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Journal of Social Archaeology

http://jsa.sagepub.com/content/7/2/199The online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/1469605307077480

2007 7: 199Journal of Social ArchaeologyFlora Vilches

The art of archaeology : Mark Dion and his dig projects

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ISSN 1469-6053 Vol 7(2):199223 DOI: 10.1177/1469605307077480

Journal of Social Archaeology A R T I C L E

199

The art of archaeologyMark Dion and his dig projects

FLORA VILCHES

Instituto de Investigaciones Arqueolgicas y Museo R.P. Gustavo Le Paige,s.j.,

Universidad Catlica del Norte, Chile

ABSTRACT

This article discusses two dig projects of American artist Mark Dion,Tate Thames Dig (1999) and New England Digs (2001), in which headvances a critique of classificatory systems by borrowing the method-ology of archaeology. While the artist explicitly displays the process oflaboratory analysis as an object itself, his critique is not directed tonor informed by any particular theoretical school within the disci-pline. However, Dions representation of the archaeological processresonates with some elements of postprocessualism. Knowing thegenealogy of the artist is vital to understanding such an affinity. Inaddition, Dions classifications have an impact on the audience interms of the construction and reproduction of historical identity,something apparent in the different reception of his work in Englandand in the USA. This difference is also apparent in the construction

and reproduction of archaeological practice in each country.

KEYWORDS

archaeological analysis classification contemporary art instal-lations Mark Dion postprocessualism



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202 Journal of Social Archaeology 7(2)

and Tilley not only cite many of the texts and authors that were staplereadings at the Whitney Program, but their reading of them comes from asimilar direction. The fact that Dion has not read postprocessual archae-

ological theory per se does not prevent him from having a critical approachto the discipline of archaeology, or to his own. Because anthropological andarchaeological self-critiques ultimately reveal a crisis in culture, the under-lying object of the critique is what brings Dion and postprocessualists, suchas the aforementioned, together.

Dions reading of Gould could be regarded as a substitute for the post-processual critical approach to archaeology. Although natural rather thansocial, biology shares the scientific component of archaeology. Dionsapproach to biology, however, is much deeper and more theoretical than hisapproach to archaeology. Works such as Tropical Rainforest Preserves (withWilliam Schefferine) of 1989 or The Delirium of Alfred Russel Wallace, of1994, denote careful and specific research that is not present in the archae-

ological projects, as we will see in the next section. Dion does not recognizean influential scholar such as Gould for archaeology:

I think the critical reassessment of archaeology in the 90s, they are readingthe same material that you are reading if you are working with literarycriticism or art criticism . . . that makes it possible for us to talk together.Major people like Foucault and James Clifford I think are shared by a lot ofpeople. But certainly Im not reading field reports, Im not going througharchaeological journals. If I am taking something from archaeology it is thekind of archaeology that comes through critical theory.1

But being more or less well versed in specific disciplinary matters is notthe main point. I am, in fact, more interested in Dions approach to archae-

ology as an artist and so is he: The tactical element of what I do in termsof a strategy in art production is to use fictional characters to discuss realmaterial situations and documentary practice (Dion, 1992: 9).

Dions relationship with archaeology defines his ability to mount aportrayal of it not necessarily foreseen by contemporary archaeologists.From this perspective, his remark on the divide between the ways in whichartists and art historians approach theory pragmatic and intellectual places archaeologists by default among the latter, within the academicworld (Coles, 1999a). Despite the tangible aspects involved in the pro-duction of knowledge about the past, archaeologists still largely approachmaterial matters intellectually. The material consequences of archae-ological practice, although existent and sometimes acknowledged, areusually hidden from public view, playing no role in reports, lectures or publi-cations. Dions approach to archaeology as a sculpture-oriented artistenables him to disclose some of those intimate practices and make themworthy to be looked at as material entities. Dion fully understands that itis not so much about working with the past as it is about working with the



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203Vilches The art of archaeology

present. Or, that the present can also be treated under the scope of materialmatters. This is the story he tells in his archaeological projects.

CLASSIFICATION IN ARCHAEOLOGY: THE PRACTICE OF

EVERYDAY LIFE

A digless dig

During the summer of 1999, Mark Dion could be seen in full archaeologicalgear on the banks of the Thames River in central London (Figure 1). A yearaway from opening its Modern addition, the Tate Gallery invited the artistto propose a project to celebrate the creation of the new building. Dion gavelife to the Tate Thames Dig, a multi-stage project that echoes archaeologicalresearch. The first stage contemplated the recovery of material remains from

two sites on opposite banks of the Thames, one in Millbank, near the oldTate, and the other in Bankside, near the new Tate. The second stagecomprised the analysis of the finds in tents located on the lawn of the newTate. Finally, the last stage included the display of the organized remnants

Figure 1 Mark Dion (left) beachcombing on Londons foreshore,

Tate Thames Dig, Site I, 1999 (Photo: Tate, London 2007)



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along with other material components of the first two stages of the projectinArt Now at the Tate Gallery at Millbank. A series of related events suchas lectures and field trips were scheduled throughout that summer to comp-

lement the exhibit.Dions project at the Thames built on his former digs at Fribourg

(History Trash Dig, 1995) and Venice (History Trash Scan, 1996). Becausethese projects were the first to represent a variation from Dions work onrepresentations of nature, they received less scholarly attention (Corrin,1997). From the Thames project onwards that situation changed. Interest-ingly, among those writing about Dions dig projects are professionalarchaeologists such as Colin Renfrew (1999, 2003), Michael Shanks (2002),Leah Rosenmeier (2001), and Cornelius Holtorf (2004b, 2005). Renfrewwas particularly involved with the Thames project, acting as consultant,public lecturer, and author of essays. He was intrigued by Dions ability tosubtly raise disquieting questions about the boundaries between science

and art. When it came to define what Dion was really doing, however,Renfrew made it very clear that gathering curiosities from the foreshore isreally just beachcombing, not modern archaeology (Renfrew, 1999: 14).Renfrew was right; Dion did not follow a systematic procedure to collectthe objects that he later classified and displayed nor did he recover themfrom secure stratigraphic contexts. And if we want to be extremely purist,he never dug anything nor did he do so in the Venice dig. But this is whathis work is about, using fiction to talk about the real. A digless dig is there-fore the ultimate irony of the fake endeavor.

As I mentioned earlier, the present discussion centers exclusively on thesecond stage of Dions project: analysis. In popular culture, this is definitelythe least attractive of all stages in the archaeological process. While field-

work may involve trips to exotic locations that culminate in grand exca-vations, analysis usually takes place indoors in the laboratory, ruling outthe very fabrication of myths of prowess and adventure. And if there is noexotic destination, but a destination, the outdoors setting helps mitigate themeticulous and tedious practices that come along with the field experience.In the laboratory, by contrast, all that remains is the meticulous and thetedious. Within the discipline of archaeology this romantic view of theprofession does not hold true; many archaeologists are not even fieldoriented, restricting their job to working indoors. Moreover, analysis itselfis not an activity exclusive to the laboratory; it starts in the field when thecollected materials are subject to preliminary organization for further andmore detailed analysis. Laboratory analysis therefore involves more refinedclassificatory procedures that seek to understand better the material.

At the heart of the analytical process lies classification. Although classi-fications aim to establish patterns to make comparison possible, they varyin degree of complexity. In the 1960s, processual archaeology advanced theuse of quantitative techniques, such as statistical and numerical analysis, toimprove the quality of analytical procedures. This set of techniques allowed



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hypothesis testing while securing a firmer backdrop between data andinterpretations made out of it. Despite the general agreement within thediscipline of the fact that classifications are methodological tools created by

investigators as operational units, what constitutes a point of contention isthe quickness with which archaeologists forget, or fail to make public, thatclassifications are indeed arbitrary. Ian Hodder has discussed this amnesiain relation to the definition of layers in controlled stratigraphic excavations:

. . . once the decision has been taken to lump lenses into a layer or to split alayer into smaller lenses or layers, it is assumed that the further description of

stratigraphic units is objective and routine. The identification of the layer (orunit, context, locus,or spit) is the primary building block of the recordingprocess in archaeology. It is according to these units that artifacts areretrieved, soils recorded and analysis and comparison undertaken. (Hodder,1999: 1089,emphasis mine)

Hodders point is relevant because it places analytical categories within ahermeneutic flux. Classifications not only provide a platform for furtherinterpretation, they also depart from and are in themselves interpretations.The fact that laboratory analysis is a practice hidden from view and publicscrutiny can only strengthen the archaeologists difficulty in exposing thearbitrariness of his/her classificatory methods. In the Tate Thames Dig,Mark Dion undermined the illusion of stability in archaeological analysisin two different ways. On the one hand, he literally turned the lab insideout by installing a field centre for everyone to see, and on the other hand,he classified many items that due to their recent origins tend not to beregarded under fixed categories, making their arbitrariness more evident.Rather than exploring each strategy at length, I discuss the elements in

Dions sensibility as an artist that enable these strategies to exist, and thattend to be absent in the sensibilities of the archaeological world.

Fake, humorous, and private

From 19 July to 13 August 1999, white tents were laid out on the south lawnof the soon-to-be Modern Tate at Bankside; it was the Field Center of MarkDions Tate Thames Dig. With the assistance of local volunteers, Dionanalyzed the finds recently recovered from days of beachcombing the banksof the Thames. To archaeologists such as Renfrew (1999, 2003) and Shanks(2002), and critics such as Coles (1999b, 2000) and Birnbaum (1999), themost valuable aspect of Dions project is its performative component. Theperformative strategy stems from earlier works dealing with naturalsciences (e.g. The N.Y. Bureau of Tropical Conservation, and The Depart-ment of Marine Animal Identification). At the Tate, Dion and his assistantswere circulating in white coats while working in the Field Center mountedin the gallerys lawn (Figure 2). The accent on live performance revealedthat Dions interest in the archaeology of the Thames lay equally, if not



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more, in the ways in which he obtained and worked through the findings,than in the results of those findings.

By performing activities natural to the archaeologist, Dion brought adaily and usually hidden practice in archaeologists lives to public eye and

scrutiny. While doing so, Dion also revealed a stage of his own artisticprocess, making the borders of what constitutes scientific and artisticpractice unclear. As Shanks comments:

In the mimesis, the mimicry of field and curatorial practices . . . there is adisquieting slippage from amateur to the professional (so too in thecollaboration with professional specialists), from simulated to real (it is allvery real) . . . This mobilization of the figure of the simulacrum (so real it ishyper real, maybe better than the original) is what disturbs and prompts thereflexion [of Renfrew and Coles]. (Shanks, 2002: 173)

The mimicry of Dions work with archaeological practice prompts theuntrained eye to think of it as science, but because the Field Center was setup in an art context and presented as the work of an artist, its receptionwas conditioned in such a direction. Naomi Beckwith, one of more than adozen volunteers in the project, expressed that many people left receptiveto the idea of how this project can be classified as art, refreshed by experi-encing a real life demonstration of art with which one could interact and

Figure 2 Field Center,Site II Bankside, Tate Thames Dig,1999

(Photo: Tate,London 2007)



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touch (Beckwith, 1999: 25). Conversely, to those who are experts inarchaeological practice, the resemblance of Dions project to reality is notan issue. As certain as they are that it is not modern archaeology, Dions

project prompts them to think of it as art. Moreover, it incites archae-ologists to think about the purpose of Dions art imitating life, their lives.

Dion has no interest in debating whether the project, or what parts of it,are art or science; he is a self-proclaimed dilettante. Dion knows that theillusion, or sometimes confusion, lies in us, the audience, be it professional,amateur, or plain observant:

The performative aspect of the archaeology projects . . . is quite complexsince I do not really convincingly develop the character of the expert. I neverdisguise the fact that I am an artist,working with a methodology borrowedfrom another field. The fact that the situation often develops in ways it isdifficult for me to control, is part of the implicit interrogation of the issue ofexpertise . . . I never take on the mantel of mastery in these projects. It is

always obvious that I am a dilettante struggling to find my way. As you know,the tone set at a dig is pretty irreverent despite the serious labor involved. Sothere is a strong performative aspect but there is no illusion. (Markonish,2001: 36)

The appeal of the recourse of dilettantism resides in its ability to triggera set of implicit cultural expectations associated with what archaeology andart are supposed to be, only to crush them. According to Dion some of thegreatest contributions in art and science have come from dilettantes ratherthan professionals (Kwon, 1997b: 269). Dions distance from archaeologyas a specialized field is what successfully enables him to objectify the stageof archaeological analysis through performance.

Dions dilettantism touches upon a deeper issue than merely exposing

the unknown to the public. It took an artist, not an archaeologist, to bringthe archaeological process to visual and public center stage. Dion notes thata fundamental difference between archaeologists and himself is that evenif scientists are good at what they do, theyre not necessarily adept in thefield of representation. They dont have access to the rich set of tools, likeirony, allegory and humor, which are the meat and potatoes of art and litera-ture (Kwon, 1997b: 11). To some extent Dion is right. Since archaeologysself-critique in the 1980s, archaeologists have increasingly become adept inthe field of representation. They realized that they do not present but re-present the past on the basis of its remnants. However, archaeologists donot necessarily share Dions strategies to undertake that self-critique. Whilesome draw from literary and artistic sources using irony, allegory andhumor, they lack Dions natural inclination to give three-dimensional formto what he sees with distance.

Christopher Tilley is one of the few archaeologists who explicitly useshumor in archaeology. He advocates for the joke principle, as one of thefive main elements of his alternative theory of reading archaeological



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discourse, designed to facilitate a greater degree of criticism, debate andself-reflexivity within archaeological practice (1990: 1478). In Tilleyswords, the joke principle:

Should be an attempt (which will always fail to a certain degree) tobracket-off the self from what is being read, a creation of distance.Paradoxically, in order to understand and take it seriously it needs to beprovisionally regarded as complete nonsense or at the very least somethingthat should not be taken seriously. In order to effect this the text read can betaken as a joke. The first thing we do to the text is to laugh at its claims to sayanything serious or meaningful about the world. (1990: 148)

Tilleys alternative theory of reading translates to an alternative mode ofwriting archaeology that is also apparent in the work of Shanks, as in thecollaborations between the two.2 The humorous spin of these works lies lessin the use of plain ironic language than in thinking that the positivistic

scientific way of practicing archaeology is not the only one to take the pastseriously. Shanks and Tilley, and other archaeologists, employ tools usuallyforeign to a scientific context, be they sources (Pearson and Shanks, 2001:performance art), writing styles (Shanks and Tilley, 1987/1992: literary),object of study (Holtorf, 2005 and Meskell, 2004: pop culture), or infor-mation not traditionally shared outside the field or laboratory stages of thearchaeological process (Bender et al., 1997; Tilley et al., 2000: scribbles fromfield journals). As in Dions Tate Thames Dig, these works bare a disquiet-ing slippage from traditional archaeologist to something else (e.g. creativewriter, literary critic, art critic); they prompt many to think it may be . . .(something else). . . but is it archaeology?

Archaeologists such as Tilley and others share Dions way of using

humor not as a facile end in itself, but as a strategy to open a door to theunspoken, ugly, and scary. Dion is in fact nothing but respectful for thescientific professions:

I would never try to devalue the efforts of biologists, anthropologists orarchaeologists,while I often attempt to question the political and socialramifications of their work . . . Archaeology is, of course, automatically moredeeply tangled in a web of ideology since it takes as its starting pointmaterial culture. (Markonish, 2001: 21)

Dions critique of culture through archaeology may be humorous at first,but it is very serious. Not only in the respectful attitude of the artist, but inthe depth of the political and social issues at stake. Paraphrasing Smithson,to Dion there is nothing archaeological about archaeology.3 Humor allowsDion to objectify the notion that the archaeologist arbitrarily imposesclassifications today, not in the archaeological past under investigation.Moreover, in this sense, the artist makes it clear that classifications aremajor sources of ideological power.



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Birnbaum (1999) notes the connection between Dions work at theThames and the widespread critical fascination with classificatory systemsin Borges, Bataille, and Foucault.4 Indeed, a point of union between the

1960s generation of artists, that of Dion, and some postprocessualists isFoucaults The Order of Things. Foucault opens the book by narrating hislaughter while reading a passage from The Analytical Language of JohnWilkins by Jorge Luis Borges, where he describes a certain ChineseEncyclopedia with a quite unorthodox classification of animals. WhatFoucault found so humorous about it was that it shattered . . . all thefamiliar landmarks of my thought our thought (1970/1994: xv). Humorenables Dion to look at the classification process in archaeology and to itsresulting types as artifacts themselves. In addition, his expertise in visualrepresentation makes these artifacts not only ideologically,but also visually,provoking. There is an aspect of Dions work that gives visual dignity andrecognition to the materiality of archaeological analysis.

As much as the use of humor in Dions archaeological work is success-fully thought provoking, the cost of attempting an alternative way of self-reflexivity within archaeology is rather high, and that may be its failure. Letus remember the harsh criticism that followed the publication of Shanksand Tilleys Re-Constructing Archaeology 20 years ago as well as the lack ofpopularity of the literary style in the current training of archaeologists. Itis one thing to see Dion play with archaeology because he is a dilettante,but completely different to see professional archaeologists altering thetraditional guidelines of the discipline. Using humor in archaeology fromwithin is thought to automatically diminish the validity of the content ofwhat is written or done. It forces the discipline to remain highly specific andbounded, instead of reaching out to alternative strategies and wider

audiences.Facing this less than encouraging reception of alternative strategies in

archaeological practice, some scholars may feel compelled to quit the fieldaltogether in favor of the arts or the humanities. That was the case in themid-1970s of Susan Hiller, whose work Fragments is a strong antecedent toDions work. Originally an anthropology doctoral candidate, Hiller laterdetermined to find a way of being inside all her activities since she couldnot do this within anthropology and nor did she have the ability to modifythe field (1996: 19).5 To Hiller, being a social scientist not only implied a diffi-culty with representation at large, but with visual representation (Hiller,1996; Robinson, 2006). This is true even for committed self-reflexive archae-ologists who have difficulty overturning the ways in which they have beendisciplined to use their eyes. Hillers analysis recalls Dions remark upon thedivide, discussed earlier, between academics and artists when approachingtheory and, in fact, he recognizes the influence of Hiller in his work.6

Interestingly, Dion approached archaeology through an expatriate, someonewho voluntarily distanced herself from anthropological practice. I do not



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mean to suggest that archaeologists should quit their field and become artiststo ensure an effective (and three-dimensional) self-critique in their practice.Rather, I want to stress how openness to the work of artists might facilitate

archaeologists efforts to create distance with their practice, employ humor,and build connections not previously foreseen (cf. Vilches, 2005).

Despite Dions status as artist and his respectful attitude toward archae-ologists, it is safe to think that his imitation of archaeologists lives couldbring up a certain feeling of self-consciousness in the viewers, especiallywhen the inside-out strategy is turned onto Dion himself. Although Dionopened up his own artistic process when performing at the Field Center, hedeliberately intended to expose such a part of the process from the verybeginning. There are several other stages that he chose not to make public.For example, Dions journals and scrapbooks, where he plans many of hisprojects,were exhibited at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art alongwith some of his works in 2003. Dion confessed:

I did not plan on ever showing them. I am very shy about many aspects ofthem; they are personal in many ways. Im a horrendous speller, for instance.There are a lot of pieces articulated in the notebooks that do not get madeand there are good reasons for why they do not get made theyre not veryinteresting or successful. (Edwards,2003: 11)

The mix of fear and embarrassment described by Dion could relate to thefeeling of distress that archaeologists might experience upon seeing Dionswork. Moreover, it could relate to the feeling of any archaeologist aboutrevealing mistakes that may occur while constructing types in the lab orwhile defining natural layers in controlled stratigraphic excavations.Although they prove to be meaningful, flaws tend to be precious only to

foreign eyes. Likewise, the boundaries of what constitutes a flaw or some-thing meaningful are very different depending on whether one is inside,outside, or in the margins of a particular field. In the same way in which ittook an artist to expose the archaeological process, it also took an outsiderto exhibit Dions diaries.

A similar feeling of nakedness may have also reached the audience ofthe Tate dig. Dions findings at the Thames spanned from fossils to presentday credit cards and plastic aliens. Because the artist deemed all objectsequally important and grouped them in types according to his idiosyncrasy,many times the old and the modern ended up together (e.g. types groupedby material or color) (Figure 3). While chronological distance with the pasttends to allow objects to live in uncontested categories, the opposite occurswith objects from present everyday life. People may experience a sense ofnakedness comparable to the one archaeologists experience when seeingthe behind the scenes of the discipline revealed and manipulated. Seeingobjects of which we know the real use increases the chances of challengingthe types in which they have been framed. They make no sense except asmethodological tools.



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At the Tate Thames Dig Dion nicknamed Tent A the InterpretationCenter, only to show that interpretation happened everywhere, beyond theconfines of that specific space. Likewise, he demonstrated that his dig

involved careful planning and considerable coordination efforts before,during, and after the visible field stage. Despite, or perhaps in spite of, beingan amateur dilettante, Dion proved that critical thinking and workingsystematically are, and should be, not mutually exclusive qualities of hiswork and the archaeological process. Moreover, he also proved that bothcritical thinking and systematic work can take a humorous spin withoutsacrificing credibility.

FROM ENGLAND TO NEW ENGLAND: PROUD OF BEING

AMERICAN

During the spring of 2001 Mark Dion was again to be seen in full archae-ological gear, this time at home, in the USA. The concept behind this projectwas basically the same as that of the Tate Modern. Dion dug at threedifferent locations in New England to sort out the findings later and display

Figure 3 Classifications inside Field Center tents, Tate Thames Dig,1999

(Photo: Tate,London 2007)



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them in cabinets in local museums Fuller Museum of Art, David WintonBell Gallery at Brown University, and University of Massachusetts at Dart-mouth. Once more, Dion worked with a team of volunteer field workers,

fellow artists, curators, and archaeologists. In the first dig, Providence, thecrew beachcombed the shores of the Seekonk River, around India Point,and Narragansett Bay, near former industrial ports. In the second dig, NewBedford, the crew literally dug an almost seven-foot deep hole on theoriginal location of OMalleys Tavern. Finally, in the third dig at Brockton,the crew raked down mounds of dirt located next to the Melrose Cemeteryand behind the Brockton Historical Society.

The analytical stage of Dions project, the one that occurs in the labora-tory, emulated the one in London except that it took place inside actualbuildings instead of tents. Again, he was able to disclose the hidden, exposethe arbitrariness in making artificial types, mix and match past and present,and convey the labor-intensive nature of both his artistic and real archae-

ological practice. A major difference between the British and Americandigs, however, was the depth of their historical site-specificities. While theThames released objects as far back as 50 million years old (fossilized sea-urchin), in New England the digs exposed pieces that were largely con-temporary, dating to the eighteenth century at the very earliest. In the nextsection, I discuss the ramifications of Dions New England Digs in theconstruction and reproduction of American historical identity.

Going native

The prospect of digging into Americas past, and specifically New Englandspast, meant something special to Dion. He was born and raised in

Fairhaven, Massachusetts,a few miles away from New Bedford, the locationof his second dig. For Dion, an artist who works extensively abroad, theproposal of curator Denise Markonish also a New England native seemed difficult to decline. The project was indeed so personal to Dion thathis parents and family members collaborated in different stages of theprocess. Furthermore, Dions rich relationship with New England alsosurfaced in the ways in which he aligned himself within former artistictraditions, such as nineteenth-century luminist paintings (Volk, 2001).

Going native in his native land enabled Dion to exploit the practicalnuances of New England daily life, such as the sheer difference betweenbeing the target and being the promoter of artistic practice. According tothe artist, Brockton, New Bedford and Providence have never been majoror sophisticated cultural centers like Boston; they are hard-boiled NewEngland working-class cities which can manifest suspicion if not outrightenmity for visual art (Markonish, 2001: 47). Dions artwork seemedespecially suspicious for this type of audience since it is unconventionaleven within the confines of visual art. In addition to the performative



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aspect of his digs, the artist refers to his artifacts as even less impressivethan the merely mundane. They are fragments, broken bits of themundane (Markonish, 2001: 47). But aware of what could legitimately be

read as a shortcoming, Dion and Markonish also knew that peoples resist-ance to contemporary art could help strengthen the ties to their ownhistory.

As Dion notes, for many people the moment they feel their liveshistoricized for the first time is a powerful one . . . the realization of thepassage of time is somehow made concrete through objects, which outliveus (Markonish, 2001: 28). That was the case in New England Digs sincethe retrieved artifacts belonged almost entirely to the nineteenth andtwentieth centuries,allowing people to identify themselves with a great partof the findings. Moreover, because Dion approaches his classificationspaying no attention to chronology, those findings coexisted with each otherand constructed a continuum of history, which emphasizes that todays

actions have lingering consequences. Nothing that is thrown away ever goesaway (Markonish, 2001: 28). Thus, the rich background relationshipbetween Dion and the place of the Digs was extended to the nativeaudience. Dion and Markonish successfully managed to transform a worst-case scenario for contemporary art into a perfect setting for celebratingAmerican history through art.

The emotional attachment of Dion and his fellow New England natives,as well as the artistic traditions evoked by his work, relate to a shallow andhomogeneous American history, only a couple of centuries old. Andalthough there is no question that New England is a lot newer thanEngland, the territory was populated long before the seventeenth-centuryEuropean settlement. The pre-Anglo American past, however, was absent

from Dions democratic pastiche of types. There were no ties or sense ofcontinuity with the distant prehistoric past. The world as it entered Dionswork was indeed the result of specific criteria for selecting those sites.According to Markonish, they had to be sites that proved unique toBrockton, New Bedford, and Providence in terms of historical or culturalsignificance, but that also proved insignificant and disturbed. The lattercriterion is a variation on the precautions that Dion took in London as away of demonstrating his commitment and respect for archaeology, despitehis dilettantism. Specifically, it means refraining from intervening in un-disturbed sites, mostly Native American, that are meaningful because of thecontextual (stratigraphic) information they can provide under systematicarchaeological research.

Cultural resources managers deemed all three deposits of New EnglandDigs disturbed and thus insignificant, leaving Dion free to use them. Thedeposits usually consisted of already moved dirt (used as fills) exposingcontemporary, eighteenth, and nineteenth century debris, altogether. AsDion explains, Native American remains were not visible in the fills:



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. . . but even then, the Native American Cultural Resources managers camein and wanted to be sure of what we were doing, that there was absolutely nochance of finding any Native American artifacts because we were workingmostly with fill and are not going beyond the original foundations . . . but ifwe had, there would have been trouble . . . they were still making sure thatwe were not cheating, doing more than what we claimed.7

Although avoiding Native American sites is a good thing in the name offuture scientific and systematic research, it also helped further the histori-cal exclusion of Native Americans in the region. In Dions words, therelationship between New England natives and their Native American past:

. . . is very, very mythic . . . all the names you grow up with are NativeAmerican in some way, but I think because the age of contact was so longago theres certainly not much of a presence in the relationship of peopleand that Native American tradition,at least where I grew up,even thoughyou still find things of course.8

The British set foot on Plymouth in 1610, almost four centuries ago,purchasing territory from Chief Massasoit. The peace did not last long asIndian wars followed within a few decades when the natives began to seetheir land taken away (Souza, 2001: 28). A lack of understanding, let aloneintegration,between the two ethnic groups the Massachuset (which meansa large hill place in Algonquian language) and the British pilgrims led toa complete erasure of Native Americans in the region. Although one shouldnot expect dumpsters to be culturally diverse, the nature of the disturbedfillings acted as a metaphor for that mythic relationship. Native Americansplay no prominent role in the construction and reproduction of NewEnglands American identity, except for specific occasions (e.g. Thanks-

giving). For better or for worse, the Native American past was deliberatelyerased from Dions project.

From this perspective, while playing local Dion was still a bit of anintruder in a territory occupied long before European settlement. This iscertainly not Dions fault; it is just the result of the historical relationshipbetween the inhabitants of New England and their Native American pre-historic past. So when Dion wonders,Are these things [the artifacts the digteams found] repressed histories returning, familiar things coming back tohaunt or delight us? One clue is that their return is predicated on theirexclusion, he could not be more right (Markonish, 2001: 41). The exclusionof the Native American aspect of everyday life in New England returns tohaunt us through Dions work, but once again, predicated on its veryexclusion. Dion knows that had he found Native American remains theproject would have taken on a whole different dimension.9 Indeed, in sucha scenario it is difficult to find a right way to proceed when nothing seemsto have been done correctly. Perhaps because Dion is removed from thecultural politics of anthropology and archaeology, his approach to the



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matter is still quite sensible. In his view,the best thing would have been tofind things and treat them with the same neutrality, so if I had found themthats what I would have done.10

Nothing that is thrown away ever goes away

As much as the dig projects disclose archaeologys modus operandi throughDions own creative process,one might consider where the artist locates thelimits of his artistic production. To Dion, the process [of the digs] ends whenthe cabinets are locked . . . when they are finally done.11 Although thecreative production may end there, the cultural life of the installationscontinues with the displacement of their physical location and/or of theirmeaning. The changing circumstances (contexts) generate different types ofsocial relations between and around them a process similar to the way inwhich Dion saw the New England Digs as concentric circles of meaning

(Markonish, 2001: 36). Using Dions own words: nothing that is thrownaway ever goes away. Generally, however, Dion does not participate in theaftermath of his archaeological projects. In the case of the digs that tookplace in Europe, the cabinets and related material have remained in theiroriginal locations, since their meaning is tied to their site specificity.12

This is not the case for New England Digs as well as the others that havetaken place in the USA.13 After exhibition at their three original venuesand at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Dion stored the entireNew England project at his house in Beach Lake, Pennsylvania. In thesummer of 2004, upon my request, Dion opened his storage facility, aspace that is not normally open to public view or scrutiny. Ironicallyenough, the interior of Dions metal barn looks very much like an archae-

ology laboratory; the artist developed a new classification system to storethe project, adding another layer to the creative production of NewEngland Digs. The three unlocked empty cabinets lie next to each otherbehind plastic curtains while boxes originally inside the cabinets are placedon shelves, hand in hand with objects from nature projects (Figures 4and 5). The piling up of boxes and the shelves themselves also recall thetents at the Tate and Dions earlier work Department of AnthropologyfromAngelica Point, 1994.

At the time of our meeting, Dion was working on a dig project forMOMAs reopening in November of 2004. As the artist explained, thelaboratory to be mounted on site was recycled from one that he had set upin a New York Field Station in the summer of 2004. A limited budget forthe MOMA show forced Dion to use half of the original lab, which happensto be the most lab-like that he had ever used in a dig project. It was actuallyinspired by Staten Islands Water Street on-site archaeology lab, which Dionhad visited. This operation of mixing and matching pieces of different instal-lations as well as the chaotic classifications inside the steel barn are also



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part of Dions analytical process of determining what goes where. In fact,they are not that different from Dions modus operandi when producing

his scrapbooks:

Before I take my magazines out for recycling I go through them and cut outall the images I am interested in. I put these clippings in a general envelopeand then more or less curate that envelope into these pages. Sometimes Imight save up material for six months before I get the chance to put ittogether. There is a crazy taxonomy to it. The scrapbooks also chartdevelopments in my personal perspective and field of discourse. Theircomposition relies on what Im obsessing about at a particular moment.(Edwards, 2003: 11)

Although his scrapbooks revealed unfinished works, projects of finalizedwork, and blueprints of work that never happened, the steel storage facilityrevealed the aftermath of works already proved successful. Aside fromarchaeological analysis, Dions creative process is just one example of thecountless instances in which classifications and types are constructedbecause and for different motives. Only some are more apparent to themakers than others.

Figure 4 Mark Dion and the author releasing the plastic cover from the

New England Digs cabinets in the artists storage space,Beach Lake,PA

(Photo: Ben Benus)



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SIGNIFICANT AND DISTURBING

Mark Dion nicknamed the New England Digs project insignificant anddisturbed to recall the kind of contexts in which he and his crew were andnormally are allowed to intervene. Yet Dions archaeological projects haveproved that what may appear insignificant to archaeology, due to dis-turbance of context, can still be significant, let alone disturbing. I am notreferring to archaeologys disregard for disturbed contexts altogether.There are several examples of archaeological studies of refuse that are

Figure 5 Shelves with some of the contents of New England Digs in

Mark Dions storage space,Beach Lake,PA (Photo: Flora Vilches)



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immensely significant, such as William Rathjes Garbage Project and thearchaeology of middens (e.g. Rathje and Murphy, 1992; Waselkov, 1987).What is more disturbing for archaeology is Dions ability to invert what is

normally considered private and public inside the discipline.Dions credentials as visual artist and outsider to archaeology allow him

to materialize his view of archaeological practice in three-dimensional formusing humor. His dig projects in London and New England suggest a directrelationship between the historical depth of each place and the ways inwhich the British and Americans approach art,archaeology, and humor. Theartist describes the reaction of the audience to each of his works:

If you go to the Tate Modern its absolutely full of people. And a lot of thatwork I dont know how you would approach it if you dont come from asomewhat formal art history background. So I find it extremely interestingthat its so popular or that people are willing to take the challenge to look atit, but also that they are extremely irreverent about it, they are not

embarrassed to think its not art, . . . they are taunting the work and the workis taunting them back . . . Here [United States] I think theres still this kindof reverence, people go to art museums very much as this special place,something in between a church and a library, so its harder to get them tointeract with things . . .14

Dions words resonate with those of Smithson back in the 1960s, when heasserted how the varieties of humor are pretty foreign to the Americantemperament. It seems that the American temperament doesnt associateart with humor. Humor is not considered serious (Smithson,1967/1996: 50).Forty years later, Dions New England Digs demonstrated that at least inhard-boiled New England working-class cities art is still not associated withhumor. One wonders if there is any relation with Mark Leones point

regarding the ways in which British and American archaeologists haveapproached their discipline (Leone, 1982).

Let us remember that Leone thinks that Britains seamless relationshipwith the past might be a reason to explain the British origins of post-processualism. What Dion describes as an irreverent attitude of the Britishpublic at the Tate is not very different from British postprocessualists suchas Shanks and Tilley, or those trained in Britain such as Meskell and Holtorf.They too are taunting the practice of archaeology as they feel free tointeract with the discipline as a cultural construct, perhaps because the pasthas been taunting them for longer. They are less afraid to reinvent thepractice. As Dion remarks:

The British school of archaeology really does have a strong critical theory,cultural studies component to it and they are certainly questioning abouttheir own process whereas here [in the USA] its much more pragmatic . . .and I think thats true in the rest of the [European] continent as well . . . Ithink in Britain very often you find people who can do the kind ofprocedural archaeology but also see that the archaeology itself is produced



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in culture, there is a sense of distance that they can take from their ownpractice whereas here I dont think thats near. I havent encountered thatkind of archaeology.

In Britain because there is a lot of funding and the way things are managed,in these archaeological sites they have artists in residence . . . . We[Americans] are so far from imagining that as a possibility here, theresnothing like that, no one will ever think of it.15

If Americans did not associate humor with art in the 1960s, neither did theyassociate it with science. Processual archaeology, one of the most posi-tivistic and humorless archaeological paradigms, did actually originate inthe USA in the 1960s. Forty years later, many American archaeologists arecritical of the overpowering role of positivism. However, dealing with theNative American heritage is still a major source of contention both insideand outside the discipline. The Native American past is now taunting

Americans and American history on a regular basis and will not takeexclusion for an answer. To some degree this issue may prevent archae-ologists from reinventing themselves more freely. Dions dilettante per-ception of American archaeology is not entirely inaccurate; the exercise oflooking at the practice critically is not as generalized as it is in Britain.

Dions remarks plus my own positive bias towards British archaeologyadd to the temptation to classify the Brits as the good and Americans asthe bad. Far from consciously attempting to do so, this biased analysisshould be seen as a heuristic exercise pointing to a constant questionthroughout this article: the slippage between art and science, and mostimportantly, the slippage between any type of categories. Does it matterwhether one is an artist or archaeologist? Whether one is intellectual or

pragmatic? Isnt it another obsessive way of classifying people? Cant weall be hybrids? Will certain disciplinary boundaries ever be crossed? Shouldthey be crossed? Perhaps new categories need to be created. Dionsarchaeological projects demonstrate that self-critique helps raise awarenessabout the specific ways in which different fields discipline our eyes and ulti-mately condition our representations of social reality. Dions projects alsodemonstrate that creating distance from ones practice and crossing over toother practices is crucial to achieve self-criticism.

Mark Dions dig projects together with several other contemporaryartworks exemplify that works of art no longer need to pertain to remoteand exotic subject matters to be anthropological or, by default, archae-ological in nature,or of these disciplines interest (cf. Gell, 1998). Moreover,artworks no longer need to bear formal or metaphorical associations withthe objects of archaeology as much as with thepractice of archaeology itself.Even if artists do not intend to comment deliberately on archaeologicalpractice, the nature of their own creative process may well reproducearchaeologys dynamics and provoke self-reflection in archaeologists. In



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this sense, contemporary artwork can help materialize the very process ofdoing and theorizing archaeology by making its contradictions and modusoperandi visible.

Notes

1 Mark Dion, interview by the author,19 August 2004, Beach Lake, PA. Dionknows Meskell and Renfrew personally and has read part of their work(Meskell, 2004; Renfrew, 2003).

2 The same essay where Tilley proposes this theory is a good example ofhumorous writing. In an earlier section he writes an ironic little history of[Anglo-American] archaeological modernity (Tilley, 1990: 1306), andelsewhere he has analyzed the genre of the Cambridge inaugural lectures froma similar perspective (Tilley, 1989/1995). Shanks (1992), on the other hand,writes with less overt recourses to humor, but incorporates visual material thatis humorous into his texts. This is the case of his photomontages in

Experiencing the Past. This different way of approaching humor may be due todiffering personal interests. At any rate, they both find alternative methods inplaces outside of traditional, purely scientific, archaeological practice.

3 I am referring to Smithsons quote theres nothing natural about theMuseum of Natural History. Nature is simply another 18th- and 19th-centuryfiction (Smithson, 1968/1996: 85).

4 In the realm of the American visual arts, this fascination with classificationscan be tracked down to the 1960s. Artists were building on earlier models suchas Duchamp, Dada, and the surrealists. Dion and his peers are most notablyindebted to Smithson and Marcel Broodthaers. Shanks (2002) notes the Britishcounterpart to this phenomenon,but only in the 1990s and in relation toperformance exclusively.

5 Hiller went through this experience at the time anthropology was developingsymbolic paradigms to study culture, which, although revolutionary, were yetfar from the disciplines full self-critique of the early 1980s.

6 Mark Dion, interview by the author, 19 August 2004, Beach Lake, PA.7 Mark Dion, interview by the author, 19 August 2004, Beach Lake, PA.8 Mark Dion, interview by the author, 19 August 2004, Beach Lake, PA.9 Mark Dion, interview by the author, 19 August 2004, Beach Lake, PA.

10 Mark Dion, interview by the author, 19 August 2004, Beach Lake, PA.11 Mark Dion, interview by the author, 19 August 2004, Beach Lake, PA.12 The Tate Dig remained in London and so did the digs at Fribourg and Venice.13 Aside from New England Digs, Dion did a less known dig project in Queens,

NY, and the more high profile MOMA dig in Manhattan, NY.14 Mark Dion, interview by the author, 19 August 2004, Beach Lake, PA.15 Mark Dion, interview by the author, 19 August 2004, Beach Lake, PA.

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Archaeological Congress, Washington, DC.

FLORA VILCHES received her degree in archaeology at the Uni-

versidad de Chile. After spending several field seasons recording and

studying ancient Andean visual imagery, she went on to pursue a

doctorate in Art History and Archaeology at the University of Maryland,

College Park, focusing on the visual arts of the twentieth century.Vilches

is interested in the connections between art, art history,and archaeology

as discursive formations conducted from and for the present. She is

currently an academic at Instituto de Investigaciones Arqueolgicas y

Museo, R.P. Gustavo Le Paige, s.j., Universidad Catlica del Norte, in San

Pedro de Atacama, Chile.

[email: [email protected]]

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