Intellectual hooliganism topic: Middle Earth Archaeology

[Annalaliath]

Yay for dredging upld topics....

While waiting to toast the Professer this year a few of us from the UNM Hobbit Society started talking abkut archaeology in Middle Earth... Again. I never got around to writing the paper, school, and work happened instead.
Some of the topics that were brought up:
1. The people burried in the dead marshes, and the implications of living friends and family not wanting to have them dug up and studied.
2. Geology
3. With those that live so long, who cares about archaeology, you can talk to an eye witness...

But that would be sometime after the war of the ring, rathert han a futur society that might evolve later.

[Faramir Jones]

Originally Posted by Annalaliath

Yay for dredging upld topics....

While waiting to toast the Professer this year a few of us from the UNM Hobbit Society started talking abkut archaeology in Middle Earth... Again. I never got around to writing the paper, school, and work happened instead.
Some of the topics that were brought up:
1. The people burried in the dead marshes, and the implications of living friends and family not wanting to have them dug up and studied.
2. Geology
3. With those that live so long, who cares about archaeology, you can talk to an eye witness...

But that would be sometime after the war of the ring, rather than a future society that might evolve later.

Regarding topic 3, I still think there would be people who would want to check on the accuracy of some of the eye witnesses' accounts. It's not that they believe that the relevant people lied; it's that the accuracy of their accounts might be affected by other factors. We see this in the growth of the discipline of battlefield archaeology:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlefield_archaeology

http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/humanit...ldarchaeology/

We can see this issue discussed on page 3 of a document on the discipline:

How this archaeological evidence is studied and more importantly, how it is interpreted, is of the greatest importance. It can and should be distinguished from the historical literary evidence, which is usually based on personal accounts of the event and is not always necessarily reliable. Few, if any of those at a scene of conflict, can give an accurate account of the entire event, as sites of conflict are by their very nature traumatic and confusing places. They also often cover large areas of ground. The observer might not even have known how large the conflict was, or how many casualties were taken on another part of the field. The larger picture of the conflict therefore depends upon a general overview and this was usually supplied by one of the leaders of one faction. Apart from the bias inherent in such a view, it also relies upon an interpretation of the event, rather than an objective account.

In order to gain a more accurate understanding of the event, such as its scale or the number of dead, an account should ideally be obtained from something or someone who would not provide, or profit from, a distorted version of it - someone who would provide a neutral viewpoint. Although on a practical level this could be done by analysing the residue - the concentrations of artefacts left on the ground after the conflict - on a personal level, this is an almost impossible task, as the notion of conflict is often distorted by an inability to distance
oneself from most of its forms.

http://www.bajr.org/documents/bajrbattleguide.pdf

[Annalaliath]

Originally Posted by Faramir Jones

Regarding topic 3, I still think there would be people who would want to check on the accuracy of some of the eye witnesses' accounts. It's not that they believe that the relevant people lied; it's that the accuracy of their accounts might be affected by other factors. We see this in the growth of the discipline of battlefield archaeology:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlefield_archaeology

http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/humanit...ldarchaeology/

We can see this issue discussed on page 3 of a document on the discipline:

How this archaeological evidence is studied and more importantly, how it is interpreted, is of the greatest importance. It can and should be distinguished from the historical literary evidence, which is usually based on personal accounts of the event and is not always necessarily reliable. Few, if any of those at a scene of conflict, can give an accurate account of the entire event, as sites of conflict are by their very nature traumatic and confusing places. They also often cover large areas of ground. The observer might not even have known how large the conflict was, or how many casualties were taken on another part of the field. The larger picture of the conflict therefore depends upon a general overview and this was usually supplied by one of the leaders of one faction. Apart from the bias inherent in such a view, it also relies upon an interpretation of the event, rather than an objective account.

In order to gain a more accurate understanding of the event, such as its scale or the number of dead, an account should ideally be obtained from something or someone who would not provide, or profit from, a distorted version of it - someone who would provide a neutral viewpoint. Although on a practical level this could be done by analysing the residue - the concentrations of artefacts left on the ground after the conflict - on a personal level, this is an almost impossible task, as the notion of conflict is often distorted by an inability to distance
oneself from most of its forms.

http://www.bajr.org/documents/bajrbattleguide.pdf

That general idea was something I wanted to bring up, but it would have been a difficult thing to explain to others. Actually, it might be fun to see how much the Elves, and other long lived peoples of ME got right, as far as archaeology goes. I can imagine the indignation on the face of Elrond now.

[mhagain]

Utumno!

According to Appendix A, the ruins of Utumno may well be underneath the Icebay of Forochel. Who knows what's there for the taking? Equip some divers, go exploring, see what you can find. But be very very careful.....

[Annalaliath]

And that is another thing about archaeology in ME... the dangerous things that might be unearthed. Like one of Morgoth's R&D's that may have survived under the ice in Utomno. Which leads me to another question; is archaeology even prudent in ME? How safe would it be to go digging around in some old ruins of some of the more evil sort.

[Huinesoron]

Hypothetical discussions are all very well, but let us not forget that there is an actual, genuine, canonical archaeologist in Middle-earth, and his name is Gandalf.

Not convinced? Consider the following chain of events: when Gandalf decided to investigate a certain ancient artefact, his first thought was to trace the chain of custody. He knew that Bilbo had received the Ring from Gollum, but where had Gollum got it? He took Aragorn (a specialist in tracking) and went hunting for him.

But as with many archaeological investigations, it wasn't as easy as 'this is what we need to find, and here it is'. Met with apparent failure, Gandalf didn't give up, but moved onto a different avenue of investigation: the documentary archives at Minas Tirith. He delved through old texts until he found a primary source concerning the Ring, and how its identity could be established.

That would have been enough to go on, and indeed he started back to the Shire at that point, but then came word that Aragorn had found Gollum. Did Gandalf say 'welp, waste of time, I've got what I need'? No! He followed his archaeological instincts and got as much information as he could before reporting back.

Okay (you may say), but that was the Ring, it was kind of a big deal. True - except that Gandalf has a full-blown habit of investigating questions this way. They find a tomb in Moria, and what does he do? He immediately finds a primary source text to determine the events that led up to it (despite the obvious presence of orc-scimitars in the room, and the general time pressure the Fellowship were under). Admittedly it was only 25 years old, but that doesn't make it not archaeology!

When helping Thorin organise an expedition to the Lonely Mountain, he recruited Bilbo as someone who could enter the site without leaving any traces and extract artefacts without disturbing anything - call him a burglar or an archaeologist as you will! When he found ancient swords marked with runes that he (apparently?) couldn't read, he took them directly to Elrond, who is noted as knowing 'all about runes of every kind'. He also took Thror's map there, in case Elrond could get more information out of it than he could. Whenever he wanted to teach someone about a country, he did it by singing ancient songs - songs that no-one else seemed to know any more, that he had perhaps dug up out of the same archives as the Isildur text.

Of course, Gandalf was never a traditional archaeologist with shovels and trenches, but rather a documentary archaeologist, tracing written evidence whenever he could. Nor was he, admittedly, a particularly careful archaeologist - his reaction to priceless artefacts like Glamdring was 'plunder and use', so he's about on the level of the early Victorian stages of the science. But an archaeologist he most certainly was.

(All said with tongue firmly in cheek. Next up (not actually next up), a discussion of Tom Bombadil's investigative skills, and the decontextualisation of Barrow-wight treasure...)