Pub Date : 2022-09-23DOI: 10.1017/S1380203822000253
P. Newson, R. Young
Ethics are fundamentally important to all forms of archaeological theory and practice and are embedded within many professional codes of conduct. The ethics of archaeological engagement with conflicts around the world have also been subject to scrutiny and debate. While archaeology and archaeological heritage are increasingly viewed as significant elements of post-conflict work, with much to contribute to rebuilding stable and secure societies, there has been limited acknowledgement and debate of post-conflict ethical issues and challenges for archaeologists. This paper is intended to stimulate discussion around major ethical issues, the problems and possible ways forward for post-conflict archaeology and archaeological heritage.
{"title":"Post-conflict ethics, archaeology and archaeological heritage: a call for discussion","authors":"P. Newson, R. Young","doi":"10.1017/S1380203822000253","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1380203822000253","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Ethics are fundamentally important to all forms of archaeological theory and practice and are embedded within many professional codes of conduct. The ethics of archaeological engagement with conflicts around the world have also been subject to scrutiny and debate. While archaeology and archaeological heritage are increasingly viewed as significant elements of post-conflict work, with much to contribute to rebuilding stable and secure societies, there has been limited acknowledgement and debate of post-conflict ethical issues and challenges for archaeologists. This paper is intended to stimulate discussion around major ethical issues, the problems and possible ways forward for post-conflict archaeology and archaeological heritage.","PeriodicalId":45009,"journal":{"name":"Archaeological Dialogues","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57574455","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-23DOI: 10.1017/S138020382200023X
Anders Ögren, Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson, J. Ljungkvist, Ben Raffield, Neil Price
Abstract In this paper, we argue that closer engagement with the field of new institutional economics (NIE) has the potential to provide researchers with a new theoretical toolbox that can be used to study economic and social practices that are not readily traceable in material culture. NIE assumes that individual actions are based on bounded rationality and that the existence of rules (institutions) and their enforcement – the institutional framework – influences agents’ actions by providing different incentives and probabilities for different choices. Within this theoretical framework, we identify a number of concepts, such as collective identity and mobile jurisdictions, that seem to fit what we know of Viking age economic systems. In applying these models to the available archaeological and textual data, we outline the ways in which further research could provide a new understanding of economic interaction within a rapidly evolving context of diaspora and change.
{"title":"New institutional economics in Viking studies. Visualising immaterial culture","authors":"Anders Ögren, Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson, J. Ljungkvist, Ben Raffield, Neil Price","doi":"10.1017/S138020382200023X","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S138020382200023X","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this paper, we argue that closer engagement with the field of new institutional economics (NIE) has the potential to provide researchers with a new theoretical toolbox that can be used to study economic and social practices that are not readily traceable in material culture. NIE assumes that individual actions are based on bounded rationality and that the existence of rules (institutions) and their enforcement – the institutional framework – influences agents’ actions by providing different incentives and probabilities for different choices. Within this theoretical framework, we identify a number of concepts, such as collective identity and mobile jurisdictions, that seem to fit what we know of Viking age economic systems. In applying these models to the available archaeological and textual data, we outline the ways in which further research could provide a new understanding of economic interaction within a rapidly evolving context of diaspora and change.","PeriodicalId":45009,"journal":{"name":"Archaeological Dialogues","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41713706","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-23DOI: 10.1017/S1380203822000241
Eloise Govier
Abstract The rise of Symmetrical Archaeology has subtly recast archaeology as the study of things and not the study of the past or past peoples. This new description of the archaeological endeavour is often met with criticism. This paper continues in the critical vein but embraces a different strategy of engagement. Here, second-wave Symmetrical Archaeology is brought to the fore: its historical development explored, its methodology outlined, its current theoretical basis assessed. Part critique, part defence, I consider the logical underpinning of the second-wave, focusing on ontology and agency. Utilizing Levi Bryant’s ontic principle, I attend to these two issues and frame this style of archaeology as Pre-critical Archaeology. A caveat seems necessary: whilst I spend time with Symmetrical Archaeology in this paper, that does not mean I am a convert. Rather, my ambition here is to see things from the point of view of a Symmetrical archaeologist.
{"title":"Pre-critical archaeology. Speculative realism and symmetrical archaeology","authors":"Eloise Govier","doi":"10.1017/S1380203822000241","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1380203822000241","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The rise of Symmetrical Archaeology has subtly recast archaeology as the study of things and not the study of the past or past peoples. This new description of the archaeological endeavour is often met with criticism. This paper continues in the critical vein but embraces a different strategy of engagement. Here, second-wave Symmetrical Archaeology is brought to the fore: its historical development explored, its methodology outlined, its current theoretical basis assessed. Part critique, part defence, I consider the logical underpinning of the second-wave, focusing on ontology and agency. Utilizing Levi Bryant’s ontic principle, I attend to these two issues and frame this style of archaeology as Pre-critical Archaeology. A caveat seems necessary: whilst I spend time with Symmetrical Archaeology in this paper, that does not mean I am a convert. Rather, my ambition here is to see things from the point of view of a Symmetrical archaeologist.","PeriodicalId":45009,"journal":{"name":"Archaeological Dialogues","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45096331","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-29DOI: 10.1017/S1380203822000228
L. Meskell
Abstract This article recounts an untold chapter in the life of archaeologist Froelich Rainey, specifically his ambition to collaborate with Soviet scholars and deploy his personal networks to foster mutual understanding across the Iron Curtain during the height of the Cold War. The picaresque and implausible life of Rainey, who entered wartime Vienna in the turret of a B-52 bomber and was a State Department consultant with CIA connections, frantic anti-communist and advisor to Henry Kissinger, reveals just what was at stake for research in the frozen north. Here, I uncover Rainey’s work on ice—from his archaeological explorations in Alaska and his vision for a network of Arctic archaeologists to his internationalist aspirations for world peace. Without doubt, Rainey was a fascinating character, but he also occupied a position from which a wide range of values can be excavated—about politics, security, race and global order in mid-century transitions.
{"title":"Rainey and the Russians: Arctic archaeology, ‘Eskimology’ and Cold War cultural diplomacy","authors":"L. Meskell","doi":"10.1017/S1380203822000228","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1380203822000228","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article recounts an untold chapter in the life of archaeologist Froelich Rainey, specifically his ambition to collaborate with Soviet scholars and deploy his personal networks to foster mutual understanding across the Iron Curtain during the height of the Cold War. The picaresque and implausible life of Rainey, who entered wartime Vienna in the turret of a B-52 bomber and was a State Department consultant with CIA connections, frantic anti-communist and advisor to Henry Kissinger, reveals just what was at stake for research in the frozen north. Here, I uncover Rainey’s work on ice—from his archaeological explorations in Alaska and his vision for a network of Arctic archaeologists to his internationalist aspirations for world peace. Without doubt, Rainey was a fascinating character, but he also occupied a position from which a wide range of values can be excavated—about politics, security, race and global order in mid-century transitions.","PeriodicalId":45009,"journal":{"name":"Archaeological Dialogues","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2022-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45441917","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-01DOI: 10.1017/S1380203822000149
T. Hodos
(PI Oliver Nakoinz and Simon Stoddart) of the CRC 1266 (Scales of Transformation – Human–Environmental Interaction in Prehistoric and Archaic Societies) (PI Johannes Muller) which is following these same principles of multi-scalar analysis to understand the relationship between the local and the global, focused on the relationship between Northern/Central Europe and the Mediterranean. I am also grateful for inspiring conversations with Prof. Saul Dubow on the high table of Magdalene about global history.
（PI Oliver Nakoinz和Simon Stoddart）的CRC 1266（史前和古代社会中的转型尺度-人类-环境互动）（PI Johannes Muller），该研究遵循这些相同的多尺度分析原则来理解当地和全球之间的关系，重点关注北欧/中欧和地中海之间的关系。我也很感激在抹大拉的高桌上与索尔·杜博教授就全球历史进行了鼓舞人心的对话。
{"title":"Balancing macro- and micro-scales in global-context understanding","authors":"T. Hodos","doi":"10.1017/S1380203822000149","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1380203822000149","url":null,"abstract":"(PI Oliver Nakoinz and Simon Stoddart) of the CRC 1266 (Scales of Transformation – Human–Environmental Interaction in Prehistoric and Archaic Societies) (PI Johannes Muller) which is following these same principles of multi-scalar analysis to understand the relationship between the local and the global, focused on the relationship between Northern/Central Europe and the Mediterranean. I am also grateful for inspiring conversations with Prof. Saul Dubow on the high table of Magdalene about global history.","PeriodicalId":45009,"journal":{"name":"Archaeological Dialogues","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46624004","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-01DOI: 10.1017/S1380203822000150
C. Riva, Ignasi Grau Mira
We thank sincerely all the respondents for their contributions, which have provided much food for thought, and for allowing us therefore to open up the debate further. These brief final words are not intended to settle the matter, as our genuine intention is to continue a debate that will help us to advance the discipline. We would like to structure our response according to four points: (1) our position vis-à-vis global archaeology; (2) the need to extend what we propose to other regions of the Mediterranean; (3) what globalization theory does not do for the Mediterranean in the 1st millennium B.C., and therefore our concerns with it vis-à-vis the problems we have raised; and (4) further solutions to achieve a truly post-colonial global archaeology. We begin by reiterating a point that we thought we had made clearly but feel we need to underline: our position is not against large-scale comparative approaches to research problems. We agree with Stoddart that we need to take up the challenge of global studies, but we must do it by not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We hence provided a solution to this challenge that fully embraces multiple scales of analysis, which belongs to a tradition that, as Stoddart rightly points out, has a long history, among others, in landscape archaeology; this solution, we proposed, also includes rehabilitating the micro scale, the value of which we, archaeologists who constantly confront the fragmentation of the documentation at our disposal at that scale, are best placed to appreciate – another point drawn out by Stoddart – and exploit to our advantage for a post-colonial global archaeology. The Iberian case study which we treated represents one of several, multiple examples which we could have used (and would have liked to use) in the varied Mediterranean of the 1st millennium B.C. – a veritable laboratory for comparative analysis – in order to draw out the problems we have raised. Originally, our conversation began as we compared and contrasted investment, whether of research funding and projects or intellectual interests at an international level, between Iberia and Etruria and began to write a piece comparing the two vis-à-vis Graeco-Roman areas. In doing so, we would have had the opportunity to further emphasize the biases, well laid out by Belarte, in the continuing investment in both financial support and intellectual efforts, in the Graeco-Roman Mediterranean. It is in this spirit that we deem Stoddart’s and Belarte’s invitation to extend what we propose to the several other non-Graeco-Roman regions (see below) as absolutely essential for resolving the problems we have outlined. We particularly welcome Belarte’s use of the example of North Africa: we simply cannot sustain a global view of the Mediterranean of the 1st millennium B.C. unless we have a command of the regional variety and variability of the basin and are therefore able to harness it analytically, where ‘regional’ pertains not to broad
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Pub Date : 2022-06-01DOI: 10.1017/S1380203822000101
C. Riva, Ignasi Grau Mira
Abstract Recently, voices have been raised regarding the challenges of Big Data-driven global approaches, including the realization that exclusively tackling the global scale masks social and historical realities. While multi-scalar analyses have confronted this problem, the effects of global approaches are being felt. We highlight one of these effects: as classical scholarship struggles to decolonize itself, the ancient Mediterranean in global archaeology pivots around the Graeco-Roman world only, marginalizing the non-classical Mediterranean, thus foiling attempts at promoting post-colonial perspectives. In highlighting this, our aim is twofold: first, to invigorate the debate on multi-scalar approaches, proposing to incorporate microhistory into archaeological analysis; second, to use the non-classical Mediterranean to demonstrate that historical depth at a micro level is essential to augment that power in our interpretations.
{"title":"Global archaeology and microhistorical analysis. Connecting scales in the 1st-milennium B.C. Mediterranean","authors":"C. Riva, Ignasi Grau Mira","doi":"10.1017/S1380203822000101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1380203822000101","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Recently, voices have been raised regarding the challenges of Big Data-driven global approaches, including the realization that exclusively tackling the global scale masks social and historical realities. While multi-scalar analyses have confronted this problem, the effects of global approaches are being felt. We highlight one of these effects: as classical scholarship struggles to decolonize itself, the ancient Mediterranean in global archaeology pivots around the Graeco-Roman world only, marginalizing the non-classical Mediterranean, thus foiling attempts at promoting post-colonial perspectives. In highlighting this, our aim is twofold: first, to invigorate the debate on multi-scalar approaches, proposing to incorporate microhistory into archaeological analysis; second, to use the non-classical Mediterranean to demonstrate that historical depth at a micro level is essential to augment that power in our interpretations.","PeriodicalId":45009,"journal":{"name":"Archaeological Dialogues","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46579074","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-01DOI: 10.1017/S1380203822000113
M. Belarte
Graeco-Roman models can only enhance our understanding of the complexity of the Mediterranean in the 1st millennium B.C. Close analysis discloses both specific temporalities and micro-dynamics in social processes. In other words, changing usage and participation in necropolises and sanctuaries in Iron Age Iberia highlight specific historical phases not dependent on pre-established etic frameworks in long-term processes. The analysis of both refined time lapses and the spatial micro-scale transformations of ritual participation has enabled us to observe the intensity and sequencing of constitutive practices that can be compared to what we know of Greek citizenship. In fact, such a comparative exercise can only be enriched by the incorporation of other well-known and well-investigated urban micro-regions such as southern Tyrrhenian Etruria, also subjected to a Graeco-Roman straitjacket as far as urbanism is concerned (Riva 2010, 2–8). Ultimately and beyond the Mediterranean, it is recognizing diversity at different scales that we come to an in-depth understanding of specific social phenomena comparatively beyond conventional interpretations and excessively broad views (Graeber and Wengrow 2021). The brief treatment of south-eastern Iberia is ultimately aimed at proposing a truly global archaeology, one which takes into account the variability of scales across both time and space. Mindful of its methodological potential, we thus advocate a microhistorical approach to global archaeology accompanying multi-scalar analysis. Despite this potential, scholarship proposing the integration of a microhistorical perspective is infrequent (Fahlander 2003; Boric 2007; Mimisson and Magnusson 2014; Ribeiro 2019) and much more so in studies related to the Mediterranean in the 1st millennium B.C. (Perego et al. 2019). We hope that our present review will contribute to further debates for a true global archaeology.
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Pub Date : 2022-06-01DOI: 10.1017/S1380203822000137
S. Stoddart
and that the authors themselves do not view Athenian citizenship as a standard norm against which all other modes of belonging should be measured. But such a presentation of contrasting examples is a reminder of how deeply ingrained a Greekand Roman-centric perspective still is. Riva and Grau Mira acknowledge the depth of this challenge themselves – they note, ‘This process of decentring and decolonization : : : has been put in jeopardy by recent Big History studies of long-term Mediterranean trajectories where the grand narrative’s preference for integration is largely for the Graeco-Roman world and the east of the basin’. The implication is that the Greek and Roman worlds remain at the centre, and ‘new additions’ made in the name of decolonization or decentring must be integrated with them, instead of the reverse. Riva and Grau Mira’s emphasis is quite rightly placed on the critical contributions of microhistorical archaeology; the degree to whichMediterranean archaeology has been colonized by our obsession with Greece and Rome (Dietler 2005), however, means that many of the themes and phenomena explored by a global archaeology will have been established within the same heavily biased context. That is to say, they have been identified because of their relevance to Greece and Rome.Without great care, the exercise in one-sided integration seems likely to repeat itself under a slightly different guise. Riva and Grau Mira are, of course, no strangers to this issue either. They note that their analysis of citizenship in south-eastern Iberia is only possible because notions of Athenian citizenship have been dramatically overhauled in recent years. Even so, we are left considering south-eastern Iberian as belonging as part of a much broader, more socially rooted form of ‘citizenship’ instead of discussing Athenian citizenship as one form of collective belonging exhibited more broadly in urbanizing contexts. The difference is subtle, but the implications are great. I do not mean to suggest that Mediterranean-wide comparison is impossible; on the contrary, it is essential. But perhaps a modified structure would be more fruitful. Instead of comparing seemingly ‘anomalous’ micro-scale examples to sweeping trends, like might be paired with like, and comparanda could be limited to equally microscopic case studies, evaluated through a shared bottomup process. By introducing data from traditionally marginalized regions and contexts into direct conversation with Greek and Romanmaterials (or even eschewing them altogether), a more balanced knowledge baseline might be established. From that baseline, new themes and phenomena may be identified that hold more equal relevance for all Mediterranean regions. Once such a knowledge landscape has been established – one that is less overtly colonized by its very nature – a decolonized global archaeology of the 1st-millennium Mediterranean may be a realistic goal.
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