Collaborating with a Pest? Recounting an Encounter Between Moles and Archaeologists

Abstract

This piece is about a close encounter between the mole and archaeologists. This is nothing new. Archaeologists are accustomed to taking the “disturbances” that moles produce into account in their working assumptions. Indeed, archaeologists tend to agree with other soil practitioners such as farmers and gardeners that moles are a pest for perturbing soils. The market is abrim with all sorts of pungent flower bulbs, devices that emit vibrations, gas, or explosives that flood, pinch and trap moles. This piece centres on a very specific context, a research group based at Ghent University and the site of a medieval settlement north of Bruges where archaeologists work with the shards of pottery contained in the soils the moles bring to the surface. In their research, the assumption that moles are a nuisance is suspended by engaging molehills in a new but low-tech scientific practice. This piece tackles the wider question of what is a pest by enrolling the practice of these archaeologists into a history of multi-species social science perspectives. It thinks through the dynamics of categories that species come up against and slide in and out of (Haraway 2008). It is therefore, a piece about more than species. It is also a piece about soils. The soils that emerge involve many different species and not just humans but other living beings including moles, worms, badgers, insects, and plants. Lending attention to soils brings with it socio-cultural associations, tools such as sieves and legislations about animals and archaeological digs. Densely inhabited and littered with remnants of human activities and histories, we might call these multi-species social soils.