Depicting the past

I'm full of admiration for those illustrators who bring the past to life. When watching Time Team – a guilty pleasure, I freely admit – I was always dazzled by Victor Ambrus' uncanny ability to peer at some sketchy archaeological remains, then paint them as they might have been. His people were believable because he made them seem like us. Different lifestyle, different clothes, but just like us.



Not all artists are so diligent and I've noticed that when it comes to the ancient British past, many fall back on the weary stereotype of the uggish caveman. Whether it be the Stone Age or the Iron, our forebears are all too often shown as dirty, dishevelled, long-haired, bearded, wrapped carelessly in skins, crouched low or imprecating madly to the sky, and clearly suffering from an unhealthy obsession with sharp pointy sticks.

Last week's BBC documentary, Operation Stonehenge, was a case in point. While otherwise excellent, its tiresome reconstructions trucked out the same stereotypes.



These jokers would've been dead in a week.

Such depictions make the past distant, other, and have the effect of elevating us at its expense. We look on condescendingly, safe in the knowledge that the slow march of cultural evolution has made us different. We are civilised. They were not.

The discovery on Dartmoor, in 2011, of the beautifully preserved remains of a Bronze Age kist burial ought to scotch such stereotypes once and for all. The prize find consisted of two spindle wood discs. They turned out to be ear plugs. Whoever had been buried there had stretched earlobes, a fact that makes me think our ancestors were far more like the indigenous hunter-gathers of today than the convenient oafs of stereotype. 


For take a look at extant tribal cultures and you'll find that they are, by necessity, resourceful, keen-witted, fit, ripped and equipped with the skills and wherewithal to survive.

They are also proud and vain, adorning themselves in pelts, feathers, piercings, paint and tattoos. They are, in other words, and no matter how alien their moralities, lifeways and worldviews, just like us, a fact I wish the history-makers would remember.



2 comments:

  1. First, yes to your serious point: the 'forward march of progress' nonsense needs no encouragement and 'othering' of people different in time is scarily translated to people different in space. Secondly, I have met these people: 'dirty, dishevelled, long-haired, bearded, wrapped carelessly in skins, crouched low or imprecating madly to the sky, and clearly suffering from an unhealthy obsession with sharp pointy sticks'.

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