Concerning a Long Arc of "Documenting Progress" — Toward an Archaeology Minus Nihilism

This may be the first article I'll have written as to describe my own albeit naive views with regards to archaeology as an academic practice, archaeology as a rhetorical domain, and archaeology as a a concept.

It's likely to be a short article, as such. There's certainly a great lot of academic legacy that has been developed, but that I am heretofore unfamiliar with, in regards to any of those three points of view with regards to, broadly, archaeology as a concept — a concept, certainly, entailing any manner of a study of objects of historic consequence. I'm certain that there might also be a lot of connotations about a concept of archaeology, such that may be observed, whether or not moreover described, to any of a sense of relevance in any single context or contexts of metaphysical theory. To comment of my own gallow's sense of humor, but it would certainly not be apropos to the present discourse. The artifacts of ages — if simple artifacts cannot be carried across any of a great, unknown terminus, but what may endure of any of a persistent nature of knowledge?

Archaeology, as a concept, is such that I have had only some limited exposure to. I have, in fact, been on an archaeological "Dig," at once in my own life's time — an excavation, informally, of historic artifacts erstwhile discarded of earlier family, glass and metallic objects enduring the weather below the topsoil of an old discard pit, no doubt of a time before there was any regular waste disposal service, in all the durations of a western town of California, over time. Those artifacts, I understand, traced a duration in my family's own heritage, our migrations and adaptations in the United States.

It is not a point of view that I may presume to make any agendas about, my own family tree spans groves some or which grew of the First Nations in the United States. Of course, the rest of us had migrated away from the original climates of Europe, each in a distinct duration of time. Personally I have not, as yet, begun all of any formal geneaological study of my family's own migratory transitions and places of residence. I have heard mention of some serious genealogical research projects, in my family. It is such that I am wont to maintain a sense of privacy about — family heritage being, certainlymost often, such that one may not wish to make any of a grand exhibition about. Moreover, my own creative faculties have certainly been afrected for sense of style, as in study of works of simple storytelling in science fiction.

In which regards, perhaps the film Prometheus, stylistically, might seem as though to suggest aa that there may be quite a dark theme going, in much of contemporary storytellng. I am, personally, more a fan of Charles Scheffield's Heritage Universe — of which, if it will not spoil the tale to denote, the Zardalu species as antagonists in the tale, perhaps the Zardalu were of a great darkling kind of species in the evolution of the story, as mcontemporary to the books of the Heritage Universe as original works in creating a universe of a story. Surely, the Zardalu had seen better days. By the time when Hans Rebka & c. arrived, the Zardalu had become clearly a menacing species. Certainly the Zardalu had not then descended altogether into the darkness of any persistent evil, such as of the domain of — no doubt — of Dante Aligheri's own favorite antagonists, whether in or beside the old Latin book, Inferno.

Personally, perhaps I've studied more of an archaeology of storytelling itself, moreso than ever to presume as though to extrapolate of the world immediately around me. Of course, a work of storytellng may not often produce a great many artifacts. There are books and the props of theatre, never often a great commerce of the storytelling media, aside to the commerce of commercial radio, commercial television, contemporary cinema, and the broader Networks and Webs of immediate society. Aside so many commercial productions, perhaps it may seem as though an art of storytelling, itself, was merely accidental.

So far as that it may be said that there is a quality of storytelling in life, itself — perhaps, it may not permit any too trivial ontology — inasmuch as of an analogy, perhaps it might be said that a study of archaeology may draw a parallel of life, itself — however conducted in formal study and formal dissertation, how parallel to observations of artifacts and locales, how reinforced of the accumulated social narrative and scientific knowledge of which the state of the art in archaeology, itself, might ever be discovered.


Though I have ever made any of a formal study of anthropology — thereof, finding a sense as of a personal resonance with regards to an anthropological concept of participant-observer — and participated in the excavation of family's discarded artifacts — but archaeology as a formal academic concept is formally and in much "New, to me."

I've commented, in the title of this article, towards a persistent sense of nihilism, such that — to my point of view — does not ever depart from the shadow of social studies. What is "An Archaeology Minus Nihilism," therefore? Is it a concept any risking of a glib and naive positivism, or an unbalanced view of concepts of Yang as if entirely removed removed of concepts of Yin, metaphysically? It is, to my point of view, a concept daring to discard an ages old sense of pessimism as to any of the immediate and further destinations of the material cosmos, likewise daring to depart from a climate of social assumptions as to what may have conveyed humanity to wherever we are proceeding to.

As an orthogonal concept, such that I am certainly unfamiliar with in all formal regards — it seems, to me, like an emergent concept of academia, whatever its academic objectives overall — a concept of archaeology, if applied onto a very short duration of time, might be … more relevant than I can say. Whether of an observer's analysis of trends, a participant's observations of media and story, or all of a dry coroner's view of crises, it seems to me that it demands a stakehokder analysis of a scale as I am individually, singularly unable to manage.

Thus, I've begun to emphasize comunications, in works of communication. An analysis of metaphysics might be all be beyond me, for all of communications.