hmpf | Entries tagged with archaeology

I'm sorting through seven years' worth of notes and excerpts to find stuff that may help me to prepare for exams. The first shock is how much stuff there actually is. I really did spend more than half of my archaeology studies doing vaguely or directly metal and metal technology related stuff, so I have heaps and heaps of notes about that. Far more than I thought. Should have checked earlier; I hadn't hoped to find much because I was under the impression that I'd been crap at taking notes etc. Turns out I'm just crap at remembering - both at remembering the stuff I made notes about, and at remembering I made notes in the first place. (Granted, not all of my notes are really all that useful.)

The second shock is how much the physical remains of my year at a British university make me want to cry. Had I been able to stay there, I really do think I would have become a real archaeologist. (Incidentally, browsing *all* the folders filled with my old uni stuff makes me sad - as usual, now that it's over, or nearly over, I'm realising how many opportunities I missed; how much more I could have gotten out of the last seven or eight years, if only... well, if only I were a different person, essentially. More single-minded, less distractable, more disciplined, etc.)

And the third shock, really, is how little I remember of it all. Seven (eight, really) years of my life, and much of that time spent on things that, yes, I *am* interested in, and here I'm surprised to find entire *presentations* I'd done that I'd completely forgotten about. Why is it that nothing that's related to archaeology really sticks, with me?

Current Mood: sad

I'm actually a really crappy archaeology student. I just have absolutely *no* clue what I'm doing. It's a bit sad to contemplate, really, because a) I'm not *actually* stupid, and b) I'm far too old, and far too advanced in my studies, to change subjects again.

Okay, I said I shouldn't post. Probably true. But I need to vent, because the frustration is killing me. So. I'm reading these texts. I'm supposed to draw information about the beginnings of metalworking in the eneolithic period in certain parts of Slovakia from it. The texts are short, and very dense. *Extremely* dense. The shortest is essentially a list of prehistoric cultures and cultural groups of the period in Slovakia and its adjoining countries. The geographical attribution is... vague. Especially for someone who does not have a very precise idea of Slovakian geography. There are no maps included. Of course, I have a map of Slovakia, but since a lot of the geographical attributions aren't of the kind you're going to find on a normal map, it's not much use. But even if the geography weren't as much of a mystery... Oh, I dunno, I think I'll have to give you an excerpt from my notes, although probably only

tryfanstone and a certain Mystery Reader of this journal will be able to appreciate their uselessness. Anyway, here it is:

( Read more... )

So, I sit here with my notes, and I wonder: What the *hell* am I supposed to do with that stuff? In two weeks I'm supposed to *talk* about this to my fellow students, so what am I going to tell them? Is there *anything* valuable in this for them? If I just throw all those names at them - unpronounceable names they've most likely never heard before (neither have I) - they'll fall asleep or at least forget about it in less than five minutes, and I couldn't blame them - I would, too.

So what do I do? Look up every single one of those cultures and groups and whatnot, compile typical inventories, chronology, cultural connections, and drown them in details they'll quite probably never need again - or if they do, won't remember from my talk, because hearing something like that once, in passing, isn't enough *by far*?

What is the fucking use in that?

And what am I supposed to draw from this for *myself*? What do I learn from this? That Slovakian place names are a hazard to your tongue and keyboard? Thanks, but I think I suspected that already...

Whenever I try to work on this damn paper, it feels as if my internal computer is about to crash. Too much information to process, and too little of it seems to be of any use in relation to what I'm supposed to talk about.

Maybe I'm overlooking something obvious. Maybe all the above *actually* isn't relevant, and I was supposed to find something a lot more useful in those texts. Or maybe the above *is* useful and I just lack the archaeologist's eye to see it. Anyway, it's frelling frustrating, and it makes me feel like a total beginner without a clue. I wish actually asking my prof about all this wouldn't make me feel like an idiot. I wish I were back in Birmingham - there, I didn't feel like an idiot when I asked fundamental stuff like that.

Current Mood: frustrated

And already - mostly - caught up with LJ! Do I rule or do I rule?!

How was the trip? Mostly, it went thus: drive up to early-medieval slavonic fort; climb remains of fort; walk around top of fort in a circle; clamber down; get back into coach; drive to next fort; rinse and repeat.

Oh, and there was a lot of standing around in little clusters of people in the cold, cold wind, trying to warm each other penguin style by pressing close against each other. (It works!)

Also, on the coach, in between ritualistic fort-circlings, I listened to the Life On Mars soundtrack more than was good for my sanity (discussion to follow), and bred insistent bunnies, both for vids and fic. Eventually I gave in and started to write a fic, so now I have another writing fandom. Yay. Not. The vid bunny, in the meantime, is quite frustrating as it's *extremely* well-developed, but very nearly impossible for me to follow up on since I don't own proper video editing software. I've got a complete script for the vid, though, and would love to make it.

Also on the Life On Mars front:

selenak has been gushing eloquently about the show recently, and I was very pleased to find that

flurblewig posted this while I was away. It's magnificently disturbing, and exemplifies the kind of fic I sort of wished for last week in this post. If this should turn into a trend, I'll wholeheartedly encourage it! (And yes, my fic bunny is a crazy-ass AU one, as well.)

Current Mood: exhausted

any kind of scientific research is ultimately a collaborative effort. We all build on the foundations laid by previous generations, and our thinking needs to connect with what other people in our field and adjacent fields are thinking, as well. There can be no real progress without collaboration.

The basic requirement of collaboration, however, is communication. To make communication with your fellow researchers possible, you need to publish in a language they can understand. Hint: Catalan is not a language most archaeologists understand.

Believe me, I understand about the plight of small languages, and I'd like to see them saved, all of them. By all means, write novels, write poetry, write whatever you like in Catalan. Have a whole literary renaissance! But please, choose a language that more than perhaps two dozen archaeologists in the world understand to publish your excavation reports. Your reports would be more accessible to the vast majority of archaeologists if you published them in *Latin*, for heaven's sake! (I still wouldn't be able to read them, but I'm fairly certain there are more archaeologists who know Latin than there are archaeologists who know Catalan.)

Sincerely,

Me.

***

Really, sometimes I wish archaeologists would take a page from the sciences' book, and start publishing predominantly in English. People in the Middle Ages were cleverer than us in that respect, it seems: they had a language of science: Latin. What a great idea, to write all scientific works in *one* language, so that every scientist, no matter from what country, could understand them! I hear you, people who are concerned about English taking over the world at the expense of all the other languages. I don't want to see that happen, either. I love English, but I don't want to live in a monolingual world. But in this one area, it would make an awful lot of sense to me to ditch national pride or regional pride or whatever, and go with the most widely understood language in the world. (Though I'd be happy to settle for Spanish or French, if necessary, in this particular case.)

Research, studying, is about communication, about cross-pollination, about getting different views on things, and about getting the big picture. It sometimes seems to me that the field of archaeology, in particular, doesn't like this idea at all. Instead, every country, and even, in some cases, certain *parts* of certain countries, are "doing their own thing", even to the point of making it ridiculously difficult for any archaeologist who does not happen to know Catalan, or Sardic, or (insert struggling, small European regional language of your choice), to get a clear view of what's been written about the region in question. Although we do not try to prove that our own 'team' is 'the best' anymore (an awful lot of archaeology used to be about this kind of thing - especially in Germany), we still seem to be firmly entrenched in the age of nationalism ('cause 'regionalism' is just another kind of nationalism, really). What's so wrong about making the results of your research accessible?

... Okay. Rant over. I'm putting the 'meta' icon on this, although it's not fannish meta... but I don't have any Real Life or archaeology icons.

Current Mood: annoyed

I currently spend my days mostly in the libary. Not just any library, mind you, but a specialised, archaeological library that happens to be situated in the city where I live - and a good thing it is, too, 'cause I wouldn't know where to find the literature for the paper I'm working on. The university library doesn't have it, and neither does the library where I work, because all the literature happens to be Spanish, and we only have German stuff.

It's such a strange library, compared to university libraries. Small, and every piece of furniture in it seems to date from the 1950s. The building is from the same era and has a sober-yet-moderately-prosperous fifties feel to it. To me, it feels as if every day I go half a century back in time in the morning, and forward in time again in the afternoon when I go home.

Also, the library's full of archaeologists. Now, that's hardly surprising in an archaeological library, but I'm used to libraries full of students, and while there are students in this one, too, of course - me, for starters - they don't dominate, or so it seems. Maybe it's just the 1950s respectability that rubs off on them.

And the people who are there, be they young or old, give off an impression of *living* there. Everybody seems to know each other, and the whole place simply seems inhabited. University libraries rarely do.

So, yeah. Interesting experience. Let's see if I can manage to get there earlier tomorrow, so I can get a full nine hours of work in. I really do need the time - reading Spanish takes me about ten times as long as reading German or English does.

***

And, writing:

Obviously, I haven't had the time to write in the last few days (see above), but I think I'm going to allow myself an hour or two now, before I get back to uni work.

You could say that recently I've 'experimented' a bit with constructive criticism. That is to say, I've been experimenting with giving it. (Until relatively recently I felt a bit too insecure of my own skills as a writer to dare to criticise anyone - especially people of a higher general level of skill than me.) As a result, I now have two stories to beta... I see now why people are so reluctant to give constructive criticism: it all too easily degenerates into work! *g* (Yes, those two stories are in German. I wouldn't presume to be able to beta anything in a language not my own. Writing in English is, oddly enough, a lot less challenging than beta reading in English.)

In accordance with the laws of karma I have also *received* constructive criticism, i.e. honest and perceptive beta remarks, which is, on the one hand, simply great. This is the kind of beta I've been hoping for for years, and I expect the story to improve considerably due to it. On the other hand, it is, of course, intensely embarrassing. Seeing everything you did wrong pointed out is a bit like being caught naked in public, and it's all the worse, in this case, because the story has been available to the public in an even worse form than the one I just had beta'd for five and a half years. Which, metaphorically speaking, means that I've been standing around naked in public for five and a half years. And I still am standing around naked in public in places like Seventh Dimension and fanfiction.net, where the old version is still available. *g*

Beyond the 'standing around naked in public' issue, though, I am seriously spooked by just *how* many Really Bad Things I overlooked even in my recent obsessive rewriting sessions. Now, I'm pretty certain I wouldn't make those kinds of mistakes (of characterisation, of internal logic, etc.) in a new story. I think I *am* a better writer now than I was five years ago. But still, that they were invisible to me even today just because at the time of the story's conception, more than five years ago, the story 'made sense in my head', that's a bit disconcerting.