What is a Narrative Archaeologist?
Statue of Laocoon and His Sons from Greek Mythology, Crawford Art Gallery in Cork, Ireland
Perhaps it started with a spark, an idea, a gesture, a growing flame in which people gathered around to keep warm and keep company. Stories were shared as the fire grew larger and lasted longer.
Paintings in the caves of France, petroglyphs on the shores of Maine, echoes of tales that turned into statues, friezes, drawings on vases, and written text in our homes and classrooms.
For over a year now, I have called myself a Narrative Archaeologist, and with good reason, I have been asked what that means.
I can't remember the first time I fell in love with telling stories. From a young age, I spun tales of frolicking unicorns and talking dogs. I can, however, remember when I first fell in love with archaeology.
It was a game. A story. A legend sprinkled and spun into Age of Empires: Age of Mythology. It was my introduction to Greek mythology. It was my epiphany on the power of narrative.
When I pursued archaeology in college, the most important thing I learned was the need for context. Every piece of history is enhanced and explained by its surroundings. For example, a dagger discovered on a temple’s pedestal would be more likely to be used for ritual purposes than a dagger found in someone's kitchen. The presence of the dagger builds the story of how rituals may have been performed in the temple or how meals may have been prepared in the kitchen. When artifacts are removed for preservation or display, they lose the context—we no longer know if this dagger came from a temple or a kitchen unless it was documented.
Prior to the 1900s, archaeology was often equated with antiquarianism: the stealing of artifacts for one's own profit or interest. This has caused many problems, one of which being a plethora of artifacts on display with only speculation about their purpose. Some remains, like the 2,000 year old bog bodies in Ireland, are discovered without context, as many were found accidentally by civilians working in the peat bogs. Other sites, like Indigenous burial mounds in North America, were stripped without concern for context, and Indigenous communities are still piecing together their history based on what clues they can gather from oral traditions and more recent excavation efforts. Museum exhibits filled with context-poor findings are guided by speculative storytelling—our best or most lucrative descriptions of what those findings mean.
By contrast, Greek mythology is well-known. We know the context of these gods by their presence in the friezes that adorn Greek temples and their names in famous texts like Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey. Threads of these stories can be seen throughout time as they shape other mythologies and present day religions, are reimagined as children's movies like Disney's Atlantis or Hercules, build the foundation for the world in Age of Empires: Age of Mythology, and produce new twists on old characters such as those seen in the graphic novel The Wicked + The Divine and Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles. We keep writing these stories, sharing these stories, consuming these stories globally for the last 2,000 years because the source material is rich with context.
Context in both archaeology and writing is essential to storytelling. When I say I am a Narrative Archaeologist, I mean that I understand that each context clue matters to developing a rich and believable story. In my most recent portfolio pieces, the reader meets Ines. Ines is an archaeologist at a dig site. There are clues in her tent at the dig site that build on her motivation for being an archaeologist in a very dangerous valley. This motivation comes through in her characterization when the reader speaks to her through this interactive dialogue. Threatening her motivation has consequences that can prevent the reader from potentially learning more information and may cause someone to lose their life. The physical clues, the character’s innate motivation, and the dialogue choices all come together to form a context-rich, multidimensional story. Otherwise, the tent would only be for sleeping, Ines would be forgettable, and there would be no stakes to the story.
Stories are not just part of the human experience. They are the human experience. Archaeology provides context clues to these stories. A dagger on its own could mean anything or it could mean nothing, but a dagger on a temple’s pedestal tells a story that invites insight on human faith, practice, and culture. Even in fiction writing, context builds on the human experience, creating opportunities for people to connect with the story. And, of course, when people connect with a story, they retell it.
They retell it for 2,000 years.