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.Hair dyed conspicuously; make-up obvious marking outthe face; kitsch, lurid, torn, uselessly zipped, graffitied school shirts, T-shirts; fly-boydrainpipes; rubber mini skirts; sex-fetish leather, fishnet, stilettos; bondage chains andbelts.Was it Sid Vicious who never cleaned his teeth? It may have defined itself simplyas rupture and revolt against the accepted, but Punk tore a space for its sub-culture ofbizarre combinations of what were often mundane items.Spectacular and animateddisplay of defining oneself not so much in negotiation as confrontation with others(Hebdige 1979).In 1976 the Wampanoag of Mashpee, Cape Cod, filed a law suit reclaiming 16,000acres for their tribe.Other land claims were being filed by Native American groups in thelate 1960s and in the 1970s.When it came to court in 1977 the issue was more aboutwhether the Indians of Mashpee were a tribe.James Clifford gives his anthropologist saccount of the proceedings in his book The Predicament of Culture (1988, Chapter 12).There had been what was known as Indian Town on Cape Cod for some threecenturies, but the Massachusett language had disappeared from use around 1800 andthere seemed little evidence of institutions of Indian tribal government.The town was What is the archaeological past? 93Presbyterian and Baptist and intermarriage meant that none of the plaintiffs lookeddistinctively Indian.They were also very much incorporated in Massachusetts socialand business life.The defence brought in an expert historian witness who presented thedocumentary record of Mashpee s history.The case was that there never had been aMashpee tribe, that the Indian community was formed in the colonial encounter.Inconventional terms of authenticity based on continuity of formal tribal structures andancestry, the case was against the Mashpee Indians.In their turn they talked of theirexperiences as Native Americans: attending pow-wows (summer gatherings), peace-pipeceremonies, learning and teaching crafts and traditions.Medicine man John Peters, SlowTurtle, talked of his training, though there were no formal ceremonies or rites of passage.He and Chief Flying Eagle were said to be much respected.For the plaintiffs expertwitness anthropologists presented a flexible concept of tribe, stated that the Mashpeewere a distinct cultural group, indeed a tribe.They were a group of people knowing whoand where they were.The verdict went against the Mashpee Indians.Clifford challenges the organic metaphor at the heart of the conventionalunderstanding of culture: wholeness, continuity, growth, roots, stable and local existence.This metaphor does not account for actual historical and cultural practices ofcompromise, subversion; it masks invention and revival, and being both Indian andAmerican.And in cultural contact it need not be a case of absorption or resistance.Allthe critical elements of identity language, blood, leadership, religion are replaceable.Clifford was convinced that organized Indian life had been going on in Mashpee for thepast three hundred years, that a revival and reinvention of tribal identity was underway.Archaeological sites and finds play a vital role in the construction of cultural identity.Visible in the landscape, subject of visits, viewed, felt, contemplated, whatever.Theymay be brought into narratives and myths.The role of academic archaeology is arestricted one at the moment.It does help recover the archaeological past and its theoriesand explanations may be cited and used in interpretations.But a distinction is madebetween sources and resources.The archaeologist is primarily recovering and dealingwith the past as a source; further interpretation may use the source as resource, forpopular writing, literature, journalism, creative arts; but this is separate.Liberties may betaken and archaeologists may wish to comment, perhaps, as I have said, on distortionsand mistakes; but that is the limit of their role as archaeologist.I have been arguing that the separation of source and resource is not a good one.Itdepends on notions of past as origin (the real context of the archaeological object),discovered by archaeologists and passed on for preservation, display, whatever.Instead Isay that the past is dynamically formed; archaeological finds are resources from theoutset, tools for constructing the past.And present.To return to the question of identity:to belong is not about ownership and being.The past cannot be owned, only taken.Tobelong is about use and becoming.Places and things from the past are resources forinvention.The directions this can take depend on our purposes, interests, experiences,skills, and may have more or less to do with cultural identity
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