Archaeology of the Molema

by Dr Lizzie Robertson, Hannah McLean and Dr Edward Stewart

An archaeologist’s interest, often, is in stories of everyday life; the material that James Deetz (1977) described as ‘small things forgotten’, those seemingly banal parts of our life that are taken for granted. These small things however are ‘a nexus of activities and interactions that give shape and meaning to the world and give people the ability to shape their world and make it meaningful’ (Robin, 2020: 375). This project turns this lens towards a place of archaeological practice: the University of Glasgow Archaeology Department, currently housed in the Molema Building (formerly known as the Gregory Building). Through explorations into the assemblages found in the department and oral history interviews with current and former staff members and students, the project aims to investigate and record the decades of stories and narratives that may be teased out through the ‘layers’ of the department’s material culture. It considers the following research questions:

What narratives can be understood through assemblages left in storerooms and drawers; the building’s ‘small things forgotten’?
What interactions between archaeologists and non-human actors are visible in these assemblages?
What are our responsibilities to the climate and environment regarding the things that archaeologists leave behind?
What emotions and stories are associated with the building itself?
How has the Molema Building contributed to archaeological research at the University of Glasgow and the social relationships that are formed here?
How do we conceptualise the permanent and ephemeral in the materiality of our current practice?
What does the presence or absence of material signify for archaeology as a wider academic field?

The Molema’s PhD office, for example, has at times resembled a jumble sale; boxes of hand-me-down books, office supplies, and wellies for fieldwork, posters and mugs from conferences 20 years past, and accumulations of tchotchkes from decades of students.

Fig. 1: A relic of a forgotten era found in the Molema. Photograph by Hannah McLean, February 2024.

In a basement storeroom hides an assemblage that speaks to the technological evolution of archaeological fieldwork: a 1950s microscope inside a locked wooden box labelled ‘Research’, shelves of stereoscopes and dumpy levels, and teaching materials stored on floppy disks and microcassettes.

Fig. 2: A 1950s microscope inside a (formerly) locked wooden box. Photograph by Hannah McLean, September 2023.

Fig. 3: Undergraduate teaching materials stored on floppy disks. Photograph by Lizzie Robertson, September 2023.

At the back of a shelf in a small cardboard box sits a collection of hand-stamped context labels, complete with an inkpad stained by the ghosts of tester labels past. Throughout the building it is possible to find testaments to the researchers who have left their mark here.

Fig. 4: Stamp, context card, and inkpad from 1990. Photograph by Hannah McLean,
September 2023.

At a time when the University of Glasgow Archaeology Department – as well as archaeology as a wider academic field, profession, and hobby – is undergoing changes both tangible and intangible, the project aims to record the narratives and histories of the department both for posterity and to explore broader themes of sustainability, gender, job precarity. In particular, the project is concerned with the unique and intimate personal narratives connected to the Department and its building that speak to an interconnectedness among the social and material worlds within archaeology as a field.

References

Deetz, J. (1977). In Small Things Forgotten: The Archaeology of Early American Life.
Garden City, NJ: Anchor Press/Doubleday.

Robin, C. (2020). Archaeology of Everyday Life. Annual Review of Anthropology, 49, p. 373-390.