Читать книгу Iraq's Marsh Arabs in the Garden of Eden - Edward L. Ochsenschlager - Страница 10

3

WAYS AND MEANS

The research plan for this study had to be simple and flexible, for no set time period could be allotted to these studies, and the excavations at al-Hiba had to be the first concern. Holidays, days when rain or mud made the site unworkable, and evenings were available. At other times I participated in the daily digging and dealt with the ancient pottery recovered from the excavations. From time to time two or three consecutive days could be arranged, especially when staff members made group visits to other sites. It was also possible to set aside a few days before the excavations began and after they were finished.

I wanted to know how local craftspeople gathered their raw materials, how they modified or prepared these raw materials for use, what kinds of artifacts were then made and the details of their construction, their function or functions, their longevity, and how they were disposed of when they were abandoned or no longer usable. Two other elements were important: one was the variation in an artifact’s form or function based on tribal or village contexts; the other was the change that took place in any aspect of an artifact’s life cycle and the reason or reasons for that change. I focused on major, locally obtainable, raw material resources that had been available to ancient people who lived in this area: mud or clay, reeds, wood, and bitumen. I added sheep, cattle, and water buffalo to our study. In order to avoid confusion, I investigated each resource separately. For instance, only when I had completely finished collecting information about mud would I begin asking questions about reeds. As a result, a number of procedures, for example the use of reeds in mud construction, were documented twice: once when studying reeds and again when studying mud construction.

I will introduce each subject with a description of what I learned about these materials and their usage in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Then I will present a short section on the changes I noticed in individual artifacts or groups of artifacts during the 22 years of our investigation and why these changes occurred. Finally I will try to indicate the impact this information can have on our knowledge of the past.

Good Manners

Accompanied by Mohammed al Dukkhan, our mound guard and my guide, I would visit a village or settlement. Inevitably the villagers knew of my pending visit. As their laws of hospitality demanded, we were invited for coffee, tea, or both in a mudhif maintained by the local sheikh or his followers, or in one or more village homes or Bedouin tents (see p.145–9). Inevitably we were asked to stay for a meal. We tried not to inconvenience anyone by accepting, but sometimes it was impossible to refuse the invitation. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, when few families had enough food to keep them from hunger, the burden of extra mouths to feed had serious consequences. Nevertheless, hospitality was considered an important manifestation of generosity, and generosity was a major requirement of family honor (see p.17). No matter how destitute a family, they always tried to provide some help for those worse off than themselves. Women prepared more than the family needed, even if the main course was boiled greens, lest some hungry stranger wander by at mealtime.

Accepting an invitation for tea, coffee, or food was an obligation to eat or drink whatever you were offered. To do otherwise was to insult your host. Some visitors thought they could beg off food they considered unpleasant, like a chunk of fat from the tail of a fat-tailed sheep, by claiming vegetarianism. If this were not true and the visitor later ate any meat during his or her stay in the area, it became immediate village gossip and both the host and his village were dishonored by this visible rejection of their hospitality. The visitor was never believed again. It was also considered ill manners to eat in one house and then accept another invitation for the same meal or to eat in the village and return to your camp for an additional meal or snack. This double dipping broadcast to the community that you had found the hospitality of your first host inadequate and was considered a grave insult. I remember with great embarrassment an incident when I took a fellow excavator to drink coffee with the Bedouin. He asked for boiling water and used it to clean the communal coffee cup before drinking from it. This extra-hygienic flourish, offensive both to his host and the assembled guests, was fortunately considered so outrageous that it eventually became a community joke.

Such finicky behavior would rightly be destructive to one’s reputation with people of the village. Nor was there any reason for it. If, for instance, you were served the gelatinous eye of a sheep plucked from the socket of the cooked beast you could force yourself to swallow it in spite of the determined resistance of your esophagus.

All sorts of noises, some of which are considered bad manners elsewhere, are permitted at dinner. Belching, smacking your lips, making loud sucking or chomping noises with your mouth show that you relish the food and can be used as cover during the contest between your will and your stomach.

Because foreigners were unusual in these villages and camps, almost all village men would soon join us at our host’s to drink tea, talk, and ask questions. This initial encounter could be time consuming, sometimes lasting three or four hours. It took less time in small villages than in larger ones because of the number of people present, for it was essential to the honor of our hosts that they follow the rules of hospitality precisely. Only after every rule had been observed and every person present been given the opportunity to welcome me and ask their questions could I ask mine. Everyone was eager to be helpful, and often arguments would break out over exactly how something I was inquiring about was done, how something was used, how much it cost, and so on. I collected information, even that which was contradictory. When everyone had finished their say on the subject, I tried to identify people in the village who had actually made or used each item, and then I would make appointments to return and watch the artifact’s manufacture and use. Often this meant returning to the same village several times while investigating a single class of objects, because I tried to watch everyone regularly involved perform the process from beginning to end.

Careful Observation

I must emphasize the importance of the visual aspect of ethnoarchaeology. Only repeated, concentrated observation over long periods of time helps us escape a variety of pitfalls: our own preconceptions; the multitudinous snares of relying on biased, ignorant, or culture-protective informants; the danger of questionnaires, which can be intentionally or accidentally designed to elicit what the designers predetermine they want to hear; or the formulation rather than sampling of opinion.

How we see things depends on our point of view. Our preconceptions arise from our own cultural bias and what we have read or been told by “experts.” Of the two, what we have been told by “experts,” a phenomenon often unrecognized, is the more destructive of true understanding. From early childhood through old age, many of us accept without question concepts and solutions provided us by the books we read, the television or movies we see, and the opinions favored by our friends, relatives, and teachers. So powerful is the effect of this lifelong reliance on “experts” and “expert opinion” that I have observed extremely bright college students watch a video of pottery making three or four times before realizing that major aspects of the process are different from the way I described it to them moments before.

What we are capable of seeing depends on our ability to suspend routine processing of visual images. In everyday life, most of us observe phenomena only long enough to classify them and assess their immediate utility or meaning. This transitory glance helps us avoid the paralysis that would result from sensory overload had we to absorb and analyze every visual detail we perceived before we could respond. Fortunately speedy absorption of detail and comprehension are easily taught for most kinds of visual stimuli. Courses in speed reading and reading comprehension have in particular enjoyed considerable success.

The camera is also useful in helping us see clearly. A recording of an ethnographic process on file can be viewed repeatedly. The mistakes of interpretation made the first viewing can be corrected at a later showing. A film can serve as a training tool for students and also help the ethnoarchaeologist verify previous observations or discover new aspects that escaped observation in the field. Using cameras for studying ethnographic detail, however, is not necessarily the same as the production of an ethnographic or documentary film. In the former one focuses the camera and lets it run through every aspect of a process no matter how repetitive or boring. In the latter a producer or director often edits the material to present effectively a particular message or point of view and to take into account the normal span of audience attention. Today the easy availability of movie or video cameras makes them an important research tool. In the late 1960s in Iraq restrictions on their import and use and the cost of the equipment made them impractical. Still cameras, however, were an acceptable import, and shooting snapshots throughout a process of artifact manufacture or use proved extremely useful.

Clarity of perception is equally important in understanding the cultural significance or impact of change. Sometimes we can observe changes but lack understanding. Other times change is not easily seen, yet it is obvious from subsequent behavior or occurrences that important changes have taken place. Sometimes dramatic changes that appear major turn out to be minor, and sometimes changes that appear minor have significant cultural impact. Based on my experience at al-Hiba, I feel certain that the investigator must actually be present just before, or at the time when, major cultural changes occur in order to understand fully their significance or their structure. It is in community actions and deliberations that take place during the contemplation of these changes and in their initial processes that real issues and factors are weighed and discussed. A good example of this can be found in the discussion of change from mud to plastic toys (see p.89). Although afterward people attributed the change to the durability and color of the plastic, the primary motivating factor and its enforcement depended on aspects of family honor (see p. 88–9).

Since in ethnography the investigator deals with a living culture it is possible to explore actions and opinions of each member of the group provided they are willing to explain these to you. With perseverance one is able to understand the significance to the villagers individually and collectively of what we observe. This immediacy of understanding is not possible for the archaeologist, who must rely for his or her elucidations on those few artifacts preserved, his or her interpretations of their contexts, and whatever written documentation exists. The complexity of results from ethnoarchaeological research cautions archaeologists against over reliance on or easy acceptance of simple theoretical constructs to explain the nature, function, and significance of artifactual evidence.

Long-term, intensive ethnoarchaeological research with emphasis on clarity of comprehension can separate us, however reluctantly, from the outcomes we expect. It can also protect us from false, even comical ideas, which often result from scattered observations here and a few cogent questions there. Moreover, it can provide us with enough detail to understand the underlying structure of cultural persistence and change.

Problems in Collecting Data

Repeated and unhurried observations of the same process performed by many different informants, I believe, gave the most reliable information, and my serious reservations about ethnoarchaeological evidence based on interviews, questionnaires, or one or two observations are a direct result of this study. During my research I was told, and sometimes shown, many things that turned out to be inaccurate about artifact functions or manufacturing processes. Only by watching a process from beginning to end, performed by different people and in different villages, was I able to correct mistaken impressions. For instance, the time it took to make an artifact, which is an important factor in computing its relative cultural value, could be shortened by mentioning verbally but not performing one or more processes, or it could be lengthened considerably by the informant drawing out activities or descriptions as if explaining them to a two-year-old child. Things could be added, especially decorative touches, which were never seen on the artifact in question in an inventory of household items, or details could be omitted entirely.

People in the villages were always pleasant and hospitable. They would inevitably seek to please me in any way they could, which often included telling me what they thought I wanted to hear. I had to be extremely careful not to influence their replies by asking questions in such a way as to suggest the answer or by showing through facial expression or gesture either approval or disapproval. I also had to ensure that my guide, Muhammad, did not prejudice the outcome. He, of course, had heard what others said on the same subject, so it was natural and easy for him to weight answers and discussions in accord with what he had previously heard or seen. Indeed the villagers sometimes asked him outright what it was I wanted them to say or just how I wanted them to carry out a process.

Interviewees telling us what they think we want to hear probably leads to less error than other ways that they may (and do) respond. Some try to create what they imagine is a good impression, others reply with their notion of how things should be rather than the way they are. If this can happen among people whom an interviewer has known for years and who are genuinely trying to help, think of the potential error in interviewing subjects who are strangers and who have no interest in you or the success of your project. No amount of textbook behavior modification can ever replace a relationship based on years of association and proven concern for the interviewees and demonstrated usefulness to them and their villages. We were the area’s largest employer, we tried to live within the constraints of local morality, and we actively aided those in need of medical attention. Few people in the area were eager to divulge technical secrets on which their livelihood depended, but they might acquiesce for those whom they saw as appreciative and reciprocative good neighbors.

Other misleading information comes about when the informants consider their behavior old fashioned or embarrassing. For example, while watching a local burial from some distance, I happened to notice that the deceased woman’s jewelry was modeled out of mud. Although Muhammad and I had been concentrating on collecting information about the use of mud for several weeks, this was one usage he had never mentioned to me. It turned out that some families replaced the real jewelry of the dead, which often comprised the entire material resources of the family, with imitations in mud before interment. As this would appear to be a very local and unique practice somewhat at odds with religious tenets and, as far as I know, practiced no where else in Iraq, Muhammad was reluctant to discuss it. He considered this custom by some of his neighbors old fashioned, mortifying, and too bound up with the aura of death to be wholly safe for discussion. When I later took pictures of substitute jewelry being made for the adornment of a corpse, some villagers were convinced that I would die within the year. Had I not actually seen the earlier interment, I would never have known about this usage, for no one would have told me.

After making horrendous language mistakes on my first visit to the area in 1968, I decided to bring along native speakers of Arabic. In a Bedouin tent, for instance, wanting to ask how often they milked the camel, I once tried to show off by using a more specific word than jamal (camel). The word baier leapt to my mind. No sooner was the word out of my mouth than I realized I had said “stud camel.” Before I could correct my error, I was tersely advised that Bedouin do not milk stud camels. Despite my protestations that I had merely made a mistake in the choice of words, I knew what would follow. I had just defined Americans in a new and interesting way, and I could almost hear them tell their neighbors around the hearth that night, “You will never believe what Americans drink.”

I hoped that native speakers could catch nuances of language that would expand my knowledge of a particular operation, but it did not turn out that way at all. Villagers who had been voluble in their explanation of, for example, the use of dung patties for baking pottery when I had spoken to them myself, the day before, might suddenly deny that they used them at all when I brought along a city-educated translator. And, if the translator was local they might try to impress him by increasing the number of dung patties they used to show that they were well off and were indifferent to the expense, or they might decrease the number to show how skilled they were in getting sufficient heat from fewer patties. In understanding the language these translators were infinitely superior, but they lacked the necessary relationship with the participants and they depended on language, rather than on observation, in seeking to understand a process. They were inevitably misled either intentionally by the subject or through their misunderstanding of the meaning of a word or phrase as it was used in a local dialect or in a craft context foreign to them. This can be a real problem for outsiders unaware of alternative terminology or methods of classification used in local crafts or occupations (see p.129–30, 213–4). Also, like most of us, they were acutely embarrassed when they found they did not know the details of what happened in their own backyard. They either invented a theory and made their observations fit, or they bought the first explanation from an “expert,” embracing it as their own understanding and holding to it with great tenacity, in spite of their ignorance. If the translator is closely associated with his subjects one must consider his ideas of cultural propriety and what he might hide or amend in the presentations he is helping to record.^*

Some Problems of Relationships

Local curiosity about every aspect of my existence was flattering but also caused me minor problems. In the countryside the problems were small and were sorted out with no difficulty. Everyone wanted to know what America was like, what kind of work I did, and what my family was like. Good manners permitted these questions to be verbalized directly, and they could easily be answered. But simple answers could not always dispose of a question. Again and again they would approach, with incredulity, the question of my not being married. I could never find an answer that satisfied them. To marry and raise children was, after all, the duty of every able-bodied man, and it was inconceivable to them that a man my age remained unmarried. This question was one of the many disconnects between cultural expectations that arose in conversation, and at first I was concerned about how to handle them. Some suggested that I should avoid answering questions based on concepts of cultural relativity lest I offend local people. I found it far better to be open and candid as most people reacted to differences in my culture as I reacted to differences in theirs. They thought them sometimes strange and always interesting, and they wanted to know the reasons for differences in action or thought. It was my experience that forthrightness on any issue proved far better than deception.

The overwhelming impression I have of my excursions is the feeling of never being alone. Even a trip to answer the call of nature was accompanied by at least two people. If I was not feeling well, all my new friends swarmed to keep me company and cheer me up with stories, songs, and laughter. If I had a headache, I never dared to reveal it: the ensuing cacophony of support made the headache even worse. Sometimes an individual had heard some strange rumor or come up with an idea of his own invention concerning non-believers: if one stuck a pin into them or threw salt on them, or said a holy phrase, foreigners would turn red, explode, perhaps pray to Allah. From time to time, therefore, I was the victim of an unexpected and strange incident in full view of the assembled guests, and I had to accept that being stuck with a pin, sprinkled with salt, and the like, was merely the result of curiosity.

Towns were quite different from villages. Our first visit to a nearby town was a near disaster. Children saw our taradas (bitumen-covered boats that we propelled through the marshes with long poles) coming through the marshes and lined the bank where we landed. They raced ahead of us as we walked toward the town, and the townsfolk came out in great numbers; they certainly meant no harm but crowded so closely around us that we could not move. By this time, the police had been apprised of our arrival and had come running to our assistance. Worried about our safety, they ripped off their belts and beat anyone within striking distance until we were safely ensconced in a local coffeehouse. This method of crowd control, an overreaction from a Western viewpoint, was more likely to occur in towns and cities than in the villages of the countryside, and it made interviewing in town difficult if not impossible. On a visit to Shatra in 1970, I saw several ladies selling carpets in the suq (marketplace). One carpet, which I found especially interesting and unusual, featured rather large, Picassoesque birds and animals set among the more traditional geometric forms. I was touring the market with the chief guard of the antiquities department in the region and the mayor of the town, both extremely pleasant fellows and very solicitous of my welfare, and we were followed by about 150 people. The officials took my interest in the woman weaver and her product as a desire to purchase the carpet. Before I could inform them otherwise, they asked the seller how much she wanted for the carpet, and when she named a figure, the crowd began to berate her for asking too much, overcharging a visitor, and so on. The poor woman dissolved in tears under this barrage, plucked her carpet from the ground, and ran in terror from the marketplace.

Winning People’s Respect

When women were involved in a particular task, it was sometimes difficult to persuade men to let me watch their womenfolk and often impossible to persuade them to let me take photographs. The religion here is strictly aniconic, which prohibits photos, and an ideal of women’s honor hold them to a higher standard than men and prevents them from engaging in any behavior even remotely questionable.

As a compromise, a man would sometimes go through the process of making or using an artifact just outside his house while his wife coached him from within. On the one hand, it was instructive and a bit amusing to note how little a husband or son might know about something he watched his wife or mother do every day. On the other, he thought he knew the process because he was a member of the community in which it was done and he would often persist in erroneous procedures until the onlookers rolled on the ground with laughter.

The public nature of village life also acted as a control on a subject’s veracity. It was not easy for a person to fabricate or improvise a manufacturing procedure or to make a substitution such as wood for dung patties in the baking process, since sessions were seldom private and the spectators quite voluble. A real innovation required substantial explanation from the maker or user before the omnipresent crowd accepted it. Added controls were the many examples of comparative material gathered from several settlements (which were often socially at odds with each other and thus isolated from one another), as well as the visual evidence in the actual inventories of village homes. What little falsification or embellishment was attempted, such as adding store-bought brass thumbtacks to a utilitarian mugwar was never very successful.

There were several reasons why people in the village were so cooperative. First, they were aware from the beginning that we wished to make the al-Hiba expedition a long-term project. Over the years this gave us an opportunity to really get to know each other. In my experience long-term involvement with the people one is studying can win their respect and understanding. We tried very hard to respect the traditions and customs of the area and to live our own lives there accordingly.

Second was the al-Hiba expedition’s relations with its work force, all of whom came from the surrounding villages. Our policies of hiring were based on village custom, and, from time to time, we provided jobs for members of destitute families who otherwise would be dependent on village alms for survival. Sometimes these individuals were not as capable as other workers available, but our action was supported by the gratitude of the entire village.

Third, we looked after the minor injuries of the surrounding populace with iodine, bandages, aspirin, and antibiotics and often sent serious cases to the doctors in Shatra at our own expense. When traveling to villages for ethnographic research, I always took a first-aid kit and was usually able to offer some assistance that helped establish my credentials as a person interested in other human beings. There was a certain danger in this, of course, for it was always possible that I would be blamed for the death of someone I had treated. Fortunately that never happened to me. Particularly poignant is the memory of the parents of a young boy who died when his skull was crushed in a fall. Every year they would bring me vegetables from their small garden as a thank you for “having cared enough to try and help.”

Finally, I did not expect craftsmen to spend their time and energy for nothing.^* If they allowed me to watch the manufacture of an object they were making for a third party, I often ordered and paid for something similar after the session was over. If they were just making the object to demonstrate the procedures of manufacture to satisfy my curiosity, I inevitably bought the object outright. I could not bring myself to take advantage of their willingness to help me, especially in the early days of economic deprivation. This practice of paying fair market value had another advantage: it eliminated the frequent shortcuts taken in procedure and explanations when a project was not compensated.

The local people came to know me socially as the only outsider who frequently visited their villages, and they accepted me as a person as interested as they were in the problems they encountered in converting the resources of the area into a living for their families. My enthusiasm for the ethnoarchaeological project and my joy in discovering the smallest details of their everyday lives was apparent to them and in a sense flattering. They seemed to take pleasure in teaching me what they could—not, as I was to discover later, because they were concerned with my scholarly research, but because they assumed I was applying what I learned to improve my life and that of my family in rural America. Having seen a photograph of my house, which is alongside a creek, they concluded that my interest in refurbishing boats was in order that I might better repair my own boat that carried me by canal from my home to Brooklyn College. My curiosity about the details of spinning and weaving, they thought, was motivated by my desire to teach my mother and sister this necessary craft.