Today I noticed my friend’s Dr. Who keychain. It’s a weird keylike thing. I giggled at the thought that in 5000 years somone is going to dig it up and try endlessly to figure out what is was once used for.
So I have 2 questions:
How much of what’s dug up can be identified? Are there some man-made things which had unclear uses?
Has anything that seems totally useless ever been dug up? Did people back in the day love useless junk like we do, with our froggie doorstops, and our plastic blinking high heel cellphone holders filled with beads and oil?
Ain’t that the truth! - from my armchair, it seems like every single trace that the archaeologists unearth is ‘of ritual importance’ - a hole in the ground with bits of broken pot and gnawed bones is a ‘sacrificial offering’, not a ‘rubbish dump’ - a figure of a horse with wheels is a ‘fertility idol’, not a ‘child’s plaything’.
Makes you wonder how the ancients found time for eating, sleeping and building their houses, if they devoted so much of their energy to religious things.
It’s always interesting to try and figure out what ancient items are for – people at the time see them as so much a part of everyday life thart they don’t describe them, or else the culture left no records.
One example: “birdstones” – weird sort-of-birdlike stones found in the American West. People thought they were fetishes, or ornaments for canoes, or all sorts of odd things. But one suggestion (which is, I think, now the prevailing one) is that they’re handles/weights for “spear-throwers” (atlatl). In fact, I once wrote to a group that was experimenting with modern atlatls, who had published the notion that a handle for a spear-thrower would be a really good idea, and pointed out that such a thing might, indeed, have been used.
Yankee magazine has a feature where every month they answer a question sent in by a reader about “what is this weird thing we found in the garage?”
In Frederick Pohl’s “Heechee” series people spend a lot of time trying to deduce what the alien Heechee objects called “prayer fans” are. They’re in great abundance all over the place, but, as the’re alien, and there’s no written record, we don’t find out until a few books into the series, when they turn up some living aliens.
Wow, raygirvan, that’s a really interesting site. I particularly like the “latchet” artifact. (Let’s see if I can successfully link it].)
If “considerable size” means eight inches or so in length, I’d almost say that thing could be a halberd-like attachment for a sword, with a nice hook on the back for pulling down horsemen.
I remember a parody written in the form of an archaeological dig report in what was once a hotel room. A bra hanging on the doorknob was described as a “ceremonial breastplate”. Other items were also mislabeled rather hilariously. Now I’ll have to go find it…
I took an archaeology course once… one of the things that was hammered into us (and something we could lose marks on if we weren’t careful on tests) was the importance of not jumping to conclusions about the use of an artifact or the meaning of an assemblage.
For example, a burial including a female skeleton and spearpoints might lead you to think she was a warrior. But that’s not the only answer; she could have been a hunter, her husband could have been a hunter, she might have been killed by a warrior, spearpoints might have been included in burials regardless of the occupation of the deceased… in other words, if you don’t have evidence specifically pointing to one explanation, you don’t just pick the one you like the best. You keep them all in mind, or you just say you <i>don’t know</i>, which is an important skill for any scientist.
Is that keychain the pewter TARDIS key? I want one of those… and yeah, that would make a funy-looking artifact. Of course, if it’s dug up with the keyring and chain still attached, that would identify it, because even if it had no keys it’s likely that future archaeologists would have identified keyrings before. They’d be dime-a-dozen artifacts. Even without the chain and ring, the fact that it has a little loop for a chain to be attached would be a suggestion that it could very well be a decorative item of some sort.
This is especially true in light of the fact that early archaeologists were notorious for attributing artifacts to famous names in antiquity despite a complete lack of evidence. Schliemann excavated the grave circles in Mycenae and, upon finding a gold death mask of a majestic looking male face, announced to the world that he had “gazed upon the face of Agamemnon.” Never mind that the graves in question were from entirely the wrong period.
Archaeologists have discovered many ancient artifacts that could not be fully explained, ranging from the humdrum to the astonishing. Obviously, the more civilized and urbanized the culture, the more likely it is that nonessential and luxury items will be kept in the home. Some societies (Rome and Sparta) found it necessary to enact “antisumptuary” legislation to put a cap on the ownership of purely luxurious goods.
I want one of those… and yeah, that would make a funy-looking artifact. Of course, if it’s dug up with the keyring and chain still attached, that would identify it, because even if it had no keys it’s likely that future archaeologists would have identified keyrings before. They’d be dime-a-dozen artifacts. Even without the chain and ring, the fact that it has a little loop for a chain to be attached would be a suggestion that it could very well be a decorative item of some sort.