LOL Hosts Civilization | LOL

LOL Hosts Civilization

Posted on October 4, 2012

As part of Adam Smith’s course “The Rise and Fall of ‘Civilization’”, students are examining the historical and archaeological assumptions embedded within the algorithms of one of the most popular video games of the last decade: “Civilization”.  Over the course of 3 game sessions, students will examine the elements of what makes a Civilization, according to contemporary game designers, and compare this to archaeological studies of ancient civilizations from around the world.

via LOL Hosts Civilization | LOL.

Rethinking fashion, war, and peace

Can costume disarm?  This is a larger historical question posed by Anarchopanda, the alter ego of Julien Villeneuve, a philosophy professor at the College de Maisonneuve in Montreal.  As police attacks on students protesting tuition hikes became more violent, Villeneuve took to the streets in a $200 panda suit.  The absurdity of a panda amidst protesters appears to have at least a marginal impact on police aggression.  Apparently, it is not easy to charge a line of protesters reinforced by a panda as the docile figure emphasizes the disparity in power between baton yielding police and unarmed students and pandas.  The qualities of the panda rub off on the protesters, reinforcing the peaceable nature of their action and underlining the violence of the police.  See the full story here and be sure to watch the video.

The Professor They Call ‘Anarchopanda’ – Global – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

There is a larger question of material efficacy here.  Is the panda suit unique in disarming violence through a dramatization of power inequality.  One wonders if other forms of dress might be, so to speak, suitable.  The strategy here would be a version of the technology of enchantment that Gell described–a technology of pacification.

New Maya Temple of the Sun God

A fascinating discovery of a temple of the sun god at El Zotz in Guatemala dramatizes the articulation of rulership with the cosmos.  Two things of particular interest strike me most immediately.  The first is the dynamic nature of the architecture, designed to in a sense draw the viewer around the building in rhythm with the arc of the sun.  In this sense, it might well seem that the building itself is not still but rather orbits around an axis.

The second point of interest is the iconoclasm that resulted in the destruction of nose and mouth.  Houston argues that this reflects an understanding of the building of the temple as itself alive, suggesting that we need to revisit episodes of temple destruction as not only opportunities for looting but more significantly as efforts to extirpate the gods themselves.  To leave a community without their gods is presumably to leave them truly bereft, a mortal blow to the very possibility of life and sovereignty.

See video and text here: “Dramatic” New Maya Temple Found, Covered With Giant Faces.

Repatriation and “Blackmail”

Imagine that thieves force their way into your house and steal all the paintings off of the walls.  You know who the thieves are, but they are rude and uncooperative and the police are ineffectual.  But get this, the thieves then ask to borrow some more of your things: a vase, perhaps a nice tapestry.  You refuse to make the loan unless the thief returns the paintings they stole.  The thieves yell “Blackmail!! I’m being blackmailed!”

This is roughly the narrative that Newsweek endorses in a piece on their ArtBeast blog about tough tactics Turkey has been using of late to guarantee the return of looted artifacts: Turkey’s Archaeology Blackmail – The Daily Beast.

There are things to be concerned about in Turkey’s approach.  For one thing, it seems at best unwise to punish archaeologists for a fight that is largely with art institutions.  Archaeologists as a community have generally been supportive of all claims to repatriation as part of the discipline’s intellectual commitment to context and political commitment to the communities in which they work.  Aside from being unfair, it is likely an ineffectual strategy since archaeologists have little sway over the policies of the art museums that are Turkey’s main targets.

But Turkey is absolutely right to promote its indigenous archaeological community over the interests of creaky  old foreign archaeological concessions that are more part of the 19th century than the 21st.  Substantive collaboration between foreign and local archaeologists, with locals leading the way, is how a truly cosmopolitan archaeology can and should be organized.

This approach makes demands on all parties.  Local archaeologists must be substantively engaged in all aspects of the project and cannot just be nannies to foreign teams.  Similarly, foreign archaeologists must be eager and ready to learn from local collaborators, giving them the power to shape the recovery and interpretation of what is their nation’s responsibility: the slice of human heritage now within the territorial borders of Turkey.

It is not nationalism to assume responsibility for the archaeological record.  Turkey has not demanded a specific interpretation of the archaeological past, merely that its exploration, maintenance, and preservation be taken over by local scholars.  This is an extremely positive development.  Over the last century and a half, European and American institutions have justified the appropriation of artifacts from countries throughout the Mediterranean and Near East on the grounds that they did not possess the talents and resources necessary to properly care for the remains of humanity’s past.  Now that they do have the talents and resources, their efforts are derided as nationalism.

Heritage, Irredentism, Materiality

As described in a recent column in The Atlantic Armenia is opening a fascinating new front in the battle over heritage and repatriation:

To the British Museum, she is “probably Aphrodite,” the Greek goddess of love and beauty. To most Armenians, she is Anahit, an ancient Armenian goddess of fertility. Whoever is on the 1st century BC female bronze head with wavy hair and aquiline nose, it may serve as a political prop in Armenia’s looming parliamentary election campaign.

The bust, housed in the British Museum, is featured on Armenian beauty parlor logos, coins, banknotes and stamps alike. It is better known in Armenia than even the country’s state emblem, a recent TV opinion poll indicated. If asked, many Armenians most likely assume that the head, and a companion hand, are in Armenia itself.

And, now, Education Minister Armen Ashotian, a leader of the governing Republican Party of Armenia, along with the party’s Armenian Youth Foundation (AYF), want to make sure that, one day, they will be. In February, Ashotian and the AYF launched an online campaign to gather petition signatures aimed at having the British Museum turn over to Yerevan ownership of the 1st century BC hand and head.

via How a Mythical Fertility Goddess Could Help Steer Armenia’s National Election – Gayane Abrahamyan – International – The Atlantic.

The innovation here is that the bust was not found within the borders of the Republic of Armenia and spirited out of the country to feed the colonial appetites of the British public (a la the Elgin Marbles).  Instead, the bust was found in what is today northeastern Turkey but had been since at least the early 5th century BC part of a territory named Armenia.

The Republic of Armenia’s claim on the bust is thus specifically cultural, a link defined by genealogy but separated from the national territorial by the political consequences of invasion, imperialism, and the Armenian Genocide.  Yet the claim has a distinctly modern political consequences.  Affirmation of Armenia’s claim to the bust is a de facto recognition of Armenia’s claim upon the territory of eastern Turkey/western Armenia.  It is thus a deft sublimation of irredentism into the far more subtle lexicon of global cultural heritage, of landscape into materiality.

It will be fascinating to see how this develops to shape politics within Armenia, between Armenia and Turkey, and within the global heritage community.

The New Antiquities ‘Arms Race’

A two-and-a-half-year-long suspected archaeological fraud involving thousands of forged Greek and Etruscan artefacts, a hospital x-ray machine, a philanthropic aristocrat and a sophisticated network of forgers has come to an abrupt end after police raids late last year on two homes belonging to alleged members of a gang. Seven arrests were made and a further seven suspects are under investigation. 

There are two striking things about the techniques used by the forgers: the use of an x-ray to scramble any possible Thermoluminescence signature and the admixture of grog from actual ceramic artifacts into the clay of the forgeries to throw off compositional analyses.  These two techniques, dating and sourcing, were supposed to be critical new weapons in the archaeologist’s toolkit to expose forgeries.  What now?    Does this signal a new phase in the arms race between forgers and authenticators?  Perhaps this is an issue where archaeologists, museums, and collectors can find room for collective action.  Find more on the story here:

Police raid criminal gang suspected of faking antiquities – The Art Newspaper.

Modern Art and the CIA

This new revelation raises a number of interesting questions.  What art is the CIA supporting now and why?  Did it (or does it) also support other artistic genres?  What does the term ‘propaganda’ mean when the link between politics and representation is invisible?

Modern art was CIA ‘weapon’

For decades in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art – including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko – as a weapon in the Cold War. In the manner of a Renaissance prince – except that it acted secretly – the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years.

via Modern art was CIA ‘weapon’ – World – News – The Independent.

Socialism in Ruins

Michael Shanks discusses two recent studies of the archaeology of socialist worlds: World Crisis in Ruin: The Archaeology of the Former Soviet Missile Sites in Cuba by Mats Burström, Anders Gustafsson and Håkan Karlsson and Persistent Memories by Elin Andreasssen, Hein B. Bjerck, and Bjørnar Olsen.   The photos are deeply striking and hauntingly familiar for anyone who has worked in the former USSR or other now post-socialist communities.

See Ruin memories – Michael Shanks.

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