via Sapiens, 11 August 2020: An interesting story out of Papua New Guinea that expands the idea of archaeology beyond an academic (‘western’) way of thinking about the past, and showing us that different cultures have ways to think about and interpret the past too.
Of course, Western scientific and local ways of reading the past do not always agree. For example, our excavations and radiocarbon-dating program provide a different order of suburb establishment at Popo than the Oral Traditions. Some of the youngest suburbs, according to Oral Tradition, are the oldest in our radiocarbon sequence. Likewise, according to Western science, the black sand layers formed in two relatively recent events: one dating to around 650 years ago and the other just before 200 years ago.
These temporal contradictions don’t necessarily cause conflict. One night, while socializing in a house in Larihairu village, a younger community member asked me what I knew of the past. I replied that, as an archaeologist, I hoped to investigate human history using the materials people left behind. He replied, “You only know about the human story, but we know about the mythical beings and spiritual beings.”
I got the sense that Western scientific chronologies do not pose an existential threat to the mythical and spiritual pasts of Orokolo Bay. Within the Oral Traditions themselves, there are already overlapping and interwoven chronologies, each of which serves a different purpose. Popo is understood simultaneously as a migration site occupied between 16 and seven generations ago, and as a timeless origin place. Carbon dates provide another parallel chronology, which can help place the site in a broader context and enable a comparison of the history of places along PNG’s south coast. They can also be used by locals to serve their purposes, for example to argue for government protection of certain sites from mineral extraction or deforestation.
Source: Where Archaeology and Oral Tradition Coexist – SAPIENS
