Out Of The Past

Used to be an archaeologist was someone who carried a little hammer, a brush, and a specimen baggie, but in the last 40 years Virginia Slims aren't the only thing that's come a long way: modern archaeology today embraces many different concerns and disciplines, including the environment, politics, culture, and economics. Modern archaeology is the subject of this new 8-part series from the Annenberg/CPB Project. We watched episodes 3 and 8 (Artisans and Traders and Collapse, respectively). One of the signs that characterizes the shift from a hunter-gatherer society to a mercantile society is an increasing specialization among the work force. In Artisans and Traders, the Pennsylvania State University archaeologists excavate the history of the Copan settlement, an ancient Mayan site, in Honduras, Mexico, where evidence of mass production of some items suggest an economy based--at least in part--on trade. Yet, without pack animals, how did the isolated Copan community bring their goods to market? The team compares current practices in the area with what they're able to discover about the past in order to solve the mystery. Collapse, the final program also returns to Copan to question why a flourishing community should abruptly disappear around 1200 A.D. The same question is also asked of the Anasazi Indian tribe which suddenly vanished from their Colorado/New Mexico cave dwellings. Interestingly, the archaeologists come up with a wide variety of clues--ranging from oversalinization of the irrigation water to overproduction of the soil. Out of the Past is an often fascinating attempt to reconstruct the economies of ancient civilizations, to see what went wrong and in the process perhaps shed some illumination on our own troubled times. Highly recommended. (See AMERICAS for availability.)