Thread by @drspacejunk

Welcome to Space Archaeology, a free Twitter course on the archaeology of human endeavours in outer space! The hashtag is #drspacejunk101. A couple of basic resources to start with. Here is a bibliography of space archaeology zoharesque.blogspot.com/p/spo.html?m=0.

I'll get this plug out of the way early. I recently wrote a popular science book on space archaeology which is available here for ANZ newsouthbooks.com.au/books/here-com… and here for rest of world mitpress.mit.edu/books/dr-space…. However, you don't need it for this course #drspacejunk101

For our first module, we're going to look at the history and background of space archaeology. (This might involve me finally reading stuff I've been meaning to get around to for ages). #drspacejunk101

I know many of you will be new to archaeology, so let's start with some definitions. 'Archaeology' is derived from the ancient Greek word archaios, meaning ancient, so in the popular imagination archaeology is the study of the deep past. #drspacejunk101

This why you'll find archaeology tacked onto terms as a way of indicating the past - e.g. galactic archaeology. Let's just say I'm not a fan of this usage. #drspacejunk101

However, archaeology is not necessarily about the past. It is a set of methods and theories for investigating how humans interact with material culture - ie physical objects and environments - over time. #drspacejunk101

This means that you can apply archaeological approaches to any time period, even the present, and any location, even outer space! The constant is human behaviour. #drspacejunk101

What space archaeology is not: dinosaurs (I know you know this, but I mention it for completeness), galaxies, aliens, and remote sensing of terrestrial sites. #drspacejunk101

Space archaeology has been defined as as '…the archaeological study of material culture relevant to space exploration that is found on earth and in outer space (i.e., exoatmospheric material) and that is clearly the result of human behavior'. #drspacejunk101

My lovely colleague @spacearcheology has written in more detail about how to define space archaeology here: spacearchaeology.org/?p=20 #drspacejunk101

I mentioned that archaeology involves a distinct set of methods and techniques. Most people are familiar with excavation, but that is only a small part of it. #drspacejunk101

What are archaeological methods? You can find out more from The Archaeologist's Field Handbook (free to download here 9781865088624_archaeologists_field_handbook_a3e3). #drspacejunk101

This the first edition of The Archaeologists Field Handbook (I don't think the new edition is free anywhere), so be aware that parts of it are outdated. But it's still a great introduction to the basics. #drspacejunk101

Archaeology has its own methods and theories - and also standards of ethical behaviour. Please look at pages 11-18 of The Archaeologists Field Handbook for a brief outline. We might come back to this later. #drspacejunk101

So this is your first homework for #drspacejunk101! Read as much or as little of The Archaeologists Field Handbook as you like. As you do, think about which of the methods described could be applied in space.

Look at pages 20-30 of The Archaeologists Field Handbook, which cover state and federal heritage legislation (out of date now). For Aussies, you might like to search for the latest legislation. For non-Aussies, what is the heritage legislation in your country? #drspacejunk101

Don't get over-excited and rush out to try these methods - in many places you need to be qualified and have a permit to undertake archaeological fieldwork. This is not an invitation to break the law! #drspacejunk101

However, there are several archaeological methods you can try safely, ethically, and in isolation. On p 42 are instructions for making a mud map. Try drawing one of a room in your house or your backyard. #drspacejunk101

Chapter 9 is about archaeological photography and illustration. You can try these methods at home too, by looking at the objects and environment of your house as an archaeological site. Don't forget to post pics! #drspacejunk101 .

I think we'll leave it there for this morning. I feel I've only begun to scratch the surface; there is SO much more to talk about! Thanks for joining me at #drspacejunk101 and I'll look forward to your thoughts!

If the link to The Archaeologists Field Handbook isn't working for you, try this one: documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri… #drspacejunk101

I'll pick up the thread of our Twitter course on Space Archaeology tomorrow; if you want to join, we'll be doing part 2 of history and background. #drspacejunk101

Good morning class! This is part 2 of the first module in Twitter Space Archaeology. Yesterday we looked at definitions and some basics about archaeological methods. Today, I'm going to look at how and when the study of space archaeology emerged. #drspacejunk101

A reminder that I'm only going to use free online resources for this course. If you do have institutional library access or are subscribed to a repository like ResearchGate, you're welcome to read more widely (bibliography at top of thread) #drspacejunk101

Feel free to ask questions or offer thoughts at any time! Just for context, I'm tweeting from bed. It's just after 5 am in South Australia. Might get up soon and make some coffee. #drspacejunk101

One of the earliest people to consider space archaeology was the American historical archaeologist James Deetz. You can find out a bit more about him here texts.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb1… and here en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dee… #drspacejunk101

Historical archaeology, I hear you ask? I thought we were doing space archaeology! Well yes, but you could think of space archaeology as part of historical archaeology, so I'm going to talk about that for a moment. #drspacejunk101

Historical archaeology focuses on the period of European colonialism after the 1400s. It's about the growth of global markets, industrialisation, and most importantly, what happened when Europeans encountered Indigenous people. #drspacejunk101

Unlike other periods of archaeology, historical archaeologists can use documents, photographs, and texts to augment their interpretations of the material culture. Surprise! What is written down often turns out not to be true. #drspacejunk101

I can't find a good webpage which outlines historical archaeology in a way that's not confusing, so no links here. The Wikipedia page is OK. You could do worse than read James Deetz' classic In Small Things Forgotten. #drspacejunk101

But I want to talk about another book by James Deetz - Invitation to Archaeology, published in 1967. It's a slim volume about archaeology generally, not just historical archaeology. images.app.goo.gl/AQGcBW4Ez8b3jR…
#drspacejunk101

Let's think about what was happening in 1966, the year before Invitation to Archaeology was published. In the US, the Gemini human spaceflight program peaked. Spacecraft reached Venus and the Moon. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_in_s… #drspacejunk101

It's no wonder that space exploration was on historical archaeologist James Deetz' mind when he was writing Invitation to Archaeology. There's a throwaway line in the book: one day archaeologists will study starships. #drspacejunk101

You can imagine that for me, as a nascent space archaeologist battling skepticism, it was so thrilling to find this statement and feel I had backing from the great James Deetz. Sadly Deetz passed away in 2000, before space archaeology really took off. #drspacejunk101

Sorry for break in transmission! My Twitter completely fell over and I had to reinstall. #drspacejunk101

In the 1960s and 1970s the US was landing people on the Moon, and the USSR was sending spacecraft to Venus. Then there were space stations, space shuttles, and a massive growth in satellite industries. #drspacejunk101

Were archaeologists interested in the creation of new archaeological records on other worlds? Not that I can find out, but if you come across any evidence before the 1980s I'd be glad to hear it! #drspacejunk101

One reason, of course, for the lack of interest might have been because archaeologists are plagued by 'ancient aliens' conspiracy theorists, so space travel had a bad rap. #drspacejunk101

If you want to know more about the intersection of archaeology and 'ancient aliens', I recommend following @DSAArchaeology. #drspacejunk101

I might have to leave it there for this morning - there's work to be done! Next up will be the advent of modern material culture studies in the 1980s in Part 3. But we'd better have some homework (the fun part). Let me think what might be useful. #drspacejunk101

I don't want to focus on the US too much - space industry is global with global impacts, and every nation and community has its own stories to tell. But there are heaps of great free resources on US space history here: history.nasa.gov/series95.html #drspacejunk101

Join me tomorrow for more on the history of space archaeology! #drspacejunk101

Good morning class! It's 5.30 am in South Australia, I'm awake, and ready for some more space archaeology in #drspacejunk101! Today we continue Module 1 on the history and background of space archaeology.

For those who've just joined, this is our course outline. #drspacejunk101

https://twitter.com/drspacejunk/status/1239627795396886528?s=19

So far we've covered 1. Definitions of space archaeology 2. Basic archaeological field methods 3. Historical archaeology and the first mention of the possibility of space archaeology, by James Deetz in 1967. #drspacejunk101

How's everyone getting on? Thanks to @lauratgonzalez for posting her mud map. Did you find anything interesting in the readings? Any questions about anything? #drspacejunk101

So back to our historical narrative. In the 1980s, a few things happened which impacted the future discipline of space archaeology. One was the development of modern material culture studies. #drspacejunk101

Modern material culture had two strands, and now I'm going to have to dive back into archaeological definitions. One was ethnoarchaeology. This is the idea that you can learn about past behaviour by recreating it in the present #drspacejunk101

Here's an example of ethnoarchaeology. In this short video, knapping enthusiast Mike Cook makes and uses stone tools to shave his face. For some purposes, stone is superior to metal. #drspacejunk101

Ethnoarchaeology assumes that the properties of materials are constant through time, and these place constraints around human behaviour. Ie, obsidian will always break the same way whether 2 million years ago or 2 years ago #drspacejunk101

Therefore, by experimenting on himself (not recommended by the way) Mike Cook could work out roughly how many obsidian razors it takes to shave once, and when we find similar shapes and numbers in an archaeological site, we could hypothesize shaving. #drspacejunk101

Not only material properties, but basic human motivations and responses could be presumed constant through time. If you studied contemporary material culture you could learn something about human behaviour in the past. #drspacejunk101 #ethnoarchaeology

At a very broad level this might be true, but when you start to break it down, it becomes very difficult to identify what those constants are in any meaningful way. As LP Hartley said, 'the past is a foreign country. They do things differently there' #drspacejunk101

If you've been watching The Good Place, you might remember moral philosophy professor Chidi Anagonye talking about Derek Parfitt and personal identity. How do we even know we're the same person from one moment to the next? #drspacejunk101

So there's a lot to be considered in how we apply knowledge gained in the present to the past. But the other strand of modern material culture was the idea that this modern stuff might actually be relevant in its own right #drspacejunk101

A bunch of archaeologists proposed that we might learn something about contemporary society by focusing on our own material culture, and that this was a valid area of research. Revolutionary! #drspacejunk101

After all, when does the past actually begin? Is it 1000 years ago? 100 years ago? 10 years? 10 minutes? 10 seconds? This was the premise of a famous short story by Isaac Asimov. #drspacejunk101

In The Dead Past, a researcher is denied permission to use a machine called the chronoscope to investigate ancient Carthage. Why? Because if you can look 2000 years into the past, you can look a millisecond ago. #drspacejunk101

The chronoscope is a surveillance machine. The past is not dead! Read the story here: novels77.com/the-complete-s… #drspacejunk101

So now archaeologists were thinking about modern material culture as a thing in itself. One of the most influential publications was the 1981 'Modern Material Culture: the Archaeology of Us', edited by Richard Gould and Michael Schiffer #drspacejunk101

The book isn't online, but you can read the table of contents here to get an idea. You'll see there's lots of stuff which might be considered historical archaeology; the lines are blurry. books.google.com.au/books?id=xiuLB… #drspacejunk101

Hidden in this table of contents is something VERY INTERESTING. The chapter by David Meltzer called Ideology and Material Culture is actually about the US National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC! #drspacejunk101

I don't currently have a copy of the chapter, and am not able to go to the library to get the book, so we might have to come back to this one too. #drspacejunk101

In the meantime, here is your homework for today. Check out the National Air and Space Museum here: airandspace.si.edu #drspacejunk101

And here are some pics from my last visit, in 2019!

Tomorrow in #drspacejunk101 we'll stay in the 1980s with the work of Ben Finney. See you in the morning and stay safe!