Signs of Civilization Series

“Signs of Civilization” Series Artist Statement

“Civilization is what remains when all else is gone”

Not many signs endure: one digs mostly pottery shards, the occasional tool.
But always there is jewelry, a sign of status, civility, interaction, worship, of a deity or another’s supreme beauty.

When you dig, one inch is roughly a hundred years: in the same place near a stream one people lived in peace; much later another came and took over; then others came and conquered, then others and others again, leaving their mark in the same place.

Their styles vary, their understanding of the world, their powers of abstraction, and I remain fascinated by those signs, layers accumulated in a roped-off square one meter wide.

-Eve J. Alfille