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Posted at Oct 12/2011 09:56PM:
Sean Yancey: Thematically, the week's readings seem to go beyond just the idea of the archive and on to to way the present and past are inextricably linked together. Indeed, memory not only forms our integral identities both individually and communally, but also influences the very essence of how reality is presented to us (all at once seeming to ignore the boundaries that we ourselves often place between past and present). So here are a set of questions presented in a somewhat organized manner (related questions put together) that I found myself asking as I finished the readings:

+  How does memory spatialize and alter the perception of time?  +  Nabonidus manages to link past rulers across three thousand years, what does this say about the flattening effect of memory? (does 300 or 3000 years make any difference?)  +  How does material reality bend to the image formed by the community?  +  How does the present need the past?  +  How does the concept of linear time influence our perception of reality?

+  How does memory manifest itself in human nature?

+  What is Wikipedia?  +  Do archives help an organization address current needs or in fact hold them back?

“But what experience and history teach is this – that people and governments never havelearned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.”  +  Is Hegel correct, is each event in the course of history so different so that nothing may be learned?

+  How did Mesopotamian rulers create, restore, or destroy identity?  +  Why is it important to recognize one’s cultural memories and what role does observation of the past from a specific vantage point play?

Emily McCartan: The Babylonian archaeologists of antiquity were able to pursue a selective reading of history that served their own ends (political power, reinforcing of social identity in the face of upheaval) in part because they had very few records to go on. The excavation and restoration of the temple to Samas at Ebbabar (described in Jonker) hinged multiple times on serendipitous discoveries of parts of a cult that had been almost totally lost, enabling Nabu-aplu-idinna and Nabonidus to reinvent the religion and its history for their own purposes. This ability to recreate and reshape collective memory based on encounters with isolated (and somewhat decontexualized) objects from the past, however, is challenged by the modern idea of a comprehensive and accessible archive. Brothman takes this to its extreme by suggesting an "autopoeietic" (self-creating) digital archive that could not only record all documents of an organization, but could independently recall items relevant to a particular issue without human agents needing to seek them out.

What role do the forgetting and rediscovery of artifacts or traditions play in collective memory?

How would having an omnipresent archive that can intervene autonomously in the construction of memory (reducing the possibility of organic forgetting or rediscovery) change peoples' definitions of their own history?

Should societies be able to creatively reinterpret their pasts? What are the risks of doing so (political exploitation, etc.) and what might be the drawbacks of not doing so?

Posted at Oct 12/2011 10:25PM:
Sade:

Although as Winter points out, archaeology is not simply a phenomenon of the modern area, how does her article highlight the differences between modern and ancient archaeologists? The Babylonians treated archaeological excavation as a quasi-ritualistic kingly rite- is there a similar ceremonialism to archaeological work today?

As Winter points out in her quotation of Nabonidus, the act of his excavation served a desire to uncover a kind of national foundation- physical and symbolic- of Babylon. The aim was to uncover the “pious foundation document”. Essentially, his search in the earth was a search for a true Babylonian identity. What are the aims behind archaeology today?

Beaulieu’s emphasis on the issue of the Babylonians conception (or lack thereof) of some kind of linear temporality led me to think about the way in which conceptions of time affect the way in which we visualize and comprehend our physical environment and material landscape. Beaulieu’s article got me thinking: how do ways of envisioning time and temporality influence our understanding of material culture and its preservation, excavation and recovery?

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Posted at Oct 12/2011 11:57PM:

Jordan:

Brothman makes an argument against the permanence of
archival information by citing the Ptolemaic view of the Universe and
juxtaposing it to modern astronomical knowledge. I believe that despite a lack
of not being a representation of fact, Ptolemey’s view is still permanent.
While it does not provide scientific fact, it still provides valuable insight
into human thought and knowledge. Ptolemy’s proposed scientific theory
demonstrates the thought patterns of his time. In addition the dogmatic hold on
Ptolemy’s theory, which people still possessed centuries later, helps to tell
us about human nature and thought. It gives an example of the necessity to
question everything, even if it would be self ostracizing to do so. I feel that
all documents have a degree of permanence despite any new knowledge which
humanity acquires. Does archival knowledge naturally have permanence? Does
losing a piece of knowledge influence this permanence and if not, how does that
knowledge remain intact?

Jonker’s details that the “present needs images of the past
in order to perceive itself”. While on an individual level this seems quite
reasonable, does it extend to social groups? Is the past a necessity in
perceiving the present? Notably some civilizations have been far removed from
their past, Does this negatively impact the civilization’s self perception?