More notes in passing

Holiday continues! Thoughts continue to be in the form of brief notes!

• The hits keep coming, assuming that by hits you mean Romanesque churches — as I do. Today, while wandering around Como itself, we stumbled across a neat little 11th-century church, although sadly it was closed and we couldn’t go in. And this church was not on the historic city maps, even though it was well within the area they covered. It was just so minor compared to the city’s other historic churches, I guess, that it was not included. Crazy.
• Speaking of the less-mapped parts of medieval Como, we also came across a series of buildings that showed a rebuilding history like you wouldn’t believe. I did a certain amount of architectural history in my MA, and I can tell you want some of the scars on this architectural Frankenstein mean, but to make sense of its history? You’d need an expert. And again, no signs, no nothing, because compared to a lot of the other stuff there this is nothing.
• The Roman baths close at 2 PM on a weekday, which seems crazy to me but what do I know?

Non-overlapping magisteria, or why Ben Carson is a bonehead but that doesn’t mean you aren’t

Welp, time to mock and belittle someone’s sincerely-held religious beliefs.

Ha ha ha I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about

So, the news has been full of reporting on and discussion of Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson’s ridiculous statement about the pyramids. In case you missed it, he thinks they are not tombs at all but the granaries built by Joseph to hold the supplies stockpiled in the story of the seven fat years and the seven lean years.

On the one hand, this is obviously untrue. The pyramids are massive damn limestone mounds with proportionately not very much empty space inside them, and we have quite detailed information about their ritual, funerary function, not to mention the fact that we have pretty good information on Egyptian granaries.

The story here has generally been understood as either that Ben Carson, wotta bonehead or, more generally, the Republican party, wotta buncha boneheads. And while it certailny seems to be true that Ben Carson is a bonehead and the fact that the Republicans are willing to treat this bonehead seriously is not a hopeful sign, I don’t think this story illustrates it as clearly as people might like.

Because the “on the other hand” here is that, if Ben Carson believes some crazy stuff about the pyramids, he’s hardly alone. Lots of people believe nonsense about the pyramids — that they’re full of unspecified pyramid power, that they were built by aliens, that they conceal mystical secrets, etc., etc. Remember, Carson dropped his ignorant bombshell as a more plausible alternative to the idea that aliens dunnit. Which I guess it is.

Essentially, Carson is really talking about Aegypt, the mythological, magical approximation of the historical Egypt that is what most people actually care about. For Carson, Egypt isn’t really real — I mean, I’m sure he’s aware that it is a country and it has a history, but when he thinks about it he thinks about it mainly in terms of mythology. And I think that for most people, that’s the most important thing about a lot of historical civilisations — the same is true of the Maya, for instance, for whom popular discussion of their mystical significance must outnumber discussion of the actual history ten to one. People think things about Aegypt that they’d never think about the country they live in, because it’s not real. It’s a magical, faraway place.

All this is mostly harmless as long as you don’t wind up making decisions based on your mythological understanding — thinking about England and Scotland based on romantic songs rather than what those actual places are actually like, for instance, or settling your opinions on the situation in the middle east based on Biblical exegesis. I think that most people are aware that they don’t really know anything about these topics — they enjoy thinking about mystic secrets and yadda yadda, but they don’t really interact with the actual history of them so the two views don’t ever come into conflict.

But to come into conflict with the actual view of a subject by experts and just assert that your magic-ass view of the subject trumps theirs, without trying to understand their view … that is a failing of character. The kind of thing that running for office can really shine a light on.

A Pint of Science

Last night we went to a science festival in a pub. Specifically, we went to The Boathouse for a Pint of Science session. This is a series of talks by scientists in different fields, with the talks grouped around a particular theme. Six venues have a session each over the three days of the festival, and I believe each session has three talks, for a total of 54. Ours was Into the Darkness, which was about death. My background being mainly in funerary archaeology, I was really interested to see what would come up; I was familiar with the work of two of the three speakers and excited to hear more.

The talk sold out — indeed, I believe every session sold out, which is pretty impressive considering this is all also happening during the Cambridge Beer Festival. The venue for our talk was the upstairs room at the Boathouse; I used to game there, which was a slightly odd contrast. They even had a special beer for the festival, which I did not have any of. Again, clever.

One unusual feature of this festival is that each speaker is paired with an artist who creates something based on the subject of the talk. There’s an exhibit of these artworks on Thursday, so if you’re reading this in Cambridge there’s still time to check them out. It’s free!

I’m not going to go into huge detail about the talks: I took 12 pages of notes, though, so there was a lot to take in. This is just edited highlights.

First up was Dr Corinne Duhig, who talked about her experiences as a forensic archaeologist/anthropologist in Kosovo. Way back in 2007, I co-edited a volume of ARC about “the disturbing past” — Ian Hanson wrote a fascinating piece on the same topic for it. People who know more about forensic archaeology than I do were probably less alarmed by phrases like “then, in went the mine-detecting dogs.” The centre of the piece was “the clothesline,” which was also the topic of the painting by Barbara Nasto that went with this piece. Once the investigation was done, Duhig and her colleagues washed the victims’ clothes and the blankets their bodies were wrapped in, then hung them up on a long series of clotheslines outside the morgue. Bereaved relatives would walk along the ever-lengthening rows looking for clothes that had belonged to their loved ones. The painting is a bright scene of colourful blankets hanging on a line with a bright red building or shipping container in the background; the container is full of dead bodies and the blankets are from murder victims’ graves. I was particularly struck when someone asked Dr Duhig about her motivation and she replied “hatred.” She also told a story about going to the Hague to a different part of the war-crimes tribunal just to get close to Slobodan Milosevic — “to get as close as possible to … one’s enemy, I suppose.”

I thought Duhig was going to be a tough act to follow, but I had confidence in Dr John Robb, who did not disappoint. His talk was on “how to achieve a social life after death” and was about the active role that the dead continue to play in the social lives of communities — and how modern Western society, in which this is downplayed, is really the exception rather than the norm. However, he pointed out that “we believe different things that are incompatible” about the dead — we simultaneously view death as an instant transition to an inanimate state and we treat the dead as if they’re still around. Consider the idea of “owing something” to the dead — it’s ridiculous to think you can owe something to an inanimate object. He also mentioned the story of a woman who received texts from her dead grandmother, the precaution of burying Osama bin Laden at sea, and the Hand of Glory, so this was a wide-ranging talk. I was pleased to see the “Robb Scale of Research Believability” which ranges from “Publish in Nature” at one end to “mention in the pub, but only after five pints; deny at all other times.” The accompanying artwork by Liza Read was a hologram in a little black casket; once you got close enough to look at it, you saw a little frog skeleton staring back at you. It reminded me (intentionally?) of Dead Like Me: 

Last up was Professor Clive Oppenheimer, who talked about volcanoes, their potential for death and destruction and the ways in which this is sometimes overlooked — but also some of the good sides(?). I had much less background in this one, and I’m sure there are things I didn’t know that would be obvious to someone who knew anything about the subject — like that 10% of the world’s population lives within a relatively short distance (100 km?) of a volcano. I also discovered that Cambridge contains something called the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, which studies events that could wipe out the human race. That is baller extreme. I missed the name of the artists who created the “Angry Mountain Pendant” that went with this talk, though.

So yeah — three great talks, audience seemed to like it, congenial surroundings, home in time for bed. There was also a pub quiz; I missed one question, but still won a t-shirt. My wife won a goodie bag that also contained a t-shirt as well as various other goodies; notepad, pen, that kind of thing.

There are no more spaces left for this year’s talks, but I definitely recommend it for next year.

Comics! Again, possibly.

The other day I received some cool little mini-comics! They are by Gabriel Moshenska, and they’re about female archaeologists, a subject lately given some well-deserved attention by the tireless team over at Trowelblazers. Seriously, if you’re at all interested in the history of the field (or geology or palaeontology) you owe it to yourself to check out the work they’re doing.

Anyway, the comics! They came in the form of A4 sheets with eight colour panels on them.

Then you apply a set of instructions (I struggled at first to figure out which direction the folds go, but on the other hand I’m not too bright about these things):

Once you have folded and snipped, they look like this:

They are pretty adorable — and educational too!

In addition to the Margaret Murray and Elizabeth Pettigrew ones, I also got:

These are pretty neat, and I like the punkity-rock DIY vibe of the minicomics. Maybe I should do some for my own sensational character! Fame and fortune await.

Anyway, I’m not wholly sure what the mechanism is for you to get more of these, but you can read the Pettigrew and Caton Thompson ones online. 

Cartoon Corner: Spider-Woman (1979)

I have written in the past about superheroes and archaeology, largely inspired by the papers given at the Monstrous Antiquities conference back in November. Today, I just want to point out that there is a surprising amount of archaeology in the 1979 Spider-Woman cartoon … or, well … sort of. 

I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Spider-Woman cartoon, but it seems to have been largely an attempt to cash in on the popularity of Wonder Woman, right down to the spinning transformation, here called a “spider-spin.” And yeah, you know you’re back in the olden days when Marvel is trying to cash in on a DC property. 

Anyway, the cartoon basically resembles what you’d get if you got one of the less grounded Bronze Age creators (poor old Bill Mantlo, perhaps, or maybe Bob Kanigher (I may mean Bob Haney)) and just fed them an absolute shitload of cough syrup and told them to have at it, oh, and to try to work in something educational to satisfy the FCC. Maybe the easiest way for you to see what I mean about this show’s bizarre mix of earnestness and foolery is just to watch an episode. 

Our very first episode is “Pyramids of Terror,” and it kicks off with Spider-Man being in Egypt (for some reason) where he is captured by a villainous mummy. Spider-Woman, her bumbling sidekick and her plucky sidekick go off to Egypt following a series of mummy attacks, and then … erm … 

 

It turns out, right, that these mummies came from space in their pyramid ships and were buried under the sands of Egypt lo these many years ago, and I guess they inspired ancient Egyptian culture, because why not? The classic motif of the Sphinx shooting beams out of its eyes is gone one better here — not only does it have eyebeams, but if the beams hit you, they turn you into a mummy!

Eventually, Spider-Woman realises that the motive force behind the alien spaceships is, no fooling, Pyramid Power and uses her webbing to turn the lead ship into a cube. 

It’s like a checklist of pop culture Egypt: 

• ambulatory mummy
• did ancient astronauts …?
• Pyramid Powah!

So this is all well and good, but what’s weird is that it keeps happening. Spider-Woman is a very globe-trotting sort of heroine, and she winds up in contact with a lot of past-type stuff. 

She goes back to the 10th century to fight some Vikings: 

Fights some Amazons in a vaguely Mexico-ish sort of Amazon temple thing:

Seriously, I think the statue:eyebeams ratio is about 1:1.

And there’s a few more temples and castles as well. Apparently it all gets a bit more UFO-y in the later seasons, but I’m not there yet. I really just wanted to share that mummy episode with people because, you know, pink pyramid spaceship with sphinx-shaped mummy-ray turret. 

The lazy greatest-hits album

I have a busy day today, but I have been thinking on a subject lately — namely, why do certain posts keep turning up over and over again in my stats? Some of my posts pop up, get read, then disappear again, while others keep getting hit a few times a day. What’s the difference? Why do some posts have this long tail? I thought I’d go over them and think it over.

The first and most obvious is The Weight of History in Warhammer 40,000, which looks at the way in which this game uses history to create a certain aesthetic and how that aesthetic has changed over the years. I know why this one is popular: it got noticed by a couple of 40K blogs and went from there to the Warhammer 40,000 subreddit. This is by far the most popular thing I’ve ever written, and it’s basically because I wrote it about a popular subject.

Similarly, the Archaeological Themes in Skyrim series seems to occasionally be picked up by Skyrim fans on Tumblr or similar.

But the other popular ones are a little less obvious.

Ancient History, Conspiracy Theory and Hip-Hop is a weird one. In it, I mention that a Google search provides very little information about one of Vinnie Paz’s conspiracy theory references — in fact, it mostly just produces baffled Jedi Mind Tricks fans wondering what on earth Paz means. My suspicion is that this post is now relatively high on the search results for that same topic — so if you Google Paz’s line, you get me pointing out that there isn’t much information if you Google Paz’s line.

Viking Hats Through the Ages has been super-popular for some reason. Not sure I get this one.

Movie Monday: The Viking (1928) has been the most popular of my Movie Monday posts. I think, again, that this is because there has been relatively little written about this film compared to some of the other ones I’ve reviewed. Although most movie Monday reviews do have a pretty good trickle of views months into their lives. Which I suppose means that “Sign of the Pagan review” is a search term for someone. 

I think the conclusion I can draw from this is that if I want to have a post be popular, I need to write either about something very, very popular or something very, very obscure.

Not that I care! I only benefit from this blog, other than in ego terms, if someone decides to download my ebook after reading it (more formats coming soon once I remember to remember to do it). I’m just curious about what makes a post long-term popular. Rest assured that if I were aiming for a mass market I would have … done something completely different.

Archaeological Themes in FarCry 3 (no, really)

Why do they even make guns that aren’t light machine guns?

As you may know from my previous posts about archaeological themes in Skyrim (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4), I am always pleasantly surprised when archaeology stuff turns up in video games. I tend to play games years after they come out — I only acquired an Xbox 360 late in its lifecycle (I think around the time the Xbone came out, in fact) and so I’m always finding things that everyone else already knows about. The good thing about it is that playing games that are one generation obsolete is very economical (beyond that and rarity starts to become an issue). 

Anyway, a long while ago, a friend of the blog (who, in fact, is the same person who gave me the 360) pointed out that there’s some good medieval China stuff in FarCry 3, but since I hadn’t played it at the time, I went “interesting!” and then completely forgot about it. Now I’ve started playing the game, and I’m reaching the point where it starts to turn up. I think it’s very interesting, in fact. 

So in FarCry 3 you play schlub Jason Brody, who learns to survive in the jungle, find the warrior within, and so on, when his friends are captured by pirates. It’s your usual coming-of-age-by-jumping-off-a-roof-and-stabbing-a-guy story. And, this being a video game, you never meet anyone who doesn’t have some weird errand they want done in order to give you the dingus you need to get to the next stabjumping opportunity. One of these guys is a mercenary named Buck, who’s looking for some artefact or other and sends you to infiltrate a boat where some baddie is keeping some information that will lead you to the next yadda yadda. 

So I infiltrate (ed: does “infiltrate” mean “bombard with rockets, then board and finish off the scattered survivors with a hail of machine gun fire”? Check this) the boat only to find out that it is full of Chinese artefacts (like the ones above and below): 

There are also some lion(?) statues. 

And throughout the game, it becomes clear that the island was once visited by the (very real) exploration fleet of 15th-century Chinese admiral Zheng He. That is a canny choice — I think most people probably know that Zheng He existed, thanks to Gavin Menzies and his … excitable … interpretation of the story, but most people, myself included, don’t actually know much about him. And it transpires that there is a shipwreck from Zheng He’s fleet around here somewhere, although if you can get to it I haven’t yet; I had a couple of weeks off the game lately due to obsessively watching Justified being busy.

Now, I don’t know what 15th-century Chinese sailors are doing with 3rd-century BC terracotta warriors, but let that pass for a moment. What’s interesting is the way that Zheng He’s fleet is portrayed both as kind of a good thing for the island and a bad thing at the same time. The Chinese built these amazing monuments, like Citra’s temple.

 

But they did it by conquering and enslaving the island people. You can see the same story happening with the island’s WWII ruins — the Japanese occupied the island in the same way as the Chinese (there’s a complicated backstory to both, actually, which you can discover or ignore as you please). And, of course, these parallel the story of the pirates who currently dominate the island and who need to be jumped on and stabbed. These means that the story’s central tension — do you stay behind to help the islanders fight for their freedom or save your friends and return to a home you may no longer recognise — has a little extra weight behind it. 

I am not the only one to have written about this, either: check out this post on “The historical architecture of the Rook Islands archipelago” at H Does Heritage. 

 

Trip report: the Vikings

So, a scant two hours or so after going to the comics exhibit at the British Library (as documented in my last post), my wife and I went to the Vikings: Life and Legend exhibit at the British Museum. I thought it was pretty good.

I have mentioned before that the Vikings are one of those subjects in history that are full of romance, and if you want to tell people about them you have to actively work not to let the romance distort what you’re saying. And yet you have to have some element of the romance in it, because that’s partly why you’re doing the thing in the first place, right? I mean, look at the poster in the photo above.

So, the exhibit.

I went in with a bunch of friends and relatives, none of whom were quite as nerdy about early medieval Europe as I am. They enjoyed it as well, but obviously they didn’t get quite the shock of familiarity that I got when seeing things like the Mammen axe:

… or the Winchester Liber Vitae:

Me being me, I therefore got a little extra sort of sense of being in an Early Medieval Europe’s Greatest Hits type of environment. And the greatest hit of all, of course, is the ship, Roskilde 6. I say ship, but it is honestly not quite a ship — more fragments of one. It’s not as impressive as the Gokstad ship, but you do get to see that it was absolutely huge. It’s quite impressive.

As for the exhibit itself, there were good things and bad things. Here are the good things:

• Pretty much the very first thing you see when you go in is a set of comparison artefacts from lots of different cultures that the Vikings came into contact with — Byzantine, Frankish, Baltic, English, Irish, and so on. So that’s really nice: you see the Vikings not as an isolated culture but as part of a broader European world. The same trick is done upstairs in the Sutton Hoo room, and I was pleased with it there.
• There is a lot of talk about the Vikings in the east, and not a disproportionate amount (or at least not too much) about the Vikings in England. Given how important the Baltic and Russia were in the Viking age, this is nice to see.
• There is a hell of a lot of neat stuff — that’s yer British museum for you.

Here are the bad things:

• The first part of the exhibition, before you get out into the area where the ship is, is designed in such a way that the crowd tends to clog up. Fortunately, I am pretty tall, so I could see over people’s heads, but not everyone is. I guess that is a problem of popularity, but I didn’t feel like it was present in the second area — maybe people had figured out the appropriate pace by then.
• That’s actually pretty much it. I thought the presentation was very British-Museum-y: kind of spare and restrained and a little dark. I mean, you know what you’re getting. I quite like it, but I know some people don’t.
• I have heard some complaints about the catalogue, but I haven’t really had time to look at it yet.

The weirdest thing about the whole experience to me was the gift shop. They have a plastic Viking sword in there and it’s … I mean, it’s alarmingly accurate. Like, it’s got INGELRII ME FECIT on the blade. The toy swords I played with as a kid were some bullshit by comparison. On the other hand, it did cost like £14.99, so maybe it’s just that rich kids get good stuff? And the plastic Viking helmet you can buy is a nice little version of the Gjermundbu helmet. No horns in sight.

The exhibition hall has lots of quotes from various poems, histories and so on up on the walls and around the cases, which I liked. Makes good use of the space. My favourite was this one about a Viking warrior with some unusual ancestry:

The Stories of the ancients tell us that Ursus (a certain nobleman whom the Lord, contrary to what normally happens in human procreation, allowed to be created from a white bear as a father and a noblewoman as a mother), begot Spratlingus;Spratlingus begot Ulfius; and Ulfius begot Beorn, who was nicknamed Beresune, that is, “Bear’s Son”. This Beorn was Danish by race, a distinguished earl and famous soldier. As a sign, however, that due to part of his ancestry he was of a different species, nature had given him the ears of his father’s line, namely those of a bear. In all other features he was of his mother’s appearance.

I like that his badass feature is bear’s ears — not claws, not teeth, not a snout, ears. Here is how I imagine him.

 

I hope I get to hit someone with this club.
I’m a bear.

So, yeah, I thought it was good. My relatives enjoyed it. I didn’t learn anything, particularly, but then I didn’t really expect to, and I suspect I’ll learn something from the book. It was mainly cool to see these things in person. Somehow in my mind “sorceress’s” staffs (staves?) were longer.

You should go if you can; it’ll be fun and informative. If you know something I don’t about it, you should tell me. If you think the Vikings have been done to death, well, you’re probably right, but we may not share the same assumptions.

Let Me Tell You of the Days of High Adventure

If, like me, you grew up in the United States at a certain time (I’m guessing any time after the 1960s), you read a lot of Hardy Boys books (or their female-targeted equivalent, Nancy Drew). Every school library, and every public library with a section aimed at young people, seemed to have a complete set of these, in this hardback library binding with a sort of hatched, grainy cover texture.

I didn’t know these books existed in the UK, so imagine my surprise to find over a dozen of them on the “take a free book” shelf at the station while I was waiting for a coach. Not, sadly, in this classic format, but in a more modern one.

Also, good God, looking on the internet tells me that these things have been being published since 1927 and there was an attempt to modernise the franchise using the name “the Clues Brothers,” which is just unforgivable but strangely appealing.

Anyway, where was I? I was going to just enjoy a moment of nostalgia until I saw that one of these was about a Viking runestone, at which point I snapped it up and took it with me, regardless of the fact that it was supposed to be for a) commuters and b) little kids. I’ll put it back when I’m done, promise.

For those of you unfamiliar with the premise of the Hardy Boys, you have these two brothers, Frank and Joe Hardy, and their squad of teenage chums (the Fat One, the Ethnic One and the Other One) who solve mysteries under the mentorship of private eye father Somebody Else Hardy. The whole thing is sort of breathlessly innocent and stupidly didactic, in a way that I totally failed to notice when I was young but which is now very charming to read. Here’s an example, from a scene in which the brothers are searching a dump for clues:

When they met there, neither boy had found a clue.

Joe looked glum. “Guess we’re just out of luck,” he said, kicking an old box.

His brother was about to agree, when the box turned over and out fell a rolled-up pair of grey slacks. Both boys grabbed for the box and Frank pulled out a black-and-white checked sports jacket.

“Wa-hoo!” Frank exulted, holding up the jacket and turning it inside out. “Look at this label — Toronto, Canada!”

“The slacks are from Quebec,” Joe said, looking puzzled. “Do you think Kelly is from Canada?”

“He could be,” Frank answered, greatly excited.

Now, there is no form of humour lower and more predictable than the American making fun of Canada for being mostly like America but slightly different in some ways — they say “eh!” They’re very polite! They like hockey! — but it is impossible not to get a bit of a smile out of how much time our heroes spend being amazingly excited about going to Canada.

In a way, it’s part of the silly charm of the book, and it’s indicative of a certain kind of adventure story that is just no longer around, or at least not from a casual observer’s perspective. The aspects of adventure that turn up in this yarn are very pragmatic things: learning to fly a floatplane, trekking through the wilderness, a run-in with a dangerous animal. All that kind of stuff that appears to have been super-exciting to the youth of another day but which has been replaced by magic and monsters in most modern children’s fiction. (He said, as if he knew anything about it.)

And in a way that’s pretty understandable — I mean, there’s a scene in this book where the brothers and The Fat One get a tour of Saskatoon. Saska-fuckin-toon, I mean, it’s not exactly Hogwart’s. But on the other hand, it’s a little sad, because young readers are never going to get to go to Hogwarts, but they could conceivably learn to fly a plane. Anyway, I dunno. Let’s get back to the story.

So where does the Viking stone come in? I’ll let Mr Hardy explain:

“A few days ago,” Mr Hardy explained, “I had a telegram from a Mr Black, who is curator of London Museum in England. Because I had been successful in solving a case in Canada a few years ago, I had been recommended to Mr Black.”

“Yes?” Joe prompted.

“This mystery,” his father went on, “concerns an invaluable Viking rune stone that was stolen recently in Edmonton, Alberta.”

“Wow!” exclaimed Joe. “That’s near the edge of the Northwest Territories.”

“Those old Scandinavian mariners really covered a lot of water in their far-flung travels,” said his father, “often ranging inland for great distances. The runic alphabet was copied from Latin and Greek letters by the Teutonic peoples about the third century.”

Thanks, Mr Hardy!

Now, it soon transpires that this stone is no ordinary stone, heck no, but in fact contains some clues that will lead its reader to, you guessed it, hidden treasure. So the brothers are off to Canada.

Obviously, this Canadian runestone recalls the Kensington runestone, a forgery from 19th-century America (although no one who talks about the Kensington runestone ever mentions that it doesn’t even claim to be Viking — it claims to be from the 14th century).

So off they go to Canada, where they run into:

• Grain elevators!
• A big bearded French-Canadian trapper in a checked shirt who says Bon tonnere! every third sentence!
• The Mounties!
• Bears!

And they find a rune stone, but:

A look of disappointment spread over the Englishman’s face.

“This stone is not authentic,” he said wearily, but with certainty. “I can tell by the sharp edges of the lines that it was not carved in the ninth century. It is a rather clever imitation.”

But never fear — this is just a duplicate crafted by the thieves to throw the Hardys off the scent. The real runestone reveals the location of a sunken Viking ship near Yellowknife, full of tray-zher.

Reaching deep into a sack, Chet pulled out a handful of glittering gold coins.

“Wow! Look at these!” he cried.

“And this statue must be worth a fortune!” Frank held up the gold figure of a Viking warrior.

“This is a historical find, as well as a valuable one,” Mr Hardy said. “It definitely links the exploration of northern Canada to the ancient Norsemen.”

Aaaaaand then the story is explained and our heroes eat a bison and we’re done.

There are a surprising number of these books that seem to have some kind of archaeological content, but it’s not so surprising when you consider their need to combine good old-fashioned adventure with some kind of “educational” content, or at least as educational as a hack writing under a house name with a public library reference book at his elbow could crank out. Chasing historical artefacts lets you graft a history lesson onto your adventure story (and not subtly, either; check out that quote up top from Mr Hardy) with minimal fuss.

I don’t know why I find the earnest corniness of this kind of story so appealing, but I do.

Archaeological themes in Star Trek (1966)

 

With apologies to Keith Chan, from whom I swiped the image.

Over the last few months, my wife and I have been watching the original Star Trek on Lovefilm (or Amazon instant video, which is now the same thing). Only the first two seasons are available, but a few things have struck me about them. One is how changing viewing habits have really altered television storytelling. Viewed back to back, it becomes very apparent how similar the episodes are to each other: a godlike humanoid alien imprisons or chastises the crew, everyone does some soul-searching about Vietnam, a planet resembles Earth — there are maybe  half a dozen core plots repeated over and over.

One plot element that occurs once in each season we’ve watched so far involves archaeologists/anthropologists/ancient historians. There are two episodes in these seasons with historians or archaeologists as major characters: the first season episode “Space Seed,” and the second season episode “Who Mourns for Adonais?”

Let’s start with “Space Seed.” This was quite an influential episode. It introduced the character of Khan (Ricardo Montalbán), who would of course go on to be the villain in the second film and elsewhere. Khan is a relic of an earlier age, a genetically-engineered super-soldier type from a violent period of Earth’s past.

Because he’s from the past, Kirk puts Khan in touch with the ship’s historian,  Lt McGivers (Madlyn Rhue). McGivers is an interesting character. Here she is, in the traditional soft lighting enjoyed by every female character in at least one closeup.

Her quarters are full of paintings of manly men through the ages.

Naturally, when she meets an actual Manly Man from History, she falls for him …

… and tries to help him overthrow Kirk and steal the ship. But it doesn’t work out. She does get a new hairdo when Khan pulls her hair out of the hairstyle in the middle photo.

So the historian is obsessed with history, and specifically with the ways in which it’s both good and bad — she admires the resolution and will of these historical figures, but at the same time the show is aware of how they’re pretty bad guys. Which is interesting, because maybe one Star Trek episode in five ends with some guff about human will and the need to struggle and battle and survive. So: the historian is sentimentally attached to the past in a way that winds up with smooches (because it’s Star Trek and she’s a woman).

Now, let’s take a look at our second example, Season 2’s “Who Mourns for Adonais?” In this one, the Enterprise arrives at a planet occupied by a muscular dude in a chiton who claims to be the Greek god Apollo. Kirk beams down to the planet with his dudes and Lt Palamas (Leslie Parrish), who is both the ship’s specialist in archaeology and anthropology and Scotty’s love interest. This is she:

Once they get down to the planet, they spend a lot of time backity-forthing with Apollo, who takes a fancy to Palamas, and she to him. And they go off and canoodle, and he agonises and stuff, and he demonstrates his godly powers by giving her a new outfit:

However, in the end Palamas is persuaded to reject Apollo, breaking his heart and stripping him of his powers or something. She tearfully returns to the Enterprise.

So, basically, both of these two episodes have more or less the same plot:

• The Enterprise discovers a muscular dude from an earlier era
• Kirk points the ship’s history specialist, an attractive woman, at him
• She falls in love with him
• He uses their love to tempt her to switch sides
• She does and is lost or doesn’t and the day is saved.

Now, I’m not too caught up with the idea that because history is a “soft” subject so these characters are female, because Star Trek will shoehorn in an attractive woman anywhere it can. I do think it’s interesting that in both cases Kirk expresses more or less the same idea: that history has to be destroyed in order for the Space Kennedy Era to happen, but that it’s sadly regrettable — Khan is brave and determined, Apollo is majestic, and it’s a terrible shame that they have to be got rid of (although Khan is more ambiguously got rid of).

I think that’s a very Star Trek – like attitude to take.