History and Archaeology
Posted by Kushana Torumekia at 7/2/2007 2:50 PM 
Categories: Inca, Dead Sea Scrolls, Gnostic Gospels, Archaeology, Josephus
Categories: Inca, Dead Sea Scrolls, Gnostic Gospels, Archaeology, Josephus
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Nova had another excellent program this past week. It was a show
on Pizarro and an early battle to defend the newly-founded city of
Lima. It included:- The unexpected role of women in the battle
- The news (at least to me) that Native Americans had helped the Conquistadors
- The first gunshot fatality in the New World (it looked like a bullet hole to my untrained eye...)
- The only archaeological evidence of New World casualties from the Conquistadors
- The importance of test trenches (a small area dug to see if a site has any remains of the past, usually the prelude to a larger, formal, meter-by-meter dig)
- The role of archaeology (including forensic science) and good, careful history (including military history and work in both archives and museums) for elaborating and correcting the dominant written historical account in Spanish official chronicles — which omitted many important details....
The Inca buried their dead sitting up, knees drawn to the chest, facing East. This means 1) when one excavates them the first thing one encounters is the top of a head, sometimes with hair (Brrr) 2) when they are partially excavated they are sitting up, partway out of the ground — that must be a sight, first thing every morning at the dig. In my part of the world the dead are lying down and skeletonized; I suppose it's a matter of what one's accustomed to. (I don't think any archaeologist forgets "this was once a person" but the dead, themselves, are often the most informative parts of the past.)
The corrections to the Spanish chronicles also made me think of my own field. We have one Jewish historian for part of my era: Josephus. A veteran of the unsuccessful war with Rome, he had curried favor with the ascendant emperor and wrote a history of that same war in the Romans' language and on the Imperial payroll. As you might imagine, there are questions of just when (and how far) to trust Josephus — but we have little to correct his account with (at least in writing.) Archaeology has helped.
I also thought of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the main debate in that field is whether the Scrolls are linked to the ruins at Khirbet Qumran. At first we though they were copied there, but there was little evidence of scribal activity and some of it has since been overturned. More current theories suggest the scrolls were brought there, perhaps over time — but the new proposals I've seen have all suggested the ruins were something else and not the buildings of a sectarian Jewish desert community. (I must finish Dr. Magness' recent www.powells.com="" partner="" 31957="" s?isbn="978-0802826879"%3EThe%20Archaeology%20of%20Qumran%20and%20the%20Dead%20Sea%20Scrolls%3C/a%3E"">book.)
If you have the opportunity, watch the Nova episode. The issues it raises about history and archaeology are relevant to all fields of history, not just the conquest of the western shore of the New World.
-Kushana
P.S. Related interest: Nova episodes on the Cave of Letters, and papyri (includes mention of the Greek fragments of the Gospel of Thomas; if you wish to read them, these (and the Greek fragments of the Gospel of Mary), are printed (and translated) separately in the www.powells.com="" partner="" 31957="" s?isbn="978-0060523787"%3ENag%20Hammadi%20Scriptures,%20The:%20The%20International%20Edition%3C/a%3E"">Nag Hammadi Scriptures. (Before this book the Greek fragments of Thomas were relatively easy to find, but for Mary I'd have to dig out a book on papyrology.)
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