Evolution And History

270 CHAPTER 11 | The Emergence of Cities and States

Anthropology Applied

Tell It to the Marines: Teaching Troops about Cultural Heritage

by Jane C. Waldbaum

The need to protect ancient sites,

museums, and antiquities in war-torn

Iraq and Afghanistan has led the

Archaeological Institute of America

(AIA) to begin an innovative program

to help educate troops soon to be

sent to those countries. Conceived by

AIA vice president C. Brian Rose, the

program sends experienced lecturers

to military bases to teach the basics

of Middle Eastern archaeology and the

importance of protecting the evidence

of past cultures. The class, taken by

both officers and enlisted men and

women, is mandatory.

The effort is a supplement to the

AIA’s longstanding, nationwide lecture

program in which scholars in archaeol-

ogy and related fields present the latest

research and developments to more than

102 local societies in the United States

and Canada. The lectures for the troops

focus specifically on the areas where

military personnel will be deployed

and on the specific sites, monuments,

museums, and artifacts that they might

be called upon to protect.

The current lectures, funded in

part by the Packard Humanities Insti-

tute, emphasize Mesopotamia’s role in

the development of writing, schools,

libraries, law codes, calendars, and as-

tronomy, as well as connections with fa-

miliar biblical figures such as Abraham

and Daniel and ancient sites such as Ur

and Babylon. Afghanistan’s position as

a crossroads of ancient civilizations and

the route of Alexander the Great through

the region is discussed. Troops also

learn about basic archaeological tech-

niques, the importance of preserving

context, the necessity of working with

archaeologists and conservators, and

the most effective ways to protect sites

against looters.

The first series of lectures was given

at the Marine Corps base at Camp Leje-

une, North Carolina, and there are plans

to expand the program to other bases

and services in the near future. “Many

of the officers have M.A. degrees; some

are reservists and high-school history

teachers,” says Rose, who delivered the

inaugural lectures last spring. “They

care a great deal about the history of the

areas in which they serve; some of them

have actually lived in or near Babylon on

earlier tours of duty. All of us have been

struck by their thirst for knowledge dur-

ing and after our lectures.”

Many have helped get this program

up and running, including U.S. Marine

Colonel Matthew Bogdanos, who was

instrumental in securing the return of

many antiquities stolen from the Iraq

Museum. “When it comes to clearing a

building, neutralizing a land mine, or

making a neighborhood safe for children,

we know what to do,” says Bogdanos.

“When it comes to protecting a country’s

cultural heritage, we are just as eager to

do the right thing—we just don’t always

know the best way to do it. This is where

Brian Rose’s groundbreaking program

will pay dividends for generations.”

in which to expand, and so they begin to compete for
increasingly scarce resources. Internally, this may result
in the development of social stratification, in which an
elite controls important resources to which lower classes
have limited access. Externally, this leads to warfare and
even conquest, which, to be successful, require elaborate
organization under a centralized authority. As this chap-
ter’s Anthropology Applied feature shows, in times of
war centralized authorities such as the U.S. military are
drawing upon archaeological expertise to protect cultural
resources.
Problems exist with each of these ecological theories.
Across the globe and through time, cultures can be found
that do not fit these models. For example, some of the
earliest large-scale irrigation systems developed in high-
land New Guinea, where strong centralized governments
never emerged. North American Indians possessed trade
networks that extended from Labrador in northeastern
Canada to the Gulf of Mexico and the Yellowstone region
of the Rocky Mountains and even to the Pacific—all with-
out centralized control.^14 And in many of the cultures that

do not fit the theories of ecological determinism, neigh-

boring cultures learned to coexist rather than pursuing

warfare to the point of complete conquest.

Although few anthropologists would deny the impor-

tance of the human–environment relationship, many are

dissatisfied with approaches that do not take into account

human beliefs and values.^15 For example, as described in

the case study of Tikal—while religion was tied to the earth

in that the priests determined the most favorable time

for planting crops—the beliefs and power relations that

developed within Maya culture were not environmentally

determined. Human societies past and present bring

their beliefs and values into their interactions with the

environment.

Action Theory

One criticism of the above theories is that they fail to

recognize the capacity of aggressive, charismatic lead-

ers to shape the course of human history. Accordingly,

anthropologists Joyce Marcus and Kent Flannery have

(^14) Haviland, W. A., & Power, M. W. (1994). The original Vermonters (2nd
ed., chs. 3 & 4). Hanover, NH: University Press of New England.
(^15) Adams, R. M. (2001). Scale and complexity in archaic states. Latin
American Antiquity 11, 188.