This clearly has nothing to do with linguistic anthropology, or any of the terms in Duranti’s book. It does, however, combine a lot of things I love and I think it’s interesting, and it’s my blog, so my rules!
Just before I left home to return to Toronto for school after the Christmas break, I was searching for my tack cleaning supplies in the basement, when in my random sampling of boxes of stuff, I came across a bunch of my old riding gear. Tiny helmets and pint sized breeches, my first pair of leather field boots with the calfs taken in to accomodate my scrawny 12 year old awkwardness, an assortment of neon polo wraps and whips with hand-shaped poppers on the end I’d won at schooling shows; all stuff my mom had failed to get rid of at the latest garage sale. As soon as I opened the box, I abandoned my quest for Lexol leather cleaner, sat down on the unfinished concrete floor and pulled everything out.
Poring over it for about half an hour, I thought to myself- what would someone else think if they came across this stuff. To me, it brought back memories of my childhood, of spending hours at the piano perfecting my scales so that I could earn the opportunity to compete in the horse show that weekend with a flawless lesson; of long nights at the barn braiding horses and cleaning tack, of pulling each others boots off in the trailer tack room when we all forgot our boot jacks at the barn. To my mom, they might represent the years we fought over whether or not I’d get to ride, or the hours spent driving me out to the barn, or aimlessly in the country in search of horses.
Everyone has their boxes of “past” in their basements, or up on a shelf in the closet collecting dust. What will these things mean to the people who dig them up in the future, as part of the archaeological record. Will my tiny helmet end up in a museum somewhere as an artifact from 21st century youth past times? Probably not, but realistically everything we look at in museums today were at one time or another part of someone’s everyday life. What are the untold stories we’re missing out on that go hand in hand with those artifacts, but can’t be teased out of the material culture?
As a kid, I always wanted to live somewhere that had an attic, that I could open and discover the mementos of someone else’s life. Obviously, growing up in a house that my family had built, that wasn’t about to happen, but how cool would it be to open the chest of someone who lived long before you; a la “Are you afraid of the dark”, or movies where the characters get taken back in time, or connect with the ghost of someone who used to live in their house? Somehow those lost souls get their stories out there; stories that their chests of tokens don’t tell by themselves- I wish we could do the same!
I think this might be the most beautiful thing that I’ve read of yours to date.
Also, first comment! Ever! Yessss.
I really want to go through all my childhood stuff and sort through it sometime. I think when I graduate I will make an extra hard effort to do it. Also so when I move I can have a box of me that I get to keep and bring with me whereever I move.
P.S. When you were describing your mini boots and helmet, I got an image of little Renee getting ready to ride. It was adorable
When I had just finished high school I spent that summer helping my Aunt clean out my grandfathers basement. He had gone to live in the veterans wing of Sunnybrook hospital and my Aunt had finally come to terms with the fact that ooh-aah was just not coming back home to live with her and my uncle again in the house they had shared all through her childhood and into her adulthood.
Everything in the basement belonged to my grandfather, and as my Aunt and I went through everything, sorting out that which would be thrown out, recycled, donated to charity or kept as momentos I learned a great deal about the man my sisters and I affectionately called “ooh-aah”.
I learned about his ability to take apart absolutely anything and everything he could get his hands on, and his equally remarkable ability to put it back together again in working order. I learned about his passion for art as I looked through sketchbooks of still life and nature scenes he had created and then squirreled away in the basement. I learned about his love of fishing, and of his regrets and new found value of life when we found a taxidermied (sp?) rainbow trout which he had mounted for display. My aunt told me how whenever he had showed her that fish he had recounted how foolish he had been to take something so beautiful and make it so ugly.
I learned more about my grandfather, and his life and dreams in that summer than I had in my previous 17 years of life, and sadly more than I would learn in the next 3 years before he died.
Regardless of the stories that the boxes of momentos and knick knacks will tell the archaeologists of the future, the truly important fact to consider is what stories they tell us, and our children, and our grandchildren. In the end, the story of who we are, and what we yearned for in life is only important to ourselves and the ones we love. Who knows, perhaps in fifty years or so your granddaughter will be writing a blog or a story about cleaning out your basement Renee, and how your mini helmet and boots brought to life the memories of her beloved grandmother and her zeal for horses. I think the story that will tell your fictitious granddaughter is much more fullfilling, rewarding and in the end worth while than the imaginative postulations of an archaeologist a thousand years from now.
While it would be remarkable to bring to life the artifacts of the past, in the end I think it would be invasive and disrespectful to intrude on the memories those items might have given their previous owners. To us as archaeologists it would provide an insight into the everyday life of the average person of the past. To the long departed though, those memories are much more than an academic contribution to ourselves, they represent their lives, and the legacy which they left their loved ones. Im not sure I’d want to intrude on that.
Chris
“In the end, the story of who we are, and what we yearned for in life is only important to ourselves and the ones we love.”
I think I have to explain that a bit more clearly. I think it is rather foolish to contemplate what others will think of us a thousand years from now. It is the stories we tell our children and our grandchildren which will form how we are remembered once we are dead and gone.
To an archaeologist we are data about an unknown or poorly known period of time. To those we love we are a living person to remember and cherish.
Bah, and the rambling begins. So much between the ears up here taht never makes it out coherently.
Chris