Archaeological matters

In the year 1984, an Italian rock art research team encountered a rock with prehistoric engravings at Valcamonica. Valcamonica or the Valley of Camuna lies between the provinces of Bregamo and Brescia in Northern Italy. Valcamonica is a major site of prehistoric rock art that spreads over the entire valley.

From the foothills of Capo di Ponte, a twenty minutes drive takes you to the Alpine village of Paspardo, an area with a major concentration of rock art. I spent two weeks here with the Valcamonica Rock art and Archaeology Fieldschool. Paspardo is a delightful little village fringed by tall chestnut woods. The high peaks of Alps mark her horizon in graduating shades of gray. But let us leave Paspardo behind for the moment.

The research team recorded the rock with the usual academic rigour. By now research on the petroglyphs of Valcamonica was already underway for many decades. But each new exploration would bring to light a new rock, a new set of drawings. Our fieldwork co- ordinator Angelo told us of an early researcher. He discovered a group of obscure faded drawings on the ground. To his great disappointment, a few years further the road major rock engravings were discovered almost at the same spot. The poor man had his eyes glued on to the ground that he failed to lift his head and have a look around!

To get back to the story, a few years after the research team published its findings the sealed doors of a museum room was opened. The room was full of records and documents by an archaeologist by the name Giovanni Marro. And among them was the documentation of the same rock done by Marro years ago.

Marro, one of the early scholars of rock art from the region was also a political supporter of fascism. For Marro the Valcamonica engravings were a testimony to the strong Italian race. Another researcher who was working on the Valcamonica rock art at the same time as Marro was Raffelo Battaglia. Battaglia was strongly opposed to the latter’s ideas. In an exhibition on the theme, two scholars arranged separate presentations. Battaglia managed put up a modest collection of pictures. Backed by the fascist regime Marro’s section was a pompous affair with plaster casts and photographs and his own name in grand letters on the back drop.

With the end of the war Marro’s world turned around. No longer could he proclaim his loyalties out loud. So he folded his banner and called off the show. Marro hid all the documents that could betray his loyalties in the obscure museum room. Archaeology is always a political affair- a legitimisation kit. Presented as matter of fact narratives that fail to betray the farce beneath. And like a magic wand it builds castles out of thin air- like the temple in Ayodhya , dug out solid and intact out of a pile of sand.
(Thanks to Angelo who told the story)

Afterword

Oh great God of convoluted logic, I marvel at thy ways
How like a snake you coil and twist
How you slither out of sight.
And oh! How to some men thy forms are revealed
While blind mortals like us we trip and fall

For me, the last one year was a challenge to normal academic sensibility. Strange revelations were to be encountered time and again. I heard a heritage manager say that that the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha hurt him more than the rapes and killings in Iraq by the US army. I saw a bunch of archaeologists from around the world nod there heads enthusiastically at his comment. The spokesperson of an oil giant explained how heritage and oil can together facilitate displacement and foister ‘progress’. Academic engagements in the fields of archaeology and heritage are mere appendages to corporate policy making. At the tail end of the series came the strangest revelation of all. I was told that despite all this there exists a great dividing line between politics and academics. This line is as strong as national borders and as clear as white beam of light across a new moon night. Its awareness is not restricted to Mação or to Portugal but shared among the whole of the European academia.