Restating, rethinking, relocating

Orser, Charles E.. A primer on modern-world archaeology. ix+172 pages, 10 b&w illustrations. 2014. Clinton Corners (NY): Eliot Werner; 978-0-9898249-2-7 paperback $29.95.

Ferris, Neal, Harrison, Rodney & Wilcox, Michael V. (ed.). Rethinking colonial pasts through archaeology. 2014. xvi+511 pages, 52 b&w illustrations. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 978-0-19-969669-7 hardback £100.

Sayers, Daniel O.. A desolate place for a defiant people: the archaeology of Maroons, indigenous Americans, and enslaved laborers in the Great Dismal Swamp. 2014. xvi+254 pages, 30 b&w illustrations, 4 tables. Gainesville: University Press of Florida; 978-0-8130-6018-7 hardback $79.95.

In 1996 Charles Orser published A historical archaeology of the modern world. To say that this book has been influential is an understatement; it has been a touchstone for a generation of historical archaeologists. Over the 20 years since its publication, and inspired by it, the field has changed significantly. Orser's ideas have also evolved and, in A primer on modern-world archaeology, he now offers what he calls “an abbreviated reconsideration [. . .] and [a] full, updated restatement of modern-world archaeology” (pp. v–vi). Central to Orser's approach is his adage that “all modern-world archaeology is historical archaeology, but not all historical archaeology is modern-world archaeology” (p. 20). The distinction lies partly in scale, theoretical orientation and the role afforded to textual sources. Yet most of all, the difference is in ambition: “[t]o understand our present, we must work back into the past to discover the historical roots of our times in order that we might—in the course of these investigations—discover ways to right the wrongs of the past and create a more just, equal world” (p. 20). Those ‘wrongs’ are manifest today in forms such as social and racial inequality, which are high on the political agenda.

Four “haunts” lie at the heart of Orser's approach: colonialism, mercantilism/capitalism, Eurocentrism, and racialisation; the latter an addition to Orser's original Reference Orser1996 list, “rectifying this oversight” (p. 23). Each of these “remarkably tenacious” structures “floats in the background of all archaeological research, often as an unrecognized presence” (p. 23). Moreover, it is the unique combination of these haunts after c. AD 1500 that marks out the modern world. To address these structural components, Chapter 3 outlines four overarching perspectives: structural history (drawing on Braudel), network theory (stressing horizontal and vertical social networks), world-systems analysis and dialectical thinking. Chapter 4 delves into the ‘epochal substructures’ that underpin the haunts; Orser argues for a form of limited agency—individuals have latitude of action but live and act within ideological frameworks created by elites. It is these structures, among others, that perpetuate racism (as an outward manifestation of racialisation), above and beyond the thoughts and actions of a few individuals.

Chapter 5 focuses on microhistory, seeking to counter criticism that modern-world archaeology is all ‘big picture’ stuff that neglects detailed engagement with individual sites and artefacts. Orser argues that nothing could be further from the truth; such studies are the bread-and-butter of modern-world archaeology but they must be understood within a multiscalar framework. Following on, Chapter 6 explores the ways in which commodities are used to structure social relations through concepts such as taste and consumption. Finally, Chapters 7 and 8 consider the challenges to, and the future of, modern-world archaeology. Key to these challenges is post-colonialism. Given that Orser claims the “true space of modern-world archaeology” (see fig. 3) lies at the intersection of his four haunts, does post-colonialism inevitably prioritise just one of them, namely colonialism? Orser concedes that this must, in fact, be the case; Eurocentrism racialisation and capitalism would simply not have taken the same form without colonialism. As such, Orser sees strong similarities between modern-world archaeology and post-colonialism, including scales of analysis, multivocality and political stance. He nonetheless maintains a distinction, although this seems less than clear. Other challenges concern the obstacles within academic and commercial archaeology that prevent the identification and critique of the four haunts, and the need to overcome a series of ‘separations’: between past and present, and between archaeologists and non-archaeologists.

Although focused on the world after AD 1500, much of Orser's agenda and approach resonates with research on earlier periods as well. Indeed, when he argues that “[t]he intricate interplay between the earth's specific localities and the globalized world is one of the most important subjects of modern-world archaeology” (p. 4), we should note that globalisation is currently a hot topic in the study of many pre-modern periods. Papers in Pitts and Versluys (Reference Pitts and Versluys2014), for example, examine the applicability, advantages and disadvantages of using globalisation as an interpretive framework for the Roman world. The significance here is that scholars of earlier phases of global connectivity—such as those studying the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia before the arrival of Europeans (see below)—are also concerned with understanding such interplays, and to use the past to critique and shape the present.

As a primer, Orser's book adopts a concise format; its eight short chapters briskly tackle big topics of global reach and cultural sensitivity. The text is a model of clarity. Complex and interrelated issues are teased apart and articulated with sufficient technical language for precision but no more. For students, each chapter concludes with an annotated bibliography and study questions. Orser expresses his hope that modern-world archaeology can remain “fresh and innovative at the same time that [. . .] it remains relatively free from the fads archaeologists often adopt” (p. 121). This is a tricky act to pull off but surely successfully achieved here.

If Orser is keen to remind us that archaeologists were slow to respond to post-colonialism, the 24 collected papers in Rethinking colonial pasts through archaeology, edited by Ferris, Harrison & Wilcox, are a reminder of how quickly this approach has gained traction. The introductory essay picks up many of Orser's themes: the political nature of archaeology, Eurocentrism and “deconstructing [the] sustaining hierarchies of knowledge and norms in which such Western notions of the ‘modern’ [. . .] remain unchallenged” (p. 13). A theme that is rather more prominent here than in Orser's book (where it is arguably subsumed within racialisation) is identity. In this context, the introduction discusses the complexities of labels such as Aboriginal, Indigenous, Native, Indian, Indigene, Autochthonous and Subaltern, “or even when and in what contexts it is necessary to capitalize whatever noun is preferred or not” (p. 14; the terms used below reflect those used by the relevant authors).

The papers are divided into four parts, plus a concluding ‘Commentary and afterword’. The first deals with ‘Ambiguous definitions and discordances’. Some of the chapters in this section take earlier post-colonial studies to task. Jordan posits that rather than insufficient attention to colonialism, some scholars have tended to label any and all cultural interactions with this term, diminishing its value. He outlines an exercise in “pruning, not uprooting” (p. 104) the concept, scaling back its application and supplementing it with an approach based on ‘vantage points’ and ‘cultural entanglement’.

Part two emphasises ‘Colonizing and decolonizing spaces, places, things, and identities’. Case studies include a chapter by Cobb and Sapp that highlights the ways in which imperial anxieties following the Yamasee War of 1715 were expressed through construction of a series of military outposts around Charleston, South Carolina. Garrisons, such as that at Fort Moore, were intended to enforce segregation between colonists and Native Americans, but in practice they provide evidence for interaction, including smudge pits (pits containing charred corn cobs), which may indicate ceramic production by Native American women. The authors pick up on Jordan's ‘vantage points’, to suggest that, from the Native American perspective, Fort Moore's “relative isolation and reservoir of trade goods made it one of many resources in their traditional landscapes” (p. 227).

Other chapters in this section include Mann's comparison of French colonial Basse Louisiane and the pay d’en haut (the western Great Lakes and upper Mississippi and Ohio River valleys). In the latter area, indigenous pottery production ceased within a few decades of European contact, but in the former it continued into the nineteenth century. This comparison questions any interpretation that assumes ‘superior’ metal kettles would automatically replace ‘inferior’ indigenous ceramic vessels. Intriguingly, part of Mann's explanation revolves around environment. In the colder pay d’en haut, women were increasingly occupied with the cultivation and processing of maize, leaving no time for pottery production during the warmer months; farther south, in Basse Louisiane, seasonal scheduling was less restricted, allowing for continued ceramic production.

Part three deals with ‘Displacement, hybridity, and colonizing the colonial’. Amongst these chapters, Horning presents the ‘The Gaelic experience in Early Modern Ireland’, which explores the ambiguity of Ireland's position within the wider web of colonialism. This “anomalous” (p. 311) status provides a case study through which to test the limits of post-colonial concepts and terminology. Finally, the fourth part addresses the ‘Contested past and contemporary implications’ with chapters that seek to decolonise archaeological practice. Lane thus considers African archaeology (see also Innocent Pikirayi in June's issue of Antiquity). He detects a tension between the political aims of an ‘Indigenous archaeology’, which seeks to map the presence of specific communities within certain territories (prior to both Europeans and other ethnic groups), and the direction of Western archaeological theory away from the possibilities of identifying past ethnicities. Indeed, post-colonialism has emphasised the fluidity of African cultural and ethnic identities.

The volume concludes with commentaries by van Dommelen and Gosden, and with an afterword by Stahl. Each finds much to admire but also identifies gaps where further work is necessary: the neglected role of objects and materiality, and the need to diversify the category of the coloniser. In the latter case, Stahl argues for studies that link the colonial periphery and Europe, recognising “how daily life in the metropole was just as thoroughly constituted through colonial entanglements” (p. 486). Her aim is not to refocus attention back to Europe but, on the contrary, to emphasise that the study of colonialism is not an optional ancillary topic that can be wilfully ignored.

At over 500 pages, this is a substantial collection and inevitably varied. Some of the chapters are ‘standard’ post-colonial accounts; others are more adventurous in terms of ideas, methods or materials; a few seem to define their post-colonial credentials against work long since superseded. Some of the authors imitate the admirable clarity of Orser's writing; a few offer an unappealing style of verbiage. Collectively, they exemplify a field that has developed rapidly, leaving some eager to race ever further ahead and others seeking to consolidate gains before further advance; most, quite sensibly, occupy a ‘middle ground’ (no post-colonial pun intended).

Many of the ideas and approaches covered by the previous two volumes are brought together by Daniel Sayers in A desolate place for a defiant people: the archaeology of Maroons, indigenous Americans, and enslaved laborers in the Great Dismal Swamp. The swamp in question comprises some 5000km² straddling the Virginia-North Carolina border close to the Atlantic coast. The chronological focus of the volume lies between the permanent settlement of the English colony at Jamestown in 1607 and the eve of the American Civil War in 1860. During these years, the indigenous American population of the swamp was joined first by “self-emancipators from enslavement” (p. 3)—otherwise known as Maroons—and later by African American canal and lumber company labourers. The result was a unique, ten-generation experiment set apart from the wider colonialist/capitalist world and one in which Sayers finds much to admire: “I make no apologies for finding in a numerical minority particular kinds of inspiration and knowledge about how to radically transform the social world we live in” (p. 5).

The book reports the results of the ‘Great Dismal Swamp Landscape Study’. When the project began in 2003, next to nothing was known of the swamp's archaeology; Sayers's work has changed all that. Still, given its vast size, the project has been able to investigate much less than one per cent of the area. A characteristic of the swamp, however, is the presence of low hills forming dry islands that were preferentially selected for settlement (partly mapped by LiDAR, as illustrated in the poorly reproduced fig. 12). By focusing on these islands, the project has been able to make significant progress in characterising the past use of the swamp as a whole. Strikingly, all of the islands surveyed have produced evidence for human activity.

The volume begins with two theoretical chapters that draw on and develop the ideas of Marx: alienation (Chapter 2) and a ‘Praxis Mode of Production’ (Chapter 3). In marked contrast to many of the papers in Rethinking colonial pasts, Sayers explicitly avoids issues of ethnicity and identity in order to focus on economic and social relations within a Marxist context. The swamp formed an example of a “dialectical dynamic” (p. 40): the capitalist system alienated specific groups of people and simultaneously designated the swamp as a non-productive and marginal place where these people could extricate themselves from the wider world. These chapters develop concepts to explore the material culture of the swamp, which includes the ‘charismata of fetishized commodities’ within the Capitalist Mode of Production. Here, Sayers contrasts the systemic pressures through which capitalism converts things into commodities with the very different set of relations that exist between people and the objects that they make and use themselves; this material culture does not possess ‘charismata’.

The documentary sources for the Great Dismal Swamp are presented in Chapter 4, and the fieldwork results in Chapter 5. A characteristic of the excavated sites is the mixed nature of the assemblages, with artefacts from earlier centuries intermingled with those from much later periods. For example, excavation of sixteenth- or seventeenth-century cabins at the ‘nameless site’ identified reworked artefacts, some dating back millennia to the Archaic period (the refusal to assign a name to the ‘nameless site’—although justified in a footnote tucked away on p. 224—becomes increasingly irritating). Sayers argues that these communities “did not so much recycle or reuse ancient materials as they did resuscitate them” (p. 157). These artefacts were used of necessity—indeed, Sayers argues that the population could not have survived in the swamp were it not for the materials left by these earlier peoples. But what defined their use of this material culture was a particular ‘mode of production’, practised with the aim of developing control over their own labour and to structure collective and individual expressions of identity.

Around AD 1800, life in the swamp began to change with an inflow of capital associated with canal and lumber companies, which started to link the area into wider economic structures. As enslaved canal company labourers moved into the swamp, Maroons were drawn into new and alienating social relations marked by the increased presence of imported commodities. Although some of these goods, such as shards of broken glass, may have been actively sought and used within the ‘Praxis Mode of Production’, Sayers concedes that others such as bricks, nails and tobacco pipes might have been used as commodities. The swamp's population ultimately decided how they would respond to the outside world but, as Sayers notes, such decisions were made in a context in which capitalism systematically undermined non-capitalistic ways of life. Hence, just as the Civil War marked the end of the ‘Capitalistic Enslavement Mode of Production’, it also marked the end of the ‘Praxis Mode of Production’ that had emerged in opposition to it. Global capitalism triumphed over both.

For Sayers, the Great Dismal Swamp experiment represents “a rare example of a successful collective effort to eliminate social oppression and material alienation by making long-term advantageous use of a system's spatial and political-economic blind spots” (p. 8). This is a fascinating book in terms of the unique landscape it documents, the theoretical advances it proposes and the compelling political critique it draws out.

National narratives

Corbett, Elena D.. Competitive archaeology in Jordan: narrating identity from the Ottomans to the Hashemites. 2014. xiii+292 pages, 13 b&w illustrations. Austin: University of Texas Press; 978-0-292-76080-6 hardback $55.

Miksic, John N.. Singapore and the Silk Road of the sea, 1300–1800. 2014. ix+491 pages, numerous colour and b&w illustrations. Singapore: NUS Press; 978-9971-69-558-3 paperback $48.

With the next two books, colonialism continues to loom large, but nationalism also enters the equation. In Competitive archaeology in Jordan: narrating identity from the Ottomans to the Hashemites, Elena Corbett presents an impressive account of the appropriation of the archaeological heritage of Jordan by colonial and national authorities, set within a wide-ranging historical narrative of the tumultuous political and military events of the past 150 years. At the heart of the volume are the constantly changing ways in which turath (heritage) has intersected with watan (nation) for both internal and international audiences.

The story begins during the final years of Ottoman rule when Bilad al-Sham (Greater Syria) was under the control of Istanbul, but increasingly imagined and defined by the British through various mapping and archaeological projects. The aim of that activity was to create a Holy Land, a core area characterised by biblical associations and defined against a periphery—Transjordan. This anti-definition endures through to the present: “Jordan's archaeological heritage has, to its detriment, been defined largely in terms of not being Israel's archaeological heritage” (p. 208).

The problem was that, when independence came in 1946, and with the exception of Nabatean Petra, the territory of Jordan could lay claim to “nothing like ziggurats or pyramids that other new Arab states had to evidence [. . .] ancient greatness” (p. 127). The new state had therefore to navigate a tricky path between promoting sites of universal (i.e. Western) value such as Petra and Jerash, and finding other cultural heritage of resonance for domestic and regional audiences. Corbett explores the spiritual connections and historical significance of places such as Petra (especially through Harun/Aaron and Musa/Moses) for both local inhabitants and those on the Hajj; these values have long been subsumed in favour of “a foreign tourism narrative” (p. 137).

A specific problem for Jordan's new Hashemite leaders was their claim, shared with the Zionists, of descent from Abraham: without archaeological evidence inside Jordan's borders predating Abraham, they therefore needed an alternative source of legitimacy. Attention fell on Jerusalem as a way of resuming the Hashemite role as protector of holy cities. Newly won Jordanian control of Jerusalem from 1950 allowed “a remarkable turnabout of rhetorical and geographical perspective and the relationship between core and periphery” (p. 151), as the formerly peripheral Transjordan reinvented itself as the new core and redefined Palestine as its West Bank. Consequently, the loss of Jerusalem in 1967, along with treasures such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, required a reorientation of the nation's relationship with the cultural heritage within its reduced borders.

Corbett's narrative is organised chronologically, advancing from the late nineteenth century through to the present. For some, parts of the story will be familiar. Chapter 2, in this regard, deals with the archaeological initiatives of the British and Americans in the Holy Land. Less familiar to many will be the discussion in Chapter 3 that focuses on the late Ottoman initiatives launched to shore up control of the region in the face of European intervention. At this time, Helleno-Byzantine antiquities were placed centre-stage and legally protected; Islamic cultural artefacts and structures, however, were not afforded parity in this scheme, allowing, for example, Sultan Abdülhamid to donate the Early Islamic desert castle of Mshatta to Germany. Corbett emphasises the continued influence of this conceptual separation of ancient cultural heritage from recent lived heritage (such as the religious use of historic buildings), in relation to the current presentation of the Ottoman period in Jordan's national museum.

The chapters continue chronologically through the British Mandate period, the foundation of the Hashemite state and the expansion of Jordan's borders to include Jerusalem. Chapter 7 concludes the story with a consideration of how Jordan has reconfigured the relationship between territory and cultural heritage following the loss of Jerusalem and the West Bank in 1967. New emphasis has fallen on tribal and Bedouin culture, pan-Arabism has been replaced with a new focus on Islamic heritage, and the designation of Petra as a World Heritage Site signals the importance of universal value—each development speaking to a different audience. Corbett closes with the so-called ‘Historical Passageway’ in Amman, a 488m-long art installation that narrates the nation's history, incorporating not only Hellenistic and Christian monuments alongside Islamic heritage, but also reaching back to the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages, “suggesting [that] a proto-Jordan has always been there and that its history culminates inevitably with the Hasemite dynasty” (p. 201).

Running through the chapters are the competing discourses of Ottomanism, Hellenism, Islamism, Turkishness and Arabness. With each unique configuration of historical circumstances, the relationship between these discourses has shifted. These developments are documented through a diverse range of material, from archives, popular journals, school textbooks and postage stamps, to bank notes and ethnography. Although presented as a sequence of distinct phases, it would be interesting to consider further quite how clearly they were perceived by various local, national and international audiences. Another question concerns the colonial aims and actions of the Ottomans and the Europeans; Corbett finds the latter much more problematic. As some of the contributors in Rethinking colonial pasts argue, we should avoid lumping together colonialisms of very different forms. But categorising colonisers into hierarchies raises questions of judgement. Who decides whether the Europeans were worse than the Ottomans they displaced? Either way, by virtue of their fading star in the late nineteenth century, the Ottomans seem to get off lightly in this account.

Much like Orser and Sayers, Corbett makes explicit the political nature of archaeology and hence her own political ambition with “an intervention into the discourse of both Near Eastern archaeologists and historians of the modern Middle East” (p. 11). In this context, she notes that the archaeological awareness and sensitivity practised in North America is not replicated by many archaeologists working in the Middle East who “still privilege the mastery of dead languages over the mastery of languages of the countries in which they spend their lives working” (p. 12). Indeed, “many of today's archaeologists are committing the same sins as their colonial predecessors, unable or unwilling to recognize their engagement in political acts and perpetuation of foreign paradigms of knowledge” (p. 12). For many working in the Middle East, Corbett's book will make for uncomfortable reading.

From Jordan, we turn to Singapore and the Silk Road of the sea, 1300–1800 by John Miksic. A core aim of this book is to demonstrate that the history of Singapore did not begin in 1819 with the arrival of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles but extends back for centuries. Raffles himself was well aware of the antiquity of Singapore; he was not founding a city but refounding one. Despite the significance attached by Raffles to Singapore's earlier history, however, the city's past did not command significant further attention until 1984, when the first formal archaeological excavation was initiated. Miksic presents the results of the subsequent three decades of archaeological work that have transformed Singapore into the best-studied fourteenth-century city in Southeast Asia.

The book is divided into three main sections. In the first, ‘Historical background’, four chapters document the emergence of the trading connections spanning from the Mediterranean to China, within which fourteenth-century ‘Singapura’ would develop. Miksic begins with the final centuries BC, considering the evidence of Roman, Indian and, especially, Chinese traders around the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia. Miksic then works through the later centuries of the first millennium AD, with the rise of various regional port-cities, trading kingdoms and ‘island empires’, with the inclusion of Srivijaya. A dedicated chapter discusses the documentary and textual sources for ancient Southeast Asia, incorporating the geographical descriptions of the fourteenth-century Chinese trader, Wang Dayuan, the genealogical stories of the fifteenth-century Malay Annals and, from the sixteenth century, Portuguese sources.

The second group of chapters, ‘Archaeological evidence’, narrows the focus to Singapore. Chapter 5 provides a detailed history of excavations undertaken since 1984—justified on the basis that, although “tedious” (p. 22), this detail helps to explain why many assumptions about Singapore's history are wrong. Chapter 6 deals with the ‘Products of ancient Singapore’: locally produced earthenwares and metal objects that indicate that the city was not simply a place of transhipment. Nonetheless, Chapters 7 and 8, which concentrate on imported pottery, metals, coins and glassware are both rather more substantial in size.

The recently won archaeological evidence documents the foundation and rapid expansion of Singapore in the fourteenth century. Although never the most important city in Southeast Asia, the archaeological evidence indicates that it was unusual in some respects, which ranged from the diversity and richness of its material wealth to the provision of earthen defences. It is also the oldest confirmed site of an ancient overseas Chinese community, providing both documentary and archaeological evidence; moreover, unlike port-cities such as Melaka (Malacca) where foreign merchants were confined to specific quarters and closely regulated, Singapore seems to have allowed foreigners relative freedom of movement.

The ‘Golden Age’ of Singapore came to an end just before AD 1400, linked in part to the restrictions on foreign trade enforced by the new Chinese Ming dynasty. At this time much of the population shifted to Melaka, but a small community continued to occupy the site for the next two centuries, before abandoning it altogether as trade across Southeast Asia dried up c. 1600.

The third section situates ‘Singapore in a regional context’, connecting the new archaeological evidence from the city with some of the themes raised in the earlier chapters and tracking the archaeological evidence for regional development through to the arrival of the British in 1819. Colonial Singapore of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is discussed primarily as a point of comparison with the fourteenth-century city (Chapter 12). Miksic makes clear, however, that there is important archaeological work to be done on colonial Singapore and he outlines a particularly mixed and interesting assemblage: goods imported from Britain and Europe, but also abundant Chinese ceramics, artefacts from British India and local Malay wares. This colonial material, he observes, remains largely unexploited.

Despite being ambitious in breadth, fascinating in detail and richly illustrated, this book is not entirely user-friendly in its organisation, shifting rapidly between periods, places and sources of evidence. There is also a question about the book's primary focus: is it Singapore or the wider ‘Silk Road of the sea’? In practice, of course, it is both, and Miksic rightly observes that only once we are familiar with the history of maritime trade in Southeast Asia can we understand Singapore. Yet a tension arises from the paradox of Singapore taking centre-stage in the narrative not by virtue of its historical centrality or importance but because it is the site about which we now know the most. It is an account of a network that privileges just one of many nodes.

Miksic's book could not be more different from Corbett's in style or content. Where they share ground, however, is the role of cultural heritage in national identity—both Jordan and Singapore are new states with long histories. While Corbett tackles this head on, Miksic speaks more indirectly to such issues as diaspora, nation-building and community archaeology. Hence, although he hopes “that the publication of this book will serve to raise Singaporeans’ awareness of the fact that the rise of their small island nation is not a recent historical accident” (p. 23), there is little explicit discussion of how the archaeological evidence might constitute that identity. Nonetheless, he drops some heavy hints. Indeed, we learn that the early nineteenth-century “revival could not have taken place unless Singapore possessed the necessary attributes for such development: strategic location, fair and liberal government, and most importantly a hardworking and cosmopolitan population that was able to live together harmoniously despite a multiplicity of cultures, languages and religions” (p. 434). Whether this ‘networked’ national identity will turn out to be an inclusive national narrative for our own epoch or just another teleological account, only time will tell. Meanwhile, the broader potency of the material that Miksic presents is thrown into sharp relief when read alongside Hayton's (Reference Hayton2014) The South China Sea: the struggle for power in Asia. Archaeology is political.

‘Interstellar cave painting’

O’Leary, Beth Laura & Capelotti, P.J. (ed.). Archaeology and heritage of the human movement into space. 2015. xiii+166 pages, 15 colour and 29 illustrations, 4 tables. Cham: Springer; 978-3-319-07865-6; 978-3-319-07866-3 hardback £90.

As archaeologists, it is not often that we find ourselves making statements such as the following: “At 20:00 GMT on Thursday 30 April 2015, a new archaeological site was created”. But having read the collected papers in Archaeology and heritage of the human movement into space, edited by O’Leary and Capelotti, there should be no doubt that the collision of the Messenger spacecraft on the surface of Mercury—reported in the news at the time of writing—permits such a statement to be made. In his chapter, Capelotti draws on the taphonomic studies of Schiffer to argue that the moment an object ceases to be used for the purpose it was designed, it becomes an archaeological artefact. On this definition, when a spacecraft ceases communication—or crashes into a planetary body—it becomes archaeological.

Space archaeology clearly tests the boundaries of our disciplinary concepts in multiple ways, yet the contributors to this volume persuasively argue that these challenges can be accommodated; hence we find such methodological staples as sites, landscapes and taphonomy, but also some of the modern-world archaeology concepts of power, competition and contested heritage discussed above. Perhaps most convincing, however, are some of the arresting statements and facts presented: “Here on Earth we revel at news of ‘the oldest human footprints’ yet discovered. So, why not see the worth of the first footsteps left there on the magnificent desolation of a dusty moon?” (p. viii); O’Leary notes that at 18 billon kilometres from Earth, Voyager I is “humankind's most distant artifact” (p. 2), while Capelotti notes that Voyager 1 may well survive the extinction of life on Earth.

In space, as on Earth, archaeologists think of ‘sites’: the Apollo 11 moon landing at Tranquillity Base is an “archaeological site [. . .] composed of a surface scatter of approximately 106 objects deposited over an area the size of a baseball diamond” (Westwood, p. 144). The location of this site is well documented, but others have to be sought or more precisely mapped, for example, the location of the Soviet Lunokhod 1 lunar rover was only pinpointed on the Moon's surface in 2010, some 40 years after its original use. Beyond ‘sites’, Gorman makes the case for considering all the “satellites, rocket bodies, and pieces of junk currently in Earth orbit as a cultural landscape or assemblage” (p. 29). Categorising this material as an archaeological record presents conceptual and practical challenges—not least, these artefacts are in constant motion (10km per second to be precise) making it difficult to map them or to develop a clear notion of context. Collectively, Gorman argues that this space assemblage constitutes a “cultural landscape, or spacescape” (p. 32). And there is a lot of it: tens of thousands of launches have left hundreds of thousands of pieces of material culture swirling around space (Capelotti labels this “the vast archaeological space ‘midden’”, p. 54); astonishingly, there are more than 100 metric tonnes of cultural material on the surface of the Moon alone.

With plenty of cultural heritage on planet Earth in need of protection, is there a need to devote time and energy to safeguarding the detritus left by humans in space? A number of contributors argue that there is. Not only do these materials narrate key events of the second half of the twentieth century, they also document what may turn out to be the earliest steps in a completely new chapter in the history of humankind. And sites such as Tranquillity Base are threatened, not least by the commercialisation of space travel. Hence, Westwood considers the legal and political issues associated with preserving space heritage. Forget the political, cultural and bureaucratic complexities of designating a UNESCO transnational World Heritage Site such as the ‘Frontiers of the Roman Empire’. Space archaeology, yet again, pushes our conceptual limits—this heritage spans planetary bodies. But the key question remains, which nation owns this cultural heritage? The Lunar Landing Legacy Act presented to US Congress in 2013 sought to designate Tranquillity Base as a US National Park. At first sight, this appears an arrogant claim of sovereignty. There are, however, legal loopholes and possibilities. Significantly, individual nations retain ownership of all material transported to the Moon, and NASA asserts this right. Westwood therefore observes: “[w]ith this in mind, the notion that the US could bring to the World Heritage List a surface archaeological site composed of American-owned objects, but not including the lunar surface, is not unreasonable” (p. 146). Well, perhaps. It certainly underlines that space archaeology—akin to the imperial adventures of earlier centuries—is deeply political, embedded in the technological and ideological conflict of the Cold War. Westwood's proposed resolution is a transnational serial nomination involving the USA, the countries of the former USSR and other nations such as Spain (which hosted tracking facilities), and encompassing humanity's collective lunar endeavours from 1961–1972. Such an outcome would certainly be more of a giant leap than a small step.

As ‘long’ ago as 2003, a resolution on the preservation of space cultural heritage was passed by the World Archaeology Congress and subsequently a large quantity of research has accumulated on space archaeology. Conceptually, however, we learn that space archaeology has a longer history than at first apparent. Capelotti (p. 52) traces the underpinnings back to none other than Antiquity's founder, O.G.S. Crawford and his recognition of obsolete aircraft as archaeological objects. Crawford lived to see the very start of the Space Age, dying less than two months after Sputnik 1 became the first successful orbital launch in 1957. He would surely have been as astounded by the technological feats that followed as he would have been satisfied to know that archaeology would surpass even his own ambitious claim that “our field is the Earth, our range in time a million years or so, our subject the human race” (1927: 1). To infinity and beyond!