A Narrow(er) Topic and a New (?) Passion

(by Bori Mohácsi)

Maybe if I were still younger (ok, boomer) and attending a more old-fashioned institution, it would still be reason enough for me to start a new research topic that 'my supervisor suggested so'. So when this happened (the suggestion I mean), why did I dive headfirst (okay, sink gradually) into something seemingly completely new? (In this post, I'll explain that it's not so new, and I've done this before in practice, I just didn't know what it was exactly.)

How I've started out

I wouldn't want to bore anyone with the details of Hungarian legislation concerning archaeology from 2001 onwards – wait, I did that anyway, to most of my classmates, at several classes so far. Although at first I was somewhat baffled that nobody shares my outrage and curiosity towards a bunch of (alright, a huge amount of) legal paragraphs, and narrowing down the noble task of pointing out what's wrong with them felt like betraying what I've always believed in (yeah, it's a bit of correcting people when they're wrong, but also a lot of trying to save what's left of my country's archaeological heritage one article at a time). 

So why did I leave behind all this?

First, because as harsh as it is to admit it, I'm not a lawyer – and when people say that I should have been one, I should never, ever interpret it as a compliment. Second, because – and this is obvious for anyone not immersed in it – it was a huge topic. Pointing out what's wrong with the law of cultural heritage protection, addressing how it affects the practice of archaeology and giving it a new direction would be a several-year project for a team. And I'm only one person, and I have ~2 years (not even full time), so at some point, I had to do the math. Third, I've always gone for the hard stuff. And by hard stuff I mean subjects that barely anyone had dealt with before, and I've had to investigate 19th-century books and re-interpret artefacts for. But I didn't do that in 30 years like a German classicist some 200 years ago: I wanted immediate results.

No wonder it never worked as I wanted it to.

An academic breakdown

I don't know if that's a thing. Maybe it sounds way too dramatic. But when I've considered the topic my supervisor suggested (community archaeology), it sure felt like it.

Why?

Because it was too easy. It was too obvious. It was a soft topic and an idealistic one at that. And it's about actual living people, for crying out loud. I don't do that. I'm not a fluffy idealist, I'm a cold-hearted scientist who deals with facts, like dead people. And what they might have done, and how they might have behaved, which has nothing to do with...

You can probably see where I'm going with this.

Of course, I wasn't logical. 

And of course, by studying cultural heritage, I knew I'd have to deal with the living at some point. But community archaeology is exclusively about them, and I thought I wasn't ready for that.

So there's the breakdown.

Because any major change to an academic subject of your choosing, whether it's because of a suggestion, whether it's because you hit a wall, whether it's because data points to a different direction – does, in the end, make you re-evaluate your identity as a researcher. Most of the time, it's not a drastic change, but sometimes it's a sucker punch to your ego. But since what you've already tried wasn't working, you decide to go with it anyway.

Me? Community? No thanks. Yes, please!

So besides being afraid of starting a new subject that I knew nothing about, and for which I'd have to look at my whole profession from the outside, using methods I haven't used before (interviews, surveys, questionnaires, and evaluating them – you know, stuff you don't do with the dead), and dreading talking to actual living human beings, I was trying to keep an open mind.

I've tried to re-think my short professional life so far and to my shock, I realized I've already done a bit of community archaeology, as well as public archaeology. Mostly interpretation, as I've talked about exhibitions, excavations, concepts in archaeology and in Roman religion for people who didn't know anything about them, and at times weren't even interested. And I wasn't bad at it, moreover, I've genuinely enjoyed it.

I've also realized, that I'm interested in getting people involved in archaeology, and how my colleagues do that all over the country. I'm curious about good and bad practices, new initiatives, old ideas, and can't wait for observing it closely.

So as I got worked up, I had all kinds of ideas about how to approach my new topic, and although I'm 100% sure I won't be able to use all of them, I'm really excited to try as many as possible.

But am I allowed to pursue something fun and current and exciting as an academic subject?

The short answer is yes. The long answer is this egotistic rambling of a blog post, to which I hope some of the readers can relate.

I promise you the next one will be about my actual topic. At least I hope so.