Archaeology Poetry: Archaeology is Not Poetry - Archaeology Magazine Archive


Archaeology is Not Poetry	"Shall I Compare Thee to a Backfill Pile?" April 27, 2000
by Maureen Perkins

Though it may seem so on the surface.
It is the sun on your back and soil under your fingernails.
It is learning more of the local language then "hello" and "where's the bathroom."
It is discovering too much about your fellow excavators' personal lives.
Archaeology is more questions than answers.

Archaeology is not a dramatic voice-over on the Discovery channel.
It is tedious late-night research by the light of a dusty bulb.
It is rolling terms off your tongue: thermoluminescence, nuchal torus, schlepp effect.
Archaeology is ignoring the inherent paradox of washing dirt.

Archaeology is not Don Johanson's spotlessly creased khakis.
It is picking through other people's garbage.
It is becoming a flintknapper and bleeding for the sake of science.
It is an incantation of names: Piltdown, Laetoli, Taung.
Archaeology is knowing that a rock is never just a rock.

Archaeology is not wine and cheese receptions.
It is the dermestid beetle chamber for defleshing roadkill.
It is the beer can you chucked in the woods last weekend.
It is quarter-inch mesh and flotation.
Archaeology is more than the sum of its parts.

Archaeology is staring into the empty eye sockets of a Homo erectus cranium.
It is admitting you don't know.
After long hours in the lab, it is leaning close to the fossils
and hoping that if you concentrate hard enough, then maybe
just maybe
you can inhale their secrets.

Maureen Perkins is an English and Anthropology student at Ripon College in Wisconsin who is considering grad school in those fields. She would like to thank anthropology professors Katina Lillios, Paul Axelrod, and Jeff Shokler, who provided much of the inspiration for this piece.

For more on thermoluminescence, see "Rock Art Date Contested," January/February 1998.

Click here for a definition of Nuchal torus.

For more on Don Johanson, see: "50 Years of Discovery," September/October 1998.

For more on flintknapping, see The Knappers Corner.

For more on Piltdown Man, see "Rethinking Human Evolution," July/August 1999.

For more on Laetoli, see "Adventures in Africa," March/April 1999; "A Footnote," October 1, 1997; "50 Years of Discovery," September/October 1998; and "Central African Hominid," March/April 1996.

For more on the Taung skull, see "Hominid Discovery," March/April 1999.

For more on dermestid beetles, see the Biodidac Website

For more on flotation, see the Glossary of Archaeological Terms.

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