On Academic Perils

I was so taken with writing last week’s entry on the physical perils of conducting Cold War archaeology that I decided to expand the discussion to consider some of the academic perils of the field.

While the academic risks of engaging in Cold War archaeology are obviously less than the physical perils, they are nonetheless worth contemplating. The first academic peril that comes to mind I will call the risk of not being taken seriously. Every field of art and science has faced this risk sometime in its existence. Charting new territory requires leaving the familiar path and stepping into the unknown. What one expects to find there, or more importantly, what founders might tell others they expect to find there, could be unbelievable enough for them to not take you seriously. Some fields, like quantum physics have struggled for decades to be taken seriously. Perhaps due to the fact that quantum mechanics frequently attempted to articulate physical conditions where classical physics theory had previously failed and where, lacking many yet-to-be-developed instruments, the first quantum physics theories could not be easily tested experimentally. As such, many of the early theoretical discussions were probably more akin to discussions of philosophy and metaphysics than science. Throughout these early and middle decades of the twentieth century, it required strong believers to sustain the intellectual momentum and scientific culture necessary to grow the quantum physics discipline to the point where it would be taken seriously.

Archaeology as a scientific endeavor is a relatively late chapter in the field’s history. Practitioners have worked for almost two centuries to be taken seriously, transcending early enduring representations of the archaeologist as tomb robber to nurture more suitable images of the archaeologist as scientist or historian. This pursuit of legitimacy is perhaps one reason why archaeologists often respond so critically and passionately to the whip-cracking, gun-toting tomb-raiding images of Indiana Jones. They seem to believe, and perhaps correctly, that outsiders may not recognize that what Indiana Jones (a fictional, historical character) does is rarely like the archaeology they know, love and practice.

A failure of the field to achieve legitimacy has some rather dire consequences. Legitimacy is closely tied to the ability to attract funding, to the ability to publish, and the state of being widely known and respected. These three challenges are, in fact, the three principal academic perils of Cold War archaeology I intend to address.

The ability to find funding for research is a core concern of every academician. In recent decades, the ability to fund archaeological research has become more difficult as the physical and biological sciences, as well as business schools, have increasingly monopolized the already tight academic research funding resources. As a result, funding for social science and humanities research has declined over the years, making Cold War archaeology’s entry into an already competitive funding arena less than welcome. Without funding, the field will find it difficult to advance itself as others have in the past, especially as travel and other costs continue to rise in the face of global economic and energy challenges. It may be that the Cold War archaeologist will have to locate and tap alternative and unconventional funding resources.

Assuming funding does not present any insurmountable challenges for a Cold War archaeologist, the perils of publishing still lie ahead. Without the ability to publish, any field runs the risk perishing, or at least not developing a following. The task of finding journals in which to publish and then convincing them to allocate valued space to an emerging field might be difficult. Currently, there are several notable journals that publish archaeological research, including the American Journal of Archaeology, Oxford Journal of Archaeology, European Journal of Archaeology, Antiquity, International Journal of Historical Archaeology and Journal of Archaeological Research. The fledgling Journal of Conflict Archaeology also looks quite promising.

The American Journal of Archaeology and Oxford Journal of Archaeology are journals aimed at classical archaeology and are unlikely to publish Cold War archaeology research. On the other hand, the European Journal of Archaeology and Antiquity, as well as the Journal of Archaeological Research, International Journal of Historical Archaeology and the Journal of Conflict Archaeology all seem to have some potential. In any case, the Cold War archaeology papers that are submitted will need to be exceptional if they hope to compete with a range of excellent papers from other areas of archaeology; papers that are constantly being submitted and more often than not, being rejected behind others more promising.

If Cold War archaeologists are able to conquer the challenges of legitimacy, funding, and publishing, they must still succeed in attracting a strong and consistent following. This is not post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Attracting a following will require researchers to produce research and papers that will cause people to care deeply about the field and its practitioners. It also requires finding ways to draw positive attention to the field and its unconventional aim of uncovering humankind’s recent past. This means not only drawing attention to the work of the field’s practitioners, explaining what do and how they do it, but ultimately why what they find is, or should be, important to them.