Motel of the Mysteries
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
See full text [Archive.org. On loan]
YouTube video
Every archaeologist knows: ‘when you cannot find an explanation for an artefact, it is ritual!’. This very common (mis)understanding of archaeological materials sounds maybe like a joke: but it is not. During centuries of archaeology, the tendency to interpret many objects as used to perform rituals was indeed common and widespread. The problem is that in many cases, this (mis)interpretation if affected either by our carelessness in the analysis or by our actual ignorance of ancient customs at all, because we are dealing with a broken tradition.
This very smart comic reflects about this topic: how can an archaeologist interpret the result of a ‘broken tradition’? The book starts presenting a future world, affected by wars and cataclysms which led humanity almost to extinction. After some time, an archaeologist, Howard Carson (who clearly resembles Howard Carter: please note that all the story streams from the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb) uncovers in North America the remains of a structure (a motel) where he finds a skeleton in a sealed room. The enthusiastic archaeologist begins to collect as much information as he can and records all the data, with a careful attention to any detail, reconstructing the emplacement of each singular object. ‘Well done!’ (we could say). Troubles come later: during the interpretation of the ‘evidences’, the archaeologist interprets some objects (otherwise meaningless) as ritual artefacts, composing the treasure of the deceased (the room have been interpreted as a tomb): some plastic leaves as ‘fragments of a plant that would not die’; the ‘do not disturb’ label as ‘the sacred seal’ of the room; the television as ‘the great altar’; the Bakelite telephone as ‘the Bell system’; the ice basket as ‘the internal component enclosure’ (as an ancient Egyptian canopic jar); a credit card as a ‘small relief’; some hydraulic tools as ‘musical instruments’; the stopper of the sink as ‘the sacred pendant’; the shower cap as ‘the ceremonial burial cap’; the WC as ‘the sacred urn’; the toilet seat as ‘the sacred collar’ (and I guess it is fair to end the list here).
Despite its (voluntary and aware) comical nature, the book invites any archaeologist to reflect about some pivotal problems in archaeology: 1) how to (i.e. we) interpret ancient remains?; 2) at what extant our interpretation is verifiable (or also vilifiable)?; 3) what was/is ritual–aimed?; 4) how to approach a ‘broken tradition’; 5) how to record and understand an emplacement? (and the list could continue endless). For a much more ‘serious’ (in the scientific and positive meaning of the term) discussion on this topic, any archaeologist could benefit from reading some works of Giorgio Buccellati about ‘hermeneutic’ and ‘critic of archaeological reason’ (please, see the hyperlink on the top right of this abstract).
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