Showing papers in "Archaeological Dialogues in 2005"

Experiencing the past? The development of a phenomenological archaeology in British prehistory

Abstract: In recent years the development of a phenomenological archaeology has provoked considerable discussion within the discipline, particularly within British prehistory. This paper provides a review of this challenging body of research, outlining its problems and potentials and setting it within its broader disciplinary context. Phenomenology has been used to great effect to critique the Cartesian rationalism inherent in traditional archaeological approaches, encouraging imaginative and valuable reinterpretations of the architecture and landscape settings of different monuments. Nonetheless, there are a number of significant problems raised by this work. The suggestion that the archaeologist’s embodied engagement with an ancient monument or landscape can provide an insight into past experiences and interpretations is critically considered. The epistemological status of the knowledge-claims made, including how and whether the patterns identified should be verified, is discussed. The contribution of phenomenology to postprocessual debates surrounding concepts of the self, the individual, embodiment and emotion are also explored. The work of key proponents of phenomenology such as Tilley and Thomas provides a particular focus, although a range of other authors are also considered.

Households and communities in the central Anatolian Neolithic

Abstract: The neolithic communities of central Anatolia are generally reconstructed as being constituted by relatively autonomous and homologous households occupying discrete residences and performing most domestic activities in the house. In this reconstruction households are seen as the uniform and unproblematic basic component of society. This paper aims to problematize this modular conception of central Anatolian Neolithic societies, and wants to draw attention to the multiple forms in which households occurred and the manner in which they were embedded in larger social associations. It is argued that different levels of social association can only be understood in relation to each other. Further, the manner in which social configurations in central Anatolia changed over time is explored. This will be done by presenting evidence from two central Anatolian Neolithic sites: Asikli Hoyuk and Catalhoyuk. In particular, we argue that households became autonomous and clearly bounded entities only towards the end of the central Anatolian Neolithic, and that too little consideration has been given to the neighbourhood and the local community encompassing individual households.

Coins, money and exchange in the Roman world. A cultural-economic perspective.

Abstract: Until now, the Roman economy has been discussed primarily in economic terms. After the vehement debate between substantivist and formalists in the 1960s and 1970s, most historians and archaeologists have embraced an essentially substantivist perspective. Although this outlook has proven its value, it also seriously hampers a holistic view on the Roman exchange system by its focus on economic factors. Recent theoretical developments in economic anthropology, particularly through the work of Bloch and Parry, provide a model which is better suited to analysing the exchange system in its social, political and moral dimensions. It has been used succesfully in recent publications of the exchange system in the ancient Greek world. In this article, its possibilities for the Roman exchange system and the role of money in it will be explored.

Beasts, banknotes and the colour of money in colonial South Africa

Abstract: This essay explores the role of commensuration - the mechanisms that render equitable and negotiable different orders of value - in the production of society and history. While equilibration, standardization and conversion are implicated in most theories of money and commodification, their nature as social processes has not been adequately specified, above all in the construction of universalizing ideologies and modernist political and economic regimes. We pursue these processes in relation to one African theatre, examining the ways in which different regimes of value, brought up against one another in the encounter between the southern Tswana peoples and European colonizers, became the subject of both conflict and complex mediation. Cows, coin and contracts - which had the capacity to construct and negate difference - soon were invested here with magical qualities. But colonized peoples were also sensitive to the capacity of such currencies to enable or impede convertibility and the forms of abstraction and incorporation they permit. Which is why, in South Africa and elsewhere, those currencies often became metonymic of the contestations of value on which colonial struggles, tout court, were played out.

Thinker-tinkers, race and the archaeological critique of modernity

Abstract: A new sub-field in the archaeology of race has been emerging among historical archaeologists based in the US and South Africa. A review of this literature, put into play with some thoughts from Ralph Ellison and Franz Fanon, provides several ‘object lessons’ about the state of archaeological theory and practice, and the difficulties inherent in framing a material study of race. The literature exemplifies how archaeology is fast becoming an anachronistic critique of modernity that may hinder our ability to see difference in the past. At the same time, a brave new project of comparison might position us to contribute a unique perspective on the spiral of history.

‘German Archaeology and National Socialism: some Historiographical Remarks’

Abstract: This paper reconsiders German reflection on National Socialist pre- and protohistoric archaeology from 1933 onwards. It tries to do so by means of a case study of the academic contacts between the Dutch prehistorian A.E. van Giffen (1884–1973) and his German colleague H. Reinerth (1900–90). The approach adopted here differs from traditional historiographical writing on National Socialist archaeology in two respects. First, in its analysis of the academic exchange between the two scholars, the case study seeks to bridge the classical caesura between a pre- and post-war period. Second, contemporary and historical studies of National Socialist archaeology and archival sources, as well as interviews, have been incorporated in the research alongside the usual publications of the scholars involved. It is argued that with the approach taken here we may arrive at a more nuanced understanding of the different ways archaeologists have reacted to National Socialism over the past seven decades.

Archaeology in the Third Reich. Academic scholarship and the rise of the ‘lunatic fringe’

Abstract: In the 1920s, and especially during the Third Reich, the ‘lunatic fringe’ of prehistoric archaeology – in this case a group of pseudoscientists that used and created archaeological evidence to found their religious and political visions of the early past – has had a great influence on German archaeology. This group, often called archaeological Schwarmgeister (‘fanatic dreamers’), attempted with varying success to gain influence by occupying party positions and by initiating excavations that might not have occurred otherwise. By focusing on the activities of two pseudoscientists – Wilhelm Teudt and Hermann Wille – as case studies, it becomes clear that they reinforced the existing division (Ahnenerbe versus Amt Rosenberg) within professional archaeology. The reactions from academic archaeologists turn out to have been diverse. The theories of Wilhelm Teudt on the Germanic Externsteine were accepted by some professional archaeologists. At the megalithic graves in the Oldenburg area, where Hermann Wille was active, this did not happen. After 1945 their work was used in the accusations that the assistants of Amt Rosenberg especially had been involved in unscientific research. This accusation did not correspond with contemporary reality but was the result of the struggle for power and influence within the group of academic archaeologists that continued in post-war Germany.

Reassessing the roles of Roman coinage

Abstract: In the first third of his paper, Joris Aarts offers an elegant and stimulating review of the ideas that have underpinned our interpretation of coinage and exchange in the Roman world for the past 30 years. In the central section, he outlines a possible alternative approach to analysing Roman coinage, drawing on research in economic anthropology and on the role of money in the Greek world. The final part of the paper discusses ways in which this cultural-economic perspective might be applied, primarily using evidence from northern Gaul.

Cattle, community and corrals

Abstract: Jean and John Comaroff's paper provides an elegant narrative describing the processes at work behind the adoption of coinage amongst the Tswana of southern Africa under the influence of European missionaries and colonists. My own particular interests are set back two thousand years earlier with the adoption of coin in France and Britain. At this time Rome was the up-and-coming imperial power engaged in trade, and then conquest, stretching its area of influence and dominions from the Mediterranean littoral into temperate Europe. As such I envy the Comaroff's ability to use a rich array of source material that is unavailable to me with my much poorer archaeological remains and fragmentary literary sources. None the less, many of the themes have echoes of processes that must have taken place many years before in this other time and place.

The circulation of coins and the Roman periphery

Abstract: The discussion of coin finds in the European periphery and the light they throw on the nature of the Roman socio-economic complex is the most interesting part of this paper for me, because it is somewhat analogous to the relations of western Europe with west Africa in the 19th and early colonial 20th centuries. But this commentary steps over into the vast field of classical archaeology that is unfamiliar to me and instead of pursuing this analogy I find it more comfortable to make a few more general remarks on the use of social anthropological ideas and questions of method.