Archaeology and Ancient History

Breaking Down the Boundaries

Eberhard W. Sauer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• eBook ISBN: 9781134416189
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Challenging both traditional and fashionable theories, this collection of pieces from an international range of contributors explores the separation of the human past into history, archaeology and their related sub-disciplines.

Each case study challenges the validity of this separation and asks how we can move to a more holistic approach in the study of the relationship between history and archaeology.

While the focus is on the ancient world, particularly Greece and Rome, rhe lessons learnded in this book make it an essential addition to all studies of history and archaeology.

Part I: GENERAL

1 INTRODUCTION

Eberhard W. Sauer¹

Are the archaeology and history of the ancient world two disciplines that can be studied genuinely in isolation from each other – one based on the investigation of material culture, the other on texts? If so, do all data, questions and phenomena neatly fall into the competence of one or the other? If not, where precisely do we draw the line? Or, if there is no sharp division, how far may either group incorporate the other’s data or results (and the grey zone in between) while still maintaining a clear, separate identity? Are archaeology and history of equal status or is one a source-studying discipline that provides data for wider synthesis by the other – and, in the latter case, how can this attribution of roles be justified logically? What are the differences in the quality of the data they provide in terms of geographical and thematic coverage, accessibility, veracity or distortion, and to what extent can they therefore be understood in isolation from each other? Is the separation of the two an ideal to be sought and to be defended – and, if so, why? Or is it based on mere pragmatism? In the latter case, is this separation necessary to achieve a perfect methodology or merely an excuse for laziness allowing the scholar to avoid studying a substantial proportion of the relevant evidence? If, however, it is indeed considered necessary to divide the study of the human past into separate disciplines because of the sheer quantity of information, should method be our first criterion for defining those disciplines? Are not other ordering principles (such as geography, chronology and subject matter, or a combination of these) just as valid? Is there one right and one wrong way at all or would it be more fruitful to employ a multiplicity of approaches rather than, mainly, the traditional ones?

Is more interdisciplinary dialogue the way to overcome divisions, or is this a mere ‘red herring’ to distract us from the real problem – namely, that in order to have an ‘interdisciplinary’ dialogue in the first place we have to take sides and thus need to maintain our division into different opposing camps? In other words: do we have to decide whether we are historians who tell archaeologists what they can learn from textual sources, or archaeologists who tell historians what they can learn from material culture, in this interdisciplinary dialogue – while none of us must ever learn the lesson and pay equal attention to both types of evidence? Or, if we do, what are we, and how can we logically justify preserving separate identities while we ourselves no longer neatly fall into one category or the other? Should we not rather ask whether or not there is any intrinsically logical reason for our institutional separation in the first place?

It is astonishing how seldom these crucial questions are asked. Instead, implicit assumptions about what does and does not form part of a specific discipline frequently become the basis of subject definitions at university level, while the endeavour is seldom made to provide a logical explanation. Of course, it might be objected that every field of knowledge is somehow related to other fields and that in order to create disciplines of manageable size some arbitrary decisions have to be taken. There is no attempt here to deny that a discipline is defined according to our own criteria and not natural law, yet it is equally clear that definitions can vary according to the coherence of what is grouped together and to the quality of the answers the disciplines so created are likely to provide. On the premise that archaeology and history are trying to answer the same questions and are separated merely by method, the question indeed must be allowed whether the exclusion of a part of the evidence available for a specific research problem is likely to produce more accurate, reliable and complete answers.

It was to explore whether or not the very existence of history and archaeology as separate disciplines could be justified that a session was organized at the Theoretical Archaeology Group Conference in Dublin in 2001 under the deliberately provocative title: ‘Breaking down boundaries: the artificial archaeology–ancient history divide’. This monograph contains exclusively contributions based on papers delivered at this session and is complete except for John Moreland’s paper on ‘Archaeology and text’, which went far beyond his recent synonymous book (2001). We greatly regret that, because of other urgent commitments, he decided early on not to submit a written version of this splendid paper.

The contributors to this volume vary in their background and training: at the moment three of us are nominally attached to archaeology departments, four to history, ancient history or classics departments, two to the ancient history division of joint schools and one to an undivided joint school. Some of us read classical texts in the original language, some do not; some carry out archaeological fieldwork, some do not; some, indeed, do both. While we are all currently based in the British Isles, there are five different nationalities represented amongst us and some of us have studied or taught in more than one country. We thus bring a range of different experiences to bear on a multi-faceted problem and thus offer different perspectives.

It is inevitable that in choosing whom to invite, there was a preference for those who had expressed opinions on the subject before (though, unfortunately, several of them were unable to come and contribute). Even though participation was open and not dependent on subscription to any particular ideology, it can also come as no surprise that those who were attracted to offer papers independently after having read the abstract for the session on the web, were again those who had some sympathy for the proposition rather than being fiercely opposed to it or apathetic. (The former group, incidentally, accounts for five, the latter for four of the contributors, John Moreland and myself excluded.) There is thus no claim here that the contributors form a statistically representative sample of views on the matter within the academic community, nor was it ever intended to achieve this. Equally it would be wrong, however, to assume that we are all just ‘singing from the same hymn sheet’. Indeed, while no hard-line advocate of the status quo offered to contribute, the differences between us are quite substantial. There is no agreement amongst us, for example, as to how far we should go in integrating archaeological and textual evidence. Rankov argues that separate disciplinary identities should be maintained to safeguard standards and to allow us to test the independently achieved results against each other. At the same time he urges us to have the humility to recognize that other disciplines may force us to overrule the perceived wisdom in our own discipline. Several other contributors, by contrast, would go much further towards integration; indeed, I myself make no secret of my view that in an ideal world such divisions would be abolished. Dialismas shares Rankov’s scepticism that a single scholar can be in control of archaeological and textual evidence and argues in favour of analysing archaeological and historical data independently and only bringing them together at the level of synthesis.

Yet there are also important points on which we all agree, notably that it would be beneficial to integrate archaeological and historical evidence more fully and that it is important to pursue the question of how this can be achieved rather than just carrying on as before in our small worlds. We also all favour a multiplicity of approaches rather than ‘defending’ the wisdom of one disciplinary approach passed down over generations and accepted as unquestioned truth. None of us would doubt that some specialization is necessary, yet several of us express concerns about the tendency of only specializing within traditional units, rather than transcending them, thus further cementing conventional views as to what is and what is not relevant and related to each other. Henig, for example, makes a powerful case that the art and archaeology of the north-west of the united Roman Empire has been sidetracked and ignored by many Mediterranean-centred art historians and archaeologists for no reasons other than prejudice. This is so indefensible on a rational basis that those responsible for this omission scarcely acknowledge it, let alone even try to find a logical justification. It is certainly not the fact that scholars specialize in a particular geographic area per se that Henig and I would object to; if they pretend, however, that it can be understood in isolation, show little interest for closely related phenomena elsewhere or make an arbitrarily defined area, be it Britain, Germany, Italy or the Mediterranean, stand for something much grander, such as the whole of the Roman Empire, they should be asked to think again.

All of us would agree that archaeologists and historians can learn from one another rather than just one side from the other. Even if our examples vary in the emphasis they place on the neglect of either textual or material evidence, it is not possible to identify two distinctive groups who advocate either at the exclusion of the other (and we would have failed our target if there had been two such groups). Indeed, our views are complex and cannot easily be subdivided into those supporting or opposing any one proposition. For this reason a conventional chronological and geographical structure has been adopted. My general paper is followed by those which deal with the Greek world, which in turn are followed by those concerned with the Roman world. The final section deals with neighbouring cultures, not because we consider these marginal or less relevant, but because they, and the Celts in particular, cannot neatly be fitted into either the Greek or the Roman world.

Our emphasis on the ancient western world (broadly defined) here should not imply that we consider developments elsewhere (in Han China, for example) or in other periods of history and historical archaeology (such as the Middle Ages) to be less relevant. Yet, in keeping to the above principle that it is sometimes necessary to specialize, as long as the definition of the study area is as coherent as can reasonably be achieved, it was felt that the western world in Graeco-Roman antiquity, including some of its neighbours as well as the transition to the Middle Ages and relevant comparative evidence from other periods, fulfils this criterion (though there would, of course, have been infinite possibilities to shift the chronological and geographical parameters to define a different, but similarly coherent area).

My general paper explores (with negative results) whether coherent definitions of archaeology and history as separate subjects that provide full answers to the questions under examination and are yet sufficiently different from each other are possible. It tries to place the subject in a global perspective and is not confined to any particular period of history. It advocates on a deliberately idealistic level that the boundaries between the ‘two disciplines’ and those between their respective sub-disciplines should be broken down and that areas of specialization should be as varied as possible without any institutional pressure to stay on either side of the fence.

The ten papers with a specific chronological and geographic focus explore related questions:

• if and how the divide between history and archaeology and related disciplinary boundaries within them have affected research in these specific subjects in the past and present;
• how these boundaries came into being or how they became ‘fossilized’;
• whether or not there is any logical justification for these boundaries, and
  1. if so, what (and what risks, if any, might their dissolution involve),
  2. if not, what could be gained from overcoming them with concrete examples from the period under examination; and
• what would be the most suitable way forward: closer co-operation (and, if so, how and at what level) or adoption of the methods of the ‘other’ discipline by archaeologists and historians themselves?

Not all papers deal with every one of the above questions; Henig, for example, places considerable emphasis on the history of disciplinary separatism while most other contributions are concerned mainly with the recent past (and future) of the phenomenon. All, however, focus on several of these central questions, and there is no contribution which merely includes textual and material evidence without discussing the relationship of history and archaeology. Neither is any paper confined to generalities, but each places the discussion in the specific context of the period under examination and provides one or more concrete case studies.

The Greek section is introduced by Boris Rankov’s chapter on the Olympias project, a perfect example of a highly complex interdisciplinary project which is by no means just restricted to the relationship between history and archaeology. A wide range of experts in different fields contributed to this reconstruction of an ancient warship. Unlike in normal academic debate between representatives of different disciplines, in such a project it was impossible simply to agree to disagree where separate categories of evidence seemed to suggest different solutions if one ever wanted to see the ship afloat. Decisions on every constructional detail had to be reached, forcing the experts to be as open-minded as possible towards the contributions of other specialists in order to reach a workable consensus. Where they remained at loggerheads, the organizers had to take sides as to who was more likely to be right or wrong. The very complexity of the task leads Rankov to conclude that disciplinary identities should be maintained rather than broken down. In his view this allows an individual to master a discipline and thus to check the results reached independently against each other. However, it was also important that the key participants were experts in more than just one field, or at least had an exceptionally broad expertise so that they could develop a mindset open to question the received wisdom in their own discipline. This is a crucial observation; indeed, Rankov points out that the greatest obstacle to interdisciplinarity is subject pride, the belief in the received wisdom of one’s own discipline, allowing others merely to fill in the gaps but never to compete on an equal level and challenge opinions formed on the basis of one’s ‘own’ sources. Laurence, incidentally, equally sees such pride as a major hurdle for integration and key reason for academic isolationism; it is perpetuated through training in competitive university departments too proud to concede that another discipline can make valuable contributions to solving one’s ‘own’ questions.

Rankov thus argues that while the methodological vigour of a discipline should not be watered down, it is indeed possible to be an expert in more than one discipline and that academics should be sufficiently familiar with neighbouring disciplines, and open-minded towards them, to recognize where their contribution may overrule conclusions drawn on the basis of the evidence provided by their own. Rankov’s strategy may well have a greater chance of leading to the dissolution of the boundaries in the short term than the idealistic and more radical demand, advocated by myself, of abolishing the history–archaeology divide altogether – whether or not the latter is our long-term goal.

Rankov’s view that some division of labour between the disciplines is necessary because of the sheer quantity and complexity of the different sources of information is shared by Alkis Dialismas. He argues for a separate analysis of the data, but for an integration of all evidence at the level of wider interpretation and synthesis. Indeed, explosion of information is no excuse for ignoring archaeological or historical evidence at this level. If both historians and archaeologists are capable of making borrowings and of being inspired by influences from a range of other disciplines, why is it fashionable just to stress the differences between these two uniquely close subjects? Dialismas covers the transition between the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age in the Aegean. Not only is this the earliest period included in this volume, but the coverage by written sources is sporadic and problematic, there are gaps of several centuries and the Homeric poems were written down long after the period under consideration and represent an amalgam of real and imagined elements from different epochs. It is thus, he argues, very much a period at the transition between prehistory and history. He postulates that written testimonies are useful as analogies even for prehistorians. This is particularly true if the culture under examination is in close geographical and chronological proximity to that covered by the sources, which are thus more likely to reflect circumstances at the time than the average ethnological analogy (a case also powerfully supported by Karl in his contribution on Celtoscepticism). Incidentally, Dialismas points out that ethnologists do not produce separate descriptions of a culture under examination, one solely based on material evidence, the other on written or oral sources. Should archaeologists and historians not follow their example?

Yet, are the fundamental aims of archaeology and history really the same? This is one of the central questions Lin Foxhall explores in her paper. Foxhall’s chronological focus is later than that of Dialismas and her period is generally much more extensively and reliably covered by written sources. Nevertheless, she demonstrates that it is not easy, often indeed impossible, to link rural sites, for example, identified through survey or excavation with information on ownership patterns provided by literary texts. The latter are not specific enough, tend to lack any topographical precision and are sometimes no more than general topoi. This is in sharp contrast, for instance, to vernacular housing in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century rural Suffolk where it has been possible to link specific types of houses with individuals of known profession and social status. Thus in principle the aims of archaeological and historical research are the same; only in classical Greece (and in antiquity in general) the questions which the material and textual evidence allows us to answer are often not identical. Is this an argument for maintaining the current division between archaeology and history? Quite on the contrary, an awareness of both types of evidence is essential to avoid using the evidence provided by the ‘other’ discipline in a much more uncritical manner than that of the ‘own’ (a conclusion similar to the one reached by Hoffmann on the basis of her case study in Roman Britain). Crucially, Foxhall concludes that we need to ‘develop our awareness of the full range of evidence for the Greek past’ and, as she demonstrates amply, neither material culture nor texts have the capacity to furnish us with anything like the complete picture in this period.

Janett Morgan provides another survey of the relationship between history and archaeology in Greek antiquity, yet with a very different focus. Morgan scrutinizes the implicit assumptions and political agendas which underlie ideologies about the greater importance either of the literary wisdom versus material culture, or of idealized works of art divorced from their contexts versus ordinary objects, or of the objective ‘science’ of archaeology versus distorted elitist, if not fictional, texts. This results in the mutually exclusive claims of the disciplines about the primacy of their evidence. Morgan exposes the hollowness of such assumptions and stresses that all types of evidence require interpretation; none provides the undistorted truth. ‘A divided discipline’, she warns us, ‘is more vulnerable to the academic agendas of individuals with strong beliefs about the past.’ Interestingly, the same conclusion is, once again, reached independently by a second contributor: Karl points out that politically correct Celtoscepticism could only develop once archaeology had ‘freed’ itself from textual evidence, proclaimed ‘irrelevant’, which would have made it much more difficult to shape the past in ways that suited the political agendas of the present. The theories stressing alleged high levels of resistance against imperial rule throughout Roman history, and discussed in my contribution, equally have to be seen in the context of modern views on imperialism. Failure or unwillingness to differentiate between the levels of discontent in different empires and their colonies or provinces as a result of our general dislike of imperialism in any shape or form has again been facilitated by an exclusion of parts of the evidence (e.g. by looking at the north-west of the Empire in isolation). Whether the past is used to support morally reprehensible political ideals (Morgan refers to cases of modern nationalism and military aggression) or to educate us about the dangers of nationalism (the good intention of Celtosceptics in Karl’s view), they both draw our attention to the dangers of consciously or unconsciously distorting the past to propagate our own political views (and to the fact that the history–archaeology division leaves more room for pushing the evidence in the direction we like). Even if our political mission is benign and beyond reproach, are we not sawing off the branch on which we sit if we do not do the utmost to make sure that our ‘supporting evidence’ stands up to scrutiny? Yet there is a positive as well as a negative side to the multiplicity of approaches, including interdisciplinary ones, in Morgan’s view. They not only keep the past relevant but also prevent the dominance of any single dogma. This is an important point: perhaps we need not be too worried about researchers using the past to promote their own political agendas (if these do not go beyond accepted norms), as long as we find ways to ensure that they are not allowed to silence those who disagree.

The Roman section starts as the Greek ends with a ‘celebration of … pluralism’. Ray Laurence, like Morgan, argues that there is not just one right way to approach the past. This does not mean, of course, that either of them proposes a...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• ARCHAEOLOGY AND ANCIENT HISTORY
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• FIGURES
• CONTRIBUTORS
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• PART I: GENERAL
• PART II: GREECE
• PART III: ROME
• PART IV: NEIGHBOURING CULTURES