individualism (and the resultant low-context,direct communication styles). Culture Matters (Storti and Bennhold-Samaan, 1997), an extensive cross-cultural workbook for Peace Corpsvolunteers, offers important insights concerning indirect/high-context anddirect/low-context styles of communication, and should be consulted by

archaeologists wishing to improve their communication skills.The Toolkit for Cross-Cultural Collaboration (Elliot et al., 1999) wasdeveloped as a result of a study of collaboration styles of African-American, Asian-American, Native American, Hispanic-American and


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Anglo-American communities. The study noted that great differences sepa-rated each minority community from the Anglo-American communities,with the differences created by variations in expectations, styles, assump-

tions, values, body language, and privilege.The study found recognizable consequences caused by the gaps incollaboration and communication styles, among them the underutilizationof health services and the failure of many minority children to completetheir education. Since most people do not understand the exact nature ofthe differences in communication styles and values, persons from minoritycommunities often perceive that they are treated disrespectfully by behav-iors that, to the Anglo-American community, are common and normal. Asa result, minorities often withdraw from participation in services designedon an Anglo-American model.

How can such differences in styles of communication affect archaeol-ogy? If minorities withdraw from participation in services designed on anAnglo-American model, as Elliot et al. (1999) noted, it should not be asmuch of a surprise that Native American and Anglo-American groups havesuch differing views of the consultation process. Anglo-American indi-viduals, familiar with working within low-context communication styleswith explicit, direct communication, are hard pressed to understand thehigh-context, indirect communication styles of the Native American partici-pants. Anglo-Americans generally want immediate answers, while Native

Americans more often will take their time to find solutions; Anglo-Americans generally desire specific responses while Native Americansmore often use indirect responses to state a position. These culturally influ-enced communication styles, if not taken into consideration, are likely toprevent meaningful discussion and mutually beneficial solutions from beingreached (Watkins and Ferguson, 2005).

None of us is taught these ideas or concepts in graduate school, or evenin our struggles to become good instructors and academicians. We archae-ologists learn to communicate in a manner similar to that in which we are

instructed and are forced to read the low-context, direct, repetitive, over-cited and explicit style found in most academic classrooms, professionalpresentations and tenure-earning publications.

In writing about the Society for American Archaeologys Workshop onEthics in Reno, Nevada, in 1993, Alison Wylie (2005: 524) recalls anincident that, for her, highlighted the event and demonstrates the import-ance of maintaining an awareness of different communication styles:

Mid-way through the first session of the workshop, Leigh Jenkins(Kuwanwisiwma), then the Director of the Hopi Nation Cultural

Preservation Office, identified a number of ways in which the issue ofresource protection, as we had conceived it, is framed in terms that arefundamentally at odds with tribal values . . . Jenkins drew no particularlesson from this account; he left it to the assembled archaeologists to think


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through its implications for the issues they had been discussing . . . His storyabout repatriation was a pivotal intervention, changing the tone andcertainly the direction of what had begun as a quite diffuse discussion.

What might have happened had the discussion been carried out in anentirely low-context communication style is anybodys guess. Perhaps thesame point of focus on stewardship and its implications for the issues underdiscussion would have emerged, or perhaps the meeting would have woundaround issues of definition and circumscription rather than issues of ethics.But, by being open to communication in its various forms, the workshopproduced a document that now resides at the very heart of archaeologysrelationships with its various publics.

WORD CHOICE

Let us now return to the word abandoned in the earlier example. MerriamWebster defines the verb abandon as: to give up with the intent of neveragain claiming a right or interest in, such as to abandon property (Mish,2003: 2). Archaeologists have understood the archaeological data to showthat there was a great movement of people out of the Chaco Canyon region

of northwestern New Mexico at about AD 1150 in response to climaticstresses that made it most likely impossible to maintain the way of life thathad previously existed (cf. Lipe, 2004; Sebastian, 2004; Vivian, 2004). In thewestern sense of the word abandoned, it is likely that the people who livedin the region gave up trying to make a year-around living in the area andmoved to outlying areas where it was easier to survive, but the implicationsof the word are staggering.

Archaeologists have used the word indiscriminately, Gwinn Vivianoffered. This event [a major drought that began around 1130 and lasted for

50 years] proved too taxing for the Chacoan farmers and triggered theabandonment of Chaco Canyon by the late twelfth century (2004: 13). Asnoted by Rosemary Sucec, cultural resource specialist in the ethnographyprogram for the Colorado Plateau and Rocky Mountain parks in theDenver Support Office of the National Park Service, the concept ofabandonmentinadvertently negates the significance that places like MesaVerde and Chaco Canyon hold in the memories and traditions of contem-porary Indian communities (1997: 54). If you ask the Hopi (Kuwanwisi-wma, 2004), Navajo (Begay, 2004), or Pueblo (Swentzell, 2004) people for

their opinion, Chaco Canyon was never abandoned, nor did the ancestralPueblo people simply disappear. The people may have moved away fromthe habitation structures that made up the social environment of ChacoCanyon at some time in the past, but the tribal groups would never say that


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their opinions on some of the philosophical aspects of archaeology as it ispracticed in Mesoamerica. Conference attendees examined the use of termssuch as the Mayan collapse and the psychological and political impli-

cations such terminology has on local indigenous groups. Presentations byMayan individuals (cf. Castaeda, 2002; Cocom, 2002; Cojt Cuxil, 2002;Cojt Ren, 2002; Lopez,2002) drew attention to various aspects of the politi-cal relationships between archaeology and Mayan groups, and offered indi-vidual Mayan perspectives on the ways that archaeology could be morebeneficial to local indigenous groups.

But it is not only words that can have negative connotations to indigen-ous populations. Consider the implications of broad theories. When weconsider the early peopling of the New World, there often develops aproblem of communication between archaeologists and American Indians.

Archaeologists talk about the movement of people from the Old Worldinto North and South America at about 15 or 20,000 years ago (Fagan, 2000,2004; Fladmark, 1979; Stanford and Bradley, 2002), while American Indianpeople talk about always being here. Which group is correct? For thatmatter, are the two statements mutually exclusive?

In a class at the Institute for American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, I becameinvolved in a discussion with a student about the time that American Indiansdiscovered America (senso Thomas above). She spoke how scientists tellus that weve only been here 15,000 years. Her anger was palpable.

Rather than merely reciting the scientific evidence on the migrationtheories currently in vogue, I explored a different avenue. I asked thestudent to explain the differences between scientific theory and scientificfact and the ways each was developed and described. We discussed thescientific method and the construction of a null hypothesis and alternatehypotheses, and how one went about testing and reformulating hypothesesbased on information and data obtained in the research. I asked her andthe class to suggest hypotheses alternative to the theory of migration forthe occupation of North America, and then we listed the types and locations

of data we would need to find to test, refute, or support the various hypothe-ses. Did I convince the students that the scientific theory about migrationwas the truth? Of course not, but the class came to understand theprocessthrough which the various migration theories were developed as well as theshortcomings within each one of them. Even though I might not haveconvinced any of the students of the strength of the migration hypotheses,I did use the opportunity to discuss how the scientific hypothesis (as wellas their hypotheses) could be tested.

I have always argued that, in truth of fact, the first immigrants that made

their way into North America were not Native Americans, but ratherNative-Beringians or Native-Siberians, etc. But the first generation bornhere carried in their bones, their organs and their culture the trace mineralsingested by their mothers microscopic particles of the landscape that tied


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them to the area as sure as culture tied them to their kin. They were theparents of todays American Indians in a real sense, regardless of the scien-tific possibilities of multiple migrations or competing originating localities.

In point of fact,American Indians did not exist until they were born here.That is, since they did not exist anywhere else before they came into beingin America,theyve always been here. Does it matter to anyone other thanarchaeologists or American Indians? It is important for American Indiansto feel they are in the country of their ancestors and their ancestors ances-tors and that America will always be their homeland. Vine Deloria Jr.,however, draws attention to the question of the scientific theory of migra-tion and its political implications: By making us immigrants to NorthAmerica, they [scientists] are able to deny the fact that we were the full,complete, and total owners of this continent. They are able to see us simply

as earlier interlopers and therefore throw back at us the accusation that wehad simply found North America a little earlier than they had (Deloria,1995: 84, emphasis in original).

But maybe a recent theory on the peopling of North and South Americawill go much further than merely talking about American Indians as findingNorth America a little earlier. Dennis Stanford and Bruce Bradley (2000,2002) argue that the continents first inhabitants may have crossed theAtlantic slightly more than 18,000 years ago from the Iberian Peninsula the area that encompasses Spain, Portugal and southwestern France.

According to Stanford and Bradley, Solutrean populations are believed tohave originally settled along the eastern seaboard and then, over the nextsix millennia, their hunting and gathering culture may have spread as far asthe American deserts and Canadian tundra, and perhaps into SouthAmerica (but see Strauss, 2000 for a rebuttal). In a book for young readersentitled Who Came First? New Clues to Prehistoric Americans, authorPatricia Lauber (2003: 58) writes: Many scientists are doubtful that peoplecould have crossed the Atlantic. Even if they followed the edge of the ice,there was no place to put ashore. Dr Stanford agrees but says it is import-

ant to explore the possibility that Europeans were among the first Ameri-cans.

More possibilities explored

In September 2004, a news article written by Paul Rincon of the BBC NewsOnline science staff (Rincon, 2004) proclaimed Tribe Challenges AmericanOrigins. The article cites Dr Sylvia Gonzalez as saying there is very strongevidence that the first migration came from Australia via Japan and Poly-

nesia and down the Pacific coast of America. Gonzalezs work, withskeletal material from a population of long-headed individuals called thePericues (thought to have become extinct between 200 and 300 years ago),leads her to believe that the Pericues might have been related to modern


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Aboriginal Australians, based on their similar skull shapes. According to thearticle, she hopes to strengthen the theory of a link with AboriginalAustralians by doing a DNA analysis using the bones of the Pericue skele-

tons. In this manner, the article suggests, Gonzalez hopes to argue that theSiberian forebears of modern day Native Americans did not get here firstafter all, and that [Native Americans] cannot claim to have been the firstpeople in North America. The reporter also stated: If proved correct, thefindings might have implications for US legislation that covers the returnof Native American remains and artefacts to present-day tribes.

Who were the first First Americans? One option is that a EuropeanSolutrean pre-Clovis group occupied the southeastern portion of NorthAmerica, evolved into Clovis people and spread across the North andSouth American continents before being absorbed or destroyed by waves

of immigrant populations from the Asian continent (Stanford and Bradley,2002). A second option is that Australians were the first inhabitants of theNew World, eventually being replaced or absorbed by the invadingMongoloid horde (Rincon, 2004). A third option is that the first Americanswere people of African ancestry, as suggested by the discovery of the Brazil-ian skull nicknamed Luzia purported to be more than 10,000 years old(Neves and Pucciarelli, 1991). Finally, there is the standard theory of theBeringian land bridge and the ice-free corridor (Fagan, 2004; Haynes, 1969).Many of these options are presented in Lepper and Bonnichsens recent

compilation New Perspectives on the First Americans (2004). Each of theseoptions concerning the peopling of the New World has political impli-cations reminiscent of the nineteenth century argument over who theMoundbuilders really were.

The Moundbuilders were a hypothetical, superior, non-Indian race,perhaps related to the prehistoric Mexicans, Danes, or Hindus, thought tobe responsible for constructing the numerous earthen mounds in theeastern USA, stumbled across by early scientists and explorers (see Willeyand Sabloff, 1993 for a more in-depth discussion). Since contemporary local

Indians were seen as incapable of constructing the mounds, scientists of thenineteenth century hypothesized that the Moundbuilders had built themounds before either withdrawing from eastern North America or beingkilled off by the Indians. Ultimately, however, the scientists decided thatcontemporary Indians were the descendants of those responsible forconstructing the mounds.

Archaeologists Bruce Trigger (1980: 665), Don Fowler (1987: 230) andRandall McGuire (1992: 820) are among the many that have discussed howthe Moundbuilder controversy served the USA as a means of justifying the

extermination or removal of American Indians, not only from the frontierbut also from the history of the country. It is surprising that contemporaryarchaeologists fail to see the parallels between the Moundbuildercontroversy and todays issues.


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Perhaps one of the most important misunderstandings that arises whenarchaeologists looking at the earliest inhabitants of North America usemisleading labels to describe the populations from which these early immi-

grants might have come is the manner in which the general public inter-prets those labels. In Stanfords statement that it is possible that Europeanswere among the first Americans, the use of contemporary political defi-nitions carries a weighty implication. If the first people in North Americawere Europeans, it is not too large a jump in logic for American politiciansto say: If Europeans were here before anyone else, then American Indianclaims to the land are negated or at least called into question. If AmericanIndians didnt really have a valid claim to the land, then we dont have tohonor any of the treaties we made with the Indians. No treaties, no sover-eignty, no problem. Alienation of Indian land through the Jerome

Commission (188993) and the Dawes Commission (18931907) failed. TheWheeler-Howard Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 failed. Governmentalpolicies of assimilation and termination failed. Will archaeologists succeed?

Hodder (1982), Meskell (2001), Trigger (2003) and others (Conkey andGero, 1997; Conkey and Specter, 1984; Gero and Conkey, 1991) havewritten extensively about archaeology and identity politics. Other authors,such as Arnold (1990) and Fowler (1987), have written about the constraintsthat social theory can put on archaeology. But the plethora of optionsconcerning the peopling of the New World carry with them the possibility

of archaeology and misidentity politics or an integration of a new stateof archaeology through some sort of an Orwellian legerdemain: Newspeak,doublethink, the mutability of the past (Orwell, 1949: 27).

One such view, as espoused by right-wing columnist Lowell Ponte inPolitically Incorrect Genocide, Part One (Ponte, 1999a), places a verypolitical perspective on the peopling of the New World:

In other words, long before Christopher Columbus and other dead white evilEuropean male (DWEEM in PC-speak) conquistadors arrived to slaughter

noble Native American Indians, the noble Native American Indians carriedout a genocide that exterminated the true First Americans, who happened tohave black skin and African racial origins.

What a different, braver New World ours might have been. Columbusarrives in 1492 and is greeted by smiling black faces. Instead of human-sacrificing Aztecs and socialist Incas, Europeans might have found the gentleculture of Africa or the dream-time of Australian Aboriginal people. Alas, weshall never know what could have been. The murderous genocide carried outby invading Indians destroyed the offspring of Luzia and her fellow black-skinned original Americans, leaving only a few of their bones and

fragments of their beautiful art.

The same holds true for the political implications that were expoundedwhen the Kennewick materials were erroneously reported as Caucasian


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in the popular press, especially when groups such as the Asatru FolkAssembly used the opportunity to practice their brand of paganism orEurocentric supremacy. Pontes viewpoint on this issue, written on 5

October 1999 (Ponte, 1999b), is perhaps typified in the following:On todays university campuses, the fashion is to depict Euro-Americans asevil and Native Americans and most Hispanics as the virtuous survivors ofwhite colonial exploitation, rape, and genocide. Kennewick Man might provethe opposite that the true Native Americans were white, victims ofmurderous genocide by the ancestors of todays Indians who seized theirland. The European invasion of the past five centuries, in this potentialrevisionist history, merely reclaimed land stolen 9,000 years earlier fromtheir murdered kin.

Pontes comments can be likened to Orwells Winston Smith musing: Allhistory was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often aswas necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed wasdone, to prove that any falsification had taken place (Orwell, 1949: 41).Perhaps through a continued rescraping and reinscribing of history,Europe will gain legal control over Paleo-America and the populations thatmight (or might not) have descended from those early people.

The inconsistent use of contemporary geographical terminology has amajor impact on the general publics perception of the peopling of North

and South America. When anthropologists write of general relationshipsbetween early Native Americans and East Asian populations, contempor-ary politico-geographical names are rarely used. And, while it might beappropriate to say that some of the earliest inhabitants of North Americamight have come via the continent we now call Australia, via the group ofislands now known as Japan and so forth, one cannot say the people whocame through those geographical area were Australians or Japanese.Such geopolitical groups did not existin the past, and they serve no functionother than to introduce geopolitical intrigue when used in discussing past

populations.How do we come to grips with situations such as these that arise when

people try to define past populations using contemporary political andgeographical definitions/descriptions? How do we deal with the impactsthat such pronouncements and interpretations have on indigenous popu-lations? At what point can such groups cease to be tied to the past throughanthropological hyperdescentism and consider themselves merelyhuman? And, getting back to Thomas discovery issue, Western scientists,by naming the populations from which Native North American populations

originate as European, Australian, or African, can further alienate theheritage of North Americas indigenous people from contemporary NativeAmericans. Again citing Orwell: Who controls the past . . . controls thefuture: who controls the present controls the past (1949: 35).


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American anthropologists Douglas Owsley and Richard Jantz, in writingabout the situation revolving around the Kennewick Man (known by manyindigenous groups as the Ancient One), declare that the legal challenge is

not against Native Americans per se . . . It is in the interest of all people thata clear and accurate understanding of the past be available to everyone(Owsley and Jantz, 2002: 141). Patty Gerstenblith disagrees, however, notingthat Owsley and Jantzs explanation that their research will benefit allhumankind . . . justifies their unilateral appropriation of cultural and humanremains and their control over interpretation of the past through theseremains (2002: 175). Australian archaeologist Colin Pardoe, in writing aboutthe conflict between the scientific and indigenous perspectives in Australia10 years earlier, felt archaeologists might have . . . legitimised our curiosityby appealing to the noble view of world history, a democracy of knowledge

for all . . . [which] no one person could own (1992: 140).Contemporary political situations again play an important role in

heritage rights issues as well. Sarah Harding (1999: 300) notes: The debatebetween the cultural internationalists those who believe culturalheritage is the property of all humankind and the cultural nationalists those who believe that it is first and foremost the property of sourcenations has been well-documented in the ever-growing mound of litera-ture on the disposition of cultural heritage. I will not repeat that debatehere, but, as I argue elsewhere (Watkins, 2005), such a dichotomy seems to

be shortsighted, removing indigenous people (who often exist within, andare even more politically peripheral than, Third World countries) from thediscussion as if they have no right to have a voice. While American Indiantribes have separate status as sovereign nations, the control of heritage andcultural property extends only to lands owned by the tribe or the USgovernment.

Cultural intra-nationalists indigenous populations or other cultural,social, or religious enclaves within source nations often feel that theyshould be able to control the heritage material they see as rightfully theirs.

The tension between cultural property and the groups that relate to themhas become increasingly obvious. While industrialized societies might notsee their representations and appropriation of indigenous heritage as an actof cultural internationalism, but, as Timothy and Boyd note how the repre-sentation of heritage can act to legitimise existing social and political valuesand structures (2003: 257). Thus, although industrialized societies might notsee their representations and appropriation of indigenous heritage as an actof cultural internationalism, it becomes more difficult to see such acts asharmless. When Harding writes: One of the most important issues with

respect to cultural heritage is the historical denial of indigenous peoplesright to determine the fate of their own cultural heritage and to protect itfrom violation and theft (1999: 302), she is writing not only about thephysical violation and theft of cultural heritage by all types of looters


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(including archaeologists, perhaps) but also the metaphysicalviolation andtheft of cultural heritage as well.

Graeme Aplin notes how national heritage an agreed-upon set of

values, localities, or origin stories can be used by a government ordominant group in society to legitimize the state, to help define it, and toadvance individuals identification with it (2002: 16). Heritage can be astrong cement to construct a group ethos within a population,but it likewisehas the capability of excluding other portions of the population thoseeconomically, politically, philosophically, or socially on the fringes of thedominant culture from that constructed group, a point that Arnold (1990),Fowler (1987), Trigger (1986) and others have applied to archaeology.

There are those who will see the issue of using contemporary geographi-cal terms as unimportant in relation to the search for the original sources of

the population of North and South America, or that such distinctions areinconsequential, but I disagree. Archaeologists are often intricate indeveloping words to describe artificial and particular situations. We argueabout the connotations and implications of calling something an arrowheadas opposed to a projectile point, yet we quibble over the use of contem-porary geopolitical names to describe non-contemporary populations.

While I believe it is important that we communicate with the generalpublic in ways easily understood by all of our various publics, we must becareful that we do not present our information in an over-simplified way.

We have gone to great lengths to insure that people understand thathumans did not evolve from apes, but that humans and apes evolved froma common ancestor at some time in the past. Archaeologists agree thathumans came into the North American continent from some other location,but the use of contemporary geopolitical terms in over-simplified state-ments such as Europeans were the first Americans runs the risk of creatingthe same sort of misunderstanding as saying humans evolved from apesthat detractors of evolution use to support initiatives to get IntelligentDesign taught in public educational systems.

WORD INTERPR ETATIONS

Okay, not wanting to belabor the point, it becomes increasingly necessarythat archaeologists be aware of the difference in meanings portrayed whenwe speak to the public as well as the situations that underlie our researches.In Cultural Resource Management (CRM) a branch of archaeology into

which perhaps 90 per cent of the USs newly minted archaeologists enter archaeological sites are often described as being not significant. Those whodo CRM know immediately that not being significant means that the sitedoes not meet the criteria in Section 106 of the National Historic Preser-vation Act and that the impacts of a project on it do not have to be lessened


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(mitigated). But the term has a different implication to tribal populationsthat hold the site to have meaning. Not significant is deemed by tribalpeople to be the same as insignificant, a term that has an entirely differ-

ent meaning to cultural resource managers than it does to tribal people. Tocultural resource managers, it means they do not have to worry aboutSection 106 or other compliance procedures beyond merely identifying thematerial culture one might expect to encounter during survey or othercultural protection procedures. To tribal people, however, the term impliesthat the sites have no meaning beyond the very minimum, as well asimplying that the material manifestations of their culture do not matterenough to be afforded some level of protection.

In 2000, the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) produced avolume entitled Teaching Archaeology in the Twenty-first Century. Edited

by Susan Bender and George Smith (2000), the volume speaks about waysto refurbish the undergraduate education system in a broad sense, but AnnePyburn, Pam Cressey and I looked at ways that the discipline should reachout to our non-academic public, especially those members of descendantcommunities (Watkins et al., 2000). We talked about developing relation-ships, learning what areas the public were interested in and how to reachout to them, and the necessity of presenting our research to the public inways that were easily understood. Few of us are able to do such things.

Look at the following fictional paragraph:

The initial examination of the material culture was purposefully delayeduntil it was feasible to record the material with an appropriate medium.Upon resumption of the investigations, it was determined that the artifactualassemblage was indicative of a pre-ceramic material culture that residedwithin certain topographical restrictions and, in conjunction with the readilyprovable laws of superposition, it was determined that the depositionalsequence was consistent with the chronological sequencing we had expectedto encounter.

Translated it says: We waited until we loaded our cameras to take pictures.Archaic period artifacts were found associated with certain landforms andthe stratigraphy was normal and not reversed.

Which sounds more scientific? The first, of course, but it takes 75 wordsto say what could be said in 27 words. Of course there are certain conceptsthat we must use scientific phrases to describe, and we should be carefulabout dumbing down too much, but we need also to speak to the publicon a level easily understood. We pride ourselves on our ability to scientifi-cally present data, but we all too often lose our audience within the first

page. Are we doing a service if the people who pay for our research are notinterested in what we have to say?Let us look more closely at what happens when we are unable to commu-

nicate our intentions and abilities to the public. We constantly decry theillegal excavation of archaeological sites, likening the destruction to grave


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robbing. To us, scientific excavation carries with it the concept of a noblepursuit at gaining knowledge. To many American Indian tribal groups,however, it makes no difference whether the disturbance is caused by looters

or by qualified archaeologists. As Devon Mihesuah has written, the onlydifference between an illegal ransacking of a burial ground and a scientificone is the time element, sun screen, little whisk brooms, and the neatness ofthe area when finished (Mihesuah,1996: 233). If we fail to communicate ourfindings to the public in words that everyone can understand, we may besomething much better than a grave robber, but who will know it?

And there are other publics with whom we are failing miserably tocommunicate. In 2000, I had a discussion (some of it public, a great dealprivate) with a collector concerning the relationship between professionalarchaeologists and the collecting public (Watkins, 2000). The collectors

response, printed initially in the Summer 2000 edition of the Ohio Archae-ologist (Fenn, 2000) and later posted on the Friends of Americas Pastwebsite (http://www.friendsofpast.org/forum/mother.html), raised someimportant issues that we as archaeologists should take to heart concerningour inability to communicate with a large public. Most importantly, in myopinion, Mr Fenn noted that state and federal governments spend millionsof taxpayers [sic] dollars to survey, excavate, protect,preserve, conserve, andcurate the archaeology of the United States. What does the averageAmerican citizen get for his money? Most of the results appear as unpub-

lished contract reports written in an oppressive technical jargon that thepublic cannot decipher (Fenn, 2000, online version at http://www.friend-sofpast.org/forum/mother.html).

Although I still disagree with Mr Fenn on many issues, we do agree onthis one: the average American citizen is getting short-changed in the waywe present the results of public-funded archaeology to them, and we arenot getting any better at doing so, in spite of our years of practice.

WORD SMITHING

Brian Fagan is one of the finest archaeologists I know regarding presentinginformation to the public. He does so in such an easy, captivating mannerthat the reader learns something without realizing it. I use one of his text-books in an introductory archaeology class, and find that my students readahead without me having to force them to do so. Fagan uses words muchthe same way that a novelist would and keeps his readers captivated by the

story, and not merely by reciting dry, dusty facts. Fagan (2002: 5) says:Success in the future will depend on communicating with very differentaudiences, especially those with no background in archaeology whatsoever.He later writes: above all, we have to realize that the best archaeology iswritten in fluent, jargon-free prose that makes people want to learn about


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the past, not avoid it because it is incomprehensible (Fagan, 2002: 7,emphasis in original).

The written word is perhaps our most potent weapon in the battle to

protect our cultural heritage, and yet we are poorly prepared to communi-cate our ideas, thoughts and passions to those who can better help us. Wehave so many publics to reach, so many people who want to help, whounderstand why we do the things we do, and the stories we can give them,but we are failing to reach them. It is up to us to come to grips with theissues inherent in inter-cultural communication and to become more adeptat getting our point across. Our discipline depends on our ability to do so.

Acknowledgements

The nucleus of this article was presented at a public lecture at Washington StateUniversity in 2003; I wish to thank Brenda Bowser, Mary Collins and Bill Lipe fordiscussions relating to this topic resulting from that presentation. I also wish tothank Brian Fagan for his comments on an early version of this article. Specialthanks go to Carol Ellick for conversations that helped strengthen and focus thethoughts that form the nucleus of this article. Any mistakes of fact, lapses in

judgment, or jumps in logic, however, are entirely my own.

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JOE E. WATKINS, Choctaw Indian and archaeologist (Associate

Professor of Anthropology, University of New Mexico), researches the

ethical practice of anthropology and its relationships with aboriginal

populations. His book Indigenous Archaeology: American Indian Values

and Scientific Practice (AltaMira Press, 2000) is in its second printing; hislatest book, Sacred Sites and Repatriation (Chelsea House Publishers), has

just been released.

[email: [email protected]]

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