Putting Sword Technology into Context (Part 2)

In a previous post, I discussed two sword types and the technology that made them possible. This week I go further East. I initially intended to cover two swords in this post. However, I have become too excited and written too much. Therefore, there will be a Part 3 covering Javanese Kris! Please keep in mind these are cursory posts, meant to whet your appetite. For even more information, refer to the sources below. Many of these are available online. Now, onto the post:

The term damascene mentioned in the last post will crop up in this one, as part of a conversation on slanted history. The way that Damascus steel was worked in the Islamic empires created a certain aesthetic: the steel, while perfectly sharp and strong, appeared rippled and veined.

Damascening is inlaying metals, sometimes with other metals. When 'damascene' was used to describe swords, it referred to a rippled appearance in the finished metal. Armor, decorative and mundane objects were also damascened as an aesthetically pleasing practice. I have encountered the term when working with books first printed before 1970 about swords from all over the world.

Chosyu clan Samurai, Felice Beato, 1860s.
Image in the Public Domain.

Rippled Blades from the Far East

Westerners love Eastern stuff. This statement has a lot of history, dating back centuries, arguably millenia. It is something I plan on exploring more in this blog. For now, however, I want to present the idea that Westerners love Eastern stuff within a certain time frame.

Orientalism is a term used for the collection of associations we as Westerners have for what the West terms the "MidEast" (generally in Europe). It can also include the generalizations Americans apply to the Far East. Orientalism is a complex and controversial set of ideas, but it is important to these conversations because the language used when describing instances of Orientalism apply to many of the cultures we in the West view as different from our own.

Kabuki actors in Samurai costume,
 Baron Raimund von Stillfried ca. 1880.
Image in the Public Domain.

I am only going to touch on one major idea of Orientalism in this post, but I encourage you to explore the idea on your own either by clicking the link above, or checking out one of the books listed in the sources below. Orientalism is generally marked by a sense of nostalgia for a particular time period of a different culture's history. For instance, the idea we get for a member of the Samurai class is stuck in a single era, with no room for deviation.

The term 'Samurai' leaves us with the image presented by directors like Akira Kurosawa in films that were inspired by American Spaghetti Westerns. Perhaps more famous than Samurai themselves are their curving blade: the katana.

Form and Function

Katana are truly amazing swords that did not appear suddenly, and were not as unique to sword technology as one might think. Instead these swords were the result of hundreds of years of adjustment and evolution. There were blades in Japan before this tradition, and manufacture of swords in Japan continue today. However, not without controversy, I will say that this particular blade's dynastic heritage is tied to the timeline presented below.

Japanese sword history begins with the Jokoto period, an indeterminate time period ending around 900 AD, and probably beginning in the 700s. Much of the culture of the dominate group in Japan was imported from the Asian mainland, including sword technology. Unlike the later native blades, these early examples were flat and designed for stabbing. The Japanese added their famous cutting edge and the earliest known Japanese-forged sword was born, the katakiri-zukiri.

The reason for this cutting edge overlapped with the reasoning behind the gradually introduced curve of the Japanese blade. Mounted warfare was on the rise, making stabbing weapons inconvenient. Slicing or cutting an opponent still takes time. It is therefore beneficial to create a blade shape that stays in contact with an opponent as long as possible.

Blades in Japan then underwent five more periods, extending into the present. Not only was the smithing spectacular, which will be covered later, but they were an improvement on tachi swords created in the previous era.

The katana's rise to supremacy is tied to a change in the way warfare was happening in Japan. Unlike earlier swords such as the tachi, this curved blade could be smoothly drawn and used to slice an enemy in one motion. Of course, weapons technology changes all the time.

In his book, Samurai: The Weapons and Spirit of the Japanese Warrior, Clive Sinclaire claims that the supremacy of the Japanese blade ended with the bombing of Hiroshima by the United States on August 6th, 1945. The atomic bomb terminated the era of many forms of warfare. However, the production of the Katana has slowed down and changed for more than that reason.

Other rationalizations for the fall of the katana involve its creation. The process takes an extremely long time (up to three months for a single sword), and involves several people with specialized training and roles. Use of the katana, like other technology, was also tied to a strict class system that has since died out in Japan. While authentic blades are certainly cool to own, the market for them has pretty much died.

Putting it in Context

'True' tachi swords were created during the Koto period, meaning before the 1600s. While the katana differed in function and time period, the differences from tachi are difficult to discern when not being worn. The major identifier of these subtly differing blades are where the signature is located in relation to the body. What makes this particularly difficult is that the blades are signed on the nakago. It's called a tang to Western sword uses: the length of metal is part of the piece that makes up the blade, but extends past what we would call the hilt and under the grip. So, this identifying feature is usually hidden.

Of course, katana had other differences. Otherwise, it would probably just be a subtype of the earlier tachi. Usually it was heavier in weight when compared to its overall length, and tapered less, creating a wider tip. While Westerners like you or I probably think of the katana as a particularly curved blade, the tachi was more so.

Blacksmith Scene, engraving, Edo period,
Museum of Ethnography of Neuchatel, Switzerland.
Image in the Public Domain.

Similar to the Damascus blades created during the period of time we call the Crusades, layers of steel of different qualities are worked over each other to create the single edged blade of the katana. The curved blades are created from a "jewel steel" called tamahagane, made from iron sand. This folded steel differs from the Wootz steel used by Damascus smiths in several ways that, honestly, are pretty complex to explain.

If you are able to understand scientific terms relating to the molecules and chemical processes involved in smithing and metal make up, check out this article from JOM ('The Member Journal of the Minerals, Metals & Matericals Society'). Otherwise, I will simply say that Damascus steel seems to draw strength from impurities in the source of ore.

Differently, the process of folding steel for katanas removes impurities and evens out the metal's carbon content. The billet that results usually has very little curvature. A katana's signature shape is achieved through repetitive hardening methods, including our old friend quenching.

While not named in the last Putting Sword Technology into Context, quenching is the process of putting hot metal into water (or sometimes oil) to sharpen and harden it. Part of why Ulfberht swords in Northern Europe were special was because they skipped this part of the process, though it would have been a normal part of working wootz steel into blades in the Mid East. The Middle East has its own curved blade, the sabre.

The trick with quenching, which Europeans had apparently not mastered at the time of the Vikings, is to make sure the blade does not cool at the same rate. This leaves the metal brittle. The process has to involve an insulator to ensure the edge cools more quickly than the spine. In the case of the katana that means a slurry of clay, ash, and some other materials was added in differing thickness to the billet before quenching. This process is called differential hardening.

Katana creation continues today, though due to heavy restrictions on sword smiths, China now dominates the market. The process described above is from the peak of katana creation, but this particular iteration of sword technology spans around 800 years, with many changes along the way. Today, most katanas are created using modern steel combinations and different smithing processes. Despite being connected forever to the image of the honorable samurai, perhaps during the 1500s (as in the case of Seven Samurai), katana actually has an international history that spans a variety of classes.

Sources

Cohen, Richard. By the Sword: A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions. New York: Modern Library, 2007

Nagayama, Kokan. The Connoisseur's Book of Japanese Swords. Tokyo: Kodansha International Ltd., 1997.

Mcleod, John. Beginning Postcolonialism. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Random House, Inc., 1978.

Sinclair, Clive. Samurai: The Weapons and Spirit of the Japanese Warrior. Guilford, Connecticut: Globe Pequot, 2004.

Sullivan, Walter. "The Mystery of Damascus Steel Appears Solved." New York Times, September 29, 1981. Accessed January 5th, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/1981/09/29/science/the-mystery-of-damascus-steel-appears-solved.html

Putting Sword Technology Into Context (Part 1)

Excuse me while I take a little side step today. I've been doing a lot of exciting research on a certain topic this week, and wanted to share some of it. This post serves as an introduction to the subject I am dying to talk about. Today I begin talking about swords!

The Reavers

Reproduction: The Norsemen Landing in Iceland
H.A. Guerber, 1909. In the Public Domain.

When discussing arms technology in post Iron Age Europe, one would be remiss if they failed to mention the legendary Ulfberht swords. The Ulfberht was a leap forward in terms of quality for viking iron work. Before and after this master, or workshop, came and went (we are still unsure who made these fantastic weapons), red-hot iron was thrust into cold water to create sharp blades. Unfortunately, this also made them brittle.

You know the scene in your favorite pseudo-historical action movie where the bad guy demonstrates his skill by breaking someone's sword in half with his better-wielded blade? Or when the hero is facing some insurmountable foe only to have their sword break on someone's shield? You are witnessing the height of Viking technology right there.

If I have not been clear up to this point: Ulfberhts were not those swords. Ulfberhts were made using crucible steel super heated to perfection. They are still impressive today. However, the hundreds of fake swords made by scam artists in the era and ever after feature the tell-tale brittle blade.

By the way, there is a fantastic Nova special on the Ulfberht swords, where Door County's Richard Furrer (excuse me for the Wisco shout out) creates what may be the first authentically forged, Ulfberht style sword in centuries. It's worth a watch, or 6. It would do well for me to mention that I am far from a metal expert. For more information on what makes this sword the best for centuries to come, please check out this Hurstwic page on Viking swords, and watch the Nova episode. For now, you will simply have to take my word on the greatness of this sword: it was a bound forward in technology that archaeologists found difficult to account for. Then it disappeared, leaving behind a rich legacy of imitation.

Where did this technology come from, in the first place?

A Lost Golden Era

After the final breath of the Roman Empire, Europe, and, by omission, the world, suffered through the dark Middle Ages. It has always been a dramatically stark picture: the dirt clod farmers and warlords that should have inherited the bright white empire that appears to have been Rome, muddling along through history for a millennium with only minor achievements.

To me the so-called Medieval era is one of the strangest periods of history. This is mainly in how it has been handled traditionally by historians. For hundreds of years, it was essentially ignored, in favor of the brighter end-caps that throw so many shadows over it: Rome and the Renaissance. While today historians scramble to give meaning back to this European period, I do not doubt we have lost what made the dark ages bearable as much to ignorance in scholarship as to contemporary religious iconoclasm.

Excuse me for beating a dead Bucephalus, but the amount of ownership placed on the Roman Empire by Europeans is a little insane. Yes, Italy is generally considered a part of Europe. However, Rome was more than Italy. What made the empire great was the conglomeration, through trade and imperialistic action, that Rome became. At many points, it took the best of the Near East and Europe (not to mention Africa), fusing them together into one of the most truly cosmopolitan entities in history.

When Rome fell, it did not crumble into dust. In fact, on the foundations of Rome, empires with advanced science took hold for around 400 years. It may come as a surprise to traditionally educated Westerners that I am talking about the Islamic empires.

Circa 1900.
Image in the Public Domain.

Returning to swords, Islamic military entities produces a type of steel Europeans rarely got the hang of.  "Damascus" steel was a major impediment to the invading Christians during the crusades. The sword gets its strength from raw wootz steel, a superior grade of iron ore. It is thought to have been first manufactured in South central India and Sri Lanka well before the year 0.

Blacksmiths in Europe tried to copy the strong metal during the Crusades, even resorting to etching the surface in order to copy the wave-like pattern of the Saracen blade. This layered appearance was the origin of the term 'damascene'. While the Christians' sword technology was not half bad at some points (the Crusades were going from 1095 to the late 1200s), it was bad enough in comparison. The Crusades failed, in case you've been hiding under a rock.

We in the West call this period of time the Crusades, but it falls under another name as well. It has more recently been named the Golden Age of Islam. From approximately 800 to the mid 1200s, the Islamic empires were leaders in science, philosophy, and commerce. (This is arguable, as some elements included under this umbrella term were thriving much earlier.) But how does it pertain to the Ulfberht?

The Volga Connection

Anyone with cursory knowledge of the Vikings may not know they traded, as well as pillaged. During the period that Ulfberht swords were being forged, there was a trade route along the Volga river from modern day Sweden, through Russia, and all the way down to Iran. It is believed that crucible steel entered the Viking world this way, along with the technology to work it. The final proof is that authentic Ulfberhts stop being produced when the trade route was cut off in Russia. Thus it is from Islam that Europe gained a bladed legacy; This time through commerce, and not appropriation.

As a final note I would like to mention that the earliest Ulfberhts were created around 850, and production continued into the 1000s. Around the same time a blacksmith was learning how to heat quality steel, the first known recipe for gunpowder was recorded in China. When discussing the height of weapon technology, it is important to look at a single group's abilities and techniques, but do not forget that in comparison worldwide, they still might be lackluster.

Stay tuned for Putting Sword Technology Into Context part 2, next week! It will be posted on Resetting the Record's Facebook Page, and of course on the blog, here. You can be informed of new posts by entering your email address on the sidebar, liking this blog on Facebook, or following me on Twitter.

Sources

All sources, as well as articles and websites of interest, have been tagged above.

El Dorado and Perception

El Dorado is the story of a mythical city of gold that has been the inspiration for several expeditions into the wilds of South America. If you are like me, you read in a Weekly Reader at some young point in your academic career that "El Dorado" was a mistranslation that led the Spanish public, and the rest of history, to confuse a term for a man covered in gold with a wealthy city. It turns out that explanation is not entirely correct. The real answer to the El Dorado myth, is a bit more complex.

El Dorado and the Lost City of Z

According to Willie Drye of National Geographic, the Spanish heard about men being covered in gold in the 16th century. What became our mythical El Dorado was the culture and assumed city this man lived in. Any culture that could afford to throw precious items into a lake (to appease a god, of course) and coat a man in gold probably had a pretty impressive city to call home.

The term "El Dorado" refers to the "gilded one," the man himself, in Spanish. The amount of gold found in South America led to the assumption that there must be some fairly civilized, complex city on the continent supplying all of it. While there were cultures in Central and South America with the wealth that could be the answer to El Dorado, explorers were not appeased. This was the beginning of a search for civilization in the mass of jungles that make up the Amazon.

Lt. Col. Percy Fawcett in 1911.
via Wikimedia.

Lt. Colonel Percy Fawcett was an English explorer who held several dangerous jobs through out his life time. (Also, the subject of an upcoming film starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Robert Pattinson.) He is famous for a number of achievements, including seven successful expeditions into the Amazon rain forest, mapping the much contested source of a Brazilian river, and making grand claims about wildlife.

When Fawcett went on an expedition with his son and his son's young friend to find what the Lt. Colonel had dubbed the "city of Z" in 1925, no one doubted their ability. The party disappeared without a trace soon after. In its wake, around 100 explorers have gone missing attempting to find the Fawcett Party.

Is there some dark secret surrounding the "lost city?" There are plenty of terrifying stories that follow. One of my favorites is that of a minor actor turned pathfinder that went trailblazing in search of Fawcett. The last correspondence received from Albert de Winton was carried by a runner out of the rainforest on a crumpled piece of paper. A plea for someone to bring help, and to save him from the tribe he had been captured by was scribbled on the page. He was never heard from again. It was later learned that his head had been smashed in with a club for his rifle by a Kamayura tribesman.

As exciting as a lost city defense system would be, the real reason for missing parties probably has more to do with logistics. To put things in perspective: What is considered the Amazon rainforest is about one half the size of the United States, and over twice as large as the United Kingdom (excuse me while I make assumptions about my readership). That is a lot of ground to cover. While Fawcett left some coordinates behind, and the last place he was seen before disappearing is known David Grann, while researching for his book The Lost City of Z, discovered the coordinates were fake. This was to guard against explorers attempting to find the city before Fawcett.

Even an experienced adventurer could get lost. That being said, many of those that went in search were much less than experienced, and likely had unrealistic expectations of themselves or their surroundings. Piranha are scary enough, but like many other rich habitats on Earth, the Amazon is full of poisonous plants. Also, the possibility for diseases a newcomer would not know how to handle, much less avoid. Not to mention people that could be less than happy to see you. Indeed, while traveling through the home regions of the indigenous groups, it is still important to know which ones are friendly.

Civilization

Fawcett's conviction that there had been a civilization of amazing complexity locked away somewhere in Brazil was drawn heavily from what Grann calls a "widely held belief" of the time: that such a civilization sprouted from European influence somewhere much earlier in history. Fawcett thought that the Pheonicians, or even the denizens of Atlantis (a mythical city first written about by Greek philosopher Plato,) had traveled to South America and inspired a stone city deep in the jungle. This assumption tells us a lot about Western archaeology.

First of all, in Victorian England (and also before and after, in the West), the assumption was that people like those living in and around the Amazon region were primitive, and locked in a stage of precivilization. This meant that the tribes Fawcett interacted with on his expeditions were seen as a lower rung of an assumed natural line of evolution towards what Europe had achieved. When talking about archaeological history, it is important to learn the term "eurocentric."

Eurocentrism is the basis for much of what I mean when I refer to "our" archaeological understanding of the world. The assumptions held by Fawcett and other people of his time are based on the accepted wisdom that Europe is the birthplace of civilization. There are many shades and complexities to the ideas surrounding this, but for now, keep this simple idea in mind as we progress forward.

I feel it is also noteworthy that the cultures Fawcett cited as possibly founding civilization on this faraway continent are often considered part of the Orient, or Near East. As discussed in an earlier post, Europeans have often appropriated foreign cultures, in this case as the basis for their impressively civilized state. At the same time these cultures were separated from Western ones as an exotic curiosity. Thus Fawcett was appropriating a culture in order to push his unfounded beliefs on another one.

Rock formation from the Tepui plateau.
photo by Jeff Johnson
via Wikimedia.

Fawcett believed that he would find stone ruins in the jungle. Part of this was again based on the eurocentric ideas of the day, and partially on accounts of stone structures reported by earlier explorers. As Grann explains, these accounts may have been based on naturally occurring eroded sandstone formations that curiously look like the ruins of buildings. While the remains of wood dwellings had been discovered in Europe during the previous century, the majority of sites were made in stone. To be fair, it is rare that wood survives the eons as well as stone.

Many sites in Europe are rich in permanent building resources. This is true in parts of South America, too. However, in the forest, wood is much more plentiful. While Fawcett's theory may have been based on centuries of false assumptions by Europeans, he was very close to the truth. There have been urban settlements in the rainforest.

These settlements were carefully planned, and had populations in the thousands. About 20 of them have been found by Professor Michael Heckenberger of the University of Florida. They were not like anything Fawcett suspected. In fact, they were much grander.

Each site was surrounded by moats and walls, and was connected to other sites by roads and bridges placed at right angles. Proof of these sites lay in the ditches dug for the circular moats, and the holes left by the evenly spaced poles of the walls (or possibly defensive pits). Records of these sites have also been preserved in history, though not in ways we might look for. People local to the area, specifically the Kuikuro, have preserved the history of these great cities in their oral history through myths. It also retains the first time they came in contact with Europeans in 1750. What followed was slavery and epidemic disease for indigenous populations.

Perception and Eating Human Brains

I have referenced David Grann's book and work a couple of times through out this post. The information I have offered is only a fraction of the full story of the search for Z, and all it ensnared. The book is fantastic, though there is also a summary of the author's adventure in the footsteps of Fawcett available on the website of The New Yorker. It is truly a story about asking the right questions.

However, there are less enlightened responses to the search for the city of Z. Perhaps more in line with Fawcett's contemporaries, is Rich Cohen of the New York Times. In his review of The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, he recites popular opinion of the people living in the region without a grain of irony, calling the Amazon a place "where hunter-gatherers still lived on human brains".

I am no expert on cannibalism. I will admit that now. However, there is no possible way that a diet of human brains is sustainable. We grow too slowly, and it takes too long for us to reach maturity. Where would all the brains come from? If every, or even a few of the groups within the Amazon subsisted on brains, who would be left to gather the remainder of the diet? The human brain only has about 200 calories (per adult brain). While it is a heavy source of protein, where are the other 1,800 calories that are supposed to go into a healthy daily diet to come from?

If your answer was still "gathering," let me tell you something just as mind-blowing: many groups in the Amazon have been practicing agriculture for a long time. We hear a lot today about cattle farming and agriculture clearing incredible amounts of land every single minute. This is not the agriculture I am talking about.

Indigenous people in the Amazon Rainforest practice slash and burn agriculture. They keep the land healthy by rotating where they are growing crops every few years. There goes the myth of pure hunter-gatherers in the "new Eden" that the Americas were supposed to be.

The urban centers that Heckenberger found also disproves the notion that Amazonian tribes always lived furtively in the forests, existing in complete symbiosis. At least once in time, an indigenous group collected resources and cleared the forest to build on a massive scale. My point with this breakdown is that culturally accepted discourses (or ways of thinking about other groups) are often not factually based. Instead, they mirror our culture's desires and needs for what we perceive as Other. Cohen played on what we believe these groups to be like in order to hook us for the rest of his article.

I have done it myself. By describing "expeditions into the wilds of South America" I was playing on what is probably your vision of South America: primitive, dangerous, unknown. This turn of phrase is not always incorrect (I have to sell this article somehow, after all), but it is good to be aware of the ultimate effect of using what we perceive as factual about an exotic land.

It says something about us that the myth of a golden city has survived so long. Interest in the physical evidence of cultures that have survived in a place as foreboding to us as the Amazon Rainforest has peaked and plummeted again and again, but the idea that they may have at one time approached what we would consider civilization is what captures. I think it is time for us to dispel the noble myths we hold about ourselves.

Activist Orlando Villas Boas with what was supposedly the bones of Percy Fawcett.
from the Archive of the Villas Boas family, via Wikimedia.

Sources

Cohen, Rich. "On the Road to El Dorado." The New York Times, February 26th, 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/books/review/Cohen-t.html

Drye, Willie. "El Dorado Legend Snared Sir Walter Raleigh." National Geographic. Accessed Mar 13, 2014. http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/archaeology/el-dorado/

Leahy, Stephen. "Traditional Slash and Burn Agriculture Sustainable Solution to Climate Change." National Geographic. Accessed Mar 13, 2014. http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/04/13/traditional-slash-and-burn-agriculture-sustainable-solution-to-climate-change/

Mcleod, John. Beginning Postcolonialism. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010.

Wren, Kathleen. "Lost Cities if the Amazon Revealed." NBCNews. Accessed Mar 13, 2014. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3077413/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/lost-cities-amazon-revealed/#.UyIeRvnzInJ

"Pile Dwelling Fever"

As children, most of us dream of finding treasure in our attics, or in our back yard. At least, I know I did. Television programs like Antique's Roadshow feed the horror vacui we suffer from in our lives with stories of junk turned to treasure over the course of a couple of minutes. News stories about some farmer, elsewhere, or, more tantalizing, right up the road, finding a hugely important horde of gold coins or the like fuels a culture of finder's keeper's.

Beyond hoarding, there is a social status that comes with collecting. Especially when it comes to artifacts. They symbolize more than an appreciation for a time in history. Artifacts in the private collection become stories of adventure, exemplary of wealth, and hopefully, the beginning of a legacy within an institution. But what happens once your artifacts get to wherever their going?

The Swiss Lake Dwellings

In the winter of 1853 and 1854, water levels in Switzerland dropped. This revealed prehistoric artifacts and "pile dwellings" that were known to have been built their between 3,000 and 6,400 years ago. The houses are called Pfaulbau in German.

The people that lived there so many millenia ago had an extremely varied diet. They hunted and gathered, as one would expect of such an old European settlement, but also fished in the lakes they built their homes on, practiced agriculture, and herded animals. Some of the most exciting finds are the preserved types of domesticated plants and obviously prepared foodstuffs (such as charred apples). On top of good eats, the bog-like conditions of the lake bed preserved organic material of incredible complexity, such as wood and even textiles.

The appearance of valuable cultural artifacts brought out archaeologists and treasure hunters alike. Granted, it is sometimes hard to tell the difference between these two groups of people. The sudden fad by locals of collecting artifacts from the unsubmerging sites was named "Pfahlbaufieber" in German (pile dwelling fever). The artifact fishermen themselves were called "Pfahlbaufischer."

Portrait of Jakob Messikomer, 1902
via Wikimedia Commons

The Pfahlbaufischer were paid good money for their finds. Amateur archaeologists like Jakob Messikommer ensured that finds treasure seekers might pass up, such as the remains of food and other organic material, were collected and preserved. In the mid to late 1800s and early 1900s, there were several collectors that donated their collections to museums for further research and to be shared with the public, who were just wild about the Swiss lake dwellers.

The Pfahlbauten were extremely exciting because they suddenly presented a picture of life where death had previously held all the answers. Before this, the archaeological record on prehistoric Europe had been filled in by grave and military sites. On top of this, most research covered times after Roman occupation. The Pfahlbau gave Europe an independent historical identity. As Armando Mombelli of swissinfo so eloquently put it, "history no longer began with the Romans."

History in the Basement

However, at the turn of the century, Pfahlbaufieber waned. Information on the lake dwellers was relegated to that unobtainable world of academia. Museums in the United States had been the recipients of several collections, but after the beginning of World War I, all research stopped. With public interest at nil, acquisitions of European material from prehistory stopped also.

Unfortunately, it seems the wars of the 20th century created a bias against German-speaking parts of Europe; even those regions that held keys to the ancestry of the continent. Today, institutions like the Milwaukee Public Museum and the University of Glasgow are leading the way by offering information on their collections from the Robenhausen village online, but it took a century to get back in the public eye.

J. Messikomer & team digging at Robenhausen
via Wikimedia Commons

Sources (not linked above)

Arnold, Bettina. "The Lake-Dwelling Diaspora: Museums, Private Collectors, and the Evolution of Ethics in Archaeology." In The Oxford Handbook of Wetland Archaeology, edited by Francesco Menotti and Aidan O'Sullivan, 875-886. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

On Owning Monuments

National Archives and Records Administration

George Clooney's Monuments Men should have been a victory for art history nerds everywhere: it shed light on a group of World War II heroes previously unknown to many, and was followed by a well intentioned demand by Clooney for the return of looted artifacts on display at the British Museum. For many, however, it fell short. First of all, the film was not very good. On top of a poorly written and realized script, the film failed to recognize is that many of the 345 participants in the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program were women. It opts instead to follow a fictionalized female, meant to represent several real life characters.

Excluding females and other minorities from art history is an huge issue. But let's talk about Clooney's request of the British Museum, first.

The Elgin Marbles

A section of the Elgin Marbles. (From Wikimedia Commons)

It might be surprising to some to learn that many of the collections you have come to think of as defining the realm of art history can be considered looted. Such is the case with the "Parthenon Marbles" (or Elgin Marbles). The "Marbles" are the frieze sections of the Parthenon in Athens, Greece. They were obtained by a Lord Elgin while he was working as an ambassador for Britain to the Ottoman Empire. Today, the museum stands by its rightful ownership of the Marbles by citing a document that has since been lost. According to Elgin at the time, he received legal permission to remove the frieze from the culturally important Greek building from the Ottoman government.
When thinking about this instance, it is important to keep in mind two things. First of all, the document in question cannot be found. Copies supposedly exist, but even these are possibly hoaxes. Secondly, this region of Greece was under foreign control at the time. This means that, did the government give permission to have these elements removed, the permission did not come from the culture that the history of the architecture belonged to. Thus today, Greece is demanding the return of their cultural artifacts on the grounds that they were illegally removed. Britain's saying no. And that's how Imperialism got it done.

How 247 feet of outdoor decoration from a 2,500 year old acropolis could end up 2,000 miles away from its home might seem suspect to those outside the museum atmosphere. The museum's refusal to return the pieces might appear even more heinous. However, this is actually a completely normal occurrence in the history of Western institutions. That's what this blog is going to be all about. The history of the collections of Western museums is fraught with suspect policies, thievery, and a healthy dose of seasoned adventurers who got it all done.

The Art Historian in Pop Culture

When I tell people that I am going in to Art History, I most often get a joke about becoming Indiana Jones. While I doubt I could currently outrun a boulder, the historical image of the people retrieving art objects is not far off from Professor Jones. Adventure in unknown and exotic lands is part of the Imperial Art Historical Mythos for a reason. However, the adventurers I will be talking about often enough will fall more in line with Laura Croft: independently wealthy, well educated people with singular interests in the history. Dual wielding pistols might even come into play more often than you think.
The people that compiled the art collections of the West were action heroes in the most basic sense. They had to survive on their wits and knowledge far from home. That being said, they are historically a privileged set with entirely dubious morals.

About Me & This Blog

For those of you that do not know me from previous work at Fempop, and my Babe in Armor Blogs, an introduction is necessary. I am a college drop out about to finish my first degree in Art History. I have an especial interest in the history of China, academically, and have done work for a couple of museums, including giving tours and research.

While I made a small name for myself as an internet commentator and reviewer of Nerd Culture, I have since replaced pop culture journalism with genre fiction. I operate from a strict moral code that includes, but is not limited to, Feminism with a capital 'F' (the intersectional kind). My writing is entirely biased, though I try to make my opinions informed ones.

This blog will explore the biased nature of art history. More importantly, it will tell the story of famous collections and the people that "discovered" them. I hope to supply arguments where I feel they must be made, and facts where I feel the reader should pick a side for themselves, or simply be informed. Each post will have sources linked in the articles, or cited at them end.

Looking forward to going on some adventures with you all!

--Josephine Maria--