英国考古学事情（メモ） - Living, Loving, Thinking, Again

Madeleine Bunting*1 “Original thinking” http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/26/british-archaeology-social-change

英国ではかつてない考古学ブームが起こっているという。Madeleine Buntingさんによれば、19世紀にも考古学ブームは起こっており、現代と共通しているのは急激な社会変動を背景とした集団的自分探しであるという；

There was a comparable surge in interest in the subject during the middle decades of the 19th century; it was the period that antiquarianism – the collecting of quaint objects – began to develop into the academic discipline of archaeology and the pioneers were the barrow-diggers. Often clerics, these men dug their way through hundreds of barrows. In North Yorkshire, Canon William Greenwell dug 400 mounds in 50 years and ended up selling his collection to the British Museum. Alongside them sprung up the county historical societies which began the work of analysing and recording this new area of study.
What is as true today as it was in the mid-19th century is that we are living through an era of rapid social and economic change: that produces insecurity which prompts the search to answer "who are we?" and "where do we come from?". Those were the questions that Greenwell and his contemporaries puzzled over with their flints and shards of pottery. Those are the questions to which contemporary archaeologists are still piecing together answers.

また、英国考古学の現状について；

In recent decades British archaeology has relied on two resources: amateurs' time and the requirement on property developers for archaeology impact assessments. The latter has now crashed in the credit crunch. Meanwhile academic archaeology has been persuaded into focusing overseas because the requirement of the research assessment exercise (critical for all funding) is for internationally recognised research. That means Turkish or African sites will win out over the Fens or North Yorkshire moors.

日本の考古学的発掘の多くは高度成長期からバブル期にかけての土地開発の副産物だが、それは英国でも変わらないらしい。金融危機によって土地開発が停滞したせいで考古学的発掘も停滞している。

Britain's passion for the past has always been caught between its part in a global history and its own domestic origins. That dilemma was acute for the trustees of the British Museum in the 1820s when the story goes that they were faced with the choice of buying the Elgin marbles or the immensely important Colt Hoare collection of artefacts from British barrow mounds. They decided in favour of the former. It's the tension between the metropolitan and the provincial narratives of belonging and identity, and sadly it still exists.

上に引用したブロックでは現在プロの考古学者は英国国内よりも海外での発掘を指向していると書かれているが、そもそも英国の考古学には国内指向と国外指向の対立があった。そして、それは歴史についての２つの語り方と関係している。
ここでは触れられていないが、英国考古学と帝国主義との関係も忘れてはならないだろう。つまり（特に中東で）発掘の名目で（その一環として）測量や地図作成が行われ、それは当然軍事的にも有効に活用された。それに絡んで、映画『英国病人』*2をマークしておくのも無意味なことではないだろう。

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日本の考古学に関しては、再度

Clare Fawcett “Archaeology and Japanese Identity” in Donald Denoon, Mark Hudson, Gavan McCormack and Tessa Morris-Suzuki (eds.) Multicultural Japan: Palaeolithic to Postmodern*3, pp.60-77
Simon Kaner “Beyond Ethnicity and Emergence in Japanese Archaeology” in Multicultural Japan, pp.46-59

をマークしておく。Clare Fawcettさんのテクストは、戦後日本の考古学と行政や観光産業などとの関係を論じた〈考古学の社会学〉。Simon Kaner氏のテクストは、上でいうところの「集団的自分探し」としての考古学を批判するもの。例えば、

Compared with other nations facing problems over a heterogeneous present, Japan does appear remarkably homogeneous. Most of the consumers of Japanese archaeology, the Japanese people, are quite happy with the reconstructions of the past they are offered by archaeologists. Direct links are often drawn between archaeology and the image of traditional life that are actively propounded by a government ideology of furusato: stimulating feelings for one’s native place in an increasingly displaced, rootless society. These images render the discoveries of archaeology comprehensible to the public who are encouraged to view the people of the past as their ancestors: there is a direct connection between the contemporary ‘salary-man’ and his stone-age forebear. Peel off the layers of the Japanese cultural onion and the irreducible core of the Japanese spirit is revealed living in a Garden-of-Eden setting next to the primeval Tama River. (p.49)

Simon Kaner氏は考古学というのは「起源」の探求ではなく、”study of the ways in which material culture is used within particular cultural contexts”（p.51）だろうという。英国ではどうかわからないが、これは日本において考古学が歴史学に従属しているということと関係があるのか*4。