As the Archeology Days are held from June 16 to 18, Anne Lehöerff publishes the essay Giving birth to heritage, archeology in action (Le Pommier editions). President of the National Council for Archaeological Research and university professor, the archaeologist was already the author of Archeology Lover’s Dictionary (Plon) and strives to make accessible the issues that cross his discipline.
Whether with books or conferences, you seem very attached to conveying what archeology is and its challenges to a wide audience. For what ?
I am a teacher first and foremost. Sharing knowledge, transmitting, is one of my fundamentals. I opened a cycle of lectures entitled Archeology in the city, to link archeology and society, the citizen, so that the archaeologist is not only a researcher on his planet. On June 15, a conference on archeology and criminal investigations took place, with a gendarmerie officer who is used to working on cold cases with archaeologists, and an archaeologist who knows these issues well. A conference had previously been held on archeology in countries at war, the archeology of slavery… We had also held a conference after an excavation in the city of Tarterêts, to show the inhabitants that they were not the most elders to stay here…
Archaeologists seem to enjoy a special status within the scientific community with the general public who rather appreciate you.
There is a form of fascination that often goes back to childhood, to the pleasure of treasure hunting. The archaeologist is the one who is the first to find what has been buried. There are many stories of discoveries made by children elsewhere. Altamira, Lascaux… And archeology is a tangible science, you can take objects, observe them, feel them. But hey, a lot of people also think that archaeologists are just troublemakers preventing the work…
Talk about buried treasure. We often confuse archeology and hunting for beautiful objects. Does that bother you?
We’re not just going to pick up bits of stuff in the dirt like mushrooms. We unearth vestiges, through a protocol. And the most interesting archaeological objects are not necessarily the most beautiful. What is important is the scientific contribution, the information around the object. But we must be honest, finding a beautiful object is also part of the pleasure of the archaeologist. That said, beauty is not the same for everyone. I know people who go into a trance, almost, facing Paleolithic microliths…
What place should be given to archaeological objects that are scientifically interesting, but… ugly, or insignificant, such as tons of clay shards?
All discoveries are interesting, but not all have their place in a museum. With preventive archaeology, carried out before the developments, we invented mass archaeology. There is a debate between us on the sort to effector, or not. Should we throw away now and choose what we sort? Do we keep everything while waiting for the possible technologies of tomorrow to allow a new look at these objects? In any case, we have to think about it because logistical questions arise. It is our responsibility to make this choice, it is one of the great challenges of tomorrow’s archeology. Do we rebury? And how ? Are we destroying? And how ? When the objects are taken out of the ground, they are our responsibility.
You talk about the archeology of tomorrow. Does it renew itself over time?
Our questions are part of the very long term, we are the historians of the most distant time, beyond 300,000 years of history. But scientists wonder about what they are able to interrogate. For years, I studied Bronze Age weapons, and before turning it into a subject on warfare, it took me a while. Because, I believe, I did not want to see a subject on the war. Just because you have an object doesn’t mean you have a subject. For example, the question of slavery, which is a very strong subject among historians, obviously ended up affecting archeology as well. There are other emerging subjects, which were, for a thousand and one reasons, invisible for a while. Today, for example, we wonder about care and health in all ancient societies. How did men deal with this question? It’s one of the first signs of humanity: taking care of your dead and the living.
The archeology of war also shows that man has been making the same mistakes since… always. Is it sad or reassuring?
The traces of violence go back a very long time indeed. People were already hitting each other 10,000 years ago, they were already morons… We are sorry for human nature sometimes, but we can also be touched when we feel humanity through archaeological remains. This may be extremely ephemeral traces, such as footprints, fingerprints in shards of clay. It’s almost nothing, but we have the feeling of a dialogue… We sometimes imagine that the scientist must be a neutral individual, who doesn’t feel anything. But this is not true.
Can archeology have a look at current issues?
Archeology is not an alignment of discoveries of stuff, it’s what we do with it. It is not a collection of old things, it is an investigation to understand the societies of the past with questions and data that we find on the ground. We look to the past, but the questions we ask ourselves about our discoveries are of today. It is clear, through the history of archaeology, that the questions are rooted in the contemporary world. The questions asked today are not those of 50 years ago. Those linked, for example, to decolonization, 20 years ago, we did not ask ourselves. The environment is another subject at the heart of the concerns of archaeologists. In our research, we observe climatic changes inherent in the history of the planet registered, in the very long time. When we discover a penguin in the Cosquer cave for example, we can only note that today there are no penguins in the creeks of Marseille. These studies of the past are conducted in today’s world and can, at times, illuminate the future. We will try to transform these discoveries into…
Lessons?
No, I don’t like the term lesson which is overhanging, masterful. I prefer to say that our look allows humility on the contrary.
Archeology makes it possible to study civilizations which have “disappeared”, even if the term is improper. Our own civilization sometimes seems on the verge of collapse. Can archeology play a role in this context?
Neither the archaeologist, nor the other historians, is there to judge, nor to repair memory. We are there to know less badly, to understand better, to have a look at past realities through what we have inherited. The historian-judge doesn’t work, it’s not his job. Afterwards, because we have understood something from our past, are we able not to do stupid things? It seems fucked up (laughs). From Sapiens we only have the name. The wisdom of humans, who reflect, who think, as a species, I haven’t seen it yet… (laughs) I’m exaggerating a bit… It happens that our historical knowledge guides us and helps us. But, if only in recent history, we can only note that the knowledge of the past is not lessons that allow man not to go wrong.
In your opinion, what traces will the men of today leave for the archaeologists of the future?
Our contemporary societies are mass societies, invading, without common measure with the populations studied in archeology. Concretely, I don’t know how the archaeologists of tomorrow will work, if we haven’t destroyed the planet by then… Man has an impact on his environment, a strong interaction with it, since the Neolithic era, with sedentarization and farming. But recently, our link with the natural environment is no longer just an interaction, but rather a trauma.