The idea of the archive and... Babylonian archaeologists of the Mesopotamian past

Chorus discussants: Molly Cousins, Aleksandra Mackiewicz, Maya Porath, Erin Calfee

Please post provocative questions/comments/thoughts on the readings before 8pm on Wednesday, February 25!

Posted at Feb 25/2009 07:57PM:
Erin Calfee: The title of Winter's essay, "Babylonian Archaeologists of the(ir) Mesopotamian Past" displays his skepticism of the Babylonian's right to claim their discoveries as their past rather than simply the past or a remote culture. Yet I see evidence of the rediscovery of their past being much less contrived. Beauliue says that "most of the excavations undertaken by the Neo-Babylonian mornarchs were prompted by a religious fear; in order to please the deity, its temple must be rebuilt on the very same foundations which hab been laid in times immemorial" (38). This seems to suggest a sustained cultural memory, because why else respect the ancient dieties? But what allows for society's renewed respect of a god whose name is unknown/indecernible? Perhaps it was accepted in part because the monarchs demanded it. What allows the Babylonian's archeology to be more of a discovery of memory while our seems to be a discovery of a past distinct from us, a history? Certainly the timeline is not the deciding factor, considering that the Babylonians were claiming traditions that had been buried for 3,200 years. I think maybe hints of answers to these questions may be in the different conceptions of time and history, but I can't quite make the connnection.

I was also thinking about the Brothman text on archives. He seems to be trying to draw a parallel between archives and memory and suggest that archives should be used like memory, which is not passive storage but actively influencing actions and decisions. But I think a fundamental problem with this analogy is that memory is highly selective and not only continually brings up old mostly forgotten things (like the mnemonic mechanisms he suggests) but also forgets things for good. Part of memory's usefulness is that it somewhat haphazardly forgets, thus becoming manageable. I think his vision of a revolution in cognitive capabilities because of information technology revolution (pg 79) is trying to have two conflicting things, archives that are useful and archives that refuse to be limited. That memory is more selective than an archive is key to its accessibility, continual use and effectiveness. I was also struck by his questions on page 73: "Is knowledge simply a form of memory? Is memory a synonym for knowledge?" and would like to discuss these.

Mackiewicz:

“Memory involves diminishing ‘the pastness of the past’ and shaping existing informational material to present purposes. In the framework of memory, ‘the past’… encompasses certain categories of information available for use by contemporary individuals, organizations, and society” (Brothman 79).

Perhaps we can then say that the past is an architectural language which the architect can use in the present to evoke a reaction, to create a space of performance- a space where memory takes place. By using the past, being aware that once the structure is revealed it’s “submit to the image formed by the community,” does the architect define space in “anticipation of performance” (Jonker 170, Brothman 79)?

Posted at Feb 25/2009 10:27PM:
keffie: You guys touch on this issue, and I think is one of the central questions we're going to have to chew on tomorrow: What is the difference between history and memory? How is each engaged with and deployed in the construction of Babylonian (and contemporary) identities?

Posted at Feb 26/2009 02:24AM:
Maya Porath: - Continuing Erin’s comment on Brothman’s archive suggestion - I wonder if there wouldn’t be too much information offered to the user. If he plans on having automatic archival feeds for everyday tasks (Brothman, 76), an infinite amount of information will be offered for simple habitual events. One of the advantages of a linear archive is that when searching through it one can limit the time frame, rather than the relationship, limiting the amount of material consulted. (Brothman, 78) However - a linear archive designates all the material as equal, all archival objects are stored away equally. Pierre Nora writes that “It becomes impossible to predict what should be remembered,” (Nora, 14) indicating that we store things indiscriminately, both important and insignificant. Brothman’s model might help solve that “problem,” as things will be archived in relation to “automatically identified patterns of use.” (Brothman, 78)

- Does memory really exist only in the present? (Brothman, 65) What about things we forget – are they considered to be in the past? Do they shape our present in the same manner as things we remember?

- Also – how was memory a form of “repetition”? (Brothman, 59)

Posted at Feb 25/2009 10:17PM:
Molly Cousins: Both Beaulieu and Winter discuss in detail the Babylonians' practice of engraving events into foundation deposits, cylinders of rock placed in the foundations of temples. This practice was perpetuated in part out of religious fear. The deposits, as well as the temple foundation as a whole, were seen as sacred; mistreatment or disregard for the old footprint during reconstruction would assuredly lead to the perpetrator or new building's damnation. What interests me is whether this practice of rebuilding and reburying should be ultimately considered from (as Brothman puts it) a life cycle or a records continuum view. Clearly the practice demonstrates elements from both frameworks - a list of kings, clearly linear, and a seemingly permanent location for these deposits or temples. Although Jonker did mention that some of these temples were abandoned or buried over time (at least by the 1st century BC), I'm interested in the spatial and architectural effects of continually rebuilding a temple in the same location without concern for the building's (potentially) changing urban surroundings. Were they originally built outside the city due to religious specifications but eventually surrounded by the growing, expanding cities?

Posted at Mar 02/2009 03:33PM:
Molly Cousins: The ancient library in Alexandria, as mentioned in class, was designed to contain all of the world's knowledge. The idea of a space in which everything on earth that is "known" can be contained interests me - clearly, such a space is not possible for a variety of reasons. Libraries and their processes of editing knowledge, or at least "editing" it in terms of granting or restricting access to it, also greatly interest me. My mother, a librarian, would do her best to refute this, but in light of this libraries seem to me to be almost as much places of forgetting and censoring as places of learning and remembering. This "editing" or "limiting" can be accomplished in a variety of ways [censoring, creating specific subject libraries, restricted circulation, even the process of publication].

This got me thinking about the relationship between knowledge and memory. Is memory really just a type of knowledge, is knowledge a type of memory, are they both a part of something else? Knowledge is a theoretical framework by which people understand what is around them. Memories directly play into how people understand and make sense of their surroundings, as is demonstrated by the Babylonians' revival of certain religious traditions and countless other examples. Additionally, this knowledge framework can certainly be manipulated and changed according to how an individual remembers or forgets.

I'm not quite sure where I'm going with all of this, but I find it this train of thought pretty interesting (although not very conclusive) and thought I'd post it.

Posted at Mar 03/2009 11:16PM:
mackiewicz: I have to disagree with Erin’s comment: Brothman suggests “archives should be used like memory, which is not passive storage but actively influencing actions and decisions.” When Brothman refers to memory as a process that can make use of ‘existing information’, he himself states how, “archives can form a vital part of this process”(79). Memory is the active process, not something that can be stored passively, like archives. Control of archives is synonymous with control of the available existing information, knowledge. As the archives grow over time, new knowledge is made accessible for memory, suggesting an answer for Erin’s question: “What allows the Babylonian’s archaeology to be more of a discovery of memory while our seems to be a discovery of a past distinct from us, a history?”

When the Babylonian’s dug up remnants from a millennia back, although a great deal of time had gone by the existing information was relatively unchanged, thus memory was taking place with similar knowledge. If memory is a process based on the existing information it is subject to change over time as archives change. Today we have additional archives, an additional past for memory; as more knowledge that was not available in the past is acquired, we become more susceptible to distancing our memory with the memory of those who lived in the past. Perhaps this distancing is the distinction from us. Perhaps then the past’s memory, a process that took place in the past, is history, not a memory in the present.

Maya also brought up Brothman’s idea of memory as a from of repetition(59). If memory is “diminishing ‘the pastness of the past’ and shaping existing informational material to present purposes,” then although knowledge is susceptible to change the process stays the same(Brothman 79). Also current archives will likely contain archives that were apart of memory in the past; therefore, memory repeats use of past knowledge that is still relevant today.

Brothman’s idea for an archive of things categorized by “automatically identified patterns of use” reminded me of Christopher Alexander’s Pattern Language (https://www.patternlanguage.com check out the children’s history under “patterns” for a brief intro)(78). Alexander essentially performs the job of the archivist by selecting what knowledge to make available to the reader for continued repetition. It is important to note that the pattern language is aimed at individuals and groups without prior experience in building/design so what Alexander presents makes up most of the existing information. By controlling the archive Alexander influences the knowledge with which memory takes place. This brings me back to my proposal that the past is an architectural language which the architect can use in the present to evoke a reaction, to create a space of performance- a space where memory takes place.

The archives, past, which the architect intentionally chooses to either utilize or not is control over the process of memory. This goes along with Omur’s suggestion in class today, that memory is “not a consumption of the past but a creative production of the past.” The past as an architectural language is selectively used, words come together to make sentences and sentences make paragraphs with “present purpose”(79). Every time an architect starts a project he will make choices of what architectural language he will utilize, a good architect will be aware of this choice and define the space with a desired memory, with an “anticipation of performance” by carefully choosing the design, controlling the knowledge used. By designing with memory in mind the architect does not merely “submit to the image formed by the community” but attempts to writes the image, memory, himself with architectural language(Jonker 170).

Posted at Mar 04/2009 09:29PM:
Erin Calfee: In response to Molly Cousins-I was also very intrigued by the lofty goal of the library of Alexandria to collect all of the knowledge of the world, in effect to become the ultimate archive. I wonder though, to what end this knowledge would be collected? It seems that by amassing overwhelming amounts of knowledge in one place, even in an organized manner, can potentially restrict rather than enhance access to that knowledge. Decisions of how to sort the information play a huge role in whether a particular piece will ever be used or seen. In additon, clearly the goal of amassing all of the knowledge in the world is impossible, or is it? It depends on the working definition of "knowledge" whether this body is even finite. This gives the collecter even larger powers in his discretion to decide what is knowledge and what is not. Depending on his criteria, the collection might give one more insight into what he thinks is of value than stored "knowledge" according to one's own standards. Are business tablets stored by Mesopotamian's collected bodies of knowledge, or something else? "Knowledge" seems to imply a widely accepted value that "memory" does not. Knowledge could perhaps be best defined by its utility to a larger social group.

There has been a lot of posting about memory and history being in the past or the present. I was personally struck by a quote out of the power point from last Thursday:

"The past is never dead. It's not even past." -Faulkner, Requiem for a nun.

I've puzzled over this, and other similar statements (memory exists only in the present, Maya's concern for where to place things we forget-past or present?) a lot recently. My immediate reaction was to reject such statements and then, after growing accustomed to them, uneasily accept them. However, it's become increasingly obvious that I don't have a working definition of what "to be in the present" or "to be in the past" really means. For concrete objects it is obviously either in the present or gone at the present time, but ideas resist this obvious definition (how do you tell if an idea is "here" still?). Although Brothman talks about it a lot (eliminating the pastness of the past etc.) he does not define what this means. I would like to suggest a working definition (that could most definitely be improved upon-suggestions?): An object is in the present only if it is still being formed or subject to change. This would imply that collective memories that are still alive in the minds of the collective and thus being continually shaped are in the present, but someone's written memoire's belong to the past. A memory is perhaps only finalized when it is forgotten and then it enters "the past."

Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology