Freedom is…

Not Berlin. Photo (cc) thischanginglife.

The Occupation is finally bringing the peoples of Iraq together in peace. I’ve tagged a blog post in del.icio.us Baghdad residents protest US-erected dividing wall on Annotated Life which notes that Sunnis and Shi’ites are hand in hand in opposition to the construction of the latest wall across the city. I briefly noted that in another context it could pass for an Iron Curtain. With a bit more though I think I was wrong. What has surprised me is after thinking about it some more there may be a grimmer historical comparison. Unlike some people who have to live in them, archaeologists love strong dividing walls. They have so many potential uses. The default explanation for thick banks and ditches in archaeology in the past has been defence. At places like Maiden Castle in England thick ramparts have been seen as a way of keeping the enemy out. That’s obviously not the case here because the occupying forces are disliked on both sides of the wall. It also turns out that it’s not a favoured explanation for Iron Age ramparts either.

The most surprising explanation I’ve read for building big divisions is that it helps social cohesion. This was an idea put forward by Francois Brun in one of the BAR reports which I can’t track down right now. It took me a while to get my head around this because Brun was arguing that people working together on a common project would share a social bond. With time I’ve come to see that such bonds could form and help create more cohesion, but the motive for building the ramparts would have to be better than “let’s all have a bit of increased social cohesion everyone.” – which wasn’t exactly what Brun was arguing. He was thinking about what the building process meant. Brun’s idea wouldn’t apply here though as it is not a communal effort. In fact the community is against it as is clear from quotes that Edie puts forward:

Some 2,000 residents marched against the Adamiya wall, saying their district was being transformed into “a big prison.” In response, Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki issued a call to stop the construction, to which the US military bluntly declared, “construction of security barriers across Baghdad will continue without exception”.

This is another is the reason why archaeologists get so excited about big walls. It’s about control of space.

One of the growth areas in archaeology is Spatial Archaeology. It draws on a few ideas like Phenomenology, Spatial Syntax and Landscape Archaeology. It’s also related to the idea of Cognitive Archaeology because we’re examining how people think about their world, which is related to the barriers they have. One example of how barriers can change life is through gateways. In the Late Bronze Age in Britain there’s evidence of palisaded enclosures around settlements. This is a different way thinking about settlement than used before. It could be about defence, but this is also an era when social stratification starts to kick in. Some people call them ‘Big Man’ societies because power starts to be controlled by individuals. The palisades meant that people had to pass through controllable gates, which mean that they could be taxed. In this instance the US Army has an opportunity to show their moral stature by demonstrating they cannot be bribed to make passage easier between civic cells.

They can also aid observation. This was the motivation for the invention of the original concentration camps by the British in the Boer War. This was a fight for territory in South Africa against what these days might be described as insurgents. They were being resupplied from civilian Boer farms, so the British decided it would be best for all if Boer farmers were concentrated into specific camps where they could be watched. Extermination was not the aim, but nonetheless they were horrific places due to incompetence and poor medical provision. From an archaeological point of view it will be interesting to see if the Baghdad walls are a 21st century evolution of the concentration camp. The comparison can be disputed. Certainly people are being divided for belong to specific ethnic or religious groups, rather than individual actions, like a concentration camp. On the other hand they get to experience this from the comfort of their own homes. Besides are you truly imprisoned if the guards routinely allow you to pass between civic cells, albeit under their strict observation?

A problem is that this comparison is going to be emotive, no matter how dispassionately it is put. Just as Nazi concentration camps differed from the British camps, so too the American built cells will be different from both. For a start the inmates have arguably concentrated themselves rather than been relocated. Hopefully as the grip tightens, the occupying forces will be more efficient and sympathetic than the British or Germans in distributing medical supplies. Whether or not these walls will enhance the liberty currently enjoyed by the free citizens of Baghdad is unknown.

What an archaeological perspective could provide is a different viewpoint from the current official record, which some people argue overlooks certain details. Graffiti on the walls will tell us is how the Iraqis feel about the walls. Satellite photo survey and, later, the architectural scars created by building of these walls will yield some clues as to how the occupying forces thought about the natives. Most poignantly, the display of the weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq will show what the Iraqi civilians and soldiers who served their country died or suffered for.