Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Essential Excavation Experts: Alienation and Agency in the History of Archaeological Labor

  • Research
  • Published:
Archaeologies Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Nineteenth-century archaeologists working in the Middle East managed local labor in ways that reflect capitalist labor management models. These archaeologists’ memoirs reveal both the similarities in how they managed their projects and the differences in how locally hired laborers responded. Focusing on such differences illustrates the agency that local workforces have historically exerted over the archaeological process, even under alienating working conditions. I argue that while there is some emerging recognition of contributions that local communities have made to archaeology, taking a Marxist and historical view reveals how much archaeological knowledge production has fundamentally relied upon site workers’ active choices.

Résumé

Les archéologues du 19e siècle qui travaillaient au Moyen-Orient géraient la main-d’œuvre locale selon les modèles capitalistes de l’époque. Les mémoires de ces derniers révèlent à la fois des similitudes dans leur façon de gérer leurs projets et des différences quant aux comportements des travailleurs embauchés sur place. Ces différences illustrent la capacité d’agir ou l’agentivité historique des mains-d’œuvre locales sur le processus archéologique, et ce, même si ces dernières étaient soumises à des conditions de travail aliénantes. J’avance que même si l’on commence à reconnaître les contributions des communautés locales sur l’archéologie, l’adoption de points de vue marxiste et historique révèle à quel point la production des connaissances archéologiques a fondamentalement dépendu des choix actifs des travailleurs sur place.

Resumen

Los arqueólogos que trabajaban en el Medio Oriente en el siglo 19 manejaban los asuntos laborales locales en formas que reflejan los modelos de gestión capitalista de trabajo. Las memorias de estos arqueólogos revelan tanto las similitudes en la forma en que gestionaban sus proyectos y las diferencias en la forma en que respondían los trabajadores contratados localmente. Al abordar tales diferencias, se ilustra la agencia que los trabajadores locales han ejercido históricamente sobre el proceso arqueológico, incluso bajo condiciones de trabajo alienante. Yo sostengo que, si bien ha surgido algún reconocimiento de las contribuciones de las comunidades locales a la arqueología, un punto de vista marxista e histórico revela el grado en que la producción del conocimiento arqueológico ha dependido fundamentalmente de las elecciones activas de los trabajadores de sitio.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Figure 1

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Abu El Haj, N. 2001. Facts on the ground: Archaeological practice and territorial self-fashioning in Israeli society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Albright, W. F. 1954. The archaeology of Palestine (3rd ed.). Melbourne: Penguin Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Appiah, K. A. 2006. Whose culture is it? The New York Review of Books, 53(2), 38.

    Google Scholar 

  • Atalay, S., Clauss, L. R., McGuire, R. H., & Welch, J. R. (Eds.). 2010. Transforming archaeology: Activist prospects and practices. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bahrani, Z. 1998. Conjuring Mesopotamia: Imaginative geography and a world past. In L. Meskell (Ed.), Archaeology under fire: Nationalism, politics and heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East (pp. 159–174). London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Banaji, J. 2007. Islam, the Mediterranean, and the rise of capitalism. Historical Materialism, 15(1), 47–74.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baram, U. 2011. Community organizing in public archaeology: Coalitions for the preservation of a hidden history in Florida. Present Pasts, 3, 12–18.

    Google Scholar 

  • Belzoni, G. B. 2001. Narrative of the operations and recent discoveries within the pyramids, temples, tombs, and excavations, in Egypt and Nubia (A. Silotti, Ed., R. Pierce, Trans.). London: British Museum Press.

  • Berggren, Å., & Hodder, I. 2003. Social practice, method, and some problems of field archaeology. American Antiquity, 68(3), 421–434.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bernbeck, R., & Pollock, S. 2004. The political economy of archaeological practice and the production of heritage in the Middle East. In L. Meskell & R. W. Preucel (Eds.), A companion to social archaeology (pp. 335–352). Malden: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Braverman, H. 1974. Labor and monopoly capital. New York: Monthly Review.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Brodie, N., & Luke, C. 2006. Conclusion: The social and cultural contexts of looting. In N. Brodie, M. M. Kersel, C. Luke, & K. W. Tubb (Eds.), Archaeology, cultural heritage, and the antiquities trade (pp. 303–319). Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Brugsch, E., & Maspero, G. 1881. La Trouvaille De Deir-El-Bahari. Cairo: Imprimerie F. Mourès.

    Google Scholar 

  • Byrne, D. 1991. Western hegemony in archaeological heritage management. History and Anthropology, 5(2), 269–276.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ceram, C. W. 1968. Gods, graves, and scholars: The story of archaeology (2nd ed.). New York: Knopf.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coates, D. 2000. Models of capitalism: Growth and stagnation in the modern era. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Colla, E. 2007. Conflicted antiquities: Egyptology, Egyptomania, Egyptian modernity. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Dawdy, S. L. 2009. Millennial archaeology: Locating the discipline in an age of insecurity. Archaeological Dialogues, 16(2), 131–142.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dawson, W. R. 1995. Who was who in Egyptology (3rd ed.). London: Egypt Exploration Society.

    Google Scholar 

  • Doyon, W. 2014. On archaeological labor in Modern Egypt. In W. Carruthers (Ed.), Histories of Egyptology: Interdisciplinary measures (pp. 141–156). New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Drucker, P. 1954. The practice of management. New York: Harper.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dyson, S. L. 2006. In pursuit of ancient pasts: A history of classical archaeology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Everill, P. 2009. The invisible diggers: A study of British commercial archaeology. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fagan, B. 2004. The rape of the Nile: Tomb robbers, tourists, and archaeologists in Egypt, revised and updated (3rd ed.). New York: Charles Scribner’s.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foner, E. 2002. Who owns history? Rethinking the past in a changing world. New York: Hill and Wang.

    Google Scholar 

  • Friedkin, W. 1973. The Exorcist, produced by William Peter Blatty. Warner Bros: Motion Picture.

    Google Scholar 

  • Friedmann, G. 1964. Industrial society: The emergence of human problems of automation. Glencoe: Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fulcher, J. 1995. British capitalism in the 1980s: Old times or new times? The British Journal of Sociology, 46(2), 325–338.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • García, M. D.-A. 2007. A world history of nineteenth-century archaeology: Nationalism, colonialism, and the past. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gillot, L. 2010. Towards a socio-political history of archaeology in the Middle East: The development of archaeological practice and its impacts on local communities in Syria. Bulletin of the History of Archaeology, 20(1), 4–17.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goode, J. F. 2007. Negotiating for the past: Archaeology, nationalism, and diplomacy in the Middle East, 1919–1941. Austin: University of Texas Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gramsch, A., & Sommer, U. (Eds.). 2011. A history of central European archaeology: Theory, methods, and politics., Archaeolingua series minor 30 Budapest: Archaeolingua.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hall, P. A., & Soskice, D. (Eds.). 2001. Varieties of capitalism: The institutional foundations of comparative advantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hamilakis, Y. 2007. The nation and its ruins: Antiquity, archaeology, and national imagination in Greece. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hamilakis, Y. 2015. Archaeology and the logic of capital: Pulling the emergency break. International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 19(4), 721–735.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hamilakis, Y., & Duke, P. (Eds.). 2007. Archaeology and capitalism: From ethics to politics. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holtorf, C. 2007. Archaeology is a brand!: The meaning of archaeology in contemporary popular culture. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hume, I. N. 2011. Belzoni: The giant archaeologists love to hate. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • James, P., & Gills, B. (Eds.). 2006. Globalization and economy (Vol. 1). London: SAGE Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kehoe, A. B. 1998. The land of prehistory: A critical history of American archaeology. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kersel, M. M., Luke, C., & Roosevelt, C. H. 2008. Valuing the past: Perceptions of archaeological practice in Lydia and the Levant. Journal of Social Archaeology, 8(3), 298–319.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Killebrew, A. 2010. Who owns the past? The role of nationalism, politics, and profit in presenting Israel’s archaeological sites to the public. In R. Boytner, L. S. Dodd, & B. J. Parker (Eds.), Controlling the past, owning the future: The political uses of archaeology in the Middle East (pp. 123–141). Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kletter, R. 2006. Just past? The making of Israeli archaeology. London: Equinox.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuklick, B. 1996. Puritans in Babylon: The ancient near East and American intellectual life, 1880–1930. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lance, H. D. 1981. The old testament and the archaeologist. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Larsen, M. T. 1996. The conquest of Assyria: Excavations in an antique land 1840–1869. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Layard, A. H. 1849. Nineveh and its remains. London: John Murray.

    Google Scholar 

  • Levy, T. E., Michèle Daviau, P. M., Younker, R. W., & Shaer, M. 2007. Crossing Jordan: North American Contributions to the archaeology of Jordan. London: Equinox.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lipietz, A. 1982. Towards global fordism? New Left Review, 132, 33–48.

    Google Scholar 

  • Littler, C. R. 1978. Understanding taylorism. British Journal of Sociology, 29(2), 185–202.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lloyd, S. 1963. Mounds of the near east. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lucas, G. 2001. Critical approaches to fieldwork: Contemporary and historical archaeological practice. London: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Maier, C. S. 1970. Between Taylorism and technocracy: European ideologies and the vision of industrial productivity in the 1920s. Journal of Contemporary History, 5(2), 27–61.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Maisels, C. K. 1993. The near east: Archaeology in the ‘cradle of civilization’. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Majd, M. G. 2003. The great American plunder of Persia’s antiquities 1925–1941. Lanham: University Press of America.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marx, K. 1887. Capital: A critique of political economy (Vol. 1, S. Moore & E. Aveling, Trans.). Moscow: Progress Publishers.

  • Marx, K. 2012 [1844]. Economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844. Mineola: Courier Dover Publications.

  • Meryon, C. L. 1846. Travels of Lady Hester Stanhope, forming the completion of her memoirs, narrated by her physician. London: Henry Colburn.

    Google Scholar 

  • Paynter, R. 1983. Field or factory?: Concerning the degradation of archaeological labor. In J. M. Gero, D. M. Lacy, & M. L. Blakey (Eds.), The socio-politics of archaeology (pp. 31–50). Amherst: University of Massachusetts.

    Google Scholar 

  • Petrie, W. M. F. 1904. Methods and aims in archaeology. London: Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pollock, S. 1999. Ancient Mesopotamia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pollock, S. 2010. Decolonizing archaeology: Political economy and archaeological practice in the Middle East. In R. Boytner, L. S. Dodd, & B. J. Parker (Eds.), Controlling the past, owning the future: The political uses of archaeology in the Middle East (pp. 196–216). Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Quirke, S. 2010. Hidden hands: Egyptian workforces in petrie excavation archives 1880–1924. London: Duckworth.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rassam, H. 1897. Asshur and the land of Nimrod. Cincinnati: Curts & Jennings.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reid, D. M. 1985. Indigenous egyptology: The decolonization of a profession? Journal of the American Oriental Society, 105(2), 233–246.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reid, D. M. 2002. Whose pharaohs?: Archaeology, museums, and Egyptian national identity from Napoleon to World War I. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reisner, G. A., Fisher, C. S., & Lyon, D. G. 1924. Harvard excavations at Samaria. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sabel, C. F. 1982. Work and politics: The division of labour in industry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Schlanger, N., & Nordbladh, J. 2008. Archives, ancestors, practices: Archaeology in the light of its history. New York: Berghahn Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shanks, M., & McGuire, R. H. 1996. The craft of archaeology. American Antiquity, 61(1), 75–88.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Silberman, N. A. 1982. Digging for God and country: Exploration, archeology, and the secret struggle for the holy land, 1799–1917. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

    Google Scholar 

  • Silberman, N. A. 1989. Between past and present: Archaeology, ideology, and nationalism in the modern Middle East. New York: Henry Holt and Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Silberman, N. A. 1995. Promised lands and chosen peoples: The politics and poetics of archaeological narrative. In P. Kohl & C. Fawcett (Eds.), Nationalism, politics, and the practice of archaeology (pp. 249–262). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Steele, C. 2005. Who has not eaten cherries with the devil? Archaeology under challenge. In R. Bernbeck & S. Pollock (Eds.), Archaeologies of the Middle East: Critical perspectives (pp. 45–65). Malden: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stiebing, W. H., Jr. 1994. Uncovering the past: A history of archaeology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tolliday, S., & Zeitlin, J. 2003. Between Fordism and flexibility: The automobile industry and its workers—Past, present, and future. In J. C. Wood & M. Wood (Eds.), Henry Ford: Critical evaluations in business and management (pp. 226–251). London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Trigger, B. 2007. A history of archaeological thought (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wylie, A. 2002. Thinking from things: Essays in the philosophy of archaeology. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Ian Hodder, Barb Voss, Benjamin Porter, and Michael Shanks for their questions and thoughts on the topic of archaeological labor as I developed the ideas in this text. Their advice and feedback has pushed my own thinking about the matter much further, and I hope that they can see evidence of their contributions here. I am also grateful for the feedback and advice from the two anonymous reviewers for this piece. Any flaws or gaps, of course, remain my own.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Lehigh University, 31 Williams Drive, Bethlehem, PA, 18015, USA

    Allison Mickel

Authors
  1. Allison Mickel
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Allison Mickel.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The author declares she has no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Mickel, A. Essential Excavation Experts: Alienation and Agency in the History of Archaeological Labor. Arch 15, 181–205 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11759-019-09356-9

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11759-019-09356-9

Key Words

Search

Navigation