Practicing Archaeology and researching present identities in no man's land: a view from the Tri - National Prespa Lake, in: Balkan Dialogues, Routledge 2017 (Maja Gori, Maria Ivanova eds). M. Gori, P. Lera, S. Oikonomidis, A. Papayiannis, A. Tsonos. (original) (raw)
Related papers
2017
Spatial variation and patterning in the distribution of artefacts are topics of fundamental significance in Balkan archaeology. For decades, archaeologists have been classifying spatial clusters of artefacts into discrete “cultures”, which have been conventionally treated as bound entities and equated with past social (or even ethnic) groups. The need for an up-to-date and theoretically informed dialogue on group identity in Balkan prehistory is the point of departure for this volume. Thirteen case studies covering the beginning of the Neolithic to the Middle Bronze Age and written by archaeologists conducting fieldwork in the region, as well as by ethnologists with a research focus on material culture and identity, provide a robust foundation for exploring these issues. Each essay challenges long-established interpretations and provides a new, contextualised reading of the archaeological record. Bringing together the latest research (with an intentional focus on the central and western Balkans, i.e. former Yugoslavia), the chapters offer original perspectives on Balkan prehistory with relevance to the neighbouring regions of Eastern and Central Europe, the Mediterranean and Anatolia.
2010. Practicing identity: a crafty ideal? Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry 10(2): 25-43.
This paper focuses on the materialization of technological practices as a form of identity expression. Contextual analyses of a Mycenaean workshop area in the Late Bronze Age citadel of Tiryns (Argolis, Greece) are presented to investigate the interaction of different artisans under changing socio-political and economic circumstances. The case study indicates that although certain technological practices are often linked to specific crafts, they do not necessarily imply the separation of job tasks related to the working of one specific material versus another. Shared technological practices and activities, therefore, may be a factor in shaping cohesive group identities of specialized artisans. Since tracing artisans' identities is easier said than done on the basis of excavated materials alone, we employ the concepts of multiple chaînes opératoires combined with cross-craft interactions as a methodology in order to retrieve distinctive sets of both social and technological practices from the archaeological remains. These methodological concepts are not restricted to a specific set of steps in the production cycle, but ideally encompass reconstructing contexts of extraction, manufacture, distribution and discard/reuse for a range of artefacts. Therefore, these concepts reveal both technological practices, and, by contextualising these technological practices in their spatial layout, equally focus on social contacts that would have taken place during any of these actions. Our detailed contextual study demonstrates that the material remains when analysed in their entirety are complementary to textual evidence. In this case study they even form a source of information on palatial spheres of life about which the fragmentary Linear B texts, so far, remain silent.
Bridges: Italy Montenegro series n. 1, 2019
After an introduction on the political and cultural activities of Sir Arthur Evans in the Balkans before his moving to Knossos, the paper introduces a brief discussion about the possibility of detecting different cultural identities through the material assemblages. The case-study presented concerns the changes that occurred in the Knossian burial customs during the mid-2nd millennium BC. After a first phase in which the funerary landscape around the palace is marked by multi-chambered tombs with hundreds of buried individuals and assemblages with many conical cups, new impressive burial customs appear around the mid-15th century BC. In the northern sector of the Knossos valley, previously not occupied by burials, single-chamber tombs with a long dromos and different approaches to depositions appear with very rich assemblages of weapons, jewellery and a new pottery set. This funerary custom is very similar to the burial uses of Mainland Greece and in the past has been interpreted as the proof of a Mycenaean presence at Knossos in that period. Later, in the Mavro Spileo cemetery, it is possible to detect signs of hybridization processes, with tombs and assemblages showing both old/local and new/foreign traits, testifying to the creation of a new material culture.
Archaeology across past and present borders (with M. Pieniazek and S. Votruba)
The objective of our session in Istanbul was to spark theoretical debate on archaeology at the crossroads of the Balkans, Aegean and Anatolia and its interrelationship with social and political life in this historically turbulent region. Modern political borders still divide European archaeology and obstruct research. This is particularly evident in the area of study, where archaeological interaction among neighbouring countries, such as Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, the F.Y.R. of Μacedonia and Albania, is practically inactive. While globalism is increasingly bounding different parts of the world in many different ways, the nationalistic approach in archaeological research is still present in our research region. The wish of the organizers of this session was to challenge national narratives, which often draw arguments from culture-historical methods in regional archaeology and feed into the rising ideology of nationalism. Reception of the past within the local perspectives of modern nation states and changing identities are the focus points: how far can breaks or continuities in the material culture serve as evidence for ethnic continuities, migrations, ethnogeneses, etc., and what is the socio-political background of such approaches? What is the potential of material culture towards defining modern and past identities? In the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age, the area encompassing the north Aegean and the Balkans was the stage for fascinating cultural entanglements. Domestic, cultic or public architecture, artefact groups and burial rites have always been employed in the process of describing archaeological cultures or defining prehistoric identities. However, these identities were not static, but rather, underwent constant transformations. How people and objects interacted and how objects and ideas changed their function in time and space were among the questions addressed in our meeting. Despite the fact that the north Aegean and the Balkans are geographically interrelated, they are almost never treated in archaeological terms as a cohesive topic; rather, they are usually regarded as being part of clearly distinct "cultures" that rarely interrelated. This is due to divisions by modern borders and powerful biases that have resulted from the different regional traditions in our discipline: The central Balkans and even north Greece are usually regarded as remote and exotic worlds within the Aegean prehistoric and classical archaeological narrative, while the Aegean is idealized in the archaeology of the Balkans. On the other hand, Anatolia or Asia Minor -the terminology depending on the viewpoint of the researcher -is a terra incognita for Aegean archaeology and vice versa. This traditional division between "Aegean", "Balkan" and "Anatolian" archaeology is especially marked in Late Bronze and Early Iron Age research. The outcome is a certain 'Balkanization' in regional archaeology, which promotes further cultural and political division through the construction of conflicting national-archaeological narratives. Within this division, the north Aegean and the central Balkans are often regarded as the periphery or the back water of neighbouring Aegean and Anatolian cultures, and their cultural contribution is discriminated by being -not always unconsciously -classified as non-innovative, passive and receptive, and often overlooked. Therefore, one important issue in the session was the re-evaluation of the local, "less renowned" cultures and their interactions in the broader cultural milieu. Colleagues representing different scholarly traditions and cultural backgrounds, who work in
Aegean Archaeology Group Annual Postgraduate Conference. June 17th and 18th, 2021. University of Cambridge, 2021
The main aim of this conference is to explore interpretative, theoretical, and methodological approaches to the study of material culture, which move beyond the concept of ‘identities’. We are looking for alternative ways of viewing the processes and outcomes of interactions between people and things, alternatives that depart from focusing on the instrumental role of material culture in configuring people’s own and others’ views of themselves. Whilst we acknowledge that all objects may play active roles in the formation and negotiation of ‘identities’ (gender, ethnic, cultural, etc.), we would like to ask instead – what else do objects and people do? What other questions can we be asking about our material? Answers to these questions may be sought at very different scales of archaeological analysis – from engagement between individuals and objects (e.g. materiality, cognitive archaeology), to interactions between individuals and groups across social and geographical boundaries (e.g. technology transfer and mobility, networks analysis, Marxist archaeology, etc.).
Memory and identity in LC I/LM IA Thera as reflected in settlement patterns and ceramic production The settlement patterns and ceramic production in LC I/ LM IA Thera are two subjects about which new evidence has emerged during the past twenty years. As a result, we are now in a better position to approach the topic of memory and identity of Theran society in the final phase before the eruption of the volcano. Recent surface surveys added more sites to the already known complex settlement pattern of LC I pre-eruption Thera including individual farms and rural settlements. Among the new sites is Raos, in the South Caldera, where a sophisticated building complex with frescoes was revealed. This brings Thera even closer to Crete than the rest of the Cyclades. On the other hand, most of the LC I sites dispersed in the island’s countryside were founded on earlier sites dating back to the Early Cycladic period, which shows a strong tradition and memory in the occupation processes. The excavations at both Akrotiri and Raos in the 2000s and 2010s increased the ceramic material from the Volcanic Destruction Level by hundreds of complete vases and thousands of sherds. A look at the pottery of the Volcanic Destruction Level based on all the material that has been found to date, old and new, is able to shed plenty of light on the modes and dynamics of both penetration of Minoan elements into Thera and transmission of the Cycladic past In addition to the imports from Crete a good many Minoan shapes, entirely unknown in the Cyclades, were produced locally, meeting the new requirements formed by the embracing of a Minoan way of life. The process of Minoan features penetrating Thera on the cultural and social level is considerably more complex than the penetration of Knossian features, for example, into other Minoan sites. From the moment a Minoan feature penetrated Theran pottery its course was independent of the course it followed in Crete where it originated. The autonomy of the Theran workshops is more noticeable with the creation by the Theran potters of a number of types drawn from the combination of some features of two different Minoan shapes. These improvisations show better than anything else that the Theran artists were not tied to a past that was not their own, such as the Minoan. They had no hesitation whatsoever in redesigning its products. A great many local pottery shapes, however, the main examples being the beaked jugs and nippled ewers, are found in the framework of the tradition that developed in the Cyclades during the EC and MC periods. Both plastic form and painted decoration express the continuation of the sense of sparseness and the disarming simplicity of Cycladic art in great respect. It is also of special importance that the predominant ritual libation sets, judging by their greater numbers, are the local traditional libation sets, the nipple-jug and the cylindrical rhyton. In conclusion the evidence shows cultural and social transformation in LC I pre-eruption Τhera, which brings it closer than ever to Crete and Knossos without being very far away from its deeply rooted local traditions and memories in site occupation on the one hand and art, religion and cult practices on the other that reflect the deepest foundations of every society.