Putting yourself in someone else's tipi ring

Doesn't look like much, but it is definitely prime real estate on the prairie.

When I was a kid I always hated going to museums with my dad.  I liked looking at all the stuff on display, but I was so impatient that I'd glance and run off.  Meanwhile, my dad would stop to read every single word for every single object (museums love visitors like my dad).  We went to a lot of museums.  And I mean a lot.  We made one or two or three cross-country road trips to Kansas (a state that will forever remain special to me) or Missouri, and along the way, my dad would find the smallest and most out of the way museums to stop at.  I remember all of them being museums all about the Old West:  cowboys, outlaws, and stuff like that.  I guess I liked them.

And then there was the Roy Rogers Museum in Victorville, California (it totally brought me to tears when I heard it was closed...actually, I may cry again).  We went there more than once.  Know what my dad did?  Looked at every object and read all their descriptions.  Know what I did?  Ran through the museum to the end where Buttercup, Trigger, and Trigger Jr. were stuffed and on display.  Holy crap, I loved those horses!  I still do.  They are still, by far, my very favorite museum "objects."  I remember how I would stand there and imagine myself riding them across rolling hills (hahaha!  It was the priarie I have come to love!).  They let me do what I now realize is the best part about studying the past.

I believe it is (left-right) Trigger Jr., Buttermilk, and Trigger.  And I completely forgot about Bullet, the dog.  

I won't lie...I don't remember anything else about that museum except for the horses.  And to this day, the Palomino is one of my very favorite horses.  Doesn't that picture make you happy?  Those horses, and Bullet, were the companions of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.  They were (I assume, what with the stuffing and displaying) loved and cherished friends.  I also assume, based on how people loved Roy Rogers' movies, that many other people once felt a connection with these iconic horses.  So, they were not only cherished by their owners, but by other people as well.  That makes them more than just museum objects.

Just as Trigger, Buttermilk, Trigger Jr., and Bullet were more than just objects in a museum, the artifacts or sites I come across in archaeology are more than just things.  They were once someone's home, or plate, or cup, or meal, or someone's lookout point, or fasting/ritual place, or any number of things.  Oftentimes, I forget that a tipi ring is more than just a ring of stones on the ground.  A tipi ring was once a home.

Home.

Randomly, it'll hit me that I am standing in the tipi ring.  In what was once a person's home.  And that realization makes me want to ask permission to enter, and then giggle uncontrollably at the idea of asking someone hundreds, if not thousands, of years dead for permission to stand in their home.  And what a fantastic home it must have been.  Something big, but not too big, because skins were used to form the walls, a small hearth in the center, random lithics from someone needing a stone tool, and located about 1/4 mile from a river up on a hilltop so you can see your enemies coming.

Someone once had this view outside of their home.

I took this picture from the inside of a tipi ring (not the ring pictured above, but another one in the area), and surprisingly you can't actually see any of the modern farm houses surrounding the area, so it looks remarkably undeveloped.  When I realized that I was standing in a home, I realized that this view is probably very similar to what the inhabitants of the tipi saw, with only hundreds, if not thousands of years, separating us.  

I'm afraid that sometimes we archaeologists forget about the people.  We focus so much on the things that we forget that archaeology is about people.  Just look at the three primary arguments surrounding repatriation:

1)  We can't give anything back because we'll lose all that valuable data.

2)  Give stuff back because it was part of their culture.

3)  Maybe give it back, but only after we've studied it and taken photos and measurements.

I, personally, am part of numbers 2 and 3.  I like the idea of studying other cultures, but only if that culture doesn't have any objections.  I certainly don't want to dig up any graves, or tombs.  And most definitely do not want to dig up graves and put those bodies on display or study them like they weren't once a living, breathing human.  A grave was dug, and the person laid to rest by those who knew and/or loved them.  Now, if someone agrees to give their body to science/museum, then by all means, put them on display.  I wouldn't mind my skeleton on display in a museum, so long as my hand is up in the air, with a sign reading "High five, yo!" for all visitors to see!

Now, as for the "science is more important than anything" argument...just fall off your pedestal face first, and go suck a toe.  My charming, and completely adult, response to them would be, "If I rummaged through your house and took your shit, and put it on display, how would you feel?"  Or, "Why don't I crack open your grandparent's or parent's graves, study their remains as if they weren't living things, and then put them on display or in storage at some museum?  How you like them apples?!"  Most definitely not my most professional or eloquent statements, but I feel as if they would get the point across.     

I guess my point is that all archaeologists, while remaining objective in their research, should also stop and think about the people they are studying, even if just for a moment.  Stop and look at whatever is being studied and think about how the original people would have viewed the object.  A tipi ring wasn't a tipi ring, it was a home.  A burial isn't just a burial, it was a person's resting place.  A fasting alcove isn't a pile of rocks, it was a sacred ceremonial place.  

Nothing is ever just a thing, it was valued in some way, and therefore deserves more than just objective measurements and analysis.  In Montana there are so many abandoned homesteads, and these kind of make me sad.  Having been here for 3.5 months, I have learned that in the early 1900s, many people took everything they had and headed west.  Once here, they built homes and started ranching or farming.  And of all those who came out here, it is estimated that at least half of them lost everything trying to homestead.  They were not successful, and had to sell or abandon their homes.  And so, whenever I see a homestead that has been abandoned I get all sorts of happy about seeing them, only to quickly wonder how the home became empty.  And then I get a little sad.  This is where I think archaeology becomes more than just a science; it becomes a way to see how past people's saw the world.  Archaeologists just need to remember the "people" part.

Old homestead building, with a modern-ish metal building next to it.

    

Old stove inside the homestead.

This is more than just a farm tool, it was how someone made a living.