In other words
Dig this:
According to Wikipedia (the layperson’s popular on-line resource), the goals of archaeology are “to document and explain the origins and development of human culture, understand cultural history, chronicle cultural evolution, and study human behaviour and ecology for both prehistoric and historic societies.” It is the “science that studies human cultures through the recovery, documentation and analysis of material remains and environmental data.”
As you can read in this issue, archaeologists are studying pre-historic societies in northern BC, with fascinating results.
But what about our current cultural evolution? If archaeologists were to excavate the household detritus found in our contemporary equivalent of middens, what would they find? Since I consider my household to be typical of the average Northword reader, I offer up a gander at two of my household middens: the central vacuum cleaner’s contents, and the floor of the family mini-van.
Based on completely non-scientific speculation, an examination of the typical filth accumulated during the course of this October/November would read something like this:
Vacuum cleaner: the lower layers laid down in early October exhibit copious quantities of dog hair, presumably still being shed thanks to the humongous hair growth stimulated by last winter’s excessive length and snowy depths (which had better NOT be repeated, or the dog gets waxed).
This huge dog hairball is interlaced with several ounces of dismembered moths, wasps and spiders. Cobwebs are present in significant amounts, indicating an end-of-sun-season screen-cleaning. Overlaying the cobwebs is an enormous quantity of standard household dirt combined with leaves, twigs and pumpkin seeds, no doubt the result of frantic pre-Thanksgiving cleaning. This is topped with a dusting of desiccated bread and celery stuffing and piecrust crumbs mixed in with a curried housefly.
Next, a quantity of pins and needles, sequins, beads and feathers. Glue stick caps, orange crepe paper, mini chocolate bar wrappers, and unwrapped molasses candies (from a day when a child did the vacuuming).
The most recent stratum features sand and gravel mixed in with fragments of candied fruit, walnuts and maraschino cherries.
Floor of the mini-van: In the front passenger compartment are three Tim Hortons coffee cups (with heat sleeves), a gas receipt for $77.92 from the Burns Lake 7-11, one Theatre Northwest show program, and an unwrapped stick of Trident gum.
In the rear passenger compartment, 257 grams of sweet-chili nacho chip fragments, two straws containing Sprite soft drink residue, one mostly empty Dairyland chocolate milk container, one half-eaten A&W papa burger, one half of a Gravol tablet, a dented iPod case, one unbranded broken ice scraper, and one generic dustpan. Under the front seat: one school library card, a set of werewolf teeth, two poppy pins, one bear-in-the-schoolyard notice, and the missing order forms and cheques for the gymnastics club cookie-dough fundraiser. Under the back seat: an oblong furry organic object currently undergoing DNA analysis at UNBC.
In the rear storage area, three well-worn all-season tires and the remains of a retread road kill, one half-empty (or is that half full?) jug of antifreeze windshield washer fluid, one shredded windshield wiper blade, four frozen sandbags, one bulging two-litre carton of buttermilk, 24 large fireplace logs, and 47 spider egg-sacks.
Conclusion? Judging from the junk…October/November is a transitional time of year, marked by economically significant spending events and cultural rituals to ease the journey from harvest to the start of the cold season; specifically, ritual consumption of high-fat and/or high-carb comfort foods. Family and community bonding events are big too. We meet, we eat, we laugh.
Thanksgiving is a ritual event marked by friends and family invited from far and near for a fatten’em-up-for-winter feast.
Halloween preparations include buying hundreds of treats for underprivileged kids who are bused in the town’s suburbs for candy subsidies. (It strikes me that Halloween is evolving into a children’s carnivale—by dressing up and “trick or treating” in the presumably more affluent suburbs, it’s their annual way to ‘stick it to the man’). In the north, costumes are not merely designed to go over the wearer’s winter clothes—they are winter clothes. For example, our eldest son once went out as a man who had fallen into a vat of toxic chemicals. He was quite cozy in his costume—unable to sit, mind you, but quite toasty. You could even say he glowed.
Inter-regional travel to a major commerce centre for shopping and/or recreation is still undertaken, despite the ridiculous unpredictability of the weather. Neither snow, nor ice, nor moose will stop the November trek to a really great craft fair. Or to Remembrance Day ceremonies at local cenotaphs.
With global warming redirecting our cultural evolution, what artifacts will define us northern British Columbians in the future? What trash/treasure will turn up in our middens of 2507?
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