Dry dig: Ethics and alcohol in Middle Eastern archaeological practice (2010)

ARTICLE DRY DIG ETHICS AND ALCOHOL IN MIDDLE EASTERN ARCHAEOLOGICAL PRACTICE Benjamin W. Porter Benjamin Porter is an assistant professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and a co-director of the Dhiban Excavation and Development Project. There were two people there, both archaeologists, and both recognized me from the meetings. So I had no choice but to sit down and have a beer with them [Kent Flannery 1982:265]. institutions’ rules if we were to receive their full sponsorship. However, our primary motivation for banning alcohol was the fact that we were living in a rural Jordanian town of 15,000 peo- ple, nearly all of them Muslim. Alcohol is forbidden in Islam, although today each country has different legal policies about its purchase and consumption (Devasahayam 2003; Kueny 2003). In Jordan, Muslim and non-Muslim alike can purchase alcohol, and it is common to see, especially wealthy, Jordanians drinking in resort hotels, bars, and restaurants, but in Dhiban, no such public displays of drinking are visible or welcome. The town is located next to the site, and a number of our research goals are designed around community collaboration and economic devel- opment. In order to build and maintain productive working relationships, a positive persona was therefore necessary. And, as we were determined to make the cultural experience of living in Dhiban just as important as the archaeological field school, we realized the prohibition would be necessary. So in 2009, the 23-person team of professors, graduate students, and undergraduates attempted a ”dry-dig.” Despite a persistent grumbling, the season was a success with the project attaining many of its research goals. The team stayed relatively healthy, too. After most of the students and staff had left, the codirectors were relatively pleased with the team’s discipline and respect for the local community. But soon after, when cleaning off the roof of the men’s house, we found a neatly hidden garbage bag of empty beer cans and liquor bottles, evidence that not everyone had followed the rules.... From where, exactly, did this relationship between the discipline and the drink arise? The question deserves more systematic study than can be afforded here. If allowed to speculate on ori- gins, one could cite the fact that archaeology as a discipline emerged in tandem with modern leisure activities and access to consumables made possible by the Industrial Revolution and the Victorian Age (Davison 2004:33–35). Antiquarianism was I t did not take me long to discover that alcohol consumption is an intimate ritual in archaeological practice. I recall my first anthropology club event when I was an undergraduate in the early 1990s: field projects from the past summer gave summaries of their work, each ending with slide images of empty beer cans and clever innuendos about hangovers and campfires. To me, these stories were funny. They revealed a quirky human element to a discipline I was just beginning to join. This initial impression would be reaffirmed in the coming years during graduate school cocktail hours, at the annual SAA conference bar, and, of course, during field research. As my career interests shifted to the Middle East, I found that the ritu- al of alcohol consumption was deeply embedded in archaeolog- ical practice there as well, despite any local or religious customs attempting to discourage the practice. Not that I mind a drink—I enjoy a cold beverage (or two ... or...) as much as the next archaeologist—but I have grown to realize that the discipline’s relationship with alcohol has grown com- plicated for practitioners, especially those who are designing projects that engage with communities and stakeholders. Con- sider this: in 2009, the Dhiban Excavation and Development Project, a project I co-direct with colleagues in the Middle East- ern kingdom of Jordan (Porter et al. 2005, 2007), decided to ban all alcohol consumption. We made this decision for several rea- sons. Less alcohol would reduce the chronic levels of dehydra- tion our team members experienced in this hot, arid climate; it would reduce project and personal expenses; and hopefully it would increase professional behavior among team members. The Dhiban Project would be growing in size over the next few years and it was time to instill some protocols. We had plans to increase the number of undergraduates from the United States, many of whom we anticipated would be under that country’s legal drinking age. We would be required to abide by our home November 2010 • The SAA Archaeological Record