Contested Antiquity: Archaeological Heritage and Social Conflict in Modern Greece and Cyprus . ed. by Esther Solomon (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Contested Antiquity: Archaeological Heritage and Social Conflict in Modern Greece and Cyprus. ed. by Esther Solomon Artemis Leontis (bio) Esther Solomon, editor, Contested Antiquity: Archaeological Heritage and Social Conflict in Modern Greece and Cyprus. New Anthropologies of Europe series. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021. Pp. xii + 330. 43 illustrations, 3 tables. Cloth $105.00, Paper $48.00, and E-book $47.00. A standout feature of this book on the social life of antiquities in Greece and, in one case, Cyprus is the range of subjects, issues, approaches, and disciplines covered under the rubric of “contested antiquity.” Artifact displays in Athens, excavated objects from Asine, the landscape of Dodona, and the Stoa of Attalos are all received as “antiquity,” which is understood as the record of past human activities. But what are antiquity’s connections with Greece’s Cold War international politics, Thessaloniki’s memory wars, or a former prison site? Contested Antiquity: Archaeological Heritage and Social Conflict in Modern Greece and Cyprus, carefully edited by Esther Solomon, brings together ten articles by anthropologists, archaeologists, museologists, geographers, and heritage practitioners whose work represents the current state of the interdisciplinary critical discussion about archaeological heritage in Greece. It is an exciting, demanding book and should be read by anyone in any discipline interested in the entanglements of ancient materials with people, power, and sociopolitical conflicts in the present era. About these entanglements, Solomon makes a sweeping claim: “Since the nineteenth century, almost all conflicts characterizing social reality in Greece and Cyprus have been linked to the use, and more generally the perception, of the two countries’ ancient material culture” (35). Solomon’s introduction (1–49) sets the stage while demonstrating impressive control of an extensive bibliography. She opens with a wide frame, reminding readers of the simultaneous global and local positions of Greek antiquity that have made archaeology “one of the most symbolically loaded disciplines” in the modern Greek nation-state (3). Western powers, foreign antiquarians and, later, archaeologists, the Greek state, and heritage institutions have all been involved in mobilizing archaeology’s symbolic capital. In different ways, each of these has made archaeology “an important agent that united modernity [End Page 293] with nation-building, colonialism, and territorial establishments” (4). Later, in the last two decades of the twentieth century, scholarship informed by post- processual, poststructuralist, and postcolonial approaches turned attention to the ideological uses of archaeology. Critiques came from archaeology (Shanks and Tilley 1992; Trigger 1989; Hamilakis and Yalouri 1996), history and meta-history (Lowenthal 1988; Brown and Hamilakis 2003), anthropology (Herzfeld 1982, 1988, 2002), and literary criticism (Tziovas 1989; Leontis 1995; Gourgouris 1996). Especially significant was the ethnographic turn in the study of ancient heritage (Herzfeld 1991, 1997; Yalouri 2001; Hamilakis 2007; Hamilakis and Anagnostopoulos 2009; Stroulia and Buck Sutton 2010), which called attention to the dynamic role of objects in human society and to the question of how present day communities are involved in the politics of the past. Important work from a visual-cultural perspective followed in the 2000s (Damaskos and Plantzos 2008). Solomon has herself been part of the Archaeological Dialogues, a multidisciplinary collectivity formed in Athens to undertake a “critical and reflective dialogue about antiquities and archaeology in contemporary society” (Archaeological Dialogues 2015). A panel that she chaired on “Archaeology and Memory Wars”—on the role archaeology may play not only in creating official public memory but also in exposing “dissonant,” “difficult,” “dark,” and “variously contested” heritage (2)—prepared the ground for the present volume. The articles that follow are well-researched case studies built on knowledge of Greek archaeology and its broader ramifications, each with a carefully honed argument on some contentious issue that relates to contemporary social or political reality. Each chapter could stand alone in an academic journal, but helpful cross-references reveal many subtle interconnections among them. The organization of the book into three parts draws attention to three axes of conflict, each characterized by power differentials among the agents involved. Part I, “Between Nationalism, Colonialism, and Crypto-Colonialism: Historical Perspectives and Current Implications,” contains four articles that work through the tensions between Greek and foreign interests with respect to ancient Greece. In chapter 1, “Hellas Mon Amour...