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eve_primeHurray, I finally made it to an Archaeology Film Festival event. They've been showing films from last year's festival as a fund-raiser. I was even in time to see a preview for that neat-looking Mongolian movie, The Story of the Weeping Camel. So I saw two films, one that I adored about the unusually fast excavation of Zeugma, a Hellenistic city in Turkey, and one that I was less pleased with, a very political documentary about modern Kalahari Bushmen. I have a lot to say about the movies but will spare those of you who may read this from a Friends list.
The Last Days of Zeugma
The first film documented the rapid excavation of Zeugma. The researchers had only four years to try to learn what they could about the city and salvage the paintings, mosaics, and more mobile treasures before it became submerged under a new reservoir. This city was founded by the Seleucids (heirs of Alexander the Great) on the upper Euphrates and was where the ancient Silk Road crossed the Euphrates on its way from the Mediterranean to India and China. I was sufficiently enthralled to see the Euphrates on the big screen, flowing by and looking just like any river rather than a legendary part of western civilization!
So there were two sides of the city, each with its own excavation challenges. On the east side of the river, the community called Apamea was a flat, walled city now covered with olive groves. The main tool they had to learn how the city was laid out was a fancy piece of equipment called a magnetometer, which measured variations in the earth's magnetic field caused by underground ruins. An archaeologist wore this piece of equipment and walked at a steady pace back and forth across the entire site, to the bemusement of the farmers working in the groves and the cornfields. This process yielded an incredibly detailed map of the city, with every street and house clearly defined in computer images.
The community on the western side of the Euphrates, Seleucia Zeugma, was much more challenging, as it was built into steep, terraced hillsides now covered by more than 20 feet of soil. The key to mapping this site turned out to be the vast network of sewers. Once they'd found pipes leading to an access point, they were able to lower themselves down and walk in the ancient sewers, through "hallways" about 4-5' wide and 10' tall (made me feel claustrophobic watching it). Mapping the sewers let them figure out where the streets and such were back up on top.
One of the projects in Seleucia Zeugma was the excavation of a single home, an immense mansion that yielded up an extraordinary number of floor mosaics and wall paintings, which were carefully moved away to museums. To see the mosaics and get other details about the dig, here's a link to the Zeugma project website, and here's a link for a Nova episode, "Lost Roman Treasure," which aired last October. I have no idea why I wasn't aware of that episode. The film today was a French production, as the team of archaeologists was French.
A mosaic of Achilles at the court of Menelaus:
And then, the other movie:
A Kalahari Family, Part V: Death by Myth
The other film, which had been voted the best of the film festival, was somewhat troubling to me, as it seemed more biased than appropriate, even though given a more objective presentation of the material I may well have agreed with the filmmaker. The subject was the Bushmen of the western Kalahari, in Namibia, and their lack of self-determination. Originally, decades before, the filmmaker had set up a foundation to help these people, who had given up their traditional lifestyle by the 1950s. However, the myth that the Bushmen still lead, or can lead, a traditional lifestyle is disruptively pervasive, such that the foundation (which now is unrelated to the filmmaker) brings in lots and lots of Western money, but it's all earmarked to help them maintain this traditional lifestyle.
But is that what the people want? And should patronizing Westerners try to force them on this path? The actor in The Gods Must Be Crazy was not normally a loincloth-clad hunter, but rather a cook in some modern establishment, who used his earnings to build a house and buy a car. All of the people wear Western clothing, and many would like to pursue farming, given adequate support, such as well-maintained irrigation pumps.
The filmmaker in particular appears to have promoted this idea in the past, as a route towards greater self-sufficiency given the loss of the traditional lifestyle, and in the film he made a point to focus particularly on the few Bushmen who were trying hardest to farm, despite ongoing conflicts with the foundation, which meanwhile had set up a new community by importing expensive cabins from South Africa and purchasing a fleet of new vehicles that far outnumbered the people able to drive them. The foundation kept selling the idea of the romantic Bushman culture to Westerners, bringing in large sums of money which they were using in pursuit of a planned game reserve, where tourists could come to watch Bushmen leading a traditional lifestyle (though Bushmen had to be paid to do this, as actors), and where big game hunters could have a good time.
Unfortunately (and the decision-making process for this was curiously glossed over in the film), the foundation imported 400 elephants, which meant that farming and the game reserve could not coexist, as the elephants (always depicted in grainy "night shots" as eerie looming villains) were attracted by the water and tended to destroy the water pumps and water storage tanks. Eventually, most of the farms were destroyed. Meanwhile, the game reserve had yielded income for its local members of only about U.S. $20 over a two-year period, or something. Since the people couldn't farm and couldn't hunt in their traditional ways, most of them were living on handouts, or sick, or died.
One point that kept bugging me was that the filmmaker made much of how bad it was for them to be dependent on outsiders like tourists, but ignored the fact that maintenance of their irrigation systems also required dependence on outsiders. He also spent so much time focused on his favorite farmers that one had to wonder what the rest of the people wanted -- whether the farmers were typical, or whether he thought they were an enlightened few and the rest not worthy of giving their own ignorant views in opposition. He also claimed that they faced an either/or choice about educating their children, as in either they could go to school, or they could relearn the traditional hunting methods of their people, but not both, which I didn't really believe.
So I was sorry that the film left me skeptical of the farming solution, because farming did seem like a good idea, for those who wanted it. I don't know why farming and the game reserve couldn't have both been feasible, if incompatible creatures like elephants weren't imported for the reserve.
The Last Days of Zeugma
The first film documented the rapid excavation of Zeugma. The researchers had only four years to try to learn what they could about the city and salvage the paintings, mosaics, and more mobile treasures before it became submerged under a new reservoir. This city was founded by the Seleucids (heirs of Alexander the Great) on the upper Euphrates and was where the ancient Silk Road crossed the Euphrates on its way from the Mediterranean to India and China. I was sufficiently enthralled to see the Euphrates on the big screen, flowing by and looking just like any river rather than a legendary part of western civilization!
So there were two sides of the city, each with its own excavation challenges. On the east side of the river, the community called Apamea was a flat, walled city now covered with olive groves. The main tool they had to learn how the city was laid out was a fancy piece of equipment called a magnetometer, which measured variations in the earth's magnetic field caused by underground ruins. An archaeologist wore this piece of equipment and walked at a steady pace back and forth across the entire site, to the bemusement of the farmers working in the groves and the cornfields. This process yielded an incredibly detailed map of the city, with every street and house clearly defined in computer images.
The community on the western side of the Euphrates, Seleucia Zeugma, was much more challenging, as it was built into steep, terraced hillsides now covered by more than 20 feet of soil. The key to mapping this site turned out to be the vast network of sewers. Once they'd found pipes leading to an access point, they were able to lower themselves down and walk in the ancient sewers, through "hallways" about 4-5' wide and 10' tall (made me feel claustrophobic watching it). Mapping the sewers let them figure out where the streets and such were back up on top.
One of the projects in Seleucia Zeugma was the excavation of a single home, an immense mansion that yielded up an extraordinary number of floor mosaics and wall paintings, which were carefully moved away to museums. To see the mosaics and get other details about the dig, here's a link to the Zeugma project website, and here's a link for a Nova episode, "Lost Roman Treasure," which aired last October. I have no idea why I wasn't aware of that episode. The film today was a French production, as the team of archaeologists was French.
A mosaic of Achilles at the court of Menelaus:
And then, the other movie:
A Kalahari Family, Part V: Death by Myth
The other film, which had been voted the best of the film festival, was somewhat troubling to me, as it seemed more biased than appropriate, even though given a more objective presentation of the material I may well have agreed with the filmmaker. The subject was the Bushmen of the western Kalahari, in Namibia, and their lack of self-determination. Originally, decades before, the filmmaker had set up a foundation to help these people, who had given up their traditional lifestyle by the 1950s. However, the myth that the Bushmen still lead, or can lead, a traditional lifestyle is disruptively pervasive, such that the foundation (which now is unrelated to the filmmaker) brings in lots and lots of Western money, but it's all earmarked to help them maintain this traditional lifestyle.
But is that what the people want? And should patronizing Westerners try to force them on this path? The actor in The Gods Must Be Crazy was not normally a loincloth-clad hunter, but rather a cook in some modern establishment, who used his earnings to build a house and buy a car. All of the people wear Western clothing, and many would like to pursue farming, given adequate support, such as well-maintained irrigation pumps.
The filmmaker in particular appears to have promoted this idea in the past, as a route towards greater self-sufficiency given the loss of the traditional lifestyle, and in the film he made a point to focus particularly on the few Bushmen who were trying hardest to farm, despite ongoing conflicts with the foundation, which meanwhile had set up a new community by importing expensive cabins from South Africa and purchasing a fleet of new vehicles that far outnumbered the people able to drive them. The foundation kept selling the idea of the romantic Bushman culture to Westerners, bringing in large sums of money which they were using in pursuit of a planned game reserve, where tourists could come to watch Bushmen leading a traditional lifestyle (though Bushmen had to be paid to do this, as actors), and where big game hunters could have a good time.
Unfortunately (and the decision-making process for this was curiously glossed over in the film), the foundation imported 400 elephants, which meant that farming and the game reserve could not coexist, as the elephants (always depicted in grainy "night shots" as eerie looming villains) were attracted by the water and tended to destroy the water pumps and water storage tanks. Eventually, most of the farms were destroyed. Meanwhile, the game reserve had yielded income for its local members of only about U.S. $20 over a two-year period, or something. Since the people couldn't farm and couldn't hunt in their traditional ways, most of them were living on handouts, or sick, or died.
One point that kept bugging me was that the filmmaker made much of how bad it was for them to be dependent on outsiders like tourists, but ignored the fact that maintenance of their irrigation systems also required dependence on outsiders. He also spent so much time focused on his favorite farmers that one had to wonder what the rest of the people wanted -- whether the farmers were typical, or whether he thought they were an enlightened few and the rest not worthy of giving their own ignorant views in opposition. He also claimed that they faced an either/or choice about educating their children, as in either they could go to school, or they could relearn the traditional hunting methods of their people, but not both, which I didn't really believe.
So I was sorry that the film left me skeptical of the farming solution, because farming did seem like a good idea, for those who wanted it. I don't know why farming and the game reserve couldn't have both been feasible, if incompatible creatures like elephants weren't imported for the reserve.