“A repository site should be designed to exude something cultish or religious”
How can we ensure that humans will not go near the repository even thousands of years from now? Archaeologist Andrea Schaer argues in favour of creating a monumental site. Just like those humans have erected time and again throughout history.
Andrea Schaer, you are a cultural heritage manager. What should I infer from this job title?
It does have a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? Cultural heritage – archaeological finds, historical buildings, but also intangible cultural heritage in the form of traditions and lore – is viewed differently today than it was a few decades ago. In the past, cultural heritage was seen as something that belonged to the past. Today, we look at evidence from the past with a view to what it could imply for the present and the future. We see it as a resource that could help us to improve the quality of our present-day lives.
How can cultural heritage improve our quality of life?
How can cultural heritage improve our quality of life? We like to visit cities with historical buildings. They convey that there is more to life than the last twenty or thirty years. Landscapes with their castle ruins and historic paths and bridges represent our homeland; this is where we can feel our roots. However, cultural heritage is also part of a landscape in which planning and construction take place because people are currently living there. So it is not enough to simply do research, we must include this historical resource in current discussions and planning processes. We do not want this knowledge to be jeopardised just because all other interests seem to take precedence. The work of cantonal archaeologists and monument conservators is cultural heritage management.
The big difference is that we leave far more traces today than we did 4,000 years ago: skyscrapers, cemeteries, deep geological repositories. Would you like to be reborn as an archaeologist 4,000 years from now?
That would certainly be exciting, although I would probably be annoyed by coming across those ubiquitous Red Bull cans and Coke bottles. Colleagues from England recently wrote in a report that they came across microplastics during archaeological excavations of a Roman site. This plastic has been seeping into ancient layers since the 1980s.
How do you form an idea of an object if no information on its purpose is available? You can only attempt an assumption or a conjecture.
For one, we have observed that materials are deposited in layers, with the oldest lying at the bottom. In the past, buildings were not completely demolished as they are today. You could discover the ruins of a Roman villa under a medieval settlement. Dismantling everything would have been an unnecessary effort; people simply levelled buildings and built new ones on top. If you then excavate a coin, say one depicting Emperor Tiberius, this will give you an absolute reference point, as the coin could not have been lost before the reign of the emperor in question. There are also scientific methods such as the 14C method, which can be used to determine the age of organic material. In the case of wood, a tree’s annual rings can even be used to determine the season in which the trees were felled, providing a chronological framework. As cultural development was very similar in certain regions, comparisons can be made.
What conclusions can be drawn from the past about the future?
Archaeology analyses the vestiges of humanity. We try to understand how people reacted to events such as changes in the environment, for example the climate. Today, we assume that the Roman Empire did not fall because of the decadence of its society, as is often rumoured. It began one century earlier, when the climate became colder and there was more rainfall. Economic conditions changed as a result of this. People moved to other settlements, manufactured other products and used new materials. From this, we obtain an understanding of how people react to changes in their environment. We can also bring this perspective to the current discussion.
Are you more of a listener than a reader?
This interview was conducted as part of the third issue of the Magazine of the Century “500m+” from Nagra. Hannes Hug interviewed the protagonists at Nagra’s meeting point in Stadel – the community where the surface facility for the deep geological repository is to be constructed.
Ten exciting discussions provide new perspectives on the deep geological repository. You can listen to the Podcast of the Century (Jahrhundertpodcast, in German) on the website of The Magazine of the Century or wherever podcasts are available.
How can archaeology be used in connection with the repository project?
A deep geological repository is a few shoe sizes bigger again. We are planning something today that we know should be left alone for an incredibly long period of time if we want our descendants to stay safe. We are constructing a monument that will impact the future – over a time period never before attempted by humanity. Even one million years from now, someone should still be able to understand that this strange thing deep down in the earth should be left alone. Archaeology can make a contribution to this because we study sites that have survived to this day and thus have a lasting impact. They inspire a certain respect in us, even if we rarely know what the people constructing these sites actually intended to convey and how the people living in their vicinity at the time felt about them. I’m thinking of the pyramids or Stonehenge, or stone circles that can be found all over the world. These are places that still command our respect today, places that we leave alone and do not simply dismantle. This is because they radiate something special. Even the Romans, who were sometimes very ruthless when it came to procuring building materials, did not make use of these sites. Using its knowledge of human behaviour in the past, archaeology can contribute to marking and communicating the “special sites” of the future.
You already mentioned the temporal aspect. But what about the question of how to communicate that something dangerous is buried here. How would you do that?
There are several strategies we could try. Colleagues from Scandinavia and the USA, where such repositories already exist or are being planned, have addressed this issue. One proposal is to design a repository as a site that exudes something cultish or religious. The idea is to build a place that seems to have been created and chosen by higher forces. It should convey a power so inspiring and unique that people leave this special place untouched. The existence of highly religious and emotionally charged sites has often been passed down through human history for generations and centuries. There are various examples of prehistoric places of worship that were later also sacred to the Romans, where a chapel was built 500 years later and a church still stands today. Such places have endured. The aforementioned colleagues from Sweden and the USA therefore recommend making such long-lasting installations as a deep geological repository appear as places of worship.
More interviews from the Magazine of the Century
“I can understand how some people might dislike Benny Brennstab”
Thomas Meyer was the first cultural guest in Stadel. The author is a staunch opponent of nuclear power but, at the same time, he is fascinated by the repository project. This is a contradiction he has to bear.
“We geologists think in time-scales of millions of years”
What Nagra does almost has the ring of science fiction, says its CEO, Matthias Braun, in the third issue of the Magazine of the Century “500m+”. But this “science fiction” is based on hard facts – and on swarm intelligence.
Do you have any specific examples of how to achieve this?
One idea is to mark the repository site with non-perishable landmarks in a way that encourages people to preserve this special marker so that it will continue to exist for thousands of years. Stones would probably be most suitable, perhaps as a site similar to Stonehenge. Concrete is not suitable for such long-term construction projects as the expected lifetime of today’s concrete is too limited. In addition to the marker, a tradition or lore associated with the place should also be created and anchored, signalling that it should best be left alone.
To what extent is a deep geological repository also a cultural heritage site?
Cultural heritage is something that is only ever defined retrospectively. What we create today will only be considered cultural heritage in the future – or perceived as such. This includes the deep geological repository, although we cannot predict whether future generations and civilisations will still be familiar with and respect the concept of cultural heritage. We must somehow make people associate the repository site with something – or prompt them into doing so – that encourages them to treat it with awareness and respect.
It must be something concrete and understandable, convey a specific warning yet not be an enigma. Doesn’t this multi-layered approach almost amount to squaring the circle?
Yes, it does, but we have to take the human factor into account. Humans are curious and often surprisingly resistant to learning. Moreover, a human life is short compared to the ”lifetime” of the deep geological repository. Soon, no one will be alive who was there to witness the construction and operation of the repository. At some point, our digital files can no longer be retrieved and the last hand-drawn plan will no longer be legible. This is how knowledge disappears. Our grandmothers knew every herb in the forest, yet we might not even be able to confidently identify that flowering bush as an elderflower in bloom anymore. We have to anticipate this loss of knowledge, especially taking into account a timescale of thousands of years. This is why we need to create an enduring narrative – even if knowledge of the factual background will be lost. We don’t know how the past will be viewed 10,000 years from now.
“The existence of highly religious and emotionally charged sites has often been passed down through human history for generations and centuries.”
Andrea Schaer, on the powerful impact historical buildings can have on people
What led you personally to venture below the surface, why did you start digging?
I have a piece of paper at home with a poem that a former neighbour wrote for my fourth birthday. It is called “Why” and is about the fact that the little one (me) was always standing at the garden fence wanting to know why everything was the way it was. I still want to know why things are the way they are. I had to start searching somewhere. In the beginning, it was broken pieces of flowerpots that I discovered in the garden. I want to put the world I inhabit and observations of my surroundings into a larger context. I like the hidden stories.
What was your favourite find so far?
The bronze hand from Prêles, which was found in 2017. I didn’t discover the hand myself, but I was able to work with the finder during my work at the Bern Archaeological Service and led the initial research. The bronze hand is the craziest and most enigmatic find I have ever dealt with, even though it always gave me the willies.
How old is this bronze hand?
3,500 years.
Do we know today what this hand is all about?
It was in the grave of a man who must have been a very important person to be able to afford an extravagance such as this hand. There are various hypotheses as to what function the hand might have had. Was it a prosthesis, a symbol of power or did it have a ritual function – or even a combination of all three? We don’t know and probably never will – and this after ”only” 3,500 years.
We are living in the Anthropocene, the timescale primarily shaped by human endeavours. How does this affect us, also with regard to the future?
The beginning of the Anthropocene is actually a matter of debate among scientists. Geologists say that the Anthropocene began with the atomic bomb tests in the 1950s. Cultural historians see the beginning with industrialisation and mass production and thus also with the start of massive CO2 emissions. From an archaeological perspective, the emergence of agriculture can also be seen as the first human intervention in the natural environment. Today, we can see the extent to which human activity in the past has influenced life on earth as well as natural processes and the climate.
One last question that I ask everyone I interview: if you could leave a message in the planned deep geological repository, what would you write in your note?
In a few millennia you will no longer be able to read the message … So it would have to be something pictorial that makes it clear who is behind this strange facility and what the motivation was for building it. I would leave that behind – or perhaps my former neighbour’s poem.
Archaeologist and cultural scientist Andrea Schaer is a research associate at the Swiss Information Centre for Cultural Heritage Conservation, NIKE, and an associate researcher and lecturer at the Institute of Archaeological Sciences at the University of Bern. In 2015, she founded the company Archaeokontor and offers services in the fields of archaeology, cultural history and cultural mediation.
Photos: Maurice Haas / Nagra
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