The Archaeology of the Mediterranean World

Modernity and Knossos

On the recommendation of Phyllis Graham (archaeological librarian/archaeologist extraordinary), I picked up Cathy Gere's Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism.  It was officially the last book of my summer reading season, and it left me with much food for thought.

In particular, the book brought into focus the influence of modernism on archaeological practice outside of the context of the archaeology of nationalism where the most pronounced tendencies of modernist paradigms tend to appear.  This was useful to me in three ways.  First, it helped me understand what I meant when I quipped that the Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis might be one of the most modern archaeological sites in the Mediterranean.  In saying this, I didn't simply mean that the temple set atop the "sacred rock" lacked obvious ties to the past (they had been stripped away gradually over the course of numerous intellectual, archaeological, and architectural reconstructions), but that it forms the center point of a whole range of irrational feelings ranging from expressions of passionate nationalism to transferred affections of poets and thinkers ranging from Henry Miller to Freud.  Gere makes a compelling case for the place of Arthur Evans' Knossos in the modernist imagination by going well beyond the excavator's fantastic reconstructions to the sometimes dizzying thought-world that the palace and its Minoan inhabitants evoked across Europe. 

Second, the book pushed me again to return to my rather unformed work on Dream Archaeology.  In particular, Gere's arguments has encouraged me to return to some of my  episodes of Dream Archaeology in the 20th century and consider their relationship to the modernist moment in archaeology (for more on Dream Archaeology see here and here).  This will likely go back to Freud and also to the modernist movement in Greece, since some of my Dream Archaeologists are Greek.  (As an aside, it is interesting to note that Gere's book deals very little with modernism in a Greek context -- outside the almost requisite reference to Kazantzakis -- and it would have been interesting to see how Greek intellectuals engaged Evans' work on Knossos.)  I will certainly have to press Kostis Kourelis to read Gere's book and chat with him at the Modern Greek Studies Association meeting this fall about how Angellos Tanagras fits into a broader modernist movement which sought to bridge the gap between the rational and irrational and, in the process, validate the experience of a distinctly Greek past in the language of an pan-European intellectual movement.  Tanagras work to understand the power of seemingly "supernatural" Greek folk practices, like the evil eye or malevolent dreams, within a psychoanalytical perspective represents a kind of Greek counterpoint to Evans' mystical engagement with the site of Knossos.

Finally, Gere's work is going to take me back to Kourelis' "Byzantium and the Avant-Garde: Excavations at Corinth 1920s-1930s" to explore again how the broader modernist movement made room for the emergence of Byzantine and Early Christian archaeology within Greece.  Modernisms rejection of the overly-rationalistic Christianity of Western Protestantism must have led some to seek spiritual satisfaction in the familiar, yet challenging experiences of mystical Byzantine and Early Christian thought just as Evans took refuge in the world of the ancient Minoans.

In the context of Gere's work, A. Orlandos, perhaps the most important archaeologist of the Athenian Acropolis and a scholar who reported without comment on an episode of Dream archaeology, makes a little more sense.

More on Blogging

I try to read the odd book that deals with Web 2.0 stuff or blogging with an eye toward including a couple in a yet-to-be taught digital history class.  I am particularly interested in books that look at the history of some digital phenomena.  The time span for such a history is amazingly small; even the most optimistic readers of the blogging phenomenon don't trace the development of the medium earlier than the mid-1990s.  While interviews, articles in the popular press, and simple human memory go far to provide a foundation for writing "web history", other kinds of primary sources can be amazingly ephemeral and controlled by the vagaries of the roving-robots of the Internet Archive and cached browsers pages.

With this brief word of introduction, I'll offer a few modest observations of Scott Rosenberg's Say Everything: how blogging began, what it's become, and why it matters. (New York 2009).  It was a quick read by an accomplished journalist who provided a sound history of blogging from the first autobiographical pages of Jonathan Hall to the recent explosion of political bloggers.  The book focuses almost explicitly on the bloggers themselves with particular attention to folks who facilitated the development of the tools that most bloggers depend upon to engage their craft (folks like David Winer (of XML, RSS, et c. fame) and Evan Williams (of Blogger and now Twitter renown)).  Rosenberg manages to capture the personalities of these individuals in rather vivid style, which is fun even if some of the characters end up reading a bit like generic tech-hipsters and less like read folks. 

What was really odd about the book (and what perhaps separates it from the best kind of history of blogging) is that it deals almost not at all with the folks who actually read the blogs.  These are the people who ultimately made blogging a global phenomenon rather than a hobby for late 20th century ham-radio types.  Of course, blog readers, as a group, are somewhat less interesting.  They range from the bored housewife to the insomniac historian to the unemployed denizen of the public library to the technology consultant, and for whatever reason they found that a blogger out there had similar (or diametrically opposed) interests.  Moreover, these folk had access to the technology to keep up with a blog and perhaps even comment on it through the proliferation of personal computers in the public and private zone.  And these kinds of folks found in blogging a medium capable of producing a compelling message.  The slick Blogger, Moveable Type, or Wordpress, driven presentation, the reliability of the prose (both grammatically and in terms of its adherence to specific language of expertise), the links to other trusted websites or blogs (i.e. a relationship to a trusted community), or even the the relationship of the blogger to certain known and trusted non-internet based entities whether these be universities, corporations, print publications, or even the government.  The authority and influence accessible to bloggers was not simply a development of their own idiosyncratic genius nor was it it simply their ability to tap into or leverage a kind of "surplus authority" floating around the web.  The most interesting thing, to my mind, was that bloggers were able to establish a position of authority in this new media and challenge the longstanding and time tested authority of both general and specialized print publications.  And this wasn't accomplished simply because blogs were "better" or offered "better", quicker, more up-to-date news, it was because the web provided a medium where new relationships formed between authors and readers and from these new relationships new sources and forms of authority developed.

Thus, as romantic an image as Evan Williams cut in Scott Rosenberg's prose, he was only really one side of the equation.  The other side of the equations is a readership who were willing to embrace and trust blogging as a medium for conveying information (in some of the same ways that we (or, ahem, our students) are willing to trust Wikipedia as a medium) or  engage in a public debate with a certain faith their voices will not only be heard, but in an abstract, intangible way matter.  So as much as the authors of the blogs had to feel that they were doing more than shouting into the wind, the readers had to feel the same way.

Unpacking the change in American culture that made this possible requires more than just producing romantic character sketches of cyber pioneers, but exploring the complex intersection of technology, social organization, authority, and the very acts of readership and authorship in the late 20th century.  Blogging didn't just come about because people were willing to "say everything" but because people were willing to read everything.

Fortifications between the Megarid and Corinthia

Having worked in and thought about Corinth and the Corinthia for the past decade, it amazes me how little I've thought about its northern neighbor Megara -- despite the fact that we drive through the Megarid on the way from Athens to Corinth.

Philip J. Smith's book, The Archaeology and Epigraphy of Hellenistic and Roman Megaris, Greece.  BAR 1762. (Oxford 2008), should make the archaeology of this region more accessible.  Of particular interest to me are the fortification across the northern border of Mergara presumably situated to impede progress through the Isthmus.  Since scholars have generally regarded the Megarid as "neutral" through most of its history or at least militarily and politically subordinate to her southern neighbor, the fortifications along the border between the Corinthia and Megarid would seem to fit into a more ambiguous category of internal or regional fortifications designed to accomplish interregional goals or highly local ones rather then simply to protect the boundaries of an established state.

Wiseman documented the rubble fortifications at Lysi on Geraneia (20-22) which is the best local comparandum to the rubble fortifications across Mt. Oneion on the southern boundary of the Isthmian plain (see Caraher and Gregory 2006).  This rubble fort would seem to have less to do with fortifying the territory of Megara (or the Corinthia) than with blocking traffic across the Isthmus.  Smith follows Wiseman in suggesting that Cassander built this fortification in 316 BC when he was most active in the Peloponnesus (Smith, 31).  We've argued that our walls on Oneion further south are, in fact, somewhat earlier.  Northeast of the site of Lysi, near the site of Paliopyrgos stands the remains of a circular tower which is probably post-antique on account of its mortar and rubble construction.  It may sit on an older foundation (or not) which blocked the northern approach to the rubble fort and the passage through Geraneia.

Some 10 km east of the site of Lysi stands another useful comparandum for our recent work on Corinthian fortifications.  At the Kaki Skala there is the remains of a round tower and a rectangular fortification at the northern end of the eastern pass from the Megarid into the Corinthia (Smith, 24-25).  Measuring about 10 m in diameter, this is roughly the same size as our tower at Lychnari and the combination of a round tower and fortified enclosure parallels nicely the fortifications at Ano Vayia.  Smith and Wiseman regard the site as a fortification designed the block the pass south and part of a regional signaling system which could have alerted the polis center of an enemy moving north through the Kaki Skala pass (Smith, 89-92).  

Towers or fortifications at the site of Mavrolimini in the northwestern Corinthia complete the fortifications across the southern Megarid and presumably blocked passage through the western side of the the Geraneia ridge.  Unfortunately the remains at the site are mostly lost.

There is a nice review of Smith's book here.  The only thing that I could add to this is that it is regrettable that the author did not extend his analysis to at least Late Antiquity.  The Late Antique Medgarid is poorly documented consisting of a handful of stray finds, graves, and several early Christian basilicas.  It seems increasingly common practice to include the 4th-7th century in such sweeping regional studies.

A Few Thoughts on Formation Processes and Sacred Space

I spent little bits of time this weekend meandering through the most recent volume in the Late Antique Archaeology series from Brill: L. Lavan, E. Swift, and T. Putzey eds., Objects in Context, Objects in Use Material Spatiality in Late Antiquity.  Leiden 2007.  Aside from the sort of silly notion of material spatiality, which seems to imply that there could be spatial relationships that are somehow not material, this imposing tome has a bunch of interesting "stuff" in it.  Byrn Mawr Classical Review has offered a complete early review here.

The volume contained, among other things, a series of articles on object in Early Christian space.  The articles by B. Caseau, V. Michel, and Z. Fiema, employed various textual and archaeological methods to survey the range of objects associated with religious space in an Early Christian context.  Of particular note was Z. Fiema's discussion of documents in the storeroom of the Petra Church.  The careful excavation revealed a fairly substantial archive originally arranged on shelves and in cabinets. The two articles by B. Caseau examined textual sources for the various objects that they associate with Late Antique churches.  Her work reminds us how few of the objects recorded in Late Antique church inventories or in more literary sources are regularly found in excavated churches.  Her discussion of the objects associated in texts with healing shrines reminds us how how most of things present in the everyday life of even the most imposing churches were perishable.  Brooms, wooden buckets, leather, metal and papyrus only survive in very particular archaeological and cultural environments and consequently remain invisible to excavators.

These articles reminded me of a short paper that I wrote, probably 8 years ago, with Tim Gregory and David Pettegrew, ("Archaeological 'Signatures' of Byzantine Churches: Survey Archaeology and the Creation of a Byzantine Landscape," Byzantine Studies Conference Abstracts of Papers 27 (2001), p. 38.).  We did very intensive archaeological survey in the immediate vicinity of Byzantine Churches on the island of Kythera hoping to discover some kind of material signature for Byzantine churches.  We were not particularly successful.  The tendency to keep church yards clean, the position of churches on the tops of hills or ridges, and the generally overgrown condition of the island made it difficult for us to find much material that was distinct to the religious function or chronological range of these buildings.

This all led me to think a bit about the distinct set of formation processes that create the archaeological evidence for religious space.  The tendency for the community to regard some religious spaces as sacred and consequently to continue to function on some level after catastrophic events like earthquakes and fires.  Later burials in the remains of Early Christian basilicas is one example of post-destruction re-use.  The functioning of informal and sometimes open air shrines at collapsed churches is another.  The religious significance of various objects associated with churches might prompt more significant kinds of intervention in prior to total abandonment.  Easily recognizable architectural forms (particularly the apse) made churches particularly visible even centuries after their initial abandonment and led to patterns of episodic reuse separated by centuries.

The studies pertaining to religious space presented in Objects in Context, Objects in Use, focused almost exclusively on the link between the location of objects in an archaeological context and their primary use within space.  In general, the archaeological studies avoided over reliance on the so-called Pompeii Premise, which assumed that objects found in an archaeological context revealed the function of those spaces in antiquity.   While carefully wrought observations regarding the location of objects and the function of space remain significant for unpacking the difficult matters surrounding the function of space in an Early Christian context, it provides less help understanding the dynamic processes that form the archaeological record and reveal persistent attitudes toward space in antiquity and in subsequent centuries.

Friday Varia and Quick Hits

Lots of interesting and news worthy things this week:

• Sad news about Tom Clifford's passing.  He was President of the University of North Dakota from 1971 to 1992.  Dan Rice's book is the best treatment of his term as President.  The Alumni association has put up a nice biography and interactive space.
• Congratulations to Kostis Kourelis and all the contributors for the publication of Archaeology of Xenitia: Greek Immigration and Material Culture  in the New Griffon publication series of the Gennadius Library at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. This books came out of a panel held at the 2007 Archaeological Institute of America meetings under the banner of the Archaeology of the Medieval and Post Medieval Mediterranean Interest Group.
• An interesting review and response to Y. Hamilakis' book, The Nation and Its Ruins at Archaeolog.
• Lux Interior of The Cramps died this past week.  The Cramps concert at the California State Mental Hospital remains one of the landmarks in Punk Archaeology.
• Some good comments from Ryan Stander over at Axis of Access on my Historical Jesus talk.

I have the feeling that I had more varia and quick hits, but I can't remember them.  So, the list will likely be updated.

Have a good weekend.

More on Dreams...

The regular readers of this blog know that I have an emerging interest in dreams with a focus on the relationship between religion (particularly the phenomenon of inventio) and archaeology in Greece.  Even more specifically, I've thought a bit about the different (but related) roles that predictive dreams played in disciplines influenced by the early 20th century modernist discourse.   For example, religiously inspired dreams appear occasionally in otherwise highly "scientific" archaeological reports and seem to have led the discovery of specific artifacts (relics!), buildings, or features.  This intersection of religious dream and scientific archaeology allowed the scientific discourse of archaeology to bridge the gap, if just momentarily, and create a space where it was possible to reconcile long standing religious phenomenon and "empirical" arguments.  This space, in turn, played a part in the creation of nationalist discourses which typically accommodated by mystical and scientific bases for national identities.

I've also suggested that the role of predictive dreams in anthropological discourse (as well as the scientific discipline of laography (or folklore studies)) was similar, although these dreams tended to be stripped of religious power and transformed into artifacts of continuity between Greek folk and their ancient and Byzantine predecessors.

Finally, I have noted that dreams have a significant place in the field of psychoanalysis and in Freud's works, most notably his Interpretation of Dreams.  Freudian thought was, of course, characteristic of modernism and sought to place the unconscious mind of firmer "scientific" footing.  It appears that Freudian ideas first circulated in Greece during the third decade of the 20th century and among the first generation of Greeks to explore Freud's ideas was Angelos Tanagras (P. Hartocolis, "A Letter from Greece," Journal of American Pschoanalytic Association 48 (2000), 675). 

I spent yesterday afternoon reading through A. Tanagras, Psychophysical Elements in Parapsychological Traditions (New York 1967) on the recommendation of a colleague.  Originally published as La Destin et la Change in 1930, this book sought to integrate Freudian psychological analysis and research into the parapsychological phenomenon ranging from telekinetics to telepathy and clairvoyance.  Dreams feature prominently in his book -- including dreams that lead to the discovery of lost objects.  Tanagras, following much early 20th century parapsychological research, attempts to argue that the mind can control the material world through not only the power of suggestion but also the manipulation of subatomic particles.  His arguments are based upon numerous interviews and sworn testimony of members of the Greek bourgeoisie (doctors, lawyers, newspaper editors, bankers and the like) and interlaced with a strongly Freudian understanding of mind.  In fact, it appears that the unconscious was every bit as powerful -- if not more so -- as the conscious mind in its ability to manipulate and influence the material world.  It is worth noting that Tanagras makes an effort to apply the principles of parapsychology to "evil eye" -- the practice of cursing an individual through a jealous gaze and a common phenomenon in Greek and Eastern Mediterranean folk traditions. 

While Tanagras does not deal with archaeological dreams specifically, his research follows a now well-trod path of attempting to explain and accommodate "supernatural" or even religious phenomena within the emerging (and expanding) scientific discourse.  Efforts to validate scientifically the "folk" traditions in a Greek context -- whether by categorizing them as persistent remnants of ancient practices or through juxtaposing religiously inspired dreams and empirical discoveries or establishing a scientific basis for supernatural phenomenon -- worked to create the foundation for a modern society which stood close to the center of the emerging discourse of nationalism in a Greek context (for a more subtle reading of this complex process see : J. Faubion, Modern Greek Lessons: A Primer in Historical Constructivism.  (Princeton 1993).)

Update:
For more on Tanagras, check out Kostis Kourelis excellent post!

Update 2:
Kostis has contributed more to the link between Tanagras and archaeology including the relationship between the renowned archaeologist A. Philadelpheus and Tanagras.  Philadelpheus apparently dedicated his Monuments of Athens to Tanagras.  Even more interesting is that Tanagras has an autobiography with a copy at the Elliot Garrett Parapsychology Foundation Library.

Update 3:
More brilliant blogging by Kostis Kourelis on Tanagras, parapsychology, and archaeology. 

A Quick Course on Art, Ritual, and Text in Early Christianity

For the last few years, I've offered an informal readings for graduate and advanced level undergraduates in the Spring semester.  In the past, I've offered readings on the Age of Augustus, The Archaeology of Late Antiquity, and Authority in the Early Christian World.  Generally these quick courses are designed to sample (in an almost random way) some recent and classic books offered on a particular area.  This semester's will be Experience, Ritual, and Text is Early Christianity.  After a quick primer with some Peter Brown and Robert Taft, we'll proceed through some recent(ish) and important works that emphasize on some ways the experience of religion, religious art, and ritual in Late Antiquity. 

The most glaring omission (of several) is the lack of any work on ekphrasis -- that is the poetics of description -- which became such an important component of Late Antique literature.  I might yet add a 7th week and draw in a work like the recent edited volume by Liz James, Art and Text in Byzantine Culture. (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2007).  It's also disappointing to have to leave out such classics as Thomas Mathew's The early churches of Constantinople : architecture and liturgy. (University Park, 1971) or The Clash of Gods (Princeton 1993).

But for a 6 week, non-credit, informal style readings, I think this is a nice core of material for discussion:

Experience, Ritual, Text in Early Christianity
An Informal Reading
Syllabus

Course Goals:

This is just an informal reading, but the goals are to explore some classic and recent literature on the intersection of Art, Ritual, and Text in Early Christian (and Byzantium).  The readings will have a slight archaeological bent to them, but nevertheless attempts to touch on art historical and liturgiological approaches as well.  The books included below are not meant to be a representative sample of recent approach nor even a good sample of Classic texts, but a gaggle of works that intersect the tangled matrix of space, ritual, art, and power in the Early Christian world.

Basic Texts:

Reading 1
P. Brown, The World of Late Antiquity. New York 1971.
K. Bowes, “Early Christian Archaeology: A State of the Field”
(http://www.arts.cornell.edu/Classics/faculty/KBowes_files/early%20christian%20archaeology%20religion%20compass.pdf)

Reading 2
R. Taft, Through their own eyes: liturgy as the Byzantine’s saw it.  Berkeley 2006.
R. Taft, The Byzantine Rite: A Short History.  Minneapolis 1992.

Reading 3
J. Elsner, Art and the Roman Viewer: The Transformation of Art from the Pagan World to Christianity.  Cambridge 1995.

Reading 4
A. Wharton, Refiguring the Post-Classical City: Dura Europas, Jerash, Jerusalem, and Ravenna.  Cambridge 1995.

Reading 5
S. A. Harvey, Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination.  Berkeley 2006.

Reading 6
K. Bowes, Private Worship, Public Values, and Religious Change in Late Antiquity.  Cambridge 2008.