Archaeological Institute of America

Review: Review Article: Houses and Households

Author(s): Barbara Tsakirgis
Review by: Barbara Tsakirgis
Source: American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 100, No. 4 (Oct., 1996), pp. 777-781
Published by: Archaeological Institute of America
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/506679
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 Houses and Households
BARBARA TSAKIRGIS
ERETRIA, FOUILLES ET RECHERCHESVIII: LE QUAR-
TIERDE LA MAISONAUXMOSAYQUES,
by Pierre Du-
crey,Ingrid R. Metzger,and Karl Reber.Pp. 190.
Editions Payot, Lausanne 1993. SF 129. ISBN
2-601-03119-0.
LOCRI EPIZEFIRI IV: Lo SCAVO DI MARAS"A SUD. IL
SACELLOTARDO-ARCAICOE LA "CASA DEI LEONI;'
edited by MarcellaBarra Bagnasco.(Studi e ma-
teriali di archeologia 4.) Pp. xv + 445, pls. 107,
plans 3, tables 42. Le lettere, Florence 1992. Lit
320,000. ISBN 88-7166-097-8.
STUDIA IETINA IV: DAS PERISTYLHAUS1 VON IAITAS:
ARCHITEKTURUND BAUGESCHICHTE,byKatharina
Dalcher. Pp. 183, pls. 82, plans 13. Archaolo-
gisches Institut der Universitdit Ziurich, Zurich
1994. ISBN 3-905-099-08-X.
COSA IV: THE HOUSES, by VincentJ.Bruno and Rus-
sell T Scott. (MAAR 38.) Pp. xxii + 211, pls. 120,
figs. 47. Pennsylvania State University Press, Uni-
versity Park 1993. ISBN 0-271-00782-6.
HOUSES AND HouSEHOLDS: A COMPARATIVESTUDY,
by Richard E. Blanton. Pp. xiii + 272, figs. 60,
tables 25. Plenum Press, New York 1994. $45.
ISBN 0-306-44444-5.
Until after the Second World War,domestic architec-
ture in the Greek world tended largely to be overlooked.
While some sites with well-preserved, numerous, or im-
pressive houses, such as Olynthos or Delos, excited public
and scholarlyattention, domestic architecture wasstudied
less often than the public architecture of the sanctuary
and the agora.
The reasons for the neglect of houses can be found in
both the highbrow world of scholarship and the lowbrow
world of the tourist-travelerto Greece. Scholars have fo-
cused their attentions on the monuments of public archi-
tecture because such buildings are better built than houses
and illustrate many of the extant texts. What better way,
after all, to illuminate Pericles' funeral oration and its ex-
1E. De Miro, "Il quartiere ellenistico-romano di
Agri-
gento," RendLinc ser. 8, 12 (1957) 135-40.
" Recent studies of this sort include H. Drerup, "Pros-
tashaus und Pastashaus: Zur Typologie des griechischen
Hauses," MarbWinckProg 1967, 6-17; G. Bulla, Typologische
Darstellung griechischer Innenhofhduser (Diss. Munich 1970);
S. Sinos, Die vorklassischen Hausformen in der
Agiiis (Mainz
777
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position of empire, than to look at the Parthenon,the phys-
ical embodiment of all that Thucydides has Pericles say.
Women are best not mentioned, saysPericles,even the good
ones, so the houses in which they spent their days were
not held up for examination. Travelersto Greek lands have
neglected ancient domestic architecture because the re-
mains are generally so poorly preserved that they cannot
be understood by the lay visitor. Excavated areas of do-
mestic architecture lie under weeds, or worse, trash, be-
cause tourists never visit them.
The result for the scholar interested in ancient houses
has been that few houses were excavated in the past, and
when they were, publication of the residential quarters
languished far more than that of public buildings. Those
who dispute these claims have only to visit Paestum in
southern Italy, or Agrigento in Sicily- two sites where the
excavated residential districts are nearly as great in area
as that occupied by the more famous temples. The resi-
dential district at the former site appears not in print at
all; the latter district merits a six-page publication.'
Greek houses havelong been the subject of studies deal-
ing with architectural typologies, but those studies were
often based on the remains at a few sites. In dissertations,
articles, and books, houses have been debated and clas-
sified as pastas,prostas,or peristyle houses.2With the classi-
fication of types have come other studies that attempt to
relate the types to each other and to establish, where
possible, evolutionarydevelopments that explain the wan-
ing of one type of house and the rise of another.
The past several decades, and in particular the past 20
years, have seen a sea change in the excavation and pub-
lication of domestic architecture. Not only have more
houses been uncovered than in the past, but they have also
been written about more. Excavationreports, such as the
four reviewed here, have multiplied and now allow for the
analytical and synthetic studies that have also appeared
in recent years.Moreimportantly,we haveseen the increase
in the number of books that place the ancient Greek house
in its cultural and social context in Greece and those that
attempt a cross-culturalapproach, comparing the Greek
house to others throughout the world and the centuries.
A notable example of the first type of study is Haus und
Stadtim klassischenGriechenland, now in a second edition,
an attempt to see Greek houses and house-types as re-
sponses to political and social ideals in the Greek city-
state.3Such an analysis of the Greek house would not be
possible without the necessary publication of the remains
of Greek houses, and it is perhaps because of the increase
1971); C. Krause, "Grundformen des griechischen Pastas-
hauses," AA 1977, 164-79; and D. Fusaro, "Note di archi-
tettura domestica greca nel periodo tardo geometrico e
arcaico," DialArch 4 (1982) 5-30.
"W. Hoepfner and E.L. Schwandner, Haus und Stadt im
klassischen Griechenland2(Wohnen in der klassischen Polis
1, Munich 1994).
778 BARBARA TSAKIRGIS
in excavation reports of houses that such studies are now
feasible. The cross-cultural approach is best seen in Susan
Kent's edited volume, DomesticArchitectureand the Use of Space,
a collection in which an important article by MichaelJame-
son appears (see below).4 The book by Blanton, reviewed
here, attemptsjust such a cross-cultural approach, although
it does not analyze ancient Greek houses.
The most recent works on Greek houses are some of
the most important, because their authors see Greek houses
as part of the urban fabric of the polis and part of Greek
life as a whole. Here may be the real turning point in the
study of Greek houses, the shift in focus from domestic
architecture to the household that the architecture em-
bodied and contained. Exemplary in its new point of view
is the work of Michael Jameson. In "Domestic Space and
the Greek City-State," a chapter in Kent's volume noted
above, and in a slightly different form in a collection of
articles on the Greek city,5Jameson briefly but searchingly
asks some questions and explores some areas that have
never before been asked of and examined in Greek houses.
He examines the oikos itself, the household, not just the
house, and sets the stage for future presentations and ex-
aminations of Greek houses. Nicholas Cahill's study of the
use of space in the houses at Olynthos is the type of work
that has resulted from this change of focus.6
Jameson and, increasingly, other scholars are asking
new and different questions in their examination and
discussion of Greek houses. Details of plans continue to
be described, and architectural types continue to be de-
bated, but such diverse issues as gendered space, rooms
for public versus private interaction, sleeping arrange-
ments, internal traffic patterns, and lighting have now
entered the scholarly discussion.' While the house as ar-
chitecture is the setting for such activities and concerns,
it is now with the full recognition of the human inhab-
itants that many scholars now excavate, report, or examine
Greek houses.
Because one of the books reviewed here concerns Ro-
man houses, let me add a brief mention of the attention
that they have received. Perhaps because of the extraor-
dinary preservation of the houses and villas at Pompeii
and around the Bay of Naples, Roman houses have elic-
ited more interest than their Greek counterparts. The ex-
tant architecture, standing up to the second story in some
4S. Kent ed., Domestic Architecture and the Use of Space:
An Interdisciplinary Cross-culturalStudy (Cambridge 1990).
5M. Jameson, "Private Space and the Greek
City," in O.
Murray and S. Price eds., The GreekCityfrom Homer to Alex-
ander (Oxford 1990) 171-95.
1 9E.g., P. Ducrey and I.R. Metzger, "La Maison aux mo-
N.D. Cahill, Social and Spatial Planning in a Greek City
(Diss. Univ. of California, Berkeley 1991).
7See, e.g., S. Walker, "Women and Housing in Classical
Greece: The Archaeological Evidence," in A. Kuhrt and
A. Cameron eds., Imagesof Womenin Antiquity (Detroit 1983)
81-91; C. L6hr, "Griechische Hiiuser: Hof, Fenster, Tiiren
nach 348 v. Chr.,"in W-D. Heilmeyer and W. Hoepfner eds.,
Licht und Architektur (Tiibingen 1990) 10-19. Most recently,
see the abstracts from the colloquium "Household Archaeol-
ogy," held at the 1995 meetings of the Archaeological In-
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[AJA 100
cases, and the recovery of remains ranging from painted
wall stucco and mosaic floors to bowls containing the last
meals of the occupants, have excited both scholarly and
popular interest and have provided the evidence neces-
sary for the types of social studies of houses now being
produced for the Greek house. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill,
in his seminal article on the social structure of the Roman
house, notes that at the time of his writing no one had
yet attempted a synthesis of the Greek house.8 What has
been produced in the decade following his article has be-
gun to fill the lacuna that Wallace-Hadrill noted.
One last, but intriguing, question to ponder is why
we have seen such increased attention paid to Greek
domestic architecture and the related concerns of house-
holds. A cynic might claim that there are simply too few
temples to go around, and that one can write only so many
books about the Parthenon and Periclean architecture. A
less cynical and, I hope, more accurate claim might be
that scholars have begun to realize that the social and
political issues that underlay much of the Greek civiliza-
tion and history about which we teach and write is, in some
cases, better seen in houses than in public monuments,
whose design and decoration are more restricted by con-
vention and public demand than is the case with domestic
architecture.
With this brief history and these thoughts in mind, let
us first examine four of the volumes reviewed here; the
fifth, a theoretical approach to houses and households,
is discussed last. These four books are reports of houses
excavated in different parts of the Mediterranean. The
house at Eretria is Greek and in Greece itself; the houses
at Locri Epizefiri and at Monte lato are in the Hellenized
West, on the Italian peninsula and the island of Sicily, re-
spectively, while those at Cosa are Roman houses in former
Etruscan territory. All houses reported and discussed date
primarily to the Late Classical and Hellenistic periods.
Since this discussion began with the issues most per-
tinent for Greek houses, it is appropriate to start with
the Eretrian house. The House of the Mosaics has been
known for some time; accounts of both its architecture
and its mosaics have appeared in journals and books over
the last two decades9. The house is one of several that the
Swiss archaeological team has excavated and it has
contemporaries of similar type and of larger dimensions
stitute of America in San Diego, AJA 100 (1996) 349-50.
A. Wallace-Hadrill, "The Social Structure of the Ro-
man House," PBSR 43 (1988) 43-97. For the author's more
developed ideas, see Houses and Society in Pompeii and Her-
culaneum (Princeton 1994).
saiques i Eretrie," AntK 22 (1979) 3-13; K. Reber, "Zurarch-
itektonischen Gestaltung der Andrones in den Hausern
von Eretria," AntK 32 (1989) 3-7; Ducrey, "Architecture et
po6sie: Le cas de la Maison aux mosaiques in
Etretrie,"
R. Etienne et al. eds., Architectureet poisie: Hommageci George
Roux (Lyons 1989) 51-62; and K. Salzmann, Untersuchungen
zu den antiken Kieselmosaikenvon den Anfdngen bis zum Beginn
der Tesseratechnik(Berlin 1982) 90-91.
1996] HOUSES AND HOUSEHOLDS
at Eretria itself. What distinguishes the house from its neigh-
bors are its numerous well-preserved floor mosaics of high
quality.
The report on the Eretrian house is divided into several
chapters, mostly devoted to the architecture and the arch-
itectural adornment of the house. Five different authors
present the history of the quarter, architecture of the house,
architectural elements, water system, mosaics, ceramics and
small finds, inscriptions, coins, and a tomb that was set
into the house in the Hellenistic period. The finds covered
here are considerable in number, although a not quite com-
plete array of the evidence necessary for a discussion of
the house and its attendant household; notably absent are
floral and faunal remains. The variety and number of finds
and materials considered may be due to two factors: first,
only one complete house is discussed here (two partially
excavated houses appear briefly in the report); and sec-
ond, several authors, with different areas of expertise, have
written the report. Interpretation of the material is en-
hanced by numerous drawings and photographs. Especially
welcome is the large scale of the actual state plan; too often
the disregard for domestic architecture has resulted in re-
duced scale plans of houses that are equal in size to small
temples. Useful for mosaic specialists as well as for art his-
torians and students are the numerous color photographs
of the mosaics. While the quality of the photographs var-
ies, in the main they are extremely sharp and provide ex-
cellent documentation of the technique, color, composi-
tion, and style of the mosaics.
This book on the Eretrian house gives the reader an
excellent sense not only of the architecture of the house,
but also of the life lived there. The information available
here supports discussion of the use and decoration of
rooms and the interaction between and interdependence
of rooms, among other topics. As other questions occur
to the reader or scholar, many of these too can be answered.
The publication of the House of the Lions and its Late
Archaic predecessor at Locri Epizefiri is quite comparable
in scope to the Eretria publication. The presentation of
the house's architecture and that of its predecessor is fol-
lowed by accounts of the stratigraphy and the small finds
of all types, including faunal remains; a dozen different
authors are responsible for the accounts. The house is de-
scribed very fully in both the text and the companion vol-
ume of illustrations; drawings include plans and sections
color-coded for each phase of the house and detailed ac-
tual state plans. The architecture is both described and
placed in its architectural context by comparison with do-
mestic architecture in mainland Greece, as well as in the
rest of the Hellenized West.
These first two volumes contrast in organization with
the account of the house at Monte Iato. In the latter pub-
lication, the architecture of the house is treated almost
independently of the small finds, which have in the past
or will in the future be treated in separate volumes. For
the student of architecture, and especially of domestic ar-
"I M.L. Morricone
Matini, Mosaici antichi in Italia: Pav-
imenti di signino repubblicanidi Roma e dintorni (Rome 1971);
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779
chitecture, the publication of the house at Monte lato is
especially valuable because of its numerous superb photo-
graphs and its considerable section on comparanda; the
latter takes up ca. 40 % of the text of the volume. This house
at Monte lato, a two-story building with two courtyards,
was well appointed with opus signinum floors and painted
wall stucco; this interior decoration will be treated in a
later volume. The small finds that are catalogued here are
only those that provide evidence for the dating of the house;
the descriptions of the finds are illustrated by ample profiles
of the pottery. While the treatment of the architecture it-
self is full and admirable, it does not allow, with a single
volume, the same analyses and examination of the life of
the house's inhabitants as do the accounts of the houses
at Eretria and Locri.
The fourth of these excavation reports, that on the
houses at Cosa - in contrast with the previous three, which
each covers essentially a single house - presents two blocks
of houses. Unlike those at Eretria, Locri, and Monte lato,
these Cosan houses experienced four phases of building
and rebuilding. Each phase is amply documented here and
the alterations from one period to the next are clearly de-
scribed. One wishes that the textual descriptions were bet-
ter supported by the drawings and plans; most are of such
a small scale that it is impossible to see details of the ar-
chitecture and construction. Such reduction is all the more
unfortunate since the drawings appear to be of high qual-
ity. In some places (e.g., pp. 14-15), it is difficult to follow
the text from the plan provided.
The presentation of the architecture of the houses at
Cosa is not accompanied by a fully considered compar-
ison of the buildings with their domestic neighbors and
contemporaries; some mention is made of the villa at Set-
tefinestre, although this large building differs in many ways
from the modestly scaled houses in the urban setting of
Cosa. While one may argue that a comparative study is
not necessary for a volume reporting architectural remains,
such an analysis does enable the reader to understand bet-
ter the houses under consideration. Where comparative
material is mentioned, it seems not to be the most recent
accounts that are cited. For example, the comparanda for
the opus signinum pavements should include the work of
Morricone Matini and others in the same series, as well
as the estimable but older work of Blake."'
Like the publication of the house at Monte lato, the
treatment of the Cosan houses is not accompanied fully
by that of small finds. Here the number is even smaller
than in the treatment of the Sicilian house; a few, but clearly
not all, of the sherds are presented, without a catalogue,
but with drawn profiles. In the text "scant furnishings" are
referred to, but no furnishings are recorded. On page 24
we read of"gruels and stews simmered in ovoid pots," but
no pots, ovoid or otherwise, are presented for study. In
all, the Cosa volume leaves the reader wishing for more:
more mention of the small finds in the houses, more analy-
sis of the houses in their Italian and Mediterranean archi-
and M.E. Blake, The Pavements of the Republic and Early Em-
pire (MAAR 8, 1930).
780 BARBARA TSAKIRGIS
tectural context, and more discussion of the place of the
houses in the urban fabric of Cosa.
The differences among these four volumes cause one
to ask whether one method of reporting is better than an-
other. Is it better to treat the architecture exclusively, or
to present both the architecture and its domestic assem-
blage? Perhaps we should ask whether it is even fair to priv-
ilege one type of presentation over the other. Certainly
the differences among the publications stem in part from
the scope of excavation conducted at each site. Cosa is,
in the words of Stephen Dyson, a "megasite," a site exca-
vated over much of its area and over a long period of
time." Studies of small finds at such a site regularly in-
clude material from dozens of different buildings; to pub-
lish the small finds from just one house or small group
of houses would be to divorce those finds from their greater
context at Cosa. In contrast, the excavations at Monte lato
and at Locri have been on a smaller scale and perhaps
allow the excavators to include many types of finds in one
volume; however, those publishing the remains at Monte
lato have chosen not to include the small finds with the
architecture.
What is the scholar who is writing about houses and
households to do about the variety of styles of reporting?
One can wait for succeeding volumes on lamps, coins, pot-
tery of various periods, terracottas, etc., but sometimes one
must wait for a very long time. Sites that have been exca-
vated for a half century or more have produced such am-
ple material that a volume on architecture may be sepa-
rated by decades from one containing only some of the
small finds recovered from it. One (albeit imperfect) answer
to the problem is the inclusion, in at least a preliminary
fashion, of a catalogue of the small finds with its attendant
architecture. Such a catalogue is dependent on the good-
will of all parties involved, both the scholar responsible
for publishing the architecture, and those responsible for
the small finds. The accounts of the houses at Eretria and
Locri Epizefiri show that such an integrated volume can
be achieved.
The result of these publications of excavated material
and others like them is the increase in the number of an-
alytical and comparative studies of houses that have ap-
peared in recent decades. The final volume reviewed here
is a comparative study of peasant houses and households,
and it uses published accounts of houses such as those
reviewed here. Employing methodology derived from an-
thropology, archaeology, sociology, and architecture, Blan-
ton investigates the formal properties of numerous houses
throughout the world. The author is chiefly interested in
theories of consumer behavior, and he attempts to create
models for and to quantify how households make decisions
about the houses in which they live. Some of the questions
that Blanton asks of the houses in his study may be useful
for analyzing ancient houses, but the present study is de-
voted to buildings and their households as reported in
modern anthropological and ethnographic reports.
11S. Dyson,"Complacency and Crisis in Late Twentieth-
Century Classical Archaeology," in P. Culham and L. Ed-
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[AJA 100
In order to compare houses from vastly different geo-
graphical regions and cultures, Blanton uses graph theory
to model each house as a graph. The houses analyzed and
compared are in rural China, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand,
Java, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Iran, Iraq, Syria,
Turkey,Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen, and parts of Mesoamerica.
The graph model of the house is based on the number
of rooms and the degree to which these rooms are linked;
a further factor involves the variation in the use of the
spaces considered. The resulting graph models are used
by the author in his comparison of the houses and his de-
termination of whether variations and similarities are due
to different or similar social conditions within the house-
hold occupying a house.
One weakness in Blanton's study stems from the data
that he uses for creating the models of the houses; he re-
lies on published reports of houses and not on his per-
sonal observations of the buildings and their households.
Several times he has to admit that the published account
on which he depends is either silent or not explicit about
the information necessary for his model. Another prob-
lem is that the graphs do not make allowance for the di-
mensions of rooms. Large rooms are treated as equal to
small rooms in the analysis, although the size of a room
in ancient houses is one of the most easily noted indica-
tors of the importance of the space and the activities that
took place in it. Also not considered, probably because
such information did not appear in the published accounts,
is the matter of blocked doorways and passages whose lo-
cation has been altered. Former access to and egress from
a room should be compared to any present arrangement
in order to determine the changing attitudes toward and
use of space in the house. Too quickly dismissed in Blanton's
study are temporary barriers, such as wooden partitions
and cloth hangings. These can quickly change the access
to a room as well as its configuration and size; a movable
screen can even convert one room into two.
Also considered by the author is the exterior decora-
tion and elaboration of a house. Such adornment is viewed
as a marker that sends messages from the members of the
household to the world outside. While reports of such dec-
oration may be obtainable from modern houses (and the
author admits that some of the published records are also
not forthcoming on this information), most exterior adorn-
ment cannot be known from the archaeological remains
of Greek houses, which are largely preserved as a low stone
socle on which mudbrick once rose.
Given the flaws in Blanton's study, what is its worth for
those interested in ancient Greek houses and households?
The value to be derived here is from the questions asked
of the houses - questions about economic choices and so-
cial conditions, which are too often omitted in the discus-
sion of ancient houses. Also to be appreciated is that some
of the weaknesses in Blanton's study derive from the omis-
sions or incomplete reports in the publications on which
he relies. Since anthropological and ethnographic reports
munds eds., Classics:A Discipline and Professionin Crisis?(New
York 1989) 211-20.
1996] BOOK REVIEWS
contain first-handaccounts of the occupants of the houses,
reports of ancient houses, whose occupants are long since
dead, are even more deficient.
The lesson to be learned is that excavators should re-
cover all of the data that are in their power (and financial
backing) to recover, and report all of those data in as
timely and full a fashion as possible. Prehistorians have
been employing such simple yet effective techniques as
water-sievingfor many years;it is time for those of us work-
ing in later periods to do the same.Only with the resulting
BOOK REVIEWS
BLACKATHENA REVISITED, edited by Mary R. Lef-
kowitz and Guy M. Rogers. Pp. xxi + 522, maps
4. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel
Hill 1996. $55 (cloth); $19.95 (paper). ISBN
0-8078-2246-9 (cloth); 0-8078-4555-8 (paper).
Black Athena Revisited consists of over 500 pages of re-
actions, responses, and rebuttals to Martin Bernal's Black
Athena volumes, published at a remarkably accessible price.
It should be deemed required reading for all archaeolo-
gists and ancient historians who have, or will, come into
contact with either students or the general public-for
this academic topic is one that has been picked up by the
popular media and broadcast to the world at large over
the past few years.
A truly astonishing number of reviewers have written
about the two volumes of Black Athena (London 1987, 1991)
that have appeared to date; reviews of varying quality and
points of view can be found both in journals and daily
periodicals, ranging from the WashingtonPost and the New
YorkTimes Book Review to AJA, CurrAnthr,History Today,and
American Visions. Longer reactions have also appeared in
a number of published forums, in many cases with re-
sponses by Bernal juxtaposed, or following in the next is-
sue; examples include Arethusa,JMA,Journal of Women'sHis-
tory, and Archaeology.
As a compendium of both new and previously pub-
lished articles on the "Black Athena" debate, the present
volume is a partial (but not complete) rendering of the
historiography of the ongoing discussions. Most of the 20
essays included are thoughtful and well written; all are by
leading scholars, includingJ. Baines, M. Liverani, E Snow-
den, E. Vermeule, and E Yurco, and a number were written
expressly for this volume. As the notes on the back cover
of the book state, "topics covered include race and phys-
ical anthropology; the question of an Egyptian invasion
of Greece; the origins of Greek language, philosophy,
and science; and racism and anti-Semitism in classical
scholarship."
The editors are to be commended on their inclusion
(and thus rescue) of several important papers originally
scheduled to appear in a volume, now cancelled, that was
based in part on a panel on Black Athena held at the 1990
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781
array of data can we understand the full character and
range of the ancient Greek house and household. The vol-
umes reviewed here represent recent attempts to provide
us with information on which to base such understanding.
DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS
VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY
BOX 132, STATION B
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE 37235
TSAKIRB@CTRVAX.VANDERBILT.EDU
ARCE conference at Berkeley (e.g., Baines, pp. 27-48;
O'Connor, pp. 49-61). They are also to be congratulated
on obtaining permissions to reprint other significant es-
says previously published in more ephemeral locales (e.g.,
Vermeule's long diatribe against Bernal [pp. 269-79], which
first appeared in the New YorkReview of Books, 26 March
1992). Granted, not everything published or presented to
date as part of the ongoing discussion could be revised
or even reprinted, but a substantial cross-section has been
included, as indicated by this volume's length. Unfortu-
nately, it is apparent from a number of notable omissions
that no articles that had previously appeared elsewhere
as part of a formal, edited compilation (e.g., those in spe-
cial issues or sections of JMA, Journal of Women'sHistory,
or Arethusa)were reprinted in this volume. As a result, there
are no articles by J. Muhly, P. Bikai, J. Ray, G. Rendsburg,
or a number of other scholars whose presence is sorely
missed. Most noticeable is the dearth of essays on the evi-
dence for possible contacts between the Aegean and the
Near East; only one essay specifically on this topic is in-
cluded, by Sarah Morris (pp. 167-74; but cf. also pp. 425-27,
436-39), and even this is little more than an advertisement
for Morris's own book Daidalos and the Origins of GreekArt
(Princeton 1992), combined with an invective against mod-
ern "virulent nationalism and inter-ethnic violence" (p. 172).
The most glaring deficiency, however, is that the volume
suffers from being acutely one-sided, as few (if any) pro-
Bernal pieces have been included. The editors' biases are
clearly reflected by what was included and, perhaps more
importantly, by what was not.
Bernal himself was not allowed to reply to any of the
new pieces published here, which is lamentable but per-
haps understandable. What is also understandable, but de-
tracts substantially from the volume and contributes to
its one-sidedness, is the failure by the editors to include
any published responses (either by Bernal or other schol-
ars) to those articles that had previously appeared else-
where. This is a shame, for although little acknowledg-
ment is made anywhere in the text of this volume, Bernal
has already published rejoinders to many of these pieces,
e.g., his reply to Lefkowitz (pp. 3-23) in the New Republic
(9 March 1992) 4-5; his response to Palter (pp. 209-66)
in History of Science 32:4 (1994) 445-64; his spirited reply
to Vermeule (pp. 269-79) in The Bookpress2/3 (April 1992)