Fotiadis - 1995 - Modernity and The Past-Still Present

Modernity and the Past-Still-Present: Politics of Time in the Birth of Regional
Archaeological Projects in Greece

Author(s): Michael Fotiadis
Source: American Journal of Archaeology , Jan., 1995, Vol. 99, No. 1 (Jan., 1995), pp.
59-78
Published by: Archaeological Institute of America
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/506879
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Modernity and the Past-Still-Present:
Politics of Time in the Birth of Regional
Archaeological Projects in Greece
MICHAEL FOTIADIS
Abstract the history of Greek archaeology, this was not the

With reference to the Minnesota Messenia Expedi- first time that the present would be assigned such
tion, the pioneer of regional archaeological research an important role. It was a new beginning, however,
in Greece (1950s-1970s), I examine some of the meth-
a reversal, as McDonald and Rapp indicate, and not
ods by which such research has construed its object and
itself. Notions of time, especially the relationship of the
only in terms of arrangement of chapters. In this
present to the past, have played a key role in that con- essay I identify some of the elements of that rever-
strual. The Expedition stressed its kinship with an ever- sal, and outline the relationship between present and
evolving tradition of knowledge deeply rooted in a West- past as it was constituted in the published reports
ern past, and it thereby became modern heir to that
of the Expedition, especially in the volume quoted
tradition. At the same time, in comparing the ethno-
graphic present in Messenia with the archaeological past,
from above. I also ask why that relationship took the
it placed the Messenians of the 1960s in the margins shape that it did. I have no complete answer to that
of modernity, indeed of all time. In short, the Expedi- question, nor perhaps can there be one. What I offer
tion introduced into Greek archaeology a modernist rep- instead are observations pertaining to historical
resentational strategy and epistemology. That important
context- the project, its origins, its disciplinary
event is here analyzed with reference to its immediate
historical context. I argue that the modernism evident milieu, and finally, its vision of what archaeology
in the Expedition's reports was intertwined with the ought to be and would become, the future identity
project's complex strategical situation and manifold en- of archaeological practice.
gagements in the disciplinary milieu, and with com- My intent is at once historical and epistemolog-
mitments to reform archaeological practice in Greece*
ical: I try to situate agency at its interface with cir-
cumstance in the core of historical analysis, and show
In dealing with subject matter so diverse in time
that such analysis sheds light on specific details of
and type, even the arrangement of chapters can
pose difficulties.... The order finally adopted not archaeological knowledge.2 While therefore describ-
only presents the historical material before most ing the disciplinary scene of which the Expedition
of the technical but reverses the historical ap- was a key element, I also argue that certain details
proach. That is, we begin with the best-known of the present-past relationship emerging from the
period (the present) and work backward through
project are best understood with reference to the
time in the written documents to the target phase
in the Late Bronze Age. complexities of that scene.
- McDonald and Rapp, 19721
LEGACY OF A PROJECT
With this "explanatory remark" begins the account The Minnesota Messenia Expedition occupies a
of the Minnesota Messenia Expedition (MME), the prominent place in the history of Greek archaeol-
first modern regional project in Greece: the presentogy. It represents a major reorientation and expan-
is to furnish a baseline, a network of points of ref-
sion in goals and methods, leading Greek archaeol-
erence useful in the interpretation of the past. In ogy into its modern phase. Fieldwork began in the
* I am thankful to the following colleagues for essential a colloquium on the history of archaeology at the Davis
information and comments on earlier drafts and parts of Center for Historical Studies, Princeton University (1994).
this paper: B. Caraher,J.L. Davis, P. Halstead, M. Herzfeld, 1 WA. McDonald and G.R. Rapp, Jr., eds., The Minnesota
S.C. Humphreys, TW. Jacobsen, A. Kalogirou, S. Krebs, Messenia Expedition: Reconstructing a Bronze Age Regional En-
I. Morris, S.B. Sutton, and, especially, the anonymous re-
vironment (Minneapolis 1972) vii (emphasis in original).
viewers and the editors of AJA. Past conversations with 2 1 am borrowing here some of the words-and con-
D. Grammenos and C. Greenhouse have also helped me cerns-of M. Foucault, e.g., "Questions of Method" [1981],
to sharpen my focus. Portions of this paper were presented in G. Burchell, C. Gordon, and P. Miller eds., The Foucault
at the 15th Annual Conference of the Theoretical Archaeol- Effect: Studies in Governmentality (Chicago 1991) 79; cf.
ogy Group, University of Durham, England (1993), and at Foucault, Discipline and Punish (New York 1979) 138-43.
59
American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995) 59-78

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60 MICHAEL FOTIADIS [AJA 99
1950s. The project togrew in
virtually any the
region, and thecourse
same was true f
and continued until the mid-1970s.3 Its focus was the the chart. Thus, for the first time in Greek archaeol-
southwestern part of the Peloponnese, an area 3,800ogy, the aims and organization of archaeological
km2, encompassing Messenia and the southernmost research-what Americanists had been calling "re-
part of Elis. MME entailed surface exploration ofsearch design"- -could be viewed (literally) as elements
that area, several kinds of palaeoenvironmental re- separate from (and, perhaps, more fundamental
search, archaeometric analyses of artifacts and raw than) the research itself. As we shall see, there were
materials, studies of economic and demographic other important innovations as well.
documents from the Mycenaean period to the pres- The significance of the 1972 publication and that
ent century, ethnographies of farming communities of the project have been acknowledged in several
and manufactures, and an excavation at the site of ways. The book-16 chapters by 17 researchers-
Nichoria (1969-1975), with its own set of environ- was greeted by reviewers with many more, and more
mental and archaeometric studies. To implement thorough, praises than criticisms. It was hailed as
such a broad program of research MME brought to "a landmark in Aegean archaeology," "a pioneering
the field humanists and social and natural scientists study, unique for any part of Greek history, [provid-
at a scale unknown in Greece before the 1960s. ing] us with generous information on Messenia from
Salient innovations were the adoption of thetheregion-
Early Bronze Age (ca. 3000 B.C.) to the present
through-time as the object of analysis, the system-
day," and it was recommended to "both students of
atic attention to the landscape and its economic po- Greece, and members of future regional
Mycenaean
tential (especially for the Late Bronze Age), expeditions."7
and an It was "the beginning of a new ap-
emphasis on ordinary settlement sites and their
proach,"8 one that sharply contrasted with archae-
humble wares rather than on major centers ological
and richtradition in Greece, which had favored the
cemeteries. A demographic orientation was sustained
study of sites in isolation from their landscape, em-
throughout: population size and distribution,
phasis and
on the cultural identities of objects often
their changes from one archaeological phase divorced
to the from archaeological context, and attention
to as
next, were paramount concerns of the project, historical
were continuities/discontinuities. MME made
the volume and range of crops the land could sus-
a contribution in "fundamentals of method" and "pro-
tain.4 The 1972 publication comprised substantial
duced at once a tool of prognostication for future
reports on the regional studies, together with syn-
exploration and a record of a very rapidly changing
thetic chapters and an overview of the entire land."9
proj-
ect.5 A striking feature of the book's first chapter
Broader recognition came in 1979, at the Centen-
was a chart in circular format, MME's "Figure nial1-1."
Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of
Here, as well as in ca. 35 research questions, America.
MME's In the plenary session, three of the four
"program," the aims and organization of the proj-
speakers cited MME as an example of new and ex-
ect, were clearly laid out.6 The questionsciting
weredevelopments "long overdue in Classical
sufficiently general to apply notjust to Messenia but
lands"10 Two years later the director of the project,
3R. Hope Simpson, "William A. McDonald and the Min- 5Many reports rested on longer technical papers and
nesota Messenia Expedition" (summary), in N.C. Wilkie dissertations. The excavation has been published separately
and W.D.E. Coulson eds., Contributions to Aegean Archaeology: in three volumes (with a fourth, synthetic volume being
Studies in Honor of William A. McDonald (Publications in An-awaited), under the series title Excavations at Nichoria in
cient Studies 1, Minneapolis 1985) xix; WA. McDonald, Southwest Greece (Minneapolis 1978, 1983, 1992).
"The Problems and the Program," in McDonald and Rapp 6McDonald (supra n. 3) 6-8. The chart, McDonald
(supra n. 1) 3 and 5; for the modest beginnings see espe- acknowledged (p. 5), had been adapted from R.S. MacNeish
cially WA. McDonald and R. Hope Simpson, "Prehistoricet al., The Prehistory of the Tehuacan Valley 1 (Austin 1967).
Habitation in Southwestern Peloponnese," AJA 65 (1961) 7 TW.Jacobsen, in Archaeology 29 (1976) 136-37;Jameson
222 n. 2.
(supra n. 4) 1054; and Watrous (supra n. 4) 86, respectively.
4 Population size in the Late Bronze Age proved an al- 8Jacobsen (supra n. 7) 136: "it is the beginning of a new
most intractable issue, and continued to vex members of approach to (hopefully, a new era in) the study of Greek
MME even after the 1972 publication: seeJ. Carothers and prehistory."
WA. McDonald, "Size and Distribution of Population in 9 Hanfmann and Shelmerdine (supra n. 4) 251, 252.
Late Bronze Age Messenia: Some Statistical Applications," 10 H.A. Thompson, "In Pursuit of the Past: The Ameri-
JFA 6 (1979) 433-54. The issue also attracted the attention can Role 1879-1979," AJA 84 (1980) 268; J. Wiseman,
of MME's reviewers: M.H.Jameson, in AHR 78 (1973) 1024; "Archaeology in the Future: An Evolving Discipline," AJA
LV. Watrous, in AJA 78 (1974) 85; G.M. Hanfmann and C.W 84 (1980) 281; and C. Renfrew, "The Great Tradition versus
Shelmerdine, in BibO 35 (1978) 252; and S. Dow, in CW 71 the Great Divide: Archaeology as Anthropology?" AJA 84
(1977-1978) 399. (1980) 294. The quoted passage is from Thompson.

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1995] MODERNITY AND THE PAST-STILL-PRESENT 61
William Andrew McDonald (b. 1913), received the pond) were, from a methodological viewpoint, fully
Institute's highest award, the Gold Medal for Distin- justified. The fact that they were addressed to MME,
guished Archaeological Achievement." A sympo- however, affirmed rather than undermined the cen-
sium in honor of McDonald followed at the Univer- trality of that project. In the last analysis, the objec-
sity of Minnesota, his home institution, in 1983.12
tions concerned concrete points of survey concepts
The contributors addressed a large spectrum of
and methods; they did not challenge the research
topics, from the analysis of archaeological sediments
agenda that McDonald had outlined. In fact, that
to philosophy of science. The symposium was a cele-
agenda has been at the core of nearly every regional
bration of the recently expanded horizons of Greekproject to date.
archaeology, and a fitting tribute to McDonald. Let me return to the relationship of present and
Recognition came in yet another, more substan-
past in MME's accounts. AsJacobsen put it in 1983,
tial, form. The 1970s and'80s indeed became "a new MME "represents a major step forward in the prac-
era" for field practice in Greece. True, much work tice of archaeological ethnography in Greece."17Just
(especially, salvage excavation) continued to focus as in so many other respects, the Expedition has been
on isolated sites and to eschew the demographic/ a pioneer in that respect too. In "reconstructing a
economic orientation pioneered in the 1960s. At the Bronze Age regional environment" McDonald and
same time, however, projects of regional scope pro- his collaborators turned to the ethnographic pres-
liferated. Scores of them now were being organized, ent as a potential source of knowledge relevant to
especially by American and British archaeologists the reconstruction. They gave to the present a promi-
in collaboration with an international staff. A con-nent role, on a par with archaeological evidence,
ference in Athens, in 1981, included reports from Linear B documents, and palynological, sedimento-
29 such projects.13 Some were of small scale, limited
logical, and other data, and in the 1972 book they
to a preliminary surface survey or to the analysis of
devoted detailed descriptions to modern Messenia
an excavated site's landscape from an economic view-
in several chapters. Stanley E. Aschenbrenner con-
point, and were carried out by single individualstributed an ethnography of Karpofora, a small village
or small groups with few resources.14 Others were community; HermanJ. Van Wersch discussed aspects
super-projects, involving dozens of researchers, andof the agricultural economy across the region; Fred-
implementing (and improving upon) the entire spec- erick R. Matson wrote about pottery workshops in
trum of objectives that MME had identified.15 Re- the district of Methoni; and McDonald and Rapp
gional archaeological research, a novelty in 1960, wasmade extensive use of demographic and other
already tradition in the early 1980s! In these new cir-
data.18 The sheer depth of attention accorded to the
cumstances, MME became a model-project, and its
present was a novelty in itself. Reviewers of the book
1972 book a master-text, now providing points of ref-took a keen interest in the parts that dealt with the
erence for field practice in Greece. In fact, some ofpresent. One would like to make Aschenbrenner's
the new projects attempted to distinguish them-village study "required reading for Aegean field ar-
selves- to assert their identities, as it were- by point-
chaeologists" and regarded Van Wersch's contribu-
ing out their differences with MME, and by criticiz-tion as a "fine chapter [making] good sense on the
ing it as often as they credited it.16 The criticisms tricky subject of the agricultural economy of Late
(nearly all of which came from young archaeologists,Helladic Messenia7"19 (Note that Van Wersch's study
and from the British bank of the archaeological
focuses equally on Messenia in the late 1960s.) A sec-
11AJA 86 (1982) 250. 16E.g., Bintliff and Snodgrass (supra n. 15) 124, 128; Dis-
1 Wilkie and Coulson (supra n. 3). cussion, in J. Bintliff ed., Mycenaean Geography: Proceedings
13 D.R. Keller and D.W. Rupp eds., Archaeological Survey of the Cambridge Colloquium, September 1976 (Cambridge 1977)
in the Mediterranean Area (BAR-IS 155, Oxford 1983). 58-62; andJ.E Cherry, "Common Sense in Mediterranean
14 E.g., in Keller and Rupp (supra n. 13): TW. Gallant, Survey?"JFA 11 (1984) 117-20.
"The Ionian Islands Paleo-economy Research Project," 17 TW. Jacobsen, "Another Modest Proposal: Ethno-
223-26; S. Van de Maele, "Prospection archeologique sur archaeology in Greece," in Wilkie and Coulson (supra
la frontiere attico-megarienne," 251-54; and R. Reinders, n. 3) 95.
"Halos, a Hellenistic Town in Thessaly," 217-18. 18 In McDonald and Rapp (supra n. 1): S. Aschenbren-
15 E.g., J.L. Bintliff and A.M. Snodgrass, "The Cam-
ner, "A Contemporary Community," 47-63; HJ. Van Wersch,
bridge/Bradford Boeotian Expedition: The First Four Years," "The Agricultural Economy," 177-87; ER. Matson, "Ceramic
JFA 12 (1985) 123-61; J.C. Wright, J.E Cherry, J.L. Davis, Studies," 200-24, esp. 211-23; and WA. McDonald and G.R.
E. Mantzourani, R.E Sutton,Jr., and S.B. Sutton, "The Nemea Rapp, Jr., "Perspectives," 240-61, esp. 245-56.
Valley Archaeological Project: A Preliminary Report," 19 Watrous (supra n. 4) 84, 85.
Hesperia 59 (1990) 579-659.

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ond reviewer indicated that Aschenbrenner's "cal- in round-table discussions and articles. The com-
endar of crop activities" would be useful toplex

"even
relationship of the present to the past contai
those casually interested in the modern Greekincoun-
MME's account, on the other hand, remained
unexamined.
tryside;'20 and a third was "particularly impressed
and fascinated by the analysis of the contemporary
Present and past in Greece now were increasingl
community" (though he was "less charmed compared,
by the and, in the process, they became com
discussion of agricultural economy").21' Yet another
parable. They became, that is, entities the researc
reviewer indicated that the diversity of approaches
ers felt free to place side by side, and also were co
"blends well as you see the details of a modernsidered
vil- like one another in crucial respects. Th
lage economic system blending on one hand with
comparability did not, however, become an obj
Mycenaean documents and on the other with resis- of analytical attention. Its scale was not circum
tivity surveys"'22 scribed, nor were its conditions specified.24 The n
In line with such assurances, discussion of thetions
pres-of present and past appeared instead to ga
ent increasingly found a place in archaeological pub- deal of plasticity. What exactly belonged to
a good
lications on Greece after 1972. Ethnographers,the geog-
present and what belonged to the past no long
raphers, agricultural economists, and others beganseemed to depend on strict chronology but on com
joining regional projects, and archaeologists set out implicit assumptions, and some elements of t
plex,
on rugged trails in search of the ethnographic pres- and of the past as well came to be thought
present
ent.23 In the same period, as I already indicated,as cer-
belonging to neither. As the chronology of specif
tain of MME's concepts and methods were events drawn (e.g., political or technological changes) was n
out of their context in the project and scrutinized
glected, it became difficult to avoid contradictions
2o S. Diamant, in Antiquity 48 (1974) 77-78. Age Kavousi,"JMA 6 (1993) 131-74; P. Halstead, "Tradition
21 R. Scranton, in CP 70 (1975) 305-306. and Ancient Mediterranean Rural Economy-plus ?a
22J. Fitting, in Technology and Culture 14 (1973) 487.
change?"JHS 107 (1987) 77-87; Halstead, "Waste Not, Want
23 At the 1981 conference in Athens (supra n. 13), three
Not: Traditional Responses to Crop Failure in Greece," Rural
History
of the 29 projects in Greece reported an ethnographic com-1 (1990) 147-64; Halstead, "Present to Past in the
Pindhos:
ponent. At a similar conference held at the University ofDiversification and Specialisation in Mountain
Illinois at Chicago in 1988 (Workshop on Systematic Sur-
Economies," in R. Maggi, R. Nisbet, and G. Barker eds.,
vey in Greece), seven of the 15 participating projects re- della pastorizia nell'Europa meridionale 1 (RStLig
Archeologia
ported ethnographic components (some with two or 56, more
Bordighera 1990); E.M. Melas, "Prehistoric Survey and
ethnographers on their staff). The Workshop's concluding
Ethnology in the Dodecanese: Current Problems and Fu-
discussion was devoted to the "interface between ture
ethnog-
Research Strategies," in E.B. French and K.A. Wardle
raphy and survey"; cf.J.L. Davis, "Surface Surveys: New Twist
eds., Problems in Greek Prehistory: Papers Presented at the Cen-
on an Old ASCSA Tradition," American School of Classical
tenary Conference of the British School of Archaeology at Athens,
Studies at Athens Newsletter 22 (Fall 1988) 5. Manchester, April 1986 (Bristol 1988) 425-36; A. Sampson,
At least 15 items in Jacobsen's (supra n. 17) four-page
"E0voapXatoXoytK;q psuvsq oniT Nioupo Katt o FtOatTi Ti;
bibliography are studies by archaeologists, published since
AcoKavEioou," NiovpiaKd 12 (1993) 101-38; TM. Whitelaw,
1972 and focusing in significant part on the present in
"The Ethnoarchaeology of Recent Rural Settlement and
Greece. Examples of such work by archaeologists after
Land 1985
Use in Northwest Keos," inJ.E Cherry,J.L. Davis, and
include H. Blitzer, "KOPQNEIKA: Storagejar Production
E. Mantzourani, Landscape Archaeology as Long-Term History:
and Trade in the Traditional Aegean," Hesperia 59Northern
(1990) Keos in the Cycladic Islands from Earliest Settlement
675-711; Blitzer, "Pastoral Life in the Mountains of until
Crete,"
Modern Times (Monumenta Archaeologica 16, Los Angeles
Expedition 32:3 (1990) 34-41; T Cullen and D.R. Keller,
1991)"The
403-54.
Greek Pithos through Time: Multiple Functions and Di-
24 Jacobsen's (supra n. 17) is the only review article (his-
verse Imagery," in WD. Kingery ed., The Changing torical
Roles and
of programmatic) on the present-past relationship
Ceramics in Society: 26,000 B.R to the Present (Ceramics
in theand
archaeology of Greece since MME's publication. In
Civilization 5, Westerville, Ohio) 183-209; N. Efstratiou,
that article Jacobsen did note some tensions in the rela-
"E0voapXatoXoytKq psuvsq o-rouq opstvo6Q; otKltogO5; nT ;he also addressed those tensions in a semester-
tionship;
Po66rrlq;," To apxalo2oyl0 6 pyo cri MaK-csovia Kai long
OpdarKi
seminar, "The Ethnoarchaeology of Greece," which
1 [1987] (Thessaloniki 1988) 479-83; Efstratiou, "Prehistoric
he taught at Indiana University in 1982 (I attended several
Habitation and Structures in Northern Greece: An Ethno-
sessions). Outside Greek archaeology, the comparability
archaeological Case-Study," in P. Darcque and R. Treuil eds., of the ethnographic present with the archaeological past
L'habitat egeen prehistorique. Actes de la table ronde internationale, became the object of intensive analysis; see esp. A. Wylie,
Athenes, 23-25juin 1987 (BCH suppl. 19, Paris 1990) 33-41; "The Reaction against Analogy," in M.B. Schiffer ed., Advances
Efstratiou, "Production and Distribution of a Ceramic Type in Archaeological Method and Theory 8 (New York 1985) 63-111.
in Highland Rhodope: An Ethnoarchaeological Study," 25 For examples of such contradictions, see M. Fotiadis,
Origini, preistoria e protostoria delle civilta antiche 16 (1993)"Regions of the Imagination: Archaeologists, Local People,
311-27; D.C. Haggis, "Intensive Survey, Traditional Settle- and the Archaeological Record in Fieldwork, Greece,"Jour-
ment Patterns, and Dark Age Crete: The Case of Early Iron nal of European Archaeology 1:2 (1993) 163-64.

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years?her
In 1990 Susan Sutton introduced Shall we regard such knowledge as misguided,
ethnographic
treat it asArchaeological
contribution to the Nemea Valley unreliable, even as erroneous?
Project by directly pointing to the To begin, the notions of

emerging error and of "bad prac-
prob-
lems: the search for the ethnographic present in tice" seem to me inadequate to account for the cir-
Greece has been guided by "an implicit assumption cumstances.28 Treating the product of some decades
that current Greek villages are carriers of an un- of archaeological ethnography in Greece simply as
broken agricultural tradition only recently trans- flawed or riddled with misunderstandings would not
formed by the processes of industrialization, urbani- serve any productive purpose. To my mind, the
zation, and tourism." The resulting studies have been "flaws"- the partiality, the narrow focus - are the dark
so keen on identifying technologies supposedly un- side of that ethnography's strengths. That is to say,
changed since antiquity that they have disregarded to maintain a sharp analytical distinction between
other aspects of the present. Such endeavors, Sutton purely positive elements of that practice and others
observed, "underutilize the ethnoarchaeological in- that are mistakes would leave the latter incompre-
formation available and reflect a misunderstanding hensible; the same creative imagination and critical
of the historical context of contemporary Greek life." energy have given rise to both.29 It rather seems nec-
Moreover, a "sense of untouched and timeless rural essary to think of partiality in positive terms as much
Greek life" persists in scholarship in spite of "con- as in critical ones, analyze it through nuanced de-
siderable evidence to the contrary."26 scription, and situate it in historical context. The
Sutton's remarks highlight a crucial effect of the purification of the present from elements supposedly
trend I sketched above: as the "best-known period" irrelevant to archaeology was an accomplishment en-
was made comparable to the past, its most cardinal tailing earnest scholarly labor. It was neither the re-
elements were suppressed. How was that suppres- sult of an intellectual myopia on the part of research-
sion accomplished, however? What logic gave to the ers nor the outcome of plain field observations and
image of an unchanging rural Greece so much forceinferences mechanically following from them. It re-
that it would endure in the face of evidence to the
quired instead a complex vision, or theoria.30 That
contrary? Why would reputable researchers time vision, in our discipline, has until now remained un-
after time disregard evidence, underutilize theirexamined.
in- It continues to inform our publications,
formation, and misunderstand the context in which and it deserves, therefore, all our attention. It is that
they worked, their very object of study indeed? Could vision that I begin to document in this paper.
theirs be a series of instances of "bad practice;' or I turn to MME for such documentation, first, be-
has it been "practice-as-usual" (with apologies to cause that project represents in crucial ways the mo-
Sandra Harding27)? What status are we now to as- ment of origin of the vision. McDonald and his col-
sign to the knowledge produced in the name of ar- laborators did not take the relationship of present
chaeological ethnography in Greece in the last 25 and past for granted. The comparisons they drew
26 S.B. Sutton, in Wright et al. (supra n. 15) 594. In the error in disciplinary matters, see M. Fotiadis, "What is
body of her contribution Sutton shows with concrete de- Archaeology's Mitigated Objectivism Mitigated By? Com-
tails that the villages of the Nemea valley have for two cen- ments on Wylie," AmerAnt 59 (1994) 549-50.
turies been in almost perpetual change. In a more recent 29 By the same token, there is no neutral, innocent
paper, she discusses several of the elements of ethnographic ground outside practice where one could stand to deliver
practice in Greece (since World War II): Sutton, "Position- pure criticism; we can be critical, but we may not forget
ing the Greek Village in Anthropology: Vasilika and thethat the practice to which we object also is the practice
Disciplinary Landscape;' paper presented at the Ameri- that has empowered our voices.
can Anthropological Association Meetings, Washington 30 In offering this alias for vision, I call attention to the
D.C., 1993. etymology of "theory" from words that mean "to see," "to
27 S.G. Harding, e.g., Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?view," "to be a spectator," etc. I also wish to underline (how-
Thinking from Women's Lives (Ithaca 1991) 54-70. Hardingever unoriginally) the privileged affiliation of vision with
distinguishes two sorts of (especially feminist) critics of
theory in archaeology and other disciplines. SeeJ. Fabian,
modern scientific practices, those who blame the problemsTime and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object (New
they identify on accidental "bad science" (and consider York 1983), esp. 106-109, and M. Herzfeld, Anthropology
therefore such problems correctable through routinely through the Looking Glass: Critical Ethnography in the Margins
"good" scientific practice), and those "who think that ofEurope (Cambridge 1987) 202-204. In other words, I call
'science-as-usual'- the whole scientific enterprise, its pur- attention to a practice that begins with the following prem-
poses, and functions- should be the target of feminist [and ise, usually implied: if sight is our birthright, assuming
other] criticism" (p. 54). viewpoints in archaeology must also be our birthright.
28 For some of the problems attending the notion of

94.66.56.99 on Tue, 23 Nov 2021 13:07:15 UTC
between the two his-environment"

epochs were (p. 259). Intertwined
explora with
plicitly tentative-just as cooperation
another theme, one might e
among researche
searchers experimenting
very different fields,with new
from engineering to
old question. raphy
Such (esp. pp. 3-17).34 For neither
comparisons camthe
when, redrawn byMME's authorsarchaeologists
other claim originality. In the
tentativeness and chapter were ("The extended and
Problems and the Program,"
Second, I focus on MME because its account contains by McDonald) as well as in the concluding o
a uniquely rich corpus of references to the present spectives," by McDonald and Rapp), they
and its relevance to the past (in particular, to the MME's origins to a tradition that reached
Late Bronze Age, MME's "target phase"). Elaborated the ancient Greeks and would continue with
in the context of a long narrative, those references yet to come (pp. 9-17, 256-60). McDonald
allow us to document the present-past relationship edged extensive debts (pp. 13-17) to three
in much of its complexity. They are, however, dis- team approaches to archaeological explor
persed throughout that narrative, separated by text Robert Braidwood's and Bruce Howe's of the "fertile
not directly relevant to my task. My method, then, crescent" (begun in 1947), Robert Adams's of the
is to bring together many of those references, juxta- Diyala Basin (mainly 1957-1958), and William
pose them, and, with my comments, weave a new con- Sanders's of the Teotihuacin Valley (1960-1964). He
text for them. referred to those projects as "particularly instructive
Isolating sentences from their original context, models," and he noted another seven interdisciplin-
bringing together what was meant to be read at inter-
ary undertakings, six American and one Soviet.
vals, and doing so for purposes other than those ofMcDonald's care in documenting MME's genealogy
the original authors: those are ingredients for a vio-
remains exemplary.35
lent method, and that is, for me, a cause for hesita- The references to the Expedition's immediate ante-
tion. I know, however, at the moment no better cedents deserve close attention. They direct us to
method. I provide some context from around thethe days-late 1940s to 1960s-when scientific hu-
critical lines, but I remain selective; readers of this
manism and the doctrine of cooperation provided
essay should also read the book.32 I hasten to add the social sciences of the Free World with an epis-
that, while I must touch upon many dimensions of temology as well as with a model for practice. "Man"
MME, what follows is far from a reappraisal of the was the ontological foundation of that humanism,
entire project, much less of its broader significance its natural-technical object of research, and politi-
for Greek archaeology. cal ideals appear to have played a significant role
in his constitution. Refashioned in the aftermath of
ECOLOGY, COOPERATION, AND
World War II and the horrors of Nazi racism, that
GENEALOGICAL RELATIONSHIPS
"man" was distinguished, above all, for his unity, in-
McDonald concisely acknowledged the deedobject of
his "universal brotherhood." His origins were
MME's research as "the interaction among humans,
in nature, next to other organisms, from where he
other biota, and the physical environment" (complete
had been removing himself through cultural evolu-
with a quotation from Amos Hawley33),tion.
or "human
He was endowed with adaptive flexibility, a pro-
ecology in a particular historical period (the
pensity forLate
cooperation (but also a "territorial im-
Bronze Age) and in a specific region (extreme south-
perative"), and a disposition for forming nuclear
families,
west Greece)" (p. 6)-- for shorter reference, with a "natural" division of labor by sex
"man-in-
31 This dubious distinction applies to myself as well, in

vey to his association with Carl Blegen in the 1939 season
my Ph.D. thesis, Ecology, Economy, and Settlement among Sub- at Ano Englianos. Moreover, the 1972 book is dedicated
sistence Farmers in the Serres Basin, Northeastern Greece, 5000-
to the memory of Blegen. In an earlier paper McDonald
1000 B.C. (Diss. Indiana Univ. 1985), and in other work.also credited Blegen with the original suggestion and ad-
32 References to "the book," McDonald and Rapp (supra vice for the entire project: WA. McDonald, "Some Sugges-
n. 1), in this paper will, as a rule, be given in the text, with
tions on Directions and a Modest Proposal," Hesperia 35
page numbers alone, in parentheses, e.g. (p. 59). The in- (1966) 413. See also C.W. Blegen, "Preclassical Greece," in
dividual author(s) of chapters (supra n. 18) should be iden- Studies in the Arts and Architecture. University of Pennsylvania
tifiable by the context. Bicentennial Conference [1940] (Port Washington, N.Y. 1969)
33A. Hawley, Human Ecology: A Theory of Community Struc-
1-14, esp. 12-13, where Blegen called both for "systematic
ture (New York 1950) 72. comprehensive survey of the districts of Greece" and for
34 Cf. Hope Simpson (supra n. 3) xviii-xx. "combined effort" with scientists in solving archaeology's
35 McDonald (p. 3) also traced his interest in surface sur-
questions.

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within them.36 Understanding

Scientific
cultural
humanism
evolution
and interdisciplinary
in coop-
terms of universal, natural laws- a kind of method- eration had until ca. 1960 largely bypassed Greek
ological naturalism- also was of critical importance archaeology. In the Classical Lands, "civilization"
for scientific humanism,37 as was observable behav- rather than "man" was the object of study in the 1950s,
ior. Such behavior, the human scientists argued, was just as it had been before World War II. The cultural
shaped by culture, and culture was grounded in the identities of artifacts commanded much of the atten-
natural environment, technology, social institutions, tion of archaeologists, and the most powerful theo-
and the like- in all except race. Research, moreover, retical notions were essentialized cultural entities,
was "for the benefit of all humanity,' at the same time such as "the Mycenaeans' "the Minoans' or "the
that "mental excellence and male dynamism [were] Greeks" Connoisseurship played an unmistakable
closely linked notions, and in turn closely tied to role in the service of such essences: a discriminat-
beliefs about scientific rationality"'38 The American ing gaze could tell "purely Minoan" from "purely My-
New Archaeology took its shape with reference to cenaean" artifacts, or could distinguish "Oriental
many of the same premises and promises. influences" on "Greek objects;' and vice versa. As in
In that climate, fieldwork was an unmistakably all essentialist approaches, the boundaries of those
gendered noun. It was the setting where modern men cultural entities and their continuities in space and
in cooperation-researchers, most of them male- time were not always self-evident. Boundaries and
investigated prehistoric men's "drives toward co- continuities were, therefore, central foci of intellec-
operation.'39 In the field the researchers enjoyed tual energy and controversy.40 As a corollary, the at-
camaraderie and bonding as much as interdisciplin- tention given to excavated objects varied according
ary exchanges. As McDonald reminisced, "common to the likelihood that their cultural identities could
problems were discussed over every meal and be- become known. In turn, materials such as seeds and
tween every jolt of the Land Rover" (p. 9). It was in sediments could hardly become objects of archae-
such circumstances that Braidwood and his team "ten- ological interest, and even pottery was excavated and
tatively explored a huge sector of the inner arc of largely discarded.41 The only productive collabora-
the 'fertile crescent'" (p. 13). The other projects fol- tion in these circumstances was with architects, drafts-
lowed similar courses. men, and artists, who were entrusted with the ren-
36See, e.g., D.J. Haraway, "Remodelling the Human Way S.C. Humphreys, Anthropology and the Greeks (London 197
of Life: Sherwood Washburn and the New Physical Anthro- 109-29; I. Morris, "Archaeologies of Greece," in I. Morr
pology," in G.W. Stocking, Jr., ed., Bones, Bodies, and Behavior: ed., Classical Greece: Ancient Histories and Modern Archaeo
Essays on Biological Anthropology (History of Anthropology ogies (Cambridge 1994) 8-47; and a series of articles b
5, Madison 1988) 206-59, esp. 207-16. Haraway's is an un- S.L. Dyson, esp. "A Classical Archaeologist's Response
surpassed account of the political ideals that shaped "uni-
the 'New Archaeology'," BASOR 242 (1981) 7-13; "The Ro
versal man," the vision of scientific humanism and the doc- of Ideology and Institutions in Shaping Classical Archaeo
trine of cooperation in the Cold War decades. While her ogy in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries," in A.
essay addresses the development of physical anthropology Christenson ed., TracingArchaeology'sPast: The Historiograph
in that period, it deserves careful reading by archaeolo- ofArchaeology (Carbondale 1989) 127-35; and"Complacenc
gists as well; see also her Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and and Crisis in Late Twentieth-Century Classical Archaeo
Nature in the World ofModern Science (New York 1989) 115-32. ogy," in P. Culham and L. Edmunds eds., Classics: A Disc
Cf. B. Trigger, A History ofArchaeological Thought (Cambridge pline and Profession in Crisis? (Lanham 1989) 211-20. It should
1989) 259-70, 275-94.
be evident, however, that I am in partial disagreement wit
37 See, e.g., Trigger (supra n. 36) 289-92. those who find theoretical content lacking from Greek
38 Haraway 1989 (supra n. 36) 121; Haraway 1988 (supra archaeology prior to the 1960s (e.g., Dyson 1981, 8). In my
n. 36) 213.
view, representing archaeological facts textually had a grea
39 "Man is born with drives toward co-operation, and deal of theoretical coherence, a big part of which is cap
unless these drives are satisfied, men and nations alike tured in Morris's notion and analysis of "Hellenism." C
fall ill"- this was a salient conclusion of UNESCO's 1952 K. Kotsakis, "The Powerful Past: Theoretical Trends in Gree
inquiry into the race concept, as quoted in Haraway 1988 Archaeology," in I. Hodder ed., Archaeological Theory i
(supra n. 29) 213. Of the 17 contributors to MME's book, Europe: The Last Three Decades (London 1991) 65-90.
16 were men. The woman, Catherine Nobeli (a chemist), 41 For documentation, by statistical means, of proce-
was a coauthor.
dures of pottery discard followed in early excavations, see
40 I do not intend such remarks as a comprehensive
T Cullen, A Measure of Interaction among Neolithic Commu
summary of the state of Greek archaeology in the mid-
nities: Design Elements of Greek Urfirnis Pottery (Diss. Indian
20th century or before. The most thorough accounts
Univ.to1985) 179-88. For the untapped potential of man
date are those of W.A. McDonald, Progress into the Past: The
categories of evidence of classical archaeology at that time
Rediscovery of Mycenaean Civilization (Bloomington see
1967);
esp. Humphreys (supra n. 40).

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dition of venerable the ruins Schools and and obje th

resplendent records.knowledge The exceptio and goo
ginal significance, ture, and the and developm the cont
humanism remained vations,46 unnoticed. made cl T
of the Classical Lands
cipline was, in the by comp post
went on in other being archaeologies conservative at
formly conservative was field.42 perhaps a virt
It also was a Great The Tradition,
situation, howe how
wayswith
ous, self-confident.., during great the su 1
cultural elite ofwould become evident even at the institutional level,
Anglo-American
at least in the United States.48
many resources available for By 1970, no fewer
major
for expensive museum acquisition
than six field projects guided by the concerns of sci-
entific humanism had produced substantialunive
from the most distinguished re-
and North America,ports.49 While where
a small minority, suchit projectswas
now i
ated with Classics and Fine Arts,
were a progressive force in the discipline. McDonald
of its curriculum placedentailed
the formation of MME in "the the period 1958-mas
1962, but Since
material culture"44 he also made it clear
thethat the project
19th took ce
sustaining that shape as it went along, in the course
tradition hadof the 1960s also
founding new institutions,
(p. 5).50o From McDonald's account one would thehave Sc
the Ecole fran?aise
to conclude that d'archeologie,
none of the six contemporary proj-
ArchdiologischesectsInstitut,
in Greece had an influence on MME,
and for therethe A
is only a single
of Classical Studies were passing mention
the of four of them in
first-
cavations, some ofthe bookthem (p. 12). McDonald'scontinuing
acknowledged nearest
at the celebrated sites
parallels in his homeof disciplineGreek
were instead in the ant
sion of such institutions
discipline's distant past, in the was
19th century. to They pro
ing and research, were,butespecially, Schliemann's
they expeditions
also to Troy, dev
settings for the from
enculturation
1870 on, and L'expidition scientifique de Morke,of y
in the 1820s and '30s. at
gists (often students dissertat
Those old projects had indeed
values of the tradition.45 In recorded
short, ancient
42 The theme of conservatism of classical archaeology

the British Academy Major Research Project in the Early
is best explored by Dyson 1989 (supra n. 40) and Dyson,
History of Agriculture was initiated.
"From New to New Age Archaeology: Archaeological Theory49 I have in mind the projects at Nea Nikomedeia, R.J.
and Classical Archaeology-A 1990s Perspective," AJA 97
Rodden et al., "Excavations at the Early Neolithic Site at
(1993) 195-97; cf. Renfrew (supra n. 10). Nea Nikomedeia, Greek Macedonia' PPS 28 (1962) 267-88;
4 Dyson 1993 (supra n. 42) 196. Dyson's claim about
in Epirus, S.I. Dakaris, E.S. Higgs, and R.W Hey, "The Cli-
support among the cultural elite is equally true for mate,
Con- Environment and Industries of Stone Age Greece,
tinental society. Part I," PPS 30 (1964) 199-244; at Knossos, J.D. Evans, "Ex-
44 Dyson 1981 (supra n. 40) 9; Morris (supra n. 40).
cavations at the Neolithic Settlement of Knossos, 1957-1960,
45The dynamics of the process are described by both
Part I," BSA 59 (1964) 132-240; at Saliagos,J.D. Evans and
Dyson 1981 (supra n. 40) and Morris (supra n. 40) C. 35.Renfrew eds., Excavations at Saliagos near Antiparos
46 In the 1960s one excavation, for example, the Athe-
(London 1968); at Franchthi Cave, TW. Jacobsen, "Excava-
nian Agora, received $1,000,000 from the Ford Foundation
tions at Porto Cheli and Vicinity, Preliminary Report, II:
(International Affairs Program), a very large grant for
TheanFranchthi Cave, 1967-1968," Hesperia 38 (1969) 343-81;
archaeological project (Ford Foundation Annual Report [1966]
and at Sitagroi, C. Renfrew, "The Autonomy of the South-
33). East European Copper Age," PPS 35 (1969) 12-47. While
47 Cf. H.A. Thompson, "Classical Lands," ProcPhilSoc none
110 of those projects was properly "regional," they all
(1966) 100. shared with MME the focus on the natural environment
48 The institutional changes were the founding ofand twothe interdisciplinary ideal. I cite only the first sub-
graduate interdisciplinary programs, the Program in stantial
Clas- report of each project. A few other comparable
sical Archaeology, Indiana University (1971) and the Center
projects- most notably, the Argolid Exploration Project-
for Ancient Studies, University of Minnesota (1973), aswere
well about to produce reports in the early 1970s; see M.
as the formation of the Association for Field Archaeology
Jameson, "The Southern Argolid: The Setting for Histor-
and the publication of its Journal of Field Archaeologyical
outand Cultural Studies," in Dimen and Friedl (infra
of Boston University. Not insignificantly, the two graduate
n. 67) 74-91.
programs were located far from the prestigious universities50 Cf. Hope Simpson (supra n. 3) xix.
that had sustained the Great Tradition. In Britain, ca. 1967,

94.66.56.99 on Tue, 23 Nov 2021 13:07:15 UTC
ruins as well as the modern inhabitants' customs, colleagues in the conservative home discipline. Here
scientific humanism had begun to be noticed. It was
inscriptions as well as the local flora, but they could
not serve as models in 1960. Still, they were impor-treated with as much or greater disdain than curi-
tant enough to be given attention (pp. 10-11, 259- osity. The existence of a new approach within Greek
archaeology created a tension, a divide indeed, with
60) - in fact, distinctly greater attention than MME's
contemporary projects in Greece: along with the an- the two sides maintaining an "uneasy relationship.'53
cient Greeks, and the Renaissance and Enlighten- Some of MME's reviewers, for example, would cast
ment travelers, the 19th-century projects stood astheir praises in equivocal language: "The result is
rather a rag-bag in this case, but provides the raw
markers of a long and evolving, if intermittent, Euro-
pean tradition in scientific practice and in the ar-material for a fuller cultural history of the area, and
chaeology of the Classical Lands. References to them, includes a number of bonus articles.., and a digest
and an extended quotation from L'expedition (1833) of the conventional ancient history of the area."54
to conclude MME's narrative (pp. 259-60), were there- Remarks such as this could come from many a clas-
fore of genuine, and considerable, historical interest.sical colleague in the 1970s. McDonald's collabora-
It seems to me, however, that those references in tion with social and natural scientists could be easily
the end also played a tactical role. Consider the cir- construed as, for example, an attempt to introduce
cumstances. If MME were to gain reputation as a into the Great Tradition "new-fashioned gadgets.'55
modern project, it had no choice but to emulate proj- It seems to me, therefore, that to remind his col-
ects from well beyond the archaeology of the Clas- leagues of precedents of collaboration among the
sical Lands, and to prove equal to them. The insti- founding fathers of the tradition was, on McDonald's
tution could be hypercritical, dismissive. On one side,
part,foresight-- a tactful way to spare the project from
Greek archaeology was at the time a target for ar- controversy. A balance had to be maintained between
chaeologists in departments of anthropology in the local tradition and what was patently foreign to it,
United States; they pointed out its "intuitive" char- and, to that end, mentions of Richard Chandler and
acter and construed it unsympathetically as a case Schliemann before those of K.V. Flannery and Wil-
counter to their own, "scientific" New Archaeology.51 liam Sanders were crucial: they would soothe the sus-
As one of them put it in 1973, "Very often, I'm afraid, picions of the classical archaeologists toward the new
these people [i.e., classical archaeologists] are mainly approach-whether or not McDonald intended them
concerned with a search for the left hand of the Vic-specifically in that role- and they would do that well,
tory of Samothrace-rather than trying to work outsince they also were of historical interest.56 Between
the nature of the civilizations they were studying."52
tradition and modernity, between the past of a dis-
MME had to demonstrate its scientific authenticity,cipline and its future, McDonald and team treaded
its command of "man," in the face of such "ami- a narrow defile of collegial politics, and passed be-
cableness" on the part of anthropological archaeol- yond it.57
ogists. But it had, after all, to be more mindful of The tension I outline, however, left discrete marks
51 See, e.g., "Archaeology First and Second Class," AFFA McDonald employed the same sensible means, yet more
News, the Newsletter of the Association for Field Archaeology 2:1 explicitly: WA. McDonald, "Acceptance Remarks," in Wilkie
(1973) 1-2. and Coulson (supra n. 3) xvii.
52 "On the Track of Ancient Cultures," an interview It is also noteworthy that MME's book was kept rather
with Michael D. Coe, Yale Alumni Magazine 37:3 (1973) 14, free of references to the programmatic/theoretical writings
quoted by R.R. Holloway,JFA 1 (1974) 67. Cf. infra n. 57. of scientific humanism (including those of New Archaeol-
Coe had directed one of the interdisciplinary undertak- ogy). Beside the reference to Hawley (supra n. 33), there
ings McDonald acknowledged as deserving "special men- is only one other reference (p.9) to a figure associated with
tion" (cf. above). that humanism and archaeology:J. Steward, Area Research:
53 The tension I am outlining is best captured in Theory and Practice (Social Science Research Council Bul-
McDonald 1966 (supra n. 35) 414-18, a most explicit ap- letin 63, New York 1950).
peal for reform in Greek archaeology. The phrase "uneasy 57 Fitting's review of MME (supra n. 22) unwittingly calls
relationship" is McDonald's from that paper. Cf. W.A. attention to this "narrow defile"- from the anthropologi-
McDonald, "Commoners and Kings," in M.A. Powell, Jr., cal side. The author expressed both "pleasure for this
and R.H. Sack eds., Studies in Honor of Tom B. Jones (AOAT meticulous multidisciplinary volume," and "chagrin" for
203, 1979) 297-302. having "been taught to regard the work of classical archae-
54J. Boardman, in CR 24 (1974) 308. Cf. Dow (supra ologists as something on a lower scale than what we [ar-
n. 4) 398-400. chaeologists in anthropology] were doing," hence missing
55 See McDonald 1966 (supra n. 35) 417. out on developments in classical archaeology.
56 Some time later, in accepting the AIA's Gold Medal,

94.66.56.99 on Tue, 23 Nov 2021 13:07:15 UTC
on MME's politics of
to the next, time.
from The
ancient origins to em
future redemp-
the project's genealogy, on
tions. In that game of its
Romantic kinsh
nationalisms, Greece
ern scientific tradition - that model of evolution of
came to occupy a peculiar, uncomfortable place, be-
mind and knowledge through time-was one of the
ing at once the foundation of Europe and, in Byron's
effects, but there were others too. In brief, some 19th-
phrase, "sad relic of departed worth."62 Laography,
century premises and postulates about the object the discipline of Greek folklore, already in the 19th
of archaeology in Greece were eschewed or simply century made the best out of both conditions, con-
forgotten. Others, however, were adapted and suc- ceiving as its object those traits of contemporary
cessfully grafted onto the body of man-in-his- Greek peasants that could be traced back to antiquity.
environment. Thus cultivated in the climate of mod- Classical archaeology, on the other hand, capitalized
ern scientific humanism, they were refined, and theyon the first condition, and only on occasion did
acquired new and greater vitality. I will proceed archaeologists focus on the peasants with whom they
with examples. mingled during fieldwork in the Classical Lands.63
The fact is that, by the later 19th century, notions
ESSENTIAL FARMERS
of survival served as points de repere across many fields
Some 150 years before MME, Hegel hadof
felt that
knowledge, from comparative philology to anthro-
among the Greeks he was "immediately at home,"
pology. For the latter field, for example, since its
aboriginal
for they were with him "in the region of the races and nations could not fit the uni-
Spirit."58
The 19th-century projects that McDonald
versalcited asof evolution, they were accommodated
pattern
precursors of MME had already eschewedassuch spe-from ancestral stages of mankind. Sur-
survivals
cial affinities with the past. Nonetheless, vivalism thus provided a powerful apparatus of
their episte-
mology incorporated premises that were (by 1960,
knowledge and discrimination; survivals could be in-
voked
patently) discriminatory and scientifically in large taxonomic efforts, and as evidence
untenable,
and that was a serious reason for which for
they could
the Europeans' advanced place vis-at-vis their
"living
not serve as models for MME. In Progress into theancestors"
Past, in the Classical Lands and primi-
McDonald had already noted the racist, nationalist,
tive races elsewhere. As my choice of words indicates,
and survivalist premises of the late 19th-century
survivalism was intertwined with the notions of race
multidisciplinary teams.59 "Race" and and nationwere

"nation" as well.64
no longer central analytical categories of Anglo-

Scientific humanism's "universal man" and MME's
American archaeological knowledge in the third
refraction, man-in-his-environment, were, in theory,
quarter of the 20th century.60 "Survival,"
powerfulonantidotes
the against survivalism, just as they
other hand, proved more obdurate, and lingered on
had been against scientific racism. Their immediate
insidiously.61 effect, after all, was to place "man" in nature, to en-
To assume a survivalist viewpoint is, in the most dow him with adaptive rationality, and thereby free
abstract sense, to understand certain traits of human him from the sway of "custom." The practice of man-
affairs as survivals from earlier states of those affairs. in-his-environment, however, turned out to be far
Survivalism, then, could be a powerful, extremelymore complex.
versatile time machine: in the 18th-19th centuries
McDonald cautioned against 18th-19th century
it had ensured (ideologically) the continuity of notions
na- of survival by noting that the European trav-
tions through time, from one historical conjuncture
elers of the period "usually viewed the contempo-
58 G.W.E Hegel, The Philosophy of History (Buffalo 1991)

(Oxford 1980) 68. I am indebted to B. Caraher for pointing
223.
out the location of the verse in Byron's oeuvre.
59 McDonald (supra n. 40) 18, 28, 34-35; cf. 106, 159. 63 See references and discussion in Jacobsen (supra
60o See B. Trigger, "Alternative Archaeologies: National- n. 17) 93.
ist, Colonialist, Imperialist," Man n.s. 19 (1984)955-70. "Na- 64 It would take volumes to do justice to survivalism,
tional character" was, however, a serious focus of Ameri- its origins, its contradictions and circularities, and its mul-
can anthropology's research into "culture and personality": tiple effects in the social disciplines and elsewhere. See,
A. Kiriakidou-Nestoros, HOscopia 'd e ; 1v lKc7jfaoypa(piac e.g., Herzfeld (supra n. 30), e.g., 8-11, 71-76, 136-38, and
(Athens 1978) 172; and Sutton 1993 (supra n. 26). Ours Once More: Folklore, Ideology, and the Making of Modern
61 See Jacobsen (supra n. 17) 94-95, and esp. Herzfeld Greece (Austin 1982), esp. 102-105; Kiriakidou-Nestoros
(supra n. 30) 9-11 and 57-61. (supra n. 60), e.g., 149-52; cf. TR. Trautmann, Lewis Henry
62 "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," canto 2, stanza 73. See Morgan and the Invention of Kinship (Berkeley 1987).
J.J. McGann ed., Lord Byron: The Complete Poetical Works 2

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rary inhabitants [of Greece] pears

as tonothing more
have done in the thirteenth than
century B.C7
pitiful survivors of ancient greatness"
(p. 177). He amplified this(adding
statement by notingthat a de-
the travelers "often provide cline
a inlively account
pastoralism, and of
the insignificance the
of fishing
contemporary way of life"; p.and 10).65 MME's
of the agricultural processing narrative
industry, which
indeed remained remarkably "provides
free only ofseasonal
survivalist
employment, mostly com- to
parisons. Matson attempted a few
women" (pp.
(p. 177). 200,
He added: "Bread,217), but
olive oil, wine,
their effect was dampened, and
and cheesenot only
are the staples of thebecause
diet"; moreover, he
placed them in the context ofthis ishis "ceramic
so "despite ecology"
. . . the rural population's great
approach: through relatively detailed
taste for meat" (p. 179). Thedescription,
picture was completed
Matson's potters became real with
persons, their
the broad assumptions craft
offered con-
by McDonald
cretely contextualized in the
and Rapp1960s
in the book's scene.66 Very
concluding chapter, "that [in
rarely did MME's authors appeal
the Late Bronzeto "custom"
Age] agricultural methods and(e.g.,
pro-
p. 47). Even "the trip to the ductivity
nearest were not perennial
significantly different;river
that the
for washing clothes... as old basic
as crops
Homer's description
(though not necessarily their relative pro-
of Odysseus' meeting withportions)
Nausicaa and
were comparable; and that as recent
agricultural sur-
as Aschenbrenner's observation ina 1969"
pluses were major item inwas cast
the balance by
of trade,
McDonald and Rapp amid a discussion
as they are today" (p. 247). Vanof
Werschnatural
offered yet
determinants of settlement another
location assumption,(p. 252).67
"that the Uni-
relative importance
versal man had arrived in Messenia:
of major land-use "Farmers here,
categories is approximately the
as everywhere, are aware of their
same in thevulnerability to sur-
two periods" (p. 181). Who needs the
weather, and their age-oldvivalist
religious practices
premises where the and
past is so authentically
beliefs bear witness to the fact"
present? (p. 251; my empha-
sis). Aschenbrenner, MME's ethnographer
There were, however, some who spent
problems with such
13 months in Karpofora, alsobroad
was wary of survivalist
assumptions-problems that MME's authors
assumptions, distrustful of continuity.
themselves noted. TheWhen he
first problem was gave
that the Ex-
examples of how his work pedition
might aidto the
appeared archaeol-
have reached Messenia just
ogists', he spoke like an agricultural economist: "Thus,
when this comparability between present and past,
for example, when jars for the betweenstorage of
the 20th century andolive oil Age,
the Late Bronze
or wine are excavated or when Linear B tablets refer
was becoming very tenuous. For McDonald and Rapp:
to amounts of these commodities, we may calculate
some range of values for area It ofwould be preferable
land planted to makein judgments
suchusing
crops or for labor expended village
inconditions
their in 1800 or even more recently,
production"
(p. 47). before the modernization of this part of Greece had
begun. One can see today great differences between
As the last two quotations suggest, universal man bustling towns on a highway or railroad and isolated
in Messenia would be, first of all, man the farmer. mountain villages; but even the latter have been
In addition, this identity appeared to have been his affected by modem trends [pp. 254-55; one may sense
since the Bronze Age. For Van Wersch, for instance, here a bit of nostalgia for the truly authentic, pre-
modern, as it were, landscape].
who conducted his research on Messenia's agricul-
tural economy "in the second half of the 1960's A.D.'
Van Wersch makes the point too: "With the opening
the picture was quite clear: "In the twentieth century up of modern transportation, communication, and
A.D. Messenia depends as much on agriculture as trade patterns and the closer integration of the re-
its almost exclusive means of subsistence as it ap- gion into national life and into the world economy,
65 For countless examples of such "lively accounts" see

Greek) and giXTi (modern Greek), which refer to a red
now R. Eisner, Travellers to an Antique Land: The History and ocher and slip, used by ancient and contemporary potters.
Literature of Travel to Greece (Ann Arbor 1991). The other (p. 200) is a sweeping statement about the trans-
66 Matson, the pioneer of the integrated "ecological ap- mission and stability of the ceramic craft, "with sons suc-
proach" to archaeological ceramics, examined petrograph- ceeding their fathers," from the Bronze Age to the present.
ically Mycenaean potsherds, tested clay sources, and de-
67 Cf. S.E. Aschenbrenner, "Archaeology and Ethnog-
scribed the work of potters in the district of Koroni, raphy in Messenia," in M. Dimen and E. Friedl eds., Re-
southeast Messenia (supra n. 18). Of the survivalist com-
gional Variation in Modern Greece and Cyprus: Toward a Per-
parisons I singled out, one (p. 217) was linguistic and tech- spective on the Ethnography of Greece (Annals of the New York
nological at once, concerning the words giXroq (ancient Academy of Sciences 268, New York 1976) 160.

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the age-old equilibrium marks: "Using the 1928 census

was as a base minimizes
disturb
Van Wersch that disturbance is a matter of the last
as much as possible the most recent trends of accel-
century; until then (and, presumably, since the Late
erated rural depopulation, metropolitan agglomera-
Bronze Age) "population had remained fairly stable
tion, and transportation improvements" (p. 149; em-
phasis in original).69 Lukermann, a geographer, is
while supported by a traditional economy" (p. 186).
Van Wersch's way of coping with the problem, then,in fact quite skeptical about the full range of mean-
ings "modernity" has; he too acknowledges that a
is to highlight that "traditional economy" by margin-
"shift" toward commercial economy, urbanization,
alizing, in his description, elements of the present
that would be foreign to it: for example, when he higher life expectancy, and relative political and so-
cial stability already occurred in the period 1800-
discusses farm capital, he takes trees and livestock
to be its major components. He mentions tractors, 1928. At the same time, however, he attributes that
pumps, irrigation equipment, commercial fertilizer,"shift" (read: incongruity with the idealized, authen-
etc.; he proceeds, however, to give highly precise tic,
sta-indigenous ethos of the place, its past-still-present)
tistics for barley and donkeys, grapes and hogs, tobut forces from outside the region: "In so far as these
conditions are within the context of what is meant
he does not quantify, or even estimate, the signifi-
cance of any of the components of diesel technol-
by 'modernization', they are exogenous forces to be sub-
ogy (pp. 178-79). We are left with the authoritative tracted relative to any comparison we shall make with
impression that such technology is so rare as to be earlier periods" (p. 151; my emphasis). Not only is
negligible, and so recently introduced that one can- Messenia's farmer in crucial ways premodern, then,
but he plays no active role in his own modernization.
not yet foresee its effects. Messenia's agricultural econ-
omy in the 1960s was, after all, a money economyModernity(it is allochthonous in Messenia. It has no
had been such for generations), and a careful read- local origins, it can only be brought from else-
ing of MME's text will leave no doubt. Money, how- where.70 In Lukermann's geography of concepts, a
ever, plays no role in Van Wersch's economic analysis; dichotomy between "margin" and "center" is implicit.
the word "money" does not occur once, nor do words I return to Aschenbrenner's work in order to obtain
that would imply the existence of financial institu- a sharper picture of that geography.
tions (e.g., "bank"). The Messenians are said to have Aschenbrenner began his paper "Archaeology and
a "great taste for meat," not for money. According Ethnography in Messenia" (the first of two papers
to the picture that emerges, people may still be un- the ethnographer contributed to the conference "Re-
sure about the power of money.68 gional Variation in Modern Greece and Cyprus," in
Aschenbrenner often follows similar tactics. For
1975)71 with comments on the comparability of
example, while noting in 1970 "some plowing by
Messenia's place in Aegean archaeology, history, and
tractor" as well as plowing for cash, he also counts
geography:
every horse (12 animals) and every able head of cattle
The position of Messenia in Aegean archaeology is
(22, or 11 teams), providing Karpofora, a commu- not unlike the role this region has played in the course
nity of 353, "with twenty-three plowing units." He gives
of history. It is off in the southwest corner of Greece,
no more information about tractors, the existence far from the center of activity and in a sense is geo-
of which is thereby forgotten (pp. 57-58). Modernity graphically isolated from the rest of the country.
Messenia has had its important, if ephemeral, mo-
is spurious in this rural landscape; it may be in the
ments in history, however...
future of man the farmer, but it is not in his nature.
MME's book, and Aschenbrenner's chapter in par- For Messenia, that is, to be a suitable ground for the
ticular, contain many more references to a vanish- practice of archaeological ethnography, one needed
ing comparability with the Late Bronze Age (e.g., pp. first to construe it as a marginal region in general.
48, 59, 183, 211, 223). Here are Fred Lukermann's re- Of particular interest here is the appeal to geography,
68For comparable remarks in comparable contexts, and the idea a few steps further: "Present-day (1961) agricul-
an appeal to take money and its multiple effects seriously ture is ably surveyed, including the human and animal-
in our analyses of subordinate, supposedly precapitalist, population, capital assets (an average of 172 trees per farm),
societies, see E Coronil, "Beyond Occidentalism: Towards and a wealth of other matters . . . but it does seem as if
Post-Imperial Geographical Categories," Critical Inquiry (insome earlier year could have been selected, well befor
press). the extensive changes produced by WW II, the American
69 EE. Lukermann, "Settlement and Circulation: Pattern Mission, agricultural machinery." The "exogenous forces"
and Systems," in McDonald and Rapp (supra n. 1) 148-70. of Lukermann's text here are clearly identified.
70 Dow, in his review of MME (supra n. 4) 399, carried 71Aschenbrenner (supra n. 67) 158.

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for it makes Messenia's marginality example of spatialization

appear of astime. The ethnographer
a nat-
ural condition, an effect of geography.72 Time is was not at all oblivious to the present, and he often
hereby spatialized: while the association of time with called attention to aspects of the farming commu-
history is retained, the "present-past" relationship, nity he had to leave out of his account. His approach,
mediated by the one between "modernity" and the however, was not merely "subtractive" (cf. Lukermann's
"past-still-present," now reverberates as the relation- remarks quoted above). For the present to become
ship of "center" and "margin." Like a territory, like relevant to the past, Messenia and its farmers had
states, and perhaps empires, time has a center and, to be understood in their true, long-term nature, and,
inescapably, margins. to that end, ecological concepts proved indispens-
Spatialization of time, I may add, has been a cru- able. Not only crops, therefore, but also the farmers'
cial element of the logic of all regional archaeolog- diet and their time (schedule of activities) became
ical research. The shift of emphasis from sites to their the foci of Aschenbrenner's work. For 13 months in
landscapes, from stratigraphic units to environ- Karpofora, the ethnographer recorded "the distri-
mental zones, also fostered a change in the relative bution of the modern villager's work activities ac-
value of space over time. For example, classes of farm- cording to crop, month, type of work, and climatic
land became for regional projects as important as regime," and he compared notes with Van Wersch.
archaeological phases, and settlement location with In his report he tentatively suggests the utility of such
respect to land type became the focus of equal or data in reconstructing "a possible work calendar for
greater critical energy than settlement chronology. the Bronze Age communities in the same territory"
What must be remembered is that, in Greek archaeol- (p. 50). Continuity is once more eschewed. What mat-
ogy, such a shift did not follow a peaceful course. ters rather is location in space ("same territory"), and
Rather it was met with strong resistance (in spite of the link is sought solely in the natural environment:
the age-old association of archaeology with expedi- the villagers' time is a calendar, tied to the cycle of
tion, and, therefore, with exploration of space), and crop activities, regulated above all by the scarcity
its legitimacy had to be won through maneuvers in of rainfall. ("Rain"' in various forms, occurs 14 times
the disciplinary arena.73 Casting time in a language in the course of 34 lines in Aschenbrenner's text:
that was common for space thereby acquired an pp. 50-51.) "Finally, during all the days of rain, the
emblematic character: it came to signal the new orien- press of agricultural tasks is relieved and indoor
tation in the discipline, and that may well explain crafts can be pursued" (pp. 51-52). Naturalism and
some liberties that regional researchers were willing nostalgia- a nostalgia for the farmer fixed to his land
to take with the power released through spatializa- and calendar, a farmer productive even at home-
tion of time. Construing time as a territory with a blend nicely in this passage. The farmers' time is ir-
center and margins was perhaps one of those lib- revocably cyclical-a calendar that begins every
erties; it certainly went well beyond established tech- January, and always returns to its starting point. It
nical uses of the notions of center, margin, and time. has led nowhere, perhaps since the Bronze Age. Wit-
For instance, to call a part of the landscape "mar- ness, however: such time radically contrasts with the
ginal cropland to which barley is best adapted" (Van researchers' time- the long, directional course of
Wersch's phrase, p. 182) was, in 1972, perfectly legiti- evolving scientific practice, from Herodotos to the
mate under certain agronomic assumptions.74 From future, as McDonald outlined it (see above). A differ-
such concrete usages of the notion of marginality, how- ence, indeed a qualitative contrast, between man-
ever, it proved a short step to Messenia's generalized in-his-environment and MME's own men is hereby
marginality with respect to modernity. metonymically, and generically, inscribed in time.
Aschenbrenner provides another, more rigorous Allochronism is an effective tactic for distancing re-
72 Theodore Bent had used similar tactics in the late 74"Marginality" of cropland was soon, however, to be
19th century in "On Insular Greek Customs": see Herzfeld viewed as a function also of the farmers' goals, not just
(supra n. 30) 74-75. as a natural parameter. See G.A. Collier, "Are Marginal Farm-
7 McDonald had been a leader in that war in the 1960s lands Marginal to Their Farmers?," in S. Platner ed., Formal
(supra n. 35) 414-16; cf.J.E Cherry, "Frogs Round the Pond: Methods in Economic Anthropology (Washington, D.C. 1975)
Perspectives on Current Archaeological Survey Projects 149-58; cf. my Ph.D. thesis (supra n. 31). Some of that work
in the Mediterranean Region," in Keller and Rupp (supra
was influenced by the ideas of A.V. Chayanov, whose research
n. 13) 378-90; also S.L. Dyson, "Archaeological Survey in among Russian peasants in the early decades of the 20th
the Mediterranean Basin: A Review of Recent Research,"
AmerAnt 47 (1982) 88-90. century had just been translated into English: A.V. Chaya-
nov, The Theory of Peasant Economy (Homewood, Ill. 1966).

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searchers from researched,

to the 1975and
confere
safeg
respective identities.75
first78 (they were g
I claimed earliercourse,
that MME's
along conce
with
relationship to MME's book.
between present and pas
quired not mere observations but a
A MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY
theoria. In the last few pages I have
amples of that vision,
Let me nowwith referenc
discuss a second problem that
Aschenbrenner's work. I will not atte
authors noted when they compared "the bes
direct that vision, period"
to demonstrate, for
with the Late Bronze Age. Van Wer
concrete details it
that Aschenbrenn
in the following way: "Farmers do not kee
of life in Karpofora in
and, moreover, are1969-1970
very reluctant to divulgw
ethnographer did this himself. In
formation that could possibly be used to
to the conferencehigher "Regional Variat
taxes from them. Consequently, eve
Greece and Cyprus," in 1975, he dr
ent yield figures are only approximate" (p.
different pictureMcDonald
of Karpofora (based
and Rapp also note the problem
plus additional fieldwork from
they attempt to estimate 1971
population densit
still senses nostalgia in
lages (p. 254): that paper,
"The task is a tricky one, as
howe
and domestic organization are
for the existing situation. We given
know from ex
But the details anchor
that published the descriptio
statistics can be unreliable
period around 1970. We
ularly in terms of are made
the specific a
village areas.
continue with their efforts to solve such p
of the fact that Karpofora is part of a
state that at the time was
they used governed
air photographs, by
but those entail
We learn that the practice
too- of
clouds or vegetation mayagricul
obscure visib
fora is articulated scale of the photographs
within a system is not always
of c
from the state. Machinery is a
some houses stand unoccupied. crit
McDonald
of farm capital: conclude:
there are three (pe
cording to a table) large tractors and
Even for the modern analogue the only satisfactory
wheeled ones - enough to project.
solution is a large-scalefield triple th
It should be possible
cattle and horse power.
in the near futureTractors were
to make more accurate estimates,
during the 1960s, but in the meantime
but, we must assume that
then, this ten-
Karpofo
400 ha to cultivate,tative with
equation [i.e., 112 persons per village
parts of hectare]
it
is reasonably dependable [p. 254, my emphasis].
for tractor plowing.77 We also learn t
McDonald and
are upwardly mobile, andRapp are that
not very specific
they here abouth
at least 15 years.theFor example,
sort of project that could provide more"mo accurate
village estimates. Wouldgone
have youths" it be different fromto, theirs? MME
and g
university in the was,
periodafter all, such 1967-1974.
a large-scale field project. Their M
every Karpoforite remarkshas lead to several plansissues, which Ito will tryaban
to take
up in order.
and village life. Emphasis is given to
in the course of the 1960s,
First of all, if the farmers are suspected 25%
of with- of
for one or another holdingurban
or distorting information - in effect, sus-
destination,
village's "abundantpected and
of lying-and if the statistics of the Greek
fertile resour
state also are suspect,
crease in prosperity. The because theyconceptio
are embroiled
ites as a people fixed
in the farmers' to their
lies, then the land an
only authority imagin-
is hereby imploded.able that mightAschenbrenner
secure a more accurate statistical
75 My remarks owe much to Fabian (supra n. 30), e.g., 78 Aschenbrenner (supra n. 67).
32-35, from whom I adopt the notion of allochronism. 79 Cf. Aschenbrenner (supra n. 67) 161-62.
76 S.E. Aschenbrenner, "Karpofora: Reluctant Farmers so Peter Topping, who examined for MME census docu-
on a Fertile Land," in Dimen and Friedl (supra n. 67) 207-21. ments from the 13th to the 19th centuries, was much more
77 Some of the earliest demonstrations of Western plow- confident in the accuracy of the recorded figures, espe-
ing technology in Greece after Independence had taken cially if they came from the Venetian censuses of the 17th
place in Messenia, not far from Karpofora, in 1830. See century: see P. Topping, "The Post-Classical Documents,"
in McDonald and Rapp (supra n. 1), e.g., 70, 72.
D.L.
1976)Zografos,
1, 283-84.Icropia , rg 0r1vuIKa ysEopyigaq2 (Athens

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table of reality is the independent observer:
resentation and a Business,"
reality. In "Unfinished sci- they
entist, or preferably a sizeable pointed
group to manyof them,
directions pres-
for future research. They
ent at every field the moment of harvest,
stressed attending
the need for greater interdisciplinary col-
the birth of every lamb and foal, keeping
laboration, the desirability of eyes onof ob-
larger samples
doors in every house and barn - and
servations, not
of greater only
accuracy and of for
finer detail,
a single year. I hardly exaggerate.
and they even Good estimates
touched upon the refinement of con-
are based on good measurements; before
cepts (e.g., "time calculat-
period"). They subtly indicated their
ing totals and averages for an entire region,
unhappiness with the
the state of sci- prac-
archaeological
entist would find it necessary to measure
tice not the
only in Messenia values
but, more generally, in
of the critical parameters in a Greece-whereupon
suitably large sample.
their unfinished business be-
MME's researchers did their best to adhere to such
came Greek archaeology's unfinished business. They
principles, but they also had to rely on Greek census pointed back to their Figure 1-1 (p. 6), MME's inter-
data and other official statistics. Their point about disciplinary model: their concerns were as much, or
desirability of more accurate figures was not, how- more, with the shape of archaeological practice as
ever, a mere caveat or sign of self-evaluation. McDon- with man-in-his-environment. In fact, if the object
ald and Rapp's was a vision of the discipline's future: of research, that "man," was in 1972 somewhat in-
"It should be possible in the near future to make more accurately represented, the inaccuracies were about
accurate estimates." In their last section, "Unfinished its measurable performance, its size and production;
Business" (pp. 256-61), they indeed called for more they were not about its nature. Nothing in MME's text
intensive applications of the approach they pio- suggests that the nature of "man," as the researchers
neered in Greece. For example, a "combination of understood it, might itself be subject to revision.
geophysical methods could be used to delineate more There was no concern with the effects of a spatial-
accurately the size and shape of ancient habitation ized time, a time with a center and margins, on the
sites" (p. 257), and, if Nichoria, the excavated site, identity of "man," nor was there a concern with the
were to be placed in context, "a dozen or so repre- problems inherent in the notion of a past-still-
sentative sites should be studied in more detail by present. With regard to the Messenians, the terms
surface methods to record their complete physical of representation were already congealing: "farmers,"
setting" (p. 258). In their own last words, McDonald an official classification of the state for some of its
and Rapp put their vision concisely and forcefully: subjects (a term of representation), was taken as the
"It can be confidently predicted that archaeological nature of those subjects (a fact of reality). Represen-
efforts in the future will be increasingly interdisci- tation thus was becoming one with reality. Future
plinary in scope" (p. 259). They could, perhaps, have projects, yet more rigorous, would add detail to that
also written that "ours is only the beginning; what reality, make it more concrete and, thereby, difficult
we did can be done better, and we believe that it will to deny. They would also extend it to the rest of
be" The same point was made in the conclusion of Greece.
a significant paper seven years later, and again in I will call MME's philosophical stance toward rep-
1984.81 resentation and reality, and toward time, "modern-
Beside self-evaluation and a vision of the future, ist." Modernism in this case is a theory (vision) of
such statements also suggest a philosophical stance, archaeological knowledge and practice, an attitude
namely, that a reality exists that has hitherto escaped toward the object of the archaeological quest, the
representation but that can be represented, at least subject engaged in that quest, and the method of
in its most significant part, in the future. Such a the quest: the object is man-in-his-environment, the
stance deserves all our attention. It once more im- subject a team of scientists, and the method is an
plicates time; it resounds with optimism, as it re- inquisitive, relentless census of the former by the
minds us of the possibility of new knowledge; and, latter. Note that, while both object and subject are
above all, it concedes a distance between represen- generically "man" and remain physically copresent
tation and reality, and thereby calls attention to their
in the environment for the duration of the project,
troubled relationship.
they also are assumed to be quite (shall we say, gender-
It seems to me, however, that MME's researchers
ically?) different. They are, in fact, distinguished from
in the end underestimated the distance between rep-
each other in antithetical terms, and not simply by
81 Carothers and McDonald (supra n. 4) 459; W.A.

in Studies Presented to Sterling Dow on His Eightieth Birthday
McDonald,"The Minnesota Messenia Survey: A Look Back,"
(Durham, N.C. 1984) 187.

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virtue of their ephemeral relationship

(the modernity of the researchers vs. the annual cycle
observers) but, more irreversibly,
of the researched; a past still present, and still van-by
ample, the ones are farmers
ishing; a reality and
still outside representation, yet by ca
whereas the others are scientists and zealots of the no means outside the terms of that representation).
truth.82 Moreover, while the farmers live in a world
I call this stance "modernist" not to distinguish
where truth and lie still are contiguous with age-old
it from a "postmodernist" one, nor to suggest that
it is characteristic of an era from which we now have
beliefs and religious practices, the scientists already
know of independent methods for defusing the lies It is, of course, characteristic of an era, rather
escaped.
and reaching a stratum of truth unencumbered by just of MME, but that era has yet to end. I call
than
deceit. As I showed earlier, a few other differences the stance "modernist" in consonance with one of
separate them, most notably the directional time of its most pervasive premises and effects, one part of
the researchers versus the cyclical time of the farm- the reality to which it continues to give rise: moder-
ers, and their respective locations in relation to nity, the researchers' present, as a justly superior loca-
modernity, the center of time. tion. Others might find other adjectives more ap-
The elements that together constitute the mod- propriate; "masculinist" is a strong candidate, but
ernist stance, as I have identified them in the pre- "statist" or "governmental" could also serve, for the
vious pages, can now be summarized. They include approach borrows from the state its most funda-
1) a sharp distinction between researchers and re- mental technique of knowledge, the census, and it
searched (a distinction suggestive not simply of differ- extends it to the past.83 "Positivist" may be for some
ence but also of a hierarchy, an axiology); 2) an yet another possibility. The avowed object of this
equally sharp distinction between object and method paper, however, is politics of time, so "modernism"
(a confidence in the independence of method, in will do.84
its effectiveness in overcoming the resistance of the For Greek archaeology, MME's book of 1972 con-
object; a method, we could say, despite the object); tains the first, and a remarkably rich, articulation
3) an emphasis on the authority of direct views of of the modernist vision. A large number of concepts
the object (a visualism, also deployed in the spatial- intercross and adumbrate one another, at the same
ization of time, and in graphic representations of time that a long record of observations is made rele-
the method, as in MME's Figure 1-1); 4) a sense that vant to large theoretical premises. To think of so rich
the method is still imperfect, but also a confidence and complex a vision as myopic would be, as I already
that it will be perfected (especially when it is deployed suggested, nonsensical. To treat it as arising from
more intensively); 5) a view of, indeed a commit- misunderstandings, or even as ideologically guided,
ment to, the object's nature as at once docile and pro- would be to mistake its power for something inex-
ductive (a human nature dedicated to production: orably "in the nature of things," and to leave agency
settled and, thereby, accountable farmers, the ideal at its interface with circumstance once more out of
of an "agrarian state"); and 6) a tenuous, problemat- historical analysis. It would be, that is, to forget the
ical segregation of reality along several axes at once polarized institutional climate in which MME was
82 A story told by Hope Simpson at the symposium in farmer in the same context, then distancing, indeed con-
honor of McDonald in Minneapolis, in 1983 (supra n. 3) trasting them, in terms of knowledge/ignorance.
xviii, helps to amplify this point: "Bill McDonald's work 83 See Fotiadis (supra n. 25) 151-68, esp. 159-62, for
in Messenia began in a spectacular way. In 1939 he assisted archaeology's "governmental" vision of itself and of its
Carl Blegen in the excavations at Ano Englianos. We are object. "Governmentality" is a notion that I take from
told that almost the first blows of the pick at the Palace M. Foucault,"Governmentality" [1978], in Burchell, Gordon,
site revealed a small damp clay slab with a rounded profile. and Miller (supra n. 2) 87-104.
The workman, in his ignorance, did what most Greek farm- 84 Modernism is today much discussed-and critically
ers do when examining objects of types unknown to them. so- all across the disciplines. My description of it encom-
In his curiosity he wiped it with his hand, and almost suc- passes only a few of the dimensions elaborated upon in
ceeded in erasing the first of the written records to be found the current literature. See, e.g.,J. Habermass, The Philosoph-
at the site. Bill prevented further disaster by seizing the ical Discourse ofModernity: Twelve Lectures (Cambridge, Mass.
tablet. From then on he spent most of his time on the ex- 1987); M. Strathern, "The Persuasive Fictions of Anthro-
cavation dealing with the tablets, as they emerged, en route pology," in M. Manganaro ed., Modernist Anthropology: From
to an elaborate drying out process." Archaeologists will Fieldwork to Text (Princeton 1990), esp. 91-113; also essays
perhaps all identify with McDonald's intervention. But the inJ. Clifford and G.E. Marcus eds., Writing Culture: The Poetics
story also tells of tactics for the construction of archae- and Politics of Ethnography (Berkeley 1986).
ological identity-first, by juxtaposing archaeologist and

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conducted, between classical and

qualified specific anthropological
comparisons. I now turn to some
archaeologists, and the unfriendliness
of them, leaving aside those that any proj-
of a predominantly en-
ect like MME would face from both
vironmental sides;
scope and
(e.g., coastal it would
configurations and
be to forget McDonald's commitment
climate). to moderniz-
ing his home discipline, to When
reshaping
McDonald and Rapparchaeological
compare 20th-century
practice in Greece. The success ofB records
statistics to Linear that project
with de-
regard to flocks,
pended, among other things,
"the only safeon MME's
comparison ... is thatscientific
the sheep-goat
authenticity, and that in turn did
ratio was very not a depend
different, not unexpected only
situation
on the production of good inrecords of vegetation
view of the importance of weaving woolen his-
cloth"
tories and farming practices; the very ethos of scien-
(p. 248). They observe that today's irrigated, inten-
tific humanism had to be sively
reproduced within
cultivated bottomlands Greek
must have been marshy
archaeology. It is that ethos that we witness in
in the Late Bronze Age, perhaps available asMME's
pasture
rich and complex articulation of modernism.
to the large domestic The
animals but not to the smaller
combined requirement of mental excellence, male
ruminants. "As for cultivated crops, the risks of at-
dynamism, and scientific tempting
rationality (to
a reconstruction remember
should not be underesti-
Donna Haraway85) proved a dangerous
mated" power.
(p. 249). They discuss reasons for whichThe
olive
men of Messenia-the real people-had to be, groves and vineyards may have played "a less impor-
through discourse, stripped of all those traits, gender tant role." They are equally cautious with wheat,
included, to allow for MME's researchers to demon-
barley, figs, and flax. Indeed, even when they postu-
strate theirs.
late continuity in "conditions like soil, climate, and
"Perhaps we may be pardoned for sometimes in-water supply. .. the basic determinants in agricul-
cluding what might be called hunches that depend tural regimes" (p. 251), they still qualify their con-
more on judgment and familiarity with the present clusions. Their estimate of 130 people per hectare
environment than on solid new facts about the past,"of site area is based on "a strong impression that pre-
wrote McDonald and Rapp in their last chapter historic villages in Messenia and generally through-
(p. 240). Broad assumptions about the comparabil- out Greece were somewhat more densely populated
ity of present and past, then, as the authors empha-than nowdays [sic]" (p. 255).88 And, in an admission
sized, could be just this, hunches, tentative and ex-
of limits to comparability, they qualify their broad
perimental. They had no claim to factual accuracy.86assumptions as well: "There have certainly been
Making assumptions about the object of research
changes since the Late Bronze Age in kinds and pro-
was, after all, an exercise of the researchers' intellec-
portions of crops, in breeds of animals, in agricul-
tual freedom. Whence that freedom, however? What tural practices and equipment, in pestilences, and
forces gave rise to and sustained that space of free- in dietary preference" (p. 251).
dom where the researchers could take full charge Aschenbrenner is equally cautious in the end.
of the production of truth?87 These questions did Along with the calendar, he recorded diet, farm labor,
not emerge. In the logic of modernism, intellectual yields for many crops, and the economy of water.
freedom required no explanation. Like vision, it What is the relevance of his data to the Bronze Age?
could be defended (if necessary) as an inalienable "Something like an upper limit on the productive
right- the researchers'right: the freedom at issue was capability for ancient communities can be estimated
never extended to man-in-his-environment. His free- by using the production of modern communities
dom instead, from the modernist viewpoint, was that as a base" (p. 63). He also suggests that olives and
of ecological rhythms and of economic structures. vines imply a relatively stable community, that ir-
Be that as it may, next to the broad assumptions rigation may have been practiced in Messenia's past,
about the comparability, indeed similarity, of the and that families may have seasonally moved from
present to the past in Messenia, McDonald and Rapp's upland habitations to riverine sites.
last chapter also contains many cautious, highly If these comparisons between specific elements
85Supra n. 36.
88 That estimate was later revised to 140 persons per
86 It is ironic that one of MME's reviewers, R. Hach-
1.53 ha (i.e., 91.5 persons/ha) on the basis of a larger sample
mann, in HZ 219 (1974)623, praised the project for, among
(n = 68) of modern village populations in Messenia: Caroth-
other things, "das Fehlen von unbewissennen kultur-ers and McDonald (supra n. 4) 435-38. The formula for
theoretischen Primisen in ihrem Programm." the revisions was exacting, yet not all assumptions on which
87 That is the main issue that occupied me in Fotiadisit was based werejustified. The "modern" population figures
(supra n. 25), esp. 162-64. used were those of the 1961 census.

94.66.56.99 on Tue, 23 Nov 2021 13:07:15 UTC
the past in
of the present and mind). MME's
the past scientific humanis
still
vagueness was inevitable
adopted and reworked by in 1972.
some, eschewed by o
ers were at that The notion of tradition
moment as timeless, unchang
experime
time machine (at least, with critica
habit--significantly, not as practices evolving
course ofnot
old one); they could time- emerged as an analyticalbe
possibly cat
and point of reference
exact in their results. One inexpected
archaeologists' wr
new time machine Sometimes
would it appearedbeamid discussions
perfec of u
mitarian principles,
Perhaps because they were economic
vague,and ecological
ho th
or referencesmore
parisons also proved to stone-usingproduc peoples aroun
be easily extended,
world. Other and they
times it leapt to the fore held
unexpe
more, and more and without further elaboration. As the notion
concrete, of
point
would be found. Once a past-still-present
MME could not had
very well be sustaine
show
ent in Greece could it was replaced
beby compared
another, equally troublesome,
w "t
that this could be done without resort to the old- ditional Greece," or "the present-that-was-no-longe
there": "tradition" (in Greek, paradhosi) became a r
fashioned premise of cultural survivals, observation
of the present began to gain respectability spectable
among antonym for "modernity."90
The modernist stance, as I identified it above, has
archaeologists working in the country. "The future,"
the decades of the 1970s and especially '80s, indeed
took been shifting in several directions. It is hardly
recognizable in the most recent publication of a re-
hold of the opportunity, and new ways were invented
gional project in Greece, that of northern Keos.9'
for making the present relevant to the past. Com-
parisons drawn as late as 1992 were no less True, the book has a title that is ominously evocative
vague
than those MME had been able to make in 1972.89 of the Braudelian longue duree, Greece's and the
All the same, ethnographers and other ethnograph- Mediterranean's inescapable fate, their cyclical time.
Read the text, however. The authors make very cau-
ically oriented researchers now were expected to fill
a place in regional projects. Their presence among tious use of that cyclicity. The ethnographer has com-
the archaeologists guaranteed that comparisons be-pletely eschewed calendars of agricultural activities
tween the present and the past in Greece would beand diet; she undertakes instead a detailed descrip-
made. The shape of archaeological practice changed. tion of the demographic history of Keos in relation
to macropolitical and macroeconomic forces.92 The
focus of the ethnoarchaeological study is "largely
CYCLICAL TIME "IN THE FUTURE"
abandoned but well-preserved material remains from
I cannot document here the changes that have
the recent past," and the author made some efforts
taken place since 1972 in the politics of to time ofremains.93 Throughout the book, cycli-
date those
cal of
archaeologists working in Greece. The story timethose
stays submerged in the historical detail of
politics in the "new era" does not seem each
to me toodispersed through a complex network
period,
coherent (and I only take into account here those that reach well beyond the landscape
of relationships
of Keos.with
of us who have examined the present in Greece And at the end we also find an invitation,
8 See, e.g., C. Chang, "Archaeological Landscapes: The "traditional Greece" was interrupted because of EEC sub-
Ethnoarchaeology of Pastoral Land Use in the Grevena Prov- sidies, ca. 1980.
ince of Greece," in J. Rossignol and L. Wandsnider eds., In Greece during the later 1960s and '70s paradhosi be-
Space, Time and Archaeological Landscapes (New York 1992) came a commodity, and prices of arts and crafts, from old
65-89. doilies to 78 rpm records, soared. For the international
9 Perhaps the most coherent picture of "traditional"popular" scene see Sutton 1993 (supra n. 26).
Greece" among archaeologists is in Halstead 1990 (supra91 Cherry, Davis, and Mantzourani (supra n. 23).
n. 23). A basic postulate here is the notion of "the sensible92 S.B. Sutton, "Population, Economy, and Settlement in
farmer," who "aims for overproduction and so breaks even Post-Revolutionary Keos: A Cultural Anthropological Study"
in a poor year and produces a surplus in an average in orCherry, Davis, and Mantzourani (supra n. 23) 383-402.
good year" (152; emphasis in original). It would be just as93 Whitelaw (supra n. 23) 403 (my emphasis). His claims
apposite to postulate that, in Greece, sensible farmers aboutdo the utility of ethnoarchaeological research in the
not stay farmers: see Aschenbrenner's (supra n. 76) "reluc- interpretation of the past in general (452) are, however,
as vague as those made by previous researchers.
tant farmers." It also appears from Halstead's text (147) that

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19951 MODERNITY AND THE PAST-STILL-PRESENT 77
however subtle, to reflect on the distance between so be it-yet not in the name of a liberal, pluralis
representation and reality.94 epistemology: approaching the archaeological record
Is this, then, the beginning of the end of modern- in Greece as the product of "strategists" located at
ism? The evidence at our disposal should be care- complex circumstances rather than as the produc
fully evaluated before we draw such a conclusion. of "farmers," "shepherds," etc., and with an awarenes
In 1981, archaeologists engaged in regional research of the historicity of such signs as "farmers" and "mod
in Greece and the Mediterranean pointed out the erns," could be at once humbling and invigorating.
problems that modernization (not modernity) posed
PERSPECTIVES: AGENCY, CIRCUMSTANCE, AND
for the practice of archaeology in those lands. Par-
THE LONGUE DUREE
ticipants in the conference "Archaeological Survey
in the Mediterranean Area"95 settled on few issues, I have singled out in this paper "agency at
among them, that "modern disturbance" is an im- face with circumstance" as a key to unders
portant factor of "present surface configuration of the relationship between present and past
a site." Those remarks, echoing Van Wersch's a de- account. More specifically, I have suggested
cade earlier, had a very good point;96 still, the resenting the Messenians of the 1960s as nat
association of modernization with destruction of
ants, inhabiting the margins of time, pe
archaeological sites in the Mediterranean was at in their cyclical calendar, was critic
caught
times cast in peculiar terms: as one discussant put need for scientific authenticity and l
in its
among
it, "several places in the Mediterranean area are now both classical and anthropologica
suffering from intensive agricultural exploitation."97
ologists. MME's vision of the present in Me
But, far more important: I regard the discovery
intertwined with the project's "complex st
situation:"''99
made in the course of the first regional project in it was intertwined with conflicts about
Greece, that man-in-his-environment is capable of
and concerns with the shape of archaeological prac-
lies, as an extremely important one. NeitherticeMME
in Greece, and with threats to the identity of that
nor any other archaeological project in Greece to vis-a-vis an old-fashioned, "aristocratically-
practice
date has explored the potential of that discovery.
biased"'100 tradition of knowledge in the home de-
We should for a moment remember Umberto Eco partment and a new, glamorous, and aggressive fash-
and his effort to define the notion of the sign inknowledge in neighboring departments. Such
ion of
the simplest of terms:98 we should remember,tensions
that left discrete traces on MME's construal of
is, not simply that the possibility of telling the the
truth
present-past relationship, a construal that I have
called
is predicated upon the possibility of telling lies, but"modernism." I noted that modernism was
also, that beings who can lie are, above all, beings
tactically deployed, however reluctantly, to establish
who can signify; in short, that "farmers" are able
the to
"dynamic," "masculine," "Western" identity of the
engage in representation just as much as we, "archae-
Expedition - at the expense of the identity of the
ologists" and "scientists," are. What MME's research-
Messenians, who were construed as lacking in pre-
ers discovered is that modern farmers- and, I would
cisely those elements. I also have tried to show that,
dare think, those of the "target period," the 13th
as cen-
an epistemology, modernism is problematical, be-
tury B.C.- are, and were, not only producers of cause
bread,it incorporates contradictory notions, such as
wine, and olive oil, but also producers of meaning;
the past-still-present and a time with a center and
they were able to use that meaning strategically, de-
margins, with the center being on directional time,
pending on circumstances, and they did so routinely.
and the margins being on cyclical time. At least one
of MME's researchers, Aschenbrenner, seems to me
If that means that we should "grant them equal rights,"
94 Cherry, Davis, and Mantzourani (supra n. 23) 478-79.

substituting for something else. This something else does
95 Keller and Rupp (supra n. 13), esp. 4.
not necessarily have to exist .... If something cannot be
96 Cf. Cherry (supra n. 73) 377. used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the
97 A.J. Ammerman, in Keller and Rupp (supra n. 13)truth:
59 it cannot in fact be used 'to tell' at all."
(my emphasis). For the opposite attitude toward the inten-9" M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality 1: An Introduction
sification of agriculture vis-ai-vis the practice of archaeol-
(New York 1980) 93: "[Power] is the name one attributes
ogy, see Thompson (supra n. 47) 100-101. to a complex strategical situation in a particular society."
98 U. Eco, A Theory of Semiotics (Bloomington 1976) 7:100 See McDonald (supra n. 56) xv.
"A sign is everything which can be taken as significantly

94.66.56.99 on Tue, 23 Nov 2021 13:07:15 UTC
78 M. FOTIADIS, MODERNITY AND THE PAST-STILL-PRESENT
to have recognized that the project's factual claims There are indeed benefits to be gained from broad-
about the present also needed to be balanced. Such ening our perspective beyond agencies and their im-
problems notwithstanding, book reviewers found the mediate circumstances, and from considering long-
image of present-day Messenia fascinating and edi- term structures and forces, the longue durie. After all,
fying for almost everyone. Colleagues and students, the story told about Messenia in 1972 would not have
including myself, followed. In the new era of archae- absorbed so much of my energy if it were not so anal-
ological practice in Greece that thus began, mod- ogous in its effect to the stories told about Greece
ernism proved a powerful representational strategy in the 19th century- in contexts involving ostensibly
both for reconstructing the past and for safeguard- different agencies and circumstances. At such a
ing the privileged identity of the researchers. thought, agency and circumstance lose their salience;
I find it hardly necessary to stress that agency and they become submerged as insignificant constituents
circumstance were far more complex than I have of a long-term tendency. What we are left with as
been able to represent. One might consider a host irreducible elements, transmitted from generation
of other parameters, local and global, from personal to generation, are an ideological longue durie, and
friendships and dislikes to patterns of funding also, a corpus of tactics, like the following: "Exem-
archaeological research, the Greek policy for dis- plary choice of a marginal population is an effective
bursing excavation permits, and Greece's subordi- way- through metonymy- of marginalizing an en-
nate location in the Free World of the 1960s. What tire subordinate nation."102 Allochronism, the habit
I have done is to concentrate on the most directofjustifying
link, subordination by placing ourselves and
that between the dynamic of the disciplinary the milieu
subordinate societies in distinctly different times,
and disciplinary knowledge. What attracted my is another
at- of those tactics.
tention to that link in the first place is the widely

I would like to think that archaeological practice
shared conviction that the circumstances in whichand
we, knowledge in Greece and elsewhere are possible
without resort to such tactics. Recent indications
disciplinary practitioners, routinely find ourselves-
those "complex strategical situations"- leave noare good; however, that remains more "unfinished
trace
on the shape of knowledge we produce. Modernism business."103
in archaeology-not only in Greek archaeology-

has removed the knowing subject from the field of
objectivity. I feel the urgency for more balanced ac-
counts. To the extent that this is an appeal, it isDEPARTMENT
one OF ANTHROPOLOGY
for examining disciplinary knowledge and evidence INDIANA UNIVERSITY
in relation to the forms of power that bring them BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA 47405
to light."~' MFOTIADI@UCS.INDIANA.EDU
101l See also Harding (supra n. 27), esp. her chapter of his active life as a businessman between Alexandria,
"'Strong Objectivity' and Socially Situated Knowledge." Egypt (where, before World War I, he became the owner
102 Herzfeld (supra n. 30) 75. of a hotel), and Thessaloniki (where, between World War
103 This paper is dedicated to the memory of my mater- I and II, he represented a Messenian commercial firm).
nal grandfather, Constantinos Chryssoulis (1887-1960), a He was, of course, unique-like all grandfathers.
Messenian, born in a village that he left. He spent most

94.66.56.99 on Tue, 23 Nov 2021 13:07:15 UTC

Fotiadis - 1995 - Modernity and The Past-Still Present

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Modernity and the Past-Still-Present: Politics of Time in the Birth of Regional

Archaeological Projects in Greece

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/506879

Archaeological Institute of America is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and

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Abstract the history of Greek archaeology, this was not the

American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995) 59-78

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endar of crop activities" would be useful toplex

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Project by directly pointing to the To begin, the notions of

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between the two his-environment"

31 This dubious distinction applies to myself as well, in

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within them.36 Understanding

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dition of venerable the ruins Schools and and obje th

42 The theme of conservatism of classical archaeology

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multidisciplinary teams.59 "Race" and and nationwere

no longer central analytical categories of Anglo-

58 G.W.E Hegel, The Philosophy of History (Buffalo 1991)

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rary inhabitants [of Greece] pears

65 For countless examples of such "lively accounts" see

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the age-old equilibrium marks: "Using the 1928 census

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for it makes Messenia's marginality example of spatialization

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searchers from researched,

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81 Carothers and McDonald (supra n. 4) 459; W.A.

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virtue of their ephemeral relationship

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conducted, between classical and

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94 Cherry, Davis, and Mantzourani (supra n. 23) 478-79.

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tention to that link in the first place is the widely

in archaeology-not only in Greek archaeology-

for examining disciplinary knowledge and evidence INDIANA UNIVERSITY

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