1 THE EMERGENCE OF MODERNITY AND THE CONSTITUTION OF ARCHAEOLOGY
Archaeology . . . a discipline devoted to silent monuments, inert traces, objects without context, and things left by the past.
Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge
Introduction: why modernity?
Archaeology investigates the past through the medium of material things. Yet it is increasingly clear that we do not simply reconstruct the way that things were. Instead, we establish a relationship between the past and the present. This relationship can be conceived as a kind of conversation, to which we bring a variety of expectations and prejudices, and from which we receive challenges and surprises (Gadamer 1975: 236). The past never fully reveals itself to us, but through our continued engagement we learn more, both about past worlds and about ourselves. The self-recognition that emerges from this process involves an increasing awareness of our own assumptions and prejudices: the conceptual ‘baggage’ that we tend to impose on the past. Considered in this way, the perceived distance between the past and the present is not so much a barrier to understanding as a productive space (ibid.: 264). Yet the dialogue between the two cultural and historical contexts is one that requires our active participation in giving the past a significance, and in appreciating our own position in the present (Warnke 1987: 68; Johnsen and Olsen 1992: 426).
It is arguable that while archaeology has made considerable advances in the methodological and theoretical skills required in order to address the past, we often lack an appreciation of the conditions under which we ourselves operate in the present. Indeed, in many disciplines that seek to draw up a contrast between the modern West and some other society the conception of our own context is superficial, based principally on personal experience (Pickstone 2000: 34). This in turn means that our understanding of the past continues to be hamstrung by what Gadamer calls ‘the tyranny of hidden prejudices’ (1975: 239). This book is intended to facilitate some recognition of the circumstances in which the discipline of archaeology finds itself at the start of the twenty-first century, and of the reasons why we address the past in the ways that we do. The central argument that I will be seeking to make is that modernity represents the condition of the possibility of archaeology. By that I mean that archaeology as we presently practise it is intimately connected with the modern experience, and indeed amounts to a distillation of a modern sensibility (see Olsen 2001: 43).
In everyday language, something that is ‘modern’ is generally contemporary, up to date, or progressive. It is worth saying at the outset that the sense in which I will be using the word is a philosophical one, which refers to a phase of history that succeeded the medieval era in the West. According to some commentators this period may be coming to a close (or may even have ended). Over the years, a number of historians of archaeology have suggested, whether implicitly or explicitly, that the growth of the discipline coincided with this epoch. For instance, Crawford (1932) argued that the Industrial Revolution promoted archaeological discovery through the excavation of canals, railway cuttings and coal mines, and created a leisured middle class who had the opportunity and the motivation to study the past. Piggott (1976) drew attention to the incremental process by which improvements in transport opened up the landscape to antiquarian travellers. Schnapp (1996) emphasised the growth of learning that facilitated the appreciation of artefact typology and stratigraphy. Trigger (1989) foregrounded both changing social relations and developing conceptions of history. While agreeing with the importance of all of these factors, I will seek to subsume them within what I consider to be a more fundamental process: the emergence of modernity.
Modernity may represent a chronological division of human experience, but more importantly it is distinguished by the growth of a particular philosophical outlook, and by particular ways in which human beings have operated socially. A range of obvious characteristics are particular to the modern era: capitalism, the emergence of nation-states, industrialisation, improvements in communications and transport, mercantilism, the control of violence by the state, surveillance, constant political struggle, an increasingly urban way of life, and an experience of agitation, turbulence and continuous change (Giddens 1991: 15; Berman 1982: 18; Olsen 2001: 42). Equally important has been the decline of tradition and (in the West at least) of religious conviction. Moreover, the erosion of established sources of social stability has been widely recognised within modern communities, with the effect that the modern condition is also characterised by general unease and dissatisfaction. Modern societies are unusual in recognising their own material and social conditions as being unlike those of the past, and this has fuelled a continuous critique of modernity from within (Kolakowski 1990: 12). The recognition that ‘things could be otherwise’ promotes a sense of continuous crisis, yet without any clear prospect of resolution. All of these conditions have been related to increasing social fragmentation, individualism, and efforts on the part of states to impose secular codes of moral behaviour (Gray 1995: 152). Order is recognised as a problem in the modern world. This begins to explain the peculiarly important role that philosophical thought has played in modernity. Throughout this book I will be discussing what may seem at times to be somewhat abstract philosophical themes, but in the modern world such ideas have continually ‘trickled down’ into everyday discourse, reconfigured themselves as ‘common sense’, or informed the policies and legislation of national governments. This is all the more so because, as Zygmunt Bauman argues, modern philosophy is often legislative in character, attempting to lay down a moral order, identify the good, or tame and organise a seemingly chaotic world (1992: 119). In the modern world, abstract thought is often considered to precede action: indeed, the two are held to be separate events. For this reason, modern life is overwhelmingly designed and planned. The construction of buildings and artefacts, the planning of towns, and the organisation of societies is composed in theory before being put into practice. This is one of the reasons why utopian thinking is so distinctive of modernity (ibid.: xv).
Utopias are by definition located in the future, and it is a unique aspect of modernity that it conceives of itself as a project, leading to some future state. Yet this project is forever unfinished (Smart 1992: 183). The modern condition strives for some form of closure that cannot be achieved. Both modern philosophy and modern state politics operate on the premise that perfection can be achieved, provided that a new foundation for thought and action can be secured. This imperative lies behind the foundational philosophy of the likes of Descartes, Locke and Kant, as identified by Richard Rorty (1979).
Frederic Jameson warns us against the dangers of periodisation: to talk of ‘modernity’ or ‘post-modernity’ risks setting up an image of cultural homogeneity within a chronological phase ( Jameson 1984: 56). With this in mind, we might think of modernity less as a block of time with hard edges, and more as a process, in which certain practices and relationships emerged to cultural dominance over time. We might talk of a modern era that began with the Italian Renaissance, but the ruling ideas of modernity have roots that descend back as far as the Greeks and Romans. What made the modern period modern is that a particular cluster of understandings which had been in a rarefied circulation for many centuries achieved a position of hegemony, and began to operate as the principles around which people structured their lives. Here we find a first point of connection with archaeology, for while there are isolated instances of what we might choose to call ‘archaeological thinking’ identifiable in the depths of antiquity, the emergence of a definable archaeological tradition is contingent upon that of modernity.
Modernity was (or is) neither spatially nor temporally homogeneous. Forms of organisation and understanding which matured (but were not necessarily generated) in Western Europe have gradually spread over much of the world, but in doing so they have been transformed. Similarly, the process of modernity was one that involved changes of focus and emphasis. Renaissance humanism was eclipsed by the religious conflicts of the later sixteenth century. The New Philosophy of the seventeenth century provided the impetus for the universalising intellectual project of the Enlightenment. This in turn gave way to a more historicised understanding of humanity in the nineteenth century. Such an attempt to break the modern age down into a series of phases is undoubtedly far too neat. However, the point that I wish to make is that the many twists and turns of the way in which modern people understood their own place in the world provided the context within which archaeology emerged. Moreover, this history provides the legacy that still burdens archaeology. Our ways of thinking about the past and about material things remain distinctively modern.
The roots of modernity
Histories of archaeology lay some stress on early examples of the uncovering of ancient ruins. Perhaps the earliest of these was the excavation of the temple of Larsa in Iraq by Nabonidus in the sixth century bc (Daniel 1950: 16; Schnapp 1996: 17). Attention is also sometimes drawn to the opening of ancient tombs by the classical Greeks (Schnapp 1996: 26), and to the excavations conducted by Bishops Earldred and Eadmar in St Albans in the eleventh century, partly in search of building stone (Piggott 1976: 5). Yet while these cases demonstrate an awareness of the remains of the past surviving into the present, there is no sense in which these remains were being used as evidence in the construction of a systematic knowledge of a past society, or of the diversity of humankind. So, arguably, while these early excavators were addressing the archaeological, they were not practising archaeology. Such a practice could only come into being once a particular series of understandings of humanity, time, and materiality had developed. A critical step in this direction was taken with the emergence of the belief that human beings are creatures of infinite value, possessing immortal souls, and inhabiting a world that is perishable. Such a view is to be connected with Christianity, and might be contrasted with the ancient Greek conception of humans as mortals, who are placed in an eternal world (Gray 1995: 158). This could be seen as the beginning of a process whereby humanity gradually came to supplant God as the subject of history.
Such a transient world would come to its end with the Last Judgement, and during the Middle Ages the belief that the Last Days were at hand was widespread. There was little recognition of the depth of human history, and consequentially any diversity amongst people was understood in spatial rather than temporal terms. Thus, as Hooper-Greenhill points out, Roman tombs discovered in Europe were rationalised as those of Saracens, while the remains of ancient cities were described as the work of giants (1992: 32). Medieval Europe did possess a linear conception of history, but it was one that was based around the decline from grace, followed by redemption. As a number of authors have suggested, this narrative resonates with the classical notion of humanity’s decline from a Golden Age (Trigger 1989: 34; Schnapp 1996: 68). This implied that human abilities and skills were likely to have devolved over time, denying the possibility of the accretional growth of learning, or the progressive elaboration of technology. Yet while Hesiod’s account of the ages of gold, silver and bronze presented an image of historical decline, it also contained a periodisation, which was explicitly linked to technological change (Daniel 1950: 14). Arguably, then, a linear view of time was already implicit in European culture by the time that the classical authors were revisited by the Renaissance. The change was to be one of emphasis, away from predestination and towards human achievement (Burckhardt [1860] 1995: 226).
Renaissance humanism reintroduced human agency into history, as manifest in Leon Battista Alberti’s claim that ‘men can do all things if they will’ (ibid.: 107), and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Speech on the Dignity of Man: ‘To thee alone is given a growth and a development depending on thine own free will. Thou bearest in thee the germs of a universal life’ (ibid.: 264). Renaissance scholars affirmed that human beings could change their own conditions of existence through action, and looked back to both Aristotle and Plato as models of intellectual achievement (Appleby et al. 1996b: 25). These influences were to mature into quite different intellectual traditions. While Aristotle had been revered by medieval scholasticism, it was his emphasis on human diversity and difference, and on the contextuality of historical events and ethical judgements that interested the humanists. Renaissance humanism was distinguished by its toleration of the plurality of humankind, its attentiveness to alterity, and its acceptance of ambiguity in morality and metaphysics. Indeed, Mirandola’s conclusion that ‘man is free as air to be whatever he likes’ suggests that a protean human pluralism was viewed as a source of emancipation (Bauman 1991: 22). The concern with Plato, by contrast, was wholly new, having been facilitated by the reemergence of Plato’s works in Greek from Constantinople after 1400, and their translation by Marsilio Ficino. Plato’s emphasis on a mathematical conception on the world was to inspire Renaissance natural philosophy, and ultimately prepared the way for the new science of Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler (Goodman 1991: 28).
That the Copernican model of the universe would lead to a collision with Christian orthodoxy was perhaps to be expected, but equally significant was the growing conflict between faith and reason. Both the scholastics and the humanists had placed great emphasis on the role of reason, but the latter had tied it to free will, rather than presenting it simply as a principle to guide disputation. This meant that reason was to become increasingly active in social conduct and political strategy. The model of free rational action was defended on the grounds that God allows human beings free will in order to give them moral responsibility (Carroll 1993: 49). However, this implies that humans are in a position to work out for themselves the correct course of action at any given time, as opposed to simply putting their faith in the creator. This dilemma was instrumental in bringing about the Reformation, which some have seen as a kind of ‘counter-Renaissance’. The dispute between Erasmus and Luther of 1524–5 turned on the contrast between the person as a free agent and as a bearer of total guilt (ibid.: 67). Yet both humanism and Protestantism subscribed to a conception of the person that was increasingly individualised. As we will see, believing oneself to be an ‘individual’, whether by taking responsibility for one’s own salvation or acting in one’s own interest, is a distinctively modern attitude.
It was the Renaissance rediscovery of the classical world, of course, that prompted the growth of antiquarianism. Here we have both an orientation on the past, and a specific interest in the remains of the past as being of value in their own right. From the late fourteenth century onwards, collections of Greek and Roman artefacts began to be amassed, while architectural devices and sculptural forms drawn from antiquity began to come back into fashion. This development was closely related to humanism (Schnapp 1996: 132), and while ruins and artefacts were not used as evidence in the full sense, they were recognised as an indication of past human achievements. Initially, this was taken as a confirmation of a decline of the world since ancient times. In the terms of the Renaissance cosmology, the earth was understood as a living organism, and the relative lack of accomplishment in contemporary human crafts was considered to be a symptom of its sickness (Hooper-Greenhill 1992: 33). Nonetheless, the gradual growth of an awareness that architecture, the arts, dress, legal structures and modes of conduct had changed since classical times was to have a positive effect. The Renaissance differed from the medieval period in recognising past people as qualitatively different from those of the present, and being of interest by virtue of that difference. Integral to this outlook was the awareness that different political, ethical and religious systems had existed in the past. The past therefore achieved a relationship of exteriority to the present, and could be appealed to by way of precedent or example (McVicar 1984: 55). Trigger (1989: 35) argues that for the humanists, taking an interest in classical antiquities was sometimes a coded way of expressing a preference for the republican politics of the past, in opposition to the despotisms and monarchies of early modern Europe. In practice, the ancient world provided a range of political blueprints that might be alluded to, ranging from the authoritarianism of Augustan Rome to the Athenian democracy (Day 1996: 74). What was new about the Renaissance was the understanding that society could be changed by act of will, and that a range of alternative possibilities had existed in the past, which might be preferred to the currently prevailing conditions.
Renaissance humanism was predominantly sceptical, pluralist and tolerant of diverse points of view. The Reformation can be seen in part as a reaction to one aspect of what the Renaissance embodied: wilfulness, the arrogation of God’s authority to humankind, the hubris of reason. Yet after the Council of Trent of 1545–63 Protestantism itself became a heterodoxy that was not to be tolerated by the Catholic nations. Catholicism reasserted the authority of the Pope, the unquestionable validity of tradition, the centrality of a unified body of dogma and the monopoly of the Church over the interpretation of the scriptures (Goodman 1991: 97). As Stephen Toulmin has argued, the later sixteenth and earlier seventeenth centuries were a period in which the philosophical and religious diversity that had been fostered by the Renaissance hardened into polarised positions, which then formed the basis for political struggles (Toulmin 1990: 12). France suffered a series of religious wars between Protestants and Catholics, central Europe was ravaged by the Thirty Years War, and the English civil wars played out a series of antagonisms that were not merely religious but involved governance, freedom, property and representation (Hill 1967: 129). Having entertained the possibility of alternatives to the absolute monarchy, political elites found themselves beginning to be challenged by popular demands for reform, as in the case of the Putney debates in England (Thompson 1963: 24–5).
By the seventeenth century, then, there was a growing imperative to repudiate diversity, ambiguity, plurality and scepticism, and to replace them with certitude and firmly grounded truth (Bauman 1992: xiii). Philosophy was to find this certainty in a restatement of its concern with reason and logic, and with an enhanced emphasis on the Platonic preoccupation with mathematics. Most of all, there was a growing concern with epistemology, which arose from the desire to overcome the authority of the ancient texts while not allowing knowledge to become chaotic and undisciplined. For Bacon, this was to be achieved by collective scholarly activity, but Descartes argued that rigour was only to be found in an individual adherence to a method that would guarantee a truthful outcome to inquiry (Shapin 1996: 130). However, given the severity of the conflicts that had engulfed Europe from the time of the Reformation on...
