I feel this could have real mileage as a new Tumblr, to compete with Kim Jong Il Looking at Things, Nick Clegg Looking Sad, Ed Miliband Looking Awkward and other such hilarities: Kings in Odd Places.
First of all, we had Richard III, the wise benevolent ruler of England who was viciously deposed by Henry Tudor/ the cruel child killer who met a just end at the hands of our Tudor saviours (depending on whether or not you've been to the Richard III museum in York). Killed in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth Field, Richard's remains were found to be under a car park in Leicester, located mainly thanks to the physic powers of the crazy lady from the Richard III Society, and to a lesser extent some very hard work by the University of Leicester, not to mention Channel 4.
Not to be outdone by Channel 4, the BBC have leapt on the bandwagon. This week, they announced that archaeologists from the University of Winchester had found a pelvic bone which belongs to the ninth-century West Saxon King Alfred the Great. Or possibly his eldest son, King Edward the Elder. Or maybe his younger son Æthelweard. At this distance, the chances of finding a relative to parade for DNA proof is going to be fairly tricky, and it's very hard to distinguish between three adult men we know little about from a pelvis fragment.
All of this raises serious questions for the future of archaeology. For a long time it promised to break the grip of historians, by looking beyond the great men and women of the past and telling us how ordinary people lived. And challenging the established narratives given to them by historians by using forms of evidence which are not reliant on written sources. But these cases of 'kings in odd places' are a reversion to the form of archaeology which simply provides historians with the pictures for their books. And that's not cool.
It also makes it look so certain. *This is* Richard III, and we can tell because we have the DNA to prove it. Ok, credit where it's due, they were right. But what if they weren't? It'd be hard to claim the Richard III Society and Channel 4 have a burning interest in the Greyfriars, and the University of Leicester would have looked fairly silly for following a vanity project. The certainty with which the findings were presented was impressive; they'll also be almost impossible to replicate, as the maybe-Alfred at Hyde Abbey in Winchester demonstrate. The last thing archaeology needs is to suffer from a 'CSI effect,' where people think it can offer concrete answers and concrete results. Anyone who has done any archaeology, be it commercial, academic or amateur, will tell you this simply isn't the case.
But, the really big question is, where will this trend of 'kings in odd places' end? Reading Abbey must be looking round for any idea of what they did with the body of Henry I. Malmesbury Abbey will be looking to promote the interest in Æthelstan. Glastonbury Abbey has Anglo-Saxon monarchs Edgar and Edmund Ironside somewhere in its ruins, not to mention their claimed Arthur grave. And of course, the Princes in the Tower, Edward V and Richard, Duke of York, are buried in Westminster Abbey; even now there are petitions to get them exhumed. But why stop at kings? Surely Andrew the Apostle, whose alleged remains at St Andrews were destroyed during the Reformation, deserves a look in? And then what? Beyond being able to label the signs correctly, does it really advance anything?
But to be fair, even if this potential trend of big-name-discovery archaeology contributes sod all to archeology, or to history, it'll make for a lovely Tumblr.
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