CLOSING SESSION AND FINAL REMARKS

Chaired byEric H. CLINE

E.H. Cline: We are running about a half an hour late, and I know that many of you must catch the fiveo’clock shuttle back to the hotel. I would like, therefore, to focus these final discussions and endpromptly on time, hoping of course that the discussions which we generate now will be continuedin the taxi cabs, on the airplanes, and perhaps even on Aegeanet. We asked the speakers concerned with “The Future is Now: Where Do We Go From Here?” toaddress this broad topic from their own area of expertise, and we suggested that perhaps theymight also want to try to answer some questions, such as:1) where did they see themselves going in the future?2) where did they see the field as a whole going?3) what would they recommend to their graduate students who want to work in their area ofexpertise, or somebody else’s?While this final discussion session provides an opportunity for us to ask questions and makecomments about the papers presented yesterday and today, since we had no Final Discussionyesterday, and in some cases perhaps to continue debates cut short by coffee and lunch breaks, I would prefer to focus the discussion session by asking everyone else here in this auditorium thesame questions: Where do you see yourself going in the future?; Where should our field as awhole go?; What would you recommend to graduate students who want to work in your area ofexpertise?; Can we come up with some sort of blueprint for the future, as we head into the thirdmillennium AD?We as individuals have our differences, we have our arguments over Tell el-Dabca or the HighChronology, over the past three days we have had discussions and disagreements over this, thatand the other points, but we all do have some common goals — most particularly, the furtheringof our discipline and the ultimate discovery of the Truth and of the nature of the events thatunfolded during the second millennium BC. We have just heard what Cynthia Shelmerdine,Sarah Morris, Sturt Manning, Aslihan Yener, Joan Aruz, and the Sherratts think about the futuredirections of our field; I would like to hear from a few other scholars, some of whom have beenrelatively silent thus far — for instance, John Cherry, what do you think? Chris Mee, what do youthink? Guenter Kopcke, we need to hear from you. Jack Davis and John Bennet, what do youthink? You graduate students, who have spent your hard earned money to come here, what doyou think?While Jack, and John, and Chris, and Gunter, and others in the audience, I hope, gather yourthoughts about where we are headed and what we should be doing in the coming years, I would like to ask four specific graduate students who are here with us today, and who will be (one hopes)actively pursuing their careers during the third millennium AD, to brief ly share with theaudience the nature of their projects and their thoughts about what they hope their research willcontribute to our field. I single out Nicolle Hirschfeld from the University of Texas, Gert Jan vanWijngaarden from the University of Amsterdam, Ioulia Tzonou from our own University ofCincinnati, and Michael Sugerman of Harvard University, who have agreed to brief ly describetheir dissertation research and what they hope it will contribute to our field. I should tell youthat I have told them that they have only two minutes: one minute to describe what they aredoing, one minute to describe what they hope it will contribute. So, if I could call upon Nicole...

N. Hirschfeld: Well, it’s certainly hard to follow after the Sherratts. I’m from the University of Texas atAustin. My project, my dissertation, concerns marks on pottery and what that can tell us aboutexchange, the mechanisms of exchange. We’ve talked a lot about general inf luences and aboutthings being traded from here and there; I’m very interested in trying to pinpoint as much aspossible, in terms of time and individuals, how these pots got from one place to another and themechanisms by which they were exchanged. There are many ways to approach this; the little

handle I’ve found is to look at pots that are exchanged in the Mediterranean. My study right nowis limited to the Mycenaean period. I’m looking at vessels that are exchanged — Mycenaeanpottery, Cypriot pottery, and Canaanite jars — and the kind of labels that they carry on them:signs put on after firing and that give us some sense of who’s keeping track of the pots. The sortof questions I’m beginning to start to answer, although I may not get to all of it, and the evidencemay not be able to support it all, is making observations about, for example, some of the signsthat I know are connected specifically with Cypriot marking systems. So when I find aMycenaean vase in the mainland with a Cypriot sign on it, that tells me that a Cypriot came tothe mainland to pick up the vase, or that someone who knew something about the Cypriottrading system and how they organized their pots had marked the vase. And the same thing[holds] about finding a vase in Egypt that has a Cypriot mark; I know that somehow it’s passedthrough Cypriot hands. So, I’m looking at questions of defining directional trade, individualsinvolved in trade, and then how systems change over time. The Mycenaean system is very, verydifferent from [both] what happened before and the whole track of what happens afterwards. Ithink my two minutes are up!

G.J. Van Wijngaarden: I work at the University of Amsterdam under the supervision of Joost Crouweland the co-supervision of Vronwy Hankey, Al Leonard, and Lucia Vagnetti. The title of mydissertation, which is not finished, of course, is provisionally: Use and Appreciation of MycenaeanPottery Outside Greece: Context of LH I - LH IIIB Finds in Anatolia, Cyprus, the Levant, Egypt, and Italy.On the basis of the distribution of Mycenaean pottery, I have singled out a number of sites forwhich publications are suitable to a contextual analysis. I am trying to analyze these sites byasking myself ‘who used these vessels?,’ and ‘what did they use them for?,’ and ‘what did theymean to these people?.’ First I study the onsite distribution of the Mycenaean pottery, then itscontextual distribution in the sense of domestic contexts, funerary contexts, and ritual contexts.Next, I look at closed contexts: both in settlement deposits — what other objects surround it —and in funerary contexts. Eric [Cline] asked what kind of impact I was hoping to make? I wouldlike to show that an object, once it is imported somewhere, becomes in a sense a different kindof object. A Mycenaean stirrup jar in Greece is something different than the same object inAnatolia or Syria. Its cultural meaning is determined by the context of the society which usesit, and we have to take that into account. I’m often reminded of MacDonalds hamburgers: inMoscow, Paris, or New York they taste exactly the same; however, the connotations attached tothem are completely different. Similar processes probably occurred when objects weredistributed in the Mediterranean during the Bronze Age. In my opinion, such differences incultural meaning are essential to understand the inter-regional interactions that have beendebated at this conference.

I. Tzonou: It is certainly very intimidating for me to talk about my contribution in this group of people.I certainly feel the burden of all this knowledge in my stomach right now! I want to say that Iintend to study Mycenaean ethnicity, but I know that Bernard Knapp is going to jump on me andsay ‘how do you define ethnicity?’ This conference has taught me that there is a unity in the areaof the Aegean and the Orient, and yet there is a distinctiveness among the peoples thatpopulated these areas. Now I would like to find out who the Mycenaeans were, and I’d like todo this by tracing the development of the term “Mycenaeans,” ever since Schliemann’spublication, and then see the material culture of peripheral areas like the [Cycladic] Islands: howdo we find the Mycenaeans in the Islands? What do we need to define the “Mycenaean-ness,” asSherratt defined it, in the Islands? That’s about it — my two minutes are up. It’s been a greatexperience for me being in this conference. Thank you.

M. Sugerman: My project is actually a rather simple one in idea, but a bit more difficult in practice, asmany simple ideas are. Like the other three students who have just spoken, I’m studying neithertime nor space, but rather practice, and trying to define some of the people that we’re talkingabout in terms of practice. My particular focus is a study of the distribution and production ofCanaanite jars in the Late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean. Over the past three years, I’vebeen collecting samples of Canaanite jars from sites in Israel, Cyprus, and Greece, and now theUluburun shipwreck as well. I’m dividing them up in terms of their fabric and then, throughpetrographic analysis, trying to find the sources of these jars and hoping to find some sort ofpattern in the production and distribution. The main goal behind this is to balance a lot of whatI’ve seen this weekend, actually, which is the recognition that almost all of the study of themovement of material culture between the regions that we’re discussing is in the study of what

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we would normally term “prestige goods” and may not actually apply to the great majority ofcultural contact between them. On the other hand, I may find that is the great majority ofcultural contact, but that is part of what the project is about. I also asked for, and was graciouslygranted, an extra minute to respond on behalf of the graduate students here to Sarah Morris’exhortation this morning, although it might not be my place to do so. I don’t know if all of youhere are aware of the fact that there are graduate students here at this conference representingeither Programs or Departments of Ancient Studies, Anthropology, Archaeology, Art andArchaeology of the Mediterranean World, Art History, Classics, Mediterranean Archaeology,Nautical Archaeology, Near Eastern Studies, Near Eastern Languages and Civilization, and WestAsian Archaeology. If that’s not an interdisciplinary gathering, then I don’t know how muchmore interdisciplinary we’re likely to get. The discourse between these graduate students overthe last two evenings, suitably aided by various sorts of celebration and libation (laughter), haveactually come up with some very interesting discussions. We found that we have students whoare working in analytical methods, not limited to, but including, art historical, archaeological,textual, and material analysis. My exhortation to you, the faculty, those of you who are still here,is first, to second Sarah Morris’ statement that you should all do what you can to cement yourpositions and to cement the importance of ancient studies of various kinds in your academicinstitutions, so that there will be a third millennium for the studies that we’re interested in.(Applause). And, second, also to recognize that in these interdisciplinary studies, if thediscussions of the last two evenings have been any example, you’re likely to be approached by anumber of very strange ideas. I would hope that you will receive them with the same frame ofmind that Helene Kantor’s advisors did when she came up with some of her very strange ideasfifty years ago, in order to allow some of these ideas to come to the surface and to further affectthe field that we’re all taking part in. Thank you. (Applause).

E.H. Cline: Thank you all. Speaking for myself, and I’m sure the rest of the audience as well, we wishyou all luck and look forward to reading your final products. And as for me, my E-mail is alwaysopen. I’ll try and respond — try not to get too strange! Now, how about the rest of us? Wheredo we go from here? Thoughts? We have the “Dream Team” of Bronze Age Archaeology at thisconference; let’s take advantage of that fact and do a little brainstorming, for if we can’t come upwith a plan for the third millennium, then we are in danger. Do we have comments frommembers of the audience?

J.L. Crowley: I’ll be brave enough to start, but I haven’t got the “Grand Plan.” I’d just rather like to saywhere I think the conference has brought us, at least as it seems to me. For many of us who haveworked in this area for some time, we’ve all had our battles actually establishing the fact thatthese interconnections or transferences did indeed occur, and some of us have had more battlesthan others. When I said in my talk that with this conference I think the topic has come of age,I think this is the very great value — we’ve gathered ourselves all here, and we’ve heaved ourselvesup onto a platform, if you like, or perhaps the brow of a low hill, and we can say that we don’thave to argue anymore that these things happened. What we can now go on and do is be muchmore subtle about how we tackle the challenges ahead — take as granted the interconnections outthere — and now try and refine every aspect of assessing them. And I see from the students thatthey’ve already started. I hope the next hill we climb is very high and we see a long way. .

L.V. Watrous: Just about one small remark. I think this is very important what we’re talking about, andI’d like to second the enthusiasm about Sarah Morris’ talk this afternoon. It seems to me, oneof the key things that’s important about the past is that we’re all alive today and our society existsin the present. The value of the past is that we use the past as a paradigm often. We use it as asign post. We use it all the time to guide our actions, and we usually do it in a way which isunconscious. I think that it’s important that since we are all working in the past, in a sense, we’rethe guardians of the past in some way for the present. When we write, we [should] write for thewider audience more, and we [should] try to show the relevance of what we’re doing for today.

V. Karageorghis: I was glad to hear one of the graduate students saying that he is including the centralMediterranean in his research. I think it is high time that we brought down the wall whichseparates the Mycenaean world from the rest of the Mediterranean, that is the West. In thePhoenician period, that is, later in the eighth and seventh centuries BC, in order to study thePhoenicians we have to consider the whole of the Mediterranean littoral, and the Phoenicianscholars are doing it much better, I think, than we are. We have to include the Western

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Mediterranean, from the Levant to the Atlantic coast, in fact, if you want to have a global viewof what happened in the Bronze Age in this cultural lake which is the Mediterranean.

K. Rubinson: I will ask to move in the other direction as well. I come at this from the outside. I dowork in central Asia and Transcaucasia/Eastern Anatolia. There is metalwork in the Caucasusthat’s the same as in Mycenae. Therefore, one can’t really turn one’s back on the east either.And so, beyond the high culture states with the chronologies and everything else, is an additionalworld which I think is relevant at least in terms of raw materials, that one cannot lose sight of.

A.B. Knapp: I wanted to come right in after Vassos [Karageorghis] and say that you now have themedium, and have had for the last ten years to write, or submit your ideas to, in the form of theJournal of Mediterranean Archaeology, but that’s not merely what I wanted to say. My observationon the directions and inf luences and ideas that people here have, have been nicely summarizedby three of the last speakers. Joan Aruz says, from a very detailed and learned perspective, thatwe need to move from the data out. Sturt Manning has said, with a broad scope of knowledgeand avant-garde mentality, that we need to have some chronological parameters to do what wewant to do. Sue and Andrew Sherratt have called upon — I suspect Andrew Sherratt has calledupon — geography and anthropology to become, or to continue to be, part of the perspective ofMediterranean prehistorians. I haven’t heard any of these people talk about looking at all ofthese ideas within a conceptual framework that is broad far beyond chronology, anthropologyand geography. If I read the graduate student mentality correctly, what they’re interested in issome of the things that Sturt was talking about, like individuals and agents, but they’re alsointerested in ideology, gender, ethnicity, post modernism, images, icons, pictures, different waysof looking at the past, and that’s what you’ve got to be prepared for next week, when somebodyknocks on your door. Thank you.

C. Mee: I’d just like to reiterate the point which several speakers have made. For those of us who areAegean prehistorians, it’s absolutely vital that we look beyond the narrow confines of Greece andthe Aegean, both to the west and to the east. The question is, how do we do this? I’d like to usemy own personal experience to illustrate one means. Liverpool University, although it has a longtradition in archaeology, only formed a single department six years ago. The advantages of thisfor me have been enormous, because it has brought together colleagues who are prehistorians,people who teach theoretical archaeology, but also Egyptologists and Near Eastern specialists.I’m now in a position where I can walk ten yards down the corridor if I want to consult KenKitchen on chronological matters, and with luck, in a day or so, he’s finished with me. AlanMillard, our distinguished Near Eastern specialist, again, is on the same corridor as myself. Ihave to say this has been enormously advantageous. I do think that in America, wherearchaeology seems to be split so much, it’s going to be important to integrate, if our subject,Aegean archaeology, is to develop.

E.J.W. Barber: I think we’re teetering on the verge of a whole series of wonderful new tools that canhelp us reach some of these goals, some of which have been brought up here this weekend ininteresting ways, such as this World Systems analysis, the dendrochronology, and so forth, whichare going to make all sorts of things possible. I think there are a number of other things outthere. Machteld Mellink mentioned mythology. It is certainly something that we have notlearned to use properly. There is, in addition to the East and the West, the great North. Thereis the Balkans, Central Europe, the steppelands, and so forth, which have contributed greatly tothe North Mediterranean world. There are other things: mathematics is providing us with suchthings as symmetry analysis, which has the interesting property, parallel to linguistics, that inlanguage, phonology is subconscious whereas the borrowing of words is conscious. It seems asthough the borrowing of motifs is a conscious process, but symmetry systems do not getborrowed except with massive cohabitation. These are interesting kinds of things that peoplehave hardly explored in the archaeological world. I think there are a whole raft of very new andinteresting techniques that will open our eyes; we should not be afraid of math books and thingslike that.

A. Bauer: This conference has all been about interaction. What I think is interesting is that, rather thanlooking at the relationship between specific groups, East and West, we might begin to, as somepeople in different papers here have done, look at interaction as an entity in and of itself — withits own multiple layers, multiple characteristics, as well as multiple routes, etc, and its own

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ideological significance for each person or group involved in it. This is one of the things thatDr. Knapp addressed in his paper. I think this is definitely the way to go, in looking at the secondmillennium in the Mediterranean. With that in mind, and this may be nothing new to somepeople here, [we should consider] what the Sherratt’s said in their paper about looking at theroutes themselves as significant, or as personalities or entities in and of themselves. Perhapsthat’s the way we should look at some of these questions — for example, when we’re looking atthe Sea Peoples, perhaps we should look at the Sea Peoples not as a people at all, but as the route,and therefore meaning different things to different people involved.

E.H. Cline: Perhaps a final comment or two from Jim Muhly? Jack Davis? Jerry Rutter? John Bennet?

J.D. Muhly: Well, I think one of the things I’d like to see is a return to some of the old skills as well asdeveloping new ones. I would like to see more detailed analysis of individual objects. I realizethis is a style of scholarship rather out of fashion these days, but I think it still has a great dealto teach us. Take, for example, the pyxis lid from Minet el-Beidha. Everyone talks about it, butno one knows what to do with it. That object has a great deal of very detailed informationencoded in it, but it’s going to take a sophisticated analysis to really exploit the informationcontained in that object. One of the things I’m talking about here is “style.” No one likes to talkabout “style” anymore because no one knows what “style” is. I would simply encourage everyoneto go back and read Meyer Shapiro’s great essay on “style.” It would be of great benefit to manyof the scholars here in this audience.

E.H. Cline: Thank you. Well, I must admit I have been asking myself, what do I think? I agreevehemently with what Jim Muhly said last night, that the next generation of graduate studentsneeds more years of training, not less. We need to tell our university administrators this, and notkick the students out after five years. As we get more specialized, we are losing our breadth. Ifwe are to further our investigations into the ancient world, and particularly into the connectionsbetween Greece, Egypt, and the Near East in the second millennium BC, we need scholarstrained in both the Classical and Near Eastern worlds and in both Classical and Near Easternlanguages. Though I myself am trained in both, I am still very painfully aware of the large gapsin my own knowledge. I plan to continue learning and extend my education through the rest ofmy life, remaining a perpetual student as well as a scholar. I sincerely hope that it is never toolate to learn something new, for I do believe that an active mind is an open mind. We are coming to the end here, and running out of time, so in closing, let me simply say that onbehalf of Diane [Harris-Cline] and myself, and the entire Classics Dept, including the graduatestudents, here at the University of Cincinnati, I would like to thank you all very much for yourparticipation in this conference, and for helping us to honor the work of Helene Kantor, CarlBlegen, Marion Rawson, and Jim Muhly. We hope that you all agree that it was indeedworthwhile to spend three days investigating the second millennium BC, by both looking backat our past accomplishments during the second millennium AD, and looking forward to thefuture possibilities in the next millennium. I, for one, must say that I am overjoyed by thediscussions of the past few days, and I’m greatly looking forward to our united accomplishmentsduring the coming millennium. Thus, it is with a deep sense of satisfaction, a small sense ofsadness (because we’ve been living with this conference for more than two years now), and aneven greater sense of relief that I hereby declare this conference to be at an end. I thank you allfor participating.

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