494
June 2014
PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
This means that we will be able to target where we visit.
The days of the month long treks through the jungle may
be over, and this technology will certainly open up the
region to researchers who might not have been willing or
able to withstand the rigors of these incredibly difficult
trips. Now, you can find sites from your desk.
It has been suggested that these new technologies
perpetuate a disturbing and problematic element of
archaeological discourse – the trope of discovery. Can
you elaborate on this?
In some cases, and not just in Honduras, the people utiliz-
ing these technologies have chosen to frame their work in
terms of ‘discovery,’ suggesting that they are the first to
locate these sites because of their access to this technology.
At first glance, this seems harmless until you remember
the long history of scientists usurping local knowledge and
claiming a discovery that is actually well known to local
folks. This happens in any number of fields, but archaeol-
ogy has a close historical connection with colonialism and
we must be especially vigilant to not reproduce the kind of
thing we saw during the 19th
century, when local knowledge
was rarely considered. Even
now, I have seen references
to being the ‘first to set foot
in these sites in a thousand
years’ and other implausible
statements that completely
ignore local experience and
clearly function to celebrate
the illusory notion that the
high-tech investigator is
somehow a latter day version
of the classic Western explor-
ers. And that is problematic. There is plenty of credit to
go around, and absolutely no reason to fail to give credit
to the people who may make valuable contribution to our
knowledge of the past. Archaeologists have a saying: It’s
not what you find, it’s what you find out. We shouldn’t
(and don’t, mostly) care about who first found something
as much as we appreciate the interpretation. Sadly, some
of this discourse related to tech-heavy projects focuses on
the finding, not the finding out.
Even though these new technologies can help you find
a location quicker and in a more cost effective way, they
can’t help you “find out” which is essential to under-
standing the past. Do you care to elaborate?
Locating a site via remote sensing is a first step. Ground
truthing is a second, and then there exist a litany of things
to find out besides the gross morphology of a site. What
other types of material culture is present? To what period
does it date? What activities are indicated? What can we
tell about the people who lived here from all the things
that can not be sensed remotely? For instance, in the
Mosquito Coast, there are sites with similar layouts that
date from different time periods. I can tell this from the
pottery, but not from the LIDAR data. So, we still need
to do some basic, old-fashioned archaeology to learn some
fundamental things, such as knowing what sites were
occupied at the same time in order to estimate population,
for instance, or to get a decent understanding of the spread
of people across the landscape at a given point in time.
How do you see new technology affecting the field
of archeology in the future? For the good and for the
detriment of the process of discovery?
Here, I am criticizing certain ways of representing
research utilizing new technologies, which should not be
confused with a lack of enthusiasm over these advances.
I think the promise is great, and am actively involved in
trying to make useful technology available. These tech-
nologies will enable us to work more efficiently, explore
completely new questions, and do it with less impact to the
archaeological resources. We won’t eliminate the need for
ground truthing and the some of the tedious and difficult
work that we have always done, but efforts will be directed
more effectively and informed by more data than ever
before. It will make fieldwork
less time consuming and difficult
(no more wandering around the
jungle without an idea what’s
out there), and could open it
up to many more researchers,
including those who would not or
could not have done it in the way
we used to.
The only downside I can see to
a greater utilization of remote
sensing technologies would be
from archaeologists who lack the
on-the-ground experience and
familiarity with the region that is fundamental to interpre-
tation. Recently, two archaeologists have studies museum
collections from the Mosquito Coast, where I work, with
no experience on the ground in the region. One was very
valuable, and the other suffered greatly from this lack of
familiarity.
If you decided or were asked to start the research all
over again from the beginning, what kind of things you
would do/handle differently?
My research in the Mosquito Coast of Honduras began
23 years ago, and the area was not well known at all. I
asked some basic, fundamental questions, and collected
a lot of data, and I suppose I would do it in a very similar
way. My relationship with the local indigenous groups was
always very good and invaluable to my research, and I
tried to make our collaboration explicit. In that sense, I am
satisfied. I am glad to see more researchers interested in
the area, and hopefully my research serves as a foundation
for substantive, multidisciplinary research that respects
and incorporates local knowledge into it, recognizing the
inclusion of other voices as something that strengthens
science, and is in everybody’s best interest.
