There is a media story going around this week about the discovery of a new, "hidden Maya city." Here is the story in the NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/20/world/americas/maya-city-yucatan-archaeology-ocomtun.html.
This case points out the two problems I have with press releases on the discovery of new sites (or pyramids, or tombs, or hieroglyphic inscriptions). The first is the distinction between archaeology as a science of learning about past societies, and archaeology as a celebration of big, exotic finds from the past. Nearly all of the press releases on ancient cities are breathless about past finds, and say little about the scientific knowledge that has been (or has yet to be) established. The second problem is the exaggeration of the importance of finds by the media offices of universities and other organizations.
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| Tlatelolco |
I'll start with my favorite story of this exaggeration of significance. A few years ago, a reporter emailed me and wanted to know my opinion of the new pyramid excavated at the Aztec site of Tlatelolco. I was puzzled. Tlatelolco is an Aztec ceremonial zone hemmed in by the modern buildings of Mexico City. It had a pyramid even larger than the major Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan. Tlatelolco has been completely excavated! Where could they have found a new pyramid?
Excavators in the 1940s found about eight construction stages for the main double-stair pyramid at Tlatelolco (pictured above). The earliest platform, Stage 1, was below the water table, so they didn't uncover it. The earliest platform visible today is Stage 2. Everybody knew the Stage 1 platform was sitting there, underneath the excavated Stage 2 structure. The water table had gone down since the 1940s, so archaeologists decided to excavate the Stage 1 platform. The media office said they had found a new pyramid at the site! Give me a break.
Back to the science/exotic distinction for archaeology. In some of my writings, I distinguish "household archaeology" from "monumental archaeology." The former, which many of my colleagues and I pursue, uses a scientific approach to learn about ancient society and the activities and conditions of people in the past. Not just kings and elites but everyday people. We employ hypothesis testing and careful argumentation to make inferences about these things. Monumental archaeology, on the other hand, emphasizes the big buildings and elites of the past. This is the context of the NY Times article on Ocomtun, and the emphasis of the quotes by my Mayanist colleagues.
In my prize-winning 2016 book, At Home with the Aztecs (Society for American Archaeology, Best Popular Book in Archaeology, 2017 I describe how the social and monumental approaches differ in their concept of what constitutes n archaeological discovery:
“A
different kind of contrast between monumental and household archaeology
involves the timing of the moment of archaeological discovery. In the former
approach the major finds come during fieldwork: things like the opening of a
tomb or the discovery of a new hieroglyphic inscription. But when excavating
the middens of ancient peasant farmers, excitement rarely reveals itself in
the field—the houses are similar and the middens all look pretty much the same.
The important discoveries come later, in the laboratory stage of research. The
artifacts tell the stories of what people were doing and who they were.” (p.129)
https://lib.asu.edu/shelf-life/home-aztecs
For me, finding a new site is rarely exciting or notable on its own. But once the site is mapped, contexts are excavated, and artifacts are analyzed, then a new site might yield important scientific discoveries.
I am also skeptical of new research using lidar, which Mayanists like to say has "revolutionized" the field (that word is used in the NY Times article too). When the Mayanists can point to a body of rigorous scientific findings from the lidar data, then I'll pay attention. But, with the exception of a couple of studies, that is not yet the case. Lidar has given us lots of pretty maps, but very little data on demography or social organization (beyond statements that there were lots of people living in the jungle, something we have known since the 1960s). See my 2018 cranky post here:
http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2018/02/why-i-am-skeptical-about-new-maya-lidar.html
If you want to see what an explicitly scientific approach to ancient cities looks like, take a look at my new book (Cambridge University Press
To me, "science" with respect to archaeology does not mean that one uses "scientific" techniques. Rather, it is an epistemological label for research that is rigorous, quantitative, and based on testing. If you are interested, I did a series of 3 blog posts on this a few years ago:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/2971081717687612908/4751291851771210105
I also published a paper on this topic, available here:
https://www.academia.edu/31393457/_Social_Science_and_Archaeological_Inquiry_2017_NOW_PUBLISHED_
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