“A Children’s Hermeneutics,”
Backdirt, December, pp. 32-37.
The paper offered by G. Buccellati as a tribute to the founder of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA focuses on a hermeneutical approach on the topic of children living in areas interested by archaeological activities and nowadays affected by war situation (namely, Urkesh).
A everybody probably knows, this site has been interested by a difficult moment from the seven last years: nevertheless, many efforts have been undertaken by the archaeological mission at Tell-Mozan, trying to involve children in a new program linking a local school with an Italian one (throughout Skype and emails), reflecting about the meaning of ‘archaeology’.
The last part of the paper reflects on the meaning of the words ‘heritage’ and ‘identity’: what is the heritage of a Hurrian city, as Urkesh, on the children? “What do they really inherit?”; this heritage represents of course a broken tradition, like a “steppe of time” (p. 35).
Urkesh is here presented as a case study for inclusion of local population into a ‘broken’ (because of war) archaeological excavation on the field.
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