Stumped!

“stumped. in stump v1. adj. (Originally U.S.). To cause to be at a loss; to confront with an insuperable difficulty; to nonplus

This is one of those moments when you just have to bash our a few words for no other reason than to vent. The Independent has reported that archaeologists are “stumped” by a wheel-like building complex at the Kastelli airport development in Crete. An enigmatic, evidently communal complex has been uncovered, whose exact purpose is not clear. It’s a very interesting find of Middle Minoan date, from a time when palatial civilisation was becoming a thing in the Minoan world. This has all sorts of connotations for the emergence of complex societies, where the rule of a central authority – later exemplified by the famous Minoan palaces – was become established. But the exact function of this building can’t be reconstructed from the finds currently available – and this, apparently, means that archaeologists are “stumped”.

I realise at this point that I am the proverbial Old Man Yelling At A Cloud of Simpson’s meme fame, but I’m afraid this time the cloud is just going to have to suck it up. Archaeology is an incomplete, partial picture. Every discovery reforms and recalibrated our view of the past, which can never be whole. So the fact that the exact purpose of this structure is not clear, coming as it does from a pre-writing society with no surviving textual records, and whose administrative infrastructure we cannot reconstruct in any detail, does not mean that archaeologists are “stumped”. They are operating within the limitations of the evidence they have.

Now, I am not familiar with the work of the journalist, Nicholas Paphitis. However if you read the article in full, you will see he has actually done a good job of reporting the Cretan archaeological authorities’ perspective, and the context of the find. What irks – being polite – is the headline, which draws an immediate and – ahaha – monolithic outline of that nuance, totally obliteraing it in the process. I am the son of two journalists, and know that a great way of really annoying one is to assume that they write, and are responsible for, their own headlines. The don’t and they aren’t. The headline writer has really done the issue a big disservice here.

There is a bigger point: a headline likes this feeds, in a tiny way, into a narrative that the past is somehow objective, and thus can be complete. If you are “stumped” then there has to be some rounded truth to which you do not have access. This lack of nuance, and the implied exclusion of uncertainty, enables the appropriation of past material culture for very, very unsavoury ends. Even with a throwaway headline on an otherwise well-written and apparently innocuous news piece, the mainstream media should not be contributing to this way of thinking.

Thank you for listening. The cloud has now drifted away.