I posted this on my personal blog the other day, but since it’s Archaeology-related, I thought I might as well cross-post it. Including an awesome but unrelated picture and link! 8D

Speaking of Asia (well, I haven’t spoken of Asia yet, but I will below. I’m sure you can wrap your mind around the crazy time-travel.), one of the Masters students in Global Economy gave a presentation about markets in medieval China to-day. It was quite cool, if somewhat depressing that we were uber-lucky to have someone who could read books on medieval china and tell us what they said. It was only really basic stuff, as well. T_T

Practically an entire continent worth of archaeological knowledge is blocked to me because of language? Really? It all just makes me even more interested in that part of the world.

ANYWAY. CROSS-POSTIN’ TIME.

Yesterday, I realised that I had an unread email from myself in my “ideas” folder (presumably I’d left it unread to remind myself to look at it), and it reads, in its entirety:

“Early domestication in mid + far east. Trade?”

Thank you for the specifics and elaboration there, past!Hellen.

I think it was things I was reading about and wanted to research more in future. (I really wish there was some sort of module on Asia I could’ve taken. What, is the Far East not interesting enough for you, Durham? D:)

It’s funny how things work out, though. I’m interested in East Asia because it’s strange and exotic and I don’t know anything about it, but also because I happen to be learning Japanese. And I’m learning Japanese because in 2006 I picked up a Teach Yourself Japanese book from a used book shop in London. (And I did that because some of my friends were taking it in school and I’d seen it and thought the writing was cool.*)

(And then I met Tim and he got me into anime and now no-one will ever believe me when I tell them I’m not a weabo. T_T Anyways…)

But hey, why is squiggly moon-writing a bad cause of academic interest? What other reason should I have for being interested in the spread of East Asian domestication? I’ve always been in favour of curiosity and interest for their own sake. When I was on my dig in Portugal there was a girl there who said she was getting disillusioned and depressed with Archaeology because she couldn’t see the point in it all, in digging something up if it only resulted in destroying the thing we were studying, if there might be better techniques to do so in the future. And it made me think, but why do I need a purpose?

If you’re going to give Archaeology any sort of mission for the betterment of humanity, I would say it’s keeping the facts straight and stopping people using the past for their own political agendas (I am unsure about people like neo-pagans misrepresenting the past to justify holding festivals at Stonehenge. They’ve got it wrong, but they’re not hurting anyone, so perhaps I can give them some slack). I am really into that, but the main reason I’m studying archaeology and want to be an archaeologist is just that I want to know. I’m interested in the past and I want to know what happened, just for the knowledge’s own sake. And yeah, I could’ve gone into Biology or I could do languagey translation things and contribute to the greater good of humanity somehow, but I just happen to be passionately curious about this thing. What’s wrong with that?

*I’ve always been attracted to the written word**, and other systems of writing. When I was little I had some books from my grandmother written in Fraktur, and I loved them because I had to make an effort to decipher and read them. The Roman alphabet is just too easy and boring for me, apparently.

** (go go footnote withing a footnote power!) I also think best when I’m writing. I was emailing my tutor with a question about my dissertation I was stuck on the other day, and I answered it for myself while I was writing it out. We had a workshop in school once on different types of learning and such, and when they told me I had a literary intelligence, they sure weren’t kidding.

I think this post needs a completely unrelated picture and link to complete it.

So much win.

Comment, foo! // Comment at Archaeoblogogy
Tags:Archaeology; Asia; ponderings