Lives in Ruins (28 page)

The site was made accessible to the Native Americans anytime but is off-limits to Army soldiers and employees, though the Cultural Resources crew and their guests are an exception. “Once the Army decides to protect it, our work is done,” Rush said. “This frustrates the crew. Archaeologists like to dig, not leave things
in situ
. To them, they're just getting started.” But for the Iroquois nations, including the Mohawks, “that suited them.” Rush loved to talk about the Native American visits to the base, the time one of the elders took a stick and drew a constellation in the sand, then poked holes for stars to represent the Pleiades and “smoothed all the marks—very theatrical,” or the poetic moment when the spiritual leader of the New York tribes, the Iroquoian Tadodaho, thanked “‘the stars whose names we have forgotten.'”

Rush viewed her connection with all of the Iroquois, who call themselves Haudenosaunee, as one of the outstanding benefits of her job. “We've learned so much about them since working for the Army.” Whether she was making presentations with her playing cards, or lobbying to include an archaeologist in the planning of international war exercises, she promoted the rewards of consulting other cultures about archaeology, depicting the Army's relationship with the Iroquois as a model. Rush referred to Native Americans not as stakeholders or descendant communities, but as the Army's “host nation”; when the Haudenosaunee chiefs, clan mothers, and Tadodaho visited the base, they were received with ceremony, as heads of state.

Heads of state? It hasn't always been like this. After a costly lawsuit between the Makua Military Reservation in Oahu and native Hawaiians, the Department of Defense decided to try a new tack late in the nineties. The DoD consulted tribal leaders throughout the country, asking them how they expected to be treated. The results were made policy in October 1998, formalizing the new government-to-government model—essentially a resolution by the Department of Defense to consult Native Americans in all matters that related to them and a pledge to treat them respectfully.

Rush has been honored by the Secretary of the Army and the Secretary of Defense multiple times and by her fellow professional archaeologists, for her innovative leadership, but when she was cited for her work with the Iroquois, her husband shrugged. “I don't get it,” he said. “All you did was treat them with respect. And they gave you an award for that?”

“Yes,” she told him. “That's the point!”

THE IRAQ AND
Afghan Heritage playing cards are a triumph of geekery, handsome black decks of cards that work just fine for solitaire or poker or war, but are rich with archaeological images. The decks display an internal logic that a poet would love: each suit stands for a different aspect of culture—diamonds for artifacts, spades for digs and sites, hearts for “winning hearts and minds,” and clubs for heritage preservation. Each card contains a different message, from the most basic (“Stop digging if you find ancient artifacts or archaeological features”) to the revelatory (“Karez, the ancient water system tunnels in Afghanistan, look like ant hills on aerial imagery”). The decks can also be laid out as puzzles, with the backs of each card forming part of a larger picture of an archaeological icon. As artifacts themselves, the cards tell a great deal about the conscientiousness, creativity, and playfulness of the people who devised them.

Laurie Rush found her first partner in the creation of these playing cards at her high school reunion. There she renewed her teenage friendship with Roger Ulrich, now an archaeologist teaching classics at Dartmouth and an Old World expert who could link her to specialists in classical archaeology. These specialists advised Ulrich and Rush on the content on the cards; Ulrich's students fact-checked the information, did the photo research, and secured the rights to reprint the images of sites and artifacts; and the Colorado State University Center for Environmental Management of Military Lands was enlisted to design and produce the cards. Soon there were three decks, one for Iraqi and Afghan heritage, one a dedicated Afghan deck, and one for American and Egyptian troops, who participated in war maneuvers every two years.

The only complaints Rush heard from the troops about the cards and the training on replica sites was, Where were these years ago? Stories about the cards appeared in
Archaeology
magazine and in
USA Today
—positive stories about the military and cultural heritage. Rush was heartened. The cards reached the soldiers in desert tents who could deal themselves useful and interesting facts about the heritage of the area, while studying images of landmarks captioned pointedly: “This site has survived 17 [or 23 or 35] centuries. Will it and others survive you?” But the cards were equally valuable as business cards that directed those working on these issues in the compartmentalized world of archaeology and the bureaucratic maze of the military to an open and direct channel of action. Information about the Cultural Resources staff of Fort Drum and the Colorado center, where one could find a network of professionals who were dedicated to preserving heritage and minimizing military harm, was printed on every deck and accompanied every press story. “It's funny how many military people found out about the project through the mass media,” Rush said. The cards had been beacons.

For all the approval she's earned from military leadership and the
troops, Rush has been criticized by some archaeologists for deigning to work with them at all. At the 2008 World Archaeological Congress, in Dublin, she faced so much resistance that she needed police protection while presiding over a panel about the benefits of collaborating with the military: a post in an online chat room had proposed storming her session, so the Irish Garda accompanied Rush and her fellow speakers throughout the conference. “One of the Gardaí said, ‘Ma'am, we need to review the evacuation plan with you,'” Rush recalled. “I must tell you, if you're ever worried about your speakers getting there on time, this will solve that!” Then she added, perhaps unnecessarily, “This work is not for the fainthearted.”

Responding to her critics, Rush wrote an essay titled “Mars Turns to Minerva: Thoughts on Archaeology, the Military, and Collegial Discourse,” a defense of the U.S. military's efforts to protect cultural heritage and a plea for reasoned and dignified dialogue—essentially, a call for everyone to please be nice and remember that there are lives at stake. Rush began working full-time at Fort Drum the year after the sudden death of her oldest child, at seventeen, and there is something extremely personal about her indefatigable efforts to help soldiers appreciate every scrap and crumb of human culture. She saw young men and women going off to war, and she wanted to help them earn and offer respect. The old complaint—why would we worry about potsherds and graves and ruins when we should be worrying about people?—was moot to her. Potsherds and graves and ruins were the stuff of people.

Rush welcomed the debate. “Even the most seasoned and analytical anthropologists can find themselves becoming rapidly acculturated when exposed to a military environment,” she acknowledged, “and our colleagues can play a very important role in helping us to continually question the nature of our participation and the . . . effects that our work may have.” But she couldn't condone withholding knowledge because you refused to work with those who waged war. “We had Iraqis die at checkpoints,” she said, “because our soldiers
were extending their hands with the palms up to indicate ‘Stop.' To Iraqis, extending the hand palm up means ‘Welcome.' Now, as an anthropologist, if you have knowledge that could save people, how can you not share that?”

Rush didn't want to silence archaeologists who disagreed; she didn't want to silence any constituency. She felt there should be room for everybody at the cultural table. TV reality shows featuring treasure hunters who used metal detectors, for instance, were roundly decried by archaeologists, but Rush saw the treasure hunters as potential allies in preservation. “The legislation is not going our way at all, and the archaeologists are all angry. That's our image now, angry archaeologists. I want to say, ‘Wait, you have a constituency who loves these resources [the artifacts]. Can't we figure out how to channel that enthusiasm?' We are missing a tremendous opportunity here.

“We still have that potential, but I think I have colleagues who forget that to be paid to do this is such an incredible privilege. We have jobs that other people dream about. I find myself at cocktail parties with doctors gathered around me, all saying, ‘Oh, I always wanted to be an archaeologist.' I do a lot of pinching myself.”

It was almost invisible, what she had done to shift the conversation: she waded into a contentious and thorny professional problem, and came out the other side hopeful and eager to make friends, even with treasure hunters.

THE NIGHT I
visited Fort Drum, I had dinner at a pub in Sackets Harbor with Laurie and her husband, Jack, a general practitioner with a droll sense of humor, along with their daughter Cait and her new husband. We watched the sun set over the harbor that had been the scene of several battles in the War of 1812. Our table was arrayed with different kinds of craft beer. The late rays flooded through the picture window and refracted through our drinks, turning each a different jewel-tone—amber, ruby, gold. Laurie told me about when she
used to be afraid to speak in public or in front of generals. She took up ice dancing and entered competitions to get over her performance anxiety. Once you've literally fallen on your face in front of a crowd, she said, you could talk to anyone.

Cait teased her mother about another experience she'd had with a journalist. A student had asked for an interview, so Laurie invited her to the fort. Cait quoted the resulting story: “‘You would never in a million years notice this woman. She is plain and short.'” Laurie led the laughter.

Early in my research, an elder of the profession suggested that I follow at least one archaeologist who worked for the government. I said I was interviewing an archaeologist for the Army, Laurie Rush. The man lit up. “I
like
her!” he said, then added, hastily, “not that that should matter.”

But in this case, being likable did matter. Her friendly and engaging manner helped bridge cultures, not to mention compartmentalized professions. And consider: niceness, as wielded by Rush, turned out to be quite the formidable weapon.

O
VERHEARD AT
5:30 a.m. in the clean and charming railway station of Poroy, Peru, a shiny Disneyfied terminal dropped into the slummy, narrow-roaded, dog-clotted outskirts of Cusco: “I heard your paper.” “Yes, I heard yours!” (Many languages, many accents—simple English or Spanish would have to suffice at this hour.) The gathering of the UNESCO International Committee on Archaeological Heritage Management has concluded, four days of archaeologists from six continents talking about how to manage World Heritage sites, forty years after the ambitious program began—how are we doing? Now it's time for their treat: the field trip to the king of archaeology sites, Machu Picchu. Few of the participants have four days to hike in on the Inca Trail, so they opted instead for the Vistadome train and its three- and-a-half-hour ride to Aguas Calientes at the base of Machu Picchu—neither as luxurious as the first-class Hiram Bingham rail nor as funky as the backpackers' train. This is my dream, to ride a train stuffed with archaeologists and talk archaeology and cultural identity and repatriated artifacts and other burning topics while the scenery shifts dramatically and a real-life fantasy kingdom comes into view.

So much archaeological knowledge and experience is gathered in this pleasant terminal, embodied by the cheerful Elizabeth; the
grandfatherly Willem; John, the Brit; Veysel, the handsome young doctoral student with two silver earrings who, while the rest of us hiked or taxied to the ruins above Cusco last night, rode a horse hired for the occasion; Monique, tiny and pretty with a severe haircut who made an impassioned presentation about the Palestinian heritage sites that no one can visit; Fritz, the German; Neale and the other sardonic Australians; Sato and his colleague Yo. Yo Negishi particularly enjoys the idea of a train full of archaeologists. It is the start of an amusing article, he thinks. Or an Agatha Christie mystery? There are apparently no murderers in our midst. In fact, we could not be a milder bunch. Professor Dr. Willem J. H. Willems, for instance, the copresident of the International Committee on Archaeological Heritage Management (ICAHM),
^*
is sporting enough, even at this ungodly hour, to spar with Negishi as he tries to come up with a good collective noun for this group. A wheelbarrow? A dump? A field of archaeologists? Here, on the sanitized floor of the train station, we put it to a vote:
a bucket of archaeologists
sounds just right. But before the bucket of archaeologists can be transported, it is spilled and scattered: the seats on the Vistadome to Machu Picchu have been assigned already, based on when each of us booked our tickets. The archaeologists are sprinkled through the multiple cars of the train, mixed in with tourists, and indistinguishable. Only one is seated in my car: Ashton Sinamai, who works at a World Heritage site in Zimbabwe that has been all but abandoned by the local population, but I am separated from him by a family of chatty Canadians. Sinamai closes his eyes; I open my book.