I’m way ahead of myself. There is not a Paleoextraterrestrial Period that I know of, so there really can’t be a Mesoextraterrestrial Period, and certainly not a Neoextraterrestrial Period. Those temporal designations have to wait for some future archaeologist to define. Going back to the time of Sputnik doesn’t take us far into the past, and the flights of Yuri Gagarin, Alan Shepherd, and John Glenn date only back to the early 1960s. However, if any events can be deemed Paleoextraterrestrial, they are the flights of those three explorers.
As humans have done everywhere and throughout their history, so astronauts and the people who launched the many devices now have a history. It’s brief, of course, but it is recordable in the objects that encircle Earth. Space junk and useful items litter space just as terrestrial objects litter ancient rock shelters, caves, and structures. So why not consider them archaeologically? Don’t we have a new cave to explore?
We’ve added a new place to our study of junk. Let’s step back a moment. Here are some headlines from Archaeology: 1) “World War II-Era Secret Road Found in Papua New Guinea,” 2) “4,000-Year-Old Tombs Discovered in Romania,” 3) “Medieval Graffiti Found in Egypt,” 4) “Ancient Reservoir Unearthed in Israel,” 5) “Fishing Weir in Southern England Dated to Ninth Century A.D.,” and 6) “Roman Sarcophagus Uncovered in London.” Those are the kinds of headlines a layperson might expect in a respected publication by a national institute. But then there’s this one: “Archaeologists Will Study the International Space Station.”
Are we that old? Is the space just outside the atmosphere now the place for archaeology? Although Yuri, John, and Alan have left this world in more ways than one, they both flew and died within the lifespan of current retirees spending their leisure days on golf carts not far from the American’s launch site. People now alive new them personally. Yet, here I am, placing them in the Paleoextraterrestrial Period. The “middle period” is now the time of the International Space Station and all the junk we’ve carried to it. It’s our new shelter, our new cave to explore. What will we discover? And not just in that shelter, but in the landscape of near-orbit space junk? Who will go down into the hole to retrieve or record remnants of life there?
“The U.S. Navy launched Vanguard 1 in March 1958. The cantaloupe-sized sphere was the fourth man-made object in space and is the oldest still in orbit--it has been around earth nearly 200,000 times. Is it "space junk"? Alice Gorman, an archaeologist at Flinders University in Australia, studies this material and wants it considered part of our shared heritage. ARCHAEOLOGY editor Samir S. Patel spoke with Gorman about archaeology in orbit, space as a cultural landscape, and astronaut poop.”*
In the interview Alice argues, “I argue this is a cultural landscape and removing parts of it will destroy the relationships within it.” Her comment comes in light of both NASA and the ESA’s desire to clean nearby space of its “junk” because all those orbiting pieces pose a threat to future space traffic and travelers (Think 2009 movie Gravity with Sandra Bullock and George Clooney). Alice thinks the junk, all supposedly useful stuff that we’ve carried to the ISS tells the tale of a culture.
Maybe Alice has a valid point. I remember someone once making the comment after visiting an historic site. “You know, there’s a lot of history there.” My comment—sorry for the bluntness here: “What place doesn’t have a history?” In our hominid history, we’ve been just about everywhere on the continents and quite a few places on the ocean floor. Even in the depths of the latter we know there are sunken vessels and junk thrown overboard scattered about. We don’t visit many places without leaving something behind. We mark places as surely as animals do with their scents. And archaeologists go about their business of sorting through the remnants of our existence. They recognize the “lot of history there” in what the people of almost any time often fail to see as having any importance beyond their immediate usefulness and aesthetic appeal.
I guess we’re all in the business of making jobs for future archaeologists. We’re all in the business of making places “historical” and indicative of a culture and its relationship with its environment. Are we much different from those who dwelt in rock shelters and caves? The International Space Station is the new rock shelter. Whether or not it is part of a “middle period of extraterrestrial life” will be determined only by time and some Alice who goes down the hole into that metallic cave that orbits high above all those other shelters and caves.
* Sounds archaeological to me. You can read the interview in Archaeology, Vol. 60, No. 6, November/December 2007, or online at http://archive.archaeology.org/0711/etc/conversation.html
As humans have done everywhere and throughout their history, so astronauts and the people who launched the many devices now have a history. It’s brief, of course, but it is recordable in the objects that encircle Earth. Space junk and useful items litter space just as terrestrial objects litter ancient rock shelters, caves, and structures. So why not consider them archaeologically? Don’t we have a new cave to explore?
We’ve added a new place to our study of junk. Let’s step back a moment. Here are some headlines from Archaeology: 1) “World War II-Era Secret Road Found in Papua New Guinea,” 2) “4,000-Year-Old Tombs Discovered in Romania,” 3) “Medieval Graffiti Found in Egypt,” 4) “Ancient Reservoir Unearthed in Israel,” 5) “Fishing Weir in Southern England Dated to Ninth Century A.D.,” and 6) “Roman Sarcophagus Uncovered in London.” Those are the kinds of headlines a layperson might expect in a respected publication by a national institute. But then there’s this one: “Archaeologists Will Study the International Space Station.”
Are we that old? Is the space just outside the atmosphere now the place for archaeology? Although Yuri, John, and Alan have left this world in more ways than one, they both flew and died within the lifespan of current retirees spending their leisure days on golf carts not far from the American’s launch site. People now alive new them personally. Yet, here I am, placing them in the Paleoextraterrestrial Period. The “middle period” is now the time of the International Space Station and all the junk we’ve carried to it. It’s our new shelter, our new cave to explore. What will we discover? And not just in that shelter, but in the landscape of near-orbit space junk? Who will go down into the hole to retrieve or record remnants of life there?
“The U.S. Navy launched Vanguard 1 in March 1958. The cantaloupe-sized sphere was the fourth man-made object in space and is the oldest still in orbit--it has been around earth nearly 200,000 times. Is it "space junk"? Alice Gorman, an archaeologist at Flinders University in Australia, studies this material and wants it considered part of our shared heritage. ARCHAEOLOGY editor Samir S. Patel spoke with Gorman about archaeology in orbit, space as a cultural landscape, and astronaut poop.”*
In the interview Alice argues, “I argue this is a cultural landscape and removing parts of it will destroy the relationships within it.” Her comment comes in light of both NASA and the ESA’s desire to clean nearby space of its “junk” because all those orbiting pieces pose a threat to future space traffic and travelers (Think 2009 movie Gravity with Sandra Bullock and George Clooney). Alice thinks the junk, all supposedly useful stuff that we’ve carried to the ISS tells the tale of a culture.
Maybe Alice has a valid point. I remember someone once making the comment after visiting an historic site. “You know, there’s a lot of history there.” My comment—sorry for the bluntness here: “What place doesn’t have a history?” In our hominid history, we’ve been just about everywhere on the continents and quite a few places on the ocean floor. Even in the depths of the latter we know there are sunken vessels and junk thrown overboard scattered about. We don’t visit many places without leaving something behind. We mark places as surely as animals do with their scents. And archaeologists go about their business of sorting through the remnants of our existence. They recognize the “lot of history there” in what the people of almost any time often fail to see as having any importance beyond their immediate usefulness and aesthetic appeal.
I guess we’re all in the business of making jobs for future archaeologists. We’re all in the business of making places “historical” and indicative of a culture and its relationship with its environment. Are we much different from those who dwelt in rock shelters and caves? The International Space Station is the new rock shelter. Whether or not it is part of a “middle period of extraterrestrial life” will be determined only by time and some Alice who goes down the hole into that metallic cave that orbits high above all those other shelters and caves.
* Sounds archaeological to me. You can read the interview in Archaeology, Vol. 60, No. 6, November/December 2007, or online at http://archive.archaeology.org/0711/etc/conversation.html
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