Wetwideweb-archaeology is a hub for the easy sharing of information about the ‘wet and wide’ areas of archaeological phenomena in wetlands and waters. Wetlands and aquatic environments were and are exceptional worlds, both for life in the past and for the archaeological research of today. A quick look at the globe shows how big the impact of wet areas must have been on human life in bygone times. Most parts of the globe are covered with water or inter-veined by water-systems. So Homo sapiens were - or are - amphibian mammals after all. Human her/history could not properly be understood without considering the impact of the world’s water-systems and waterways. By focussing on subsequent networks regarding the roads, railways and airlines and the virtual world of the internet we have partly forgotten how important waterways were to neolithic and bronze age lake dwellers. The decreasing importance of waterways for communication, transport and commerce today leads us to forget the previous enormous impact of this medium on the social formation of groups of people in almost all parts of the world. This network was crucial for early modes of transport and travel and also explains many of the present archaeologically discovered wetland features and phenomena such as, for instance, prehistoric lake dwellings.

This close relationship between archaeologically examined wetland features and the wet wide web is therefore the main focus of this website. In Switzerland, being a landlocked country, the awareness of the enormous impact of water systems as networks of communication, transport and economic resource is traditionally weak. Besides, these systems have nearly no economic and logistic importance in today’s Switzerland. However, all this is not sufficient to explain the extensive disregard and partial blindness for its undeniable importance for our ancestors in (especially German speaking) Swiss archaeology. In the latest comprehensive German-French publication about the Neolithic period (Stöckli, Niffeler, Gross (ed.), Switzerland, 1995, 358pp), there is no mention of rivers and lakes being used as networks of communication and transport nor about the navigability of rivers and streams. There are five lines in one column regarding the log-boat without any illustration, there is no mention nor illustration of oars and paddles, which are not uncommon findings near Neolithic lake dwellings. On fisheries there can be found are a mere 10 general lines and this within one small column. Besides an illustration depicting a fragment of a fishing net, there is nothing about fishing equipment or weirs, which both exist. Finally, there is not even a reference to the work of Pétrequin and Pétrequin (1984) who undertook a methodically crucial ethno-archaeological study of lake dwellings. It seems absurd:...so many wetland scholars contributing to this volume (me included as one of the authors and co-editor (!)), but all the „lake dwellers“  seem to do is to crawl, haul, creak and groan cumbersome about the hard dry ground.

The only explanation for this collective blindness, coming close to hypnotic trance, is perhaps the paralysing impact of the so called „Pfahlbaustreit“. Within Swiss archaeological research, this fierce battle was fought over the nature of the stilted houses found in prehistoric lake dwellings. Presumably, in order to avoid the resurgence of this tiresome battle, an unspoken vow of silence was imposed on anything involving the ‘watery’ aspects of prehistoric life. To break this taboo is a major aim of this site. The circumalpine wetland as  the heart and origin of the archaeological research of prehistoric lake dwellings in the 19th century, should recover some of its lost glinting splendour.

First of all, this site is my personal little scientific boat, where I establish the rules (regarding fairness), where I decide where and with how many knots to navigate and to dock. On this boat I am free of the regulations and petty favours of official institutions, publication organs and citation rules. I hire the crew and the passengers and I shall give out invitations for boat gatherings where we can share our knowledge and experience. All this shall be due to my own modest possibilities irrespectively of name, rank, education and academic position. But I am also interested in an intense co-operation and exchange with other more academic platforms which discuss archaeological wetland research (e.g. the Wetland Archaeological Research Project „Warp“). The site is not to compete but instead for complementing each others research, aims and possibilities. Anybody who would like to contribute or to share something in archaeological, historical or ethnological wetland matters, on my boat, may knock at the planks and ask for friendly boarding.

Eda Gross, piratess on wetwideweb-archaeology     

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