Manning

FROM PROCESS TO PEOPLE: LONGUE DURÉE TO HISTORY*

Australian historians speak frequently of the tyranny of distance. The seminal work isGeoffrey Blainey’s The tyranny of distance: how distance shaped Australia’s history (1966, rev. ed.1983). Over the last couple of decades archaeologists have increasingly appreciated theimportance of distance; the very different time-space geography of the world before theIndustrial Revolution, and the power of the distant, exotic and unknown. Fernand Braudel’sLa Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’époque de Philippe II (2nd ed. 1966) first broughtthe topic to wider note in the Mediterranean field, and Mary Helms’ Ulysses’ Sail: anethnographic odyssey of power, knowledge, and geographic distance (1988) has become widelyreferred to, and used.1 Archaeology is good at recognizing and providing spatial data. So far,so good. But the power of distance lies in its dialectical relationship with time: structuring,defining, and creating human perceptions and actions within and across lived experiences andlifetimes.2 Helms is careful to note ‘and time’ when she analyses distance and knowledge (esp.pp. 7-11). Space and time create the human landscape and world. However, archaeology israther less comfortable, or good, at time. In our field of Aegean and east Mediterraneanarchaeology, we are still very much ruled by the tyranny of time. The theme of this paper isthat we need to try to begin to understand, and escape, this tyranny, just as we are nowincreasingly confident with distance. I wish to critique the current status quo, and suggestwhere the future lies.

Chronology is often said to the backbone of history, and, under this rubric, a great dealof attention has been devoted to the subject from traditional or positivist viewpoints.3 Timeand chronology are also central to post-modern and post-processual scholarship, and itsrelativist critique and concentration on the active creation of the past in the present: ‘Time iscentral to archaeology. It constitutes the major problem of interpretation and yet is the reasonfor the discipline’s existence.’4

To our post-Renaissance, and especially Victorian and 20th century eyes, the past haslittle meaning unless neatly ordered into a linear sequence — the vicious scholarly disputes thaterupt if anyone questions either the neat linear order, or the neat numbers associated

______________________* I wish to thank Eric Cline and Diane Harris-Cline for inviting me to the Cincinnati conference, and for

making my attendance possible. I thank Eric and Diane, and Jack Davis, along with Libby, Phoebe, et al.,for all their very generous hospitality over a most enjoyable week.

1 In an Aegean context, e.g. C. BROODBANK, “Ulysses without sails: trade, distance, knowledge and powerin the early Cyclades,” World Archaeology 25 (1993) 315-31. Generally, see e.g. E.M. SCHORTMAN and P.A.URBAN (eds.), Resources, power, and interregional interaction (1992). Before Helms, see J.M. WAGSTAFF(ed.), Landscape and culture: geographical and archaeological perspectives (1987).

2 D. GREGORY and J. URRY (eds.), Social relations and spatial structures (1985); D. GREGORY, GeographicalImaginations (1994); A. PRED, Place, practice and structure: social and spatial transformation in southern Sweden,1750-1850 (1986); Idem (ed.), Space and time in geography: essays dedicated to Torsten Hägerstrand (1981); E.W.SOJA, Postmodern geographies: the reassertion of space in critical social theory (1989); Idem, Thirdspace: expandingthe geographical imagination (1996).

3 B. GRÄSLUND, The birth of prehistoric chronology (1987); B.G. TRIGGER, A ‘history’ of archaeological thought(1989). And for Aegean examples, e.g. P.M. WARREN and V. HANKEY, Aegean Bronze Age chronology(1989); S.W. MANNING, The absolute chronology of the Aegean Early Bronze Age: archaeology, radiocarbon andhistory (1995).

4 M. SHANKS and C. TILLEY, Re-constructing archaeology: theory and practice, 2nd. ed. (1992) 7.

therewith, are ample testimony.5 Flexible, cultural, pasts such as the Heroic Age of the ancientGreeks, or the Dreaming of Australia,6 are bizarrely different to our sensibilities, andperceived as of no use — excepting to post-modern literary/post-processual/myth types —unless we can create order out of the chaos (we tame, recognise, and simplify what is in facta non-linear, dynamic, reality7). We take for granted what Joseph Scalinger only learnt of nearthe end of his life (died AD 1609): the ability to give years, numbers, to ancient history,8 andto argue incessantly over such details. In general, most archaeological scholarship has notmoved on from an innate fascination at, and satisfaction with, the mere naming of parts. Thegreat works of archaeological-historical scholarship a century and more ago were about thechronology of the Old World,9 or about the categorization and typology of the past.10

A century later the situation has not significantly changed. Things must be categorisedand placed. Typology and chronology reign still in Aegean and Classical archaeology. Weaccept easily that we cannot ever know for sure many aspects of prehistory, that it is a foreign

______________________5 Examples are numerous, one might consider the EC IIB or EC IIIA and/or EC III ‘gap’ debate in the

Cyclades: J.B. RUTTER, “Some observations on the Cyclades in the later third and early second millenniaBC,” AJA 87 (1983) 69-76; Idem, “The Early Cycladic III gap: what it is and how to go about filling it withoutmaking it go away,” in J.A. MacGILLIVRAY and R.L.N. BARBER (eds.), The prehistoric Cyclades (1984)95-107; R.L.N. BARBER, “The definition of the Middle Cycladic period,” AJA 87 (1983) 76-79; J.A.MacGILLIVRAY, “The relative chronologies of Early Cycladic IIIA and Early Helladic III,” AJA 87 (1983)81-83; or the last decade of controversy over the date of the Thera eruption. Only if a change is effectivelyjust a renaming, such as C. RENFREW’s culture names in his Emergence of Civilization (1972), is it acceptable— although even here there was a controversy: J.E. COLEMAN, “The chronology and interconnections ofthe Cycladic islands in the Neolithic Period and the Early Bronze Age,” AJA 78 (1974) 333-44; Idem,“Chronological and cultural divisions of the Early Cycladic period: a critical appraisal,” J.L. DAVIS and J.F.CHERRY (eds.), Papers in Cycladic prehistory (1979) 48-50.

6 E.g. J.-P. VERNANT, Myth and society in ancient Greece, trans. J. LLOYD (1990); E. KOLIG, Dreamtime politics:religion, world view and utopian thought in Australian Aboriginal society (1989). In general, see T. MASUZAWA,In search of dreamtime: the quest for the origin of religion (1993); and, on non-modern, non-linear, past worlds,see also H.P. DUERR, Dreamtime: concerning the boundary between wilderness and civilization, trans. F.D.GOODMAN (1985).

7 I. PRIGOGINE, “Time, structure and f luctuations,” Science 201 (1978) 777-85; S.E. VAN DER LEEUW andJ. McGLADE (eds.), Time, process and structured transformation in archaeology (1997).

8 L. DEPUYDT, “More valuable than all gold: Ptolemy’s Royal Canon and Babylonian chronology,” Journal ofCuneiform Studies 47 (1996) 97-117. For a collection of all Scalinger’s works, and for antiquarian books aboutScalinger, see R. SMITSKAMP et al., The Scalinger collection (1993).

9 E.g. J.B. DE LA BASTIE, “De la manière dont les Égyptiens comptoient les années du regne des empereurs,”Histoire de l’Academie royale des inscriptions et belles-lettres (1740) 136-52; R. LEPSIUS, Die Chronologie derÄgypter (1849); Idem, über einige Berührungspunkte der ägyptischen, griechischen und römischen Chronologie.Abhandlungen der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (1859); Idem, über denchronologischen Werth der Assyrischen Eponymen und einige Berührungspunkte mit der Aegyptischen Chronologie.Abhandlungen der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (1869); H.K. BRUGSCH, Nouvellesrecherches sur la division de l’année des anciens Égyptiens suivies d’un mémoire sur des observations planétairesconsignées dans quatre tablettes égyptiennes en écriture démotique (1856); F.J. LAUTH, Aegyptische Chronologie:basirt auf die vollständige Reihe der Epochen seit Bytes-Menes bis Hadrian-Antonin durch drei volle Sothisperioden =4380 Jahre (1877); K.L. PETER, Chronological tables of Greek history: accompanied by a short narrative of events,with references to the sources of information and extracts from the ancient authorities, trans. G. Chawner (1882); C.TORR, Memphis and Mycenae: an examination of Egyptian chronology and its application to the early history ofGreece (1896); E. MEYER, Aegyptische Chronologie. Abhandlungen der Königl. Preuss. Akademie derWissenschaften vom Jahre 1904 (1904); Idem, Die ältere chronologie Babyloniens, Assyriens und Ägyptens:Nachtrag zum ersen Bande der Geschichte des Altertums (1925); D. SIDERSKY, Étude sur la chronologieassyro-babylonienne (1916); S. LANGDON, J.K. FOTHERINGHAM and K. SCHOCH, The Venus tablets ofAmmizaduga, a solution of Babylonian chronology by means of the Venus observations of the first dynasty (1928); E.J.BICKERMAN, Chronologie (1933); Idem, Chronology of the ancient world, rev. ed. (1980); L. BORCHARDT,Die Mittel zur zeitlichen Festlegung von Punkten der ägyptischen Geschichte und ihre Anwendung (1935) R.A.PARKER and W.H. DUBBERSTEIN, Babylonian chronology 626 B.C. - A.D. 45, 2nd. ed. (1946); A.E.SAMUEL, Greek and Roman chronology: calendars and years in classical antiquity (1972).

10 TRIGGER (supra n. 3).

312 Sturt W. MANNING

country, that degrees of relativism exist, and that there are a plurality of possibleinterpretations,11 but as long as we establish a chronology, and categorize those pots, we feelwe have at least a visitor’s visa, and so a means to some understanding. If something can beorganised we feel comfortable — we have control over it, it has been domesticated. Thechronology, and the entailed attention to detail, in fact serve to hide how little we know. Thesubject becomes the chronology, rather than the past society. Shanks chides the field: ‘So, forexample, what stage in the pottery sequence was reached when Knossos was destroyed? Wasit Late Minoan II or IIIA1 or IIIA2? ... These are typical questions which have concerned,sometimes obsessed, Aegean prehistorians...’.12 And he is right. We are failing to look at thebig questions, and are bogged down in one small area of preliminary detail — and then inattacks and defenses of this detail.13 There are far too few books in Aegean archaeology likeBarry Kemp’s exciting Ancient Egypt: anatomy of a civilization (1989), where he has ‘deliberatelynot allowed chronology and history to intrude too conspicuously into ... [his] text’ (p.15). Thevolcano of Thera is another, topical, example. The question of the date has seen dozens anddozens of publications over the last 20 years (mea culpa), likewise the description and analysisof the finds buried under the eruption, but the more interesting and important topic of theeffect of the eruption on Aegean society has received but a handful of publications in the last20 years,14 and is only now being rescued from obscurity by the new book of Jan Driessen andColin Macdonald.15

Such linear, ordered, chronological, views of the world are relatively recent. Knowledgeof a secure pre-Roman chronology can hardly be said to have existed before AD 1600, and thegeneral conquest of time, and the annihilation of distance, date back no further than theinvention of the accurate clock by John Harrison in AD 1735, which enabled the ordering andsubjugation of the world into our modern linear terms;16 and, in terms of every day life, suchdevelopments only really ended relative systems of Parish time, etc, with the advent of therailways.17 Such views are also rather problematic when applied to human culture. Theymake time one-dimensional, whereas the study of history reveals that very different concepts

______________________11 E.g. D. LOWENTHAL, The past is a foreign country (1985); S.D. HOUSTON, “How ‘natives’ think, about the

soul, for example (with apologies to Sahlins)” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 7 (1997) 145-47; M. SHANKS,Classical archaeology of Greece: experiences of the discipline (1996); M. SHANKS and C. TILLEY, Social theory andarchaeology (1987); SHANKS and TILLEY (supra n. 4); I. HODDER, Reading the past: current approaches tointerpretation in archaeology, 2nd. ed. (1991); Idem, Interpreting archaeology: finding meaning in the past (1994).

12 SHANKS (supra n. 11) 157.13 The recent attacks on conventional Old World chronology by P. JAMES, I.J. THORPE, N. KOKKINOS, R.

MORKOT and J. FRANKISH, Centuries of Darkness (1991) and D.M. ROHL, A test of time. Volume One: theBible — from myth to history (1995) and widespread counter-attacks by conventional scholarship numberingmany hundreds of pages of scholarly literature, offer a good example of this self-fulfilling obsession. The‘Bernal Industry’ is another case where an attack on the conventional classifications, chronology, andmodels by one author has seen many dozens of scholars and many, many hundreds of pages of response. Itis almost as if conventional, mainstream, scholarship has nothing better to do than to denounce targets weidentify as wrong-headed critics.

14 Everything went silent after the elegant, but brief and disproved, hypothesis of D.L. PAGE, The Santorinivolcano and the desolation of Minoan Crete (1970). About the most recent, and I think almost never read,example is in fact S.W. MANNING, “The volcano of Thera and the destruction of Minoan Crete,” KretikaChronika KZ’ (1987) 59-85 with bibliography up to 1985. This ends (adding p. 85 no. 3) suggesting theindirect trigger role of the eruption in the subsequent collapse of LM I Crete, a model developed in detailby DRIESSEN and MACDONALD (infra n. 15).

15 The troubled island: Minoan Crete before and after the Santorini eruption. Aegaeum 17 (1997). I thank JanDriessen for letting me read a draft copy.

16 W.J.H. ANDREWES, The quest for longitude: the proceedings of the Longitude Symposium, Harvard University,Cambridge, Massachusetts, November 4-6, 1993 (1996); D. SOBEL, Longitude: the true story of a lone genius whosolved the greatest scientific problem of his time (1996); H. HOBDEN and M. HOBDEN, John Harrison and theproblem of longitude, 5th ed. (1995).

17 For an Australian example, see G. DAVISON, The unforgiving minute: how Australians learned to tell the time(1993) 50-51.

FROM PROCESS TO PEOPLE: LONGUE DURÉE TO HISTORY 313

and scales of time operate in human history;18 moreover, in the pre-modern period, time wasalso social in perception and construction.19

We place great weight on the unforgiving minute. Time orders and controls our modernlives; it is our key discipline in Foucauldian terms. Thus when a past culture recorded time ina fashion which we can relate to our linear timescale, this information is accorded greatesteem. We use it in a modern way. We ignore or work around the fact that such recordingsof the past were ideological — ‘Legitimizing the present by revering an edited version of thepast,’20 and so very different in their aims to our notions of time. We ignore the fact that theability to relate historical or biographical time to material culture remains is often problematicor impossible. The general result has been a great divide, or structure, which has operatedfor over a century in Aegean and east Mediterranean Bronze Age archaeology. Egypt andMesopotamia have historical chronologies (and so therefore, to an extent, do parts of Syria andAnatolia), whereas the Aegean and beyond is strictly prehistoric. This has led to very differenttraditions of scholarship in the respective areas. Egyptian and Near Eastern scholars have longdiscussed key individual historical figures, and the history is a biographically informed one,and the minutiae of much scholarship is directed at textual matters and specific historicalevents. Thus major sites must have names from among those known, and key horizons evidentat these sites are linked to historically recorded events.21 In contrast, Aegeanists have insteadconcentrated on typological studies of material culture, studied large sets of data, and kept togeneral issues. They envy the event-historical mode of Egypt and the Near East, but findthemselves forced to remain vague, general, and non-biographically specific. Was Knossos(personified) the ruler of all Crete in LM I, or not; was there a Minoan thalassocracy, or not?We do not know, or even dare to know, Rhadamanthus, Minos, Merones, et al. We have noSargon the Great, Shamshi-Adad I, or Thutmose III; we must satisfy ourselves instead with keyforces called meaningful, made-up, names like Daidalos and Homer. In practice, the twoapproaches are almost exclusive (whereas, in fact, they should be complementary), and usuallymatch unhappily when Aegeans or Egyptians come across each other and a material culture‘set’ meets a specific individual, or event-historical nexus, or vice versa. Confusion or debateis the inevitable outcome in modern scholarship. Virtually every Aegean-Egyptian linkageoffers an example in one way or another. Archaeology and history offer different types ofdata, and different time scales.22

______________________18 G.N. BAILEY, “Concepts, time-scales and explanations in economic prehistory,” in A. SHERIDAN and G.N.

BAILEY (eds.), Economic archaeology: towards an integration of ecological and social approaches (1981) 97-117;Idem, “Concepts of time in quaternary prehistory,” Annual Review of Anthropology 12 (1983) 165-192; Idem,“Breaking the time barrier,” Archaeological Review from Cambridge 6 (1987) 5-20; J. FABIAN, Time and theother: how anthropology makes its object (1983); A.B. KNAPP, “Archaeology and Annales: time, space andchange,” in A.B. KNAPP (ed.), Archaeology, Annales, and ethnohistory (1992) 1-21; C. GOSDEN, Social beingand time (1994).

19 GOSDEN (supra n. 18); A. GELL, The anthropology of time. Cultural constructions of temporal maps and images(1992); B. ADAM, Time and social theory (1990); M. ELIADE, Myth and reality (1963); Idem, Images and symbols(1969).

20 B.J. KEMP, Ancient Egypt: anatomy of a civilization (1989) 22 Fig. 4 caption, generally, pp. 20-27.21 For two examples, critically analyzed, see S. FORSBERG, Near Eastern destruction datings as sources for Greek

and Near Eastern Iron Age chronology. Archaeological and historical studies: the cases of Samaria (722 B.C.) andTarsus (696 B.C.) (1995). The scholarship and debates over Alalakh offer another example: S. SMITH,Alalakh and chronology (1940); L. WOOLLEY, Alalakh: an account of the excavations at Tell Atchana in the Hatay,1937-1949 (1955); J.D. MUHLY, “Near Eastern chronology and the date of the Late Cypriot I period,” in N.ROBERTSON (ed.), The archaeology of Cyprus: recent developments (1975) 76-89; N. NA’AMAN, “A new lookat the chronology of Alalakh VII,” AnatSt 26 (1976) 129-43; D. COLLON, “A new look at the chronology ofAlalakh Level VII: a rejoinder,” AnatSt 27 (1977) 127-31; M.-H. GATES, “Alalakh levels VI and V: achronological reassessment,” Syro-Mesopotamian Studies 4 (1981) 11-50; Eadem, “Alalakh and chronologyagain,” in High, Middle or Low?, Part II, 60-86; A. KEMPINSKI, Syrien und Palästina (Kanaan) in der letztenPhase der Mittelbronze IIB Zeit (1650-1570 v. Chr.) (1983); T.L. McCLELLAN, “The chronology and ceramicassemblages of Alalakh,” in A. LEONARD, Jr. and B.B. WILLIAMS (eds.), Essays in ancient civilizationpresented to Helene J. Kantor (1989) 181-212; M. HEINZ, Tell Atchana/Alalakh (1992).

22 A. SNODGRASS, “Archaeology,” in M.H. CRAWFORD (ed.), The sources for ancient history (1983) 137-84.


In the Aegean, prehistory is broken up into ceramic periods, or architectural-cum-cultural phases.23 Development, trade, change, collapse are all described and placed interms of these periods. There are no people, just broad patterns and processes. Thechronology of these periods has conventionally been determined by the examination ofexchanges of the products or inf luences of each of these fashion or building phases with thehistorical worlds of Egypt and the Near East.24 In this way, the periods are variously surmisedto be of several decades to a couple of centuries duration, give or take usually unknown errors.But problems abound. As Shanks writes ‘...little account is taken of social processes thatcondition the design, consumption and deposition of artefacts’.25 Fashion is neither linearacross a society, nor capable of precise definition. Objects traded over long distances mayhave been in circulation for long or short periods before final deposition; objects or styles maybe emulated by others if they are perceived as valuable, or powerful, or exotic; old objectsdeemed interesting or powerful or exotic may be recycled and redeposited much later thantheir original period of manufacture;26 objects may become heirlooms and be curated longpast their period of manufacture; objects and fashion may be produced by a craftsperson whois active for a few years, or someone extraordinary like Paul Jesselin who worked at the GienFaïencerie from age 10 in 1866 until age 76 (médaille de Bronze au titre de collaborateur dela Faïencerie in 1889, the same in gold in 1900, and finally the legion d’honneur in 1932); etc.It is also usually difficult to firmly relate any archaeologically ‘sealing’ horizon with a specifichistorical event, and so on. The initial creation of the archaeological record is subject to manydifferent past cultural factors. For example, we have a reason for mortuary display of prestigeimports from the outside world in the Shaft Graves of the then emergent civilization ofMycenae, where a specific form of conspicuous consumption and display competition was inpractice among competing, and narrowing, lineages seeking to distance and distinguishthemselves from the rest of their society in a special, demarcated, disposal area,27 whereas,there is no such socio-political context, indeed graves, on established state-level LM I Crete,where the focus is instead on established living rulers, and not on lineages and ancestors aspart of a dynamic and emerging socio-political competition. And then biography is at issue.What exactly does any synchronism mean? Who does it relate to? Societies do not trade, donot make history — individual people do, and the study of Aegean vases found in Egyptiangraves may tell us something about a contemporary Egyptian family, and their values andaspirations, but rather less about Aegean people.

______________________23 See in e.g. O.T.P.K. DICKINSON, The Aegean Bronze Age (1994).24 E.g. G. CADOGAN, “Dating the Aegean Bronze Age without radiocarbon,” Archaeometry 20 (1978) 209-214;

WARREN and HANKEY (supra n. 3); V. HANKEY, “From chronos to chronology: Egyptian evidence fordating the Aegean Bronze Age,” Journal of the Ancient Chronology Forum 5 (1991/92) 99-105; S.W.MANNING, “Dating the Aegean Bronze Age: without, with, and beyond, radiocarbon,” in K. RANDSBORG(ed.), Absolute chronology: archaeological Europe 2500-500 BC. Acta Archaeologica 67 - Acta ArchaeologicaSupplementa 1 (1997) 15-37.

25 SHANKS (supra n. 11) 158. In general, see SNODGRASS (supra n. 22) esp. 149-58.26 Scarabs are an obvious example. Many are found in contexts centuries after manufacture, or centuries after

the time that a particular style should have been manufactured. I thank James Weinstein for discussion.27 G. GRAZIADO, “The process of social stratification at Mycenae in the Shaft Grave period: a comparative

examination of the evidence,” AJA 95 (1991) 403-440; S. VOUTSAKI, “Social and political processes in theMycenaean Argolid: the evidence from the mortuary practices,” in Politeia, 55-65.


Chronology, or rather its lack, is the bane of Aegean archaeology. Scholars eagerlyengage in long-running and somewhat absurd debates, such as whether or not a couple ofsherds from Tell el-Amarna in Egypt are early Late Helladic (LH) IIIB or still LH IIIA2,28

whereas this fashion/style border is inherently fuzzy as most earlier LH IIIB motifs were alsoemployed in LH IIIA2.29

The very considerable quantity of Mycenaean pottery which has been discovered in theMediterranean area, and the studies of it which have been published in the last twenty-fiveyears, have produced the impression that Mycenaean pottery is ‘well-known.’ Indeed, suchpottery is, on the whole, easily recognized but there is often great difficulty in dating it.30

Yet, in awe, and rivalry, of the Egyptian and Near Eastern world, we pretend we have thisfine precision, but as if this debate really tells us anything, or helps us to understand Aegeanhistory. Comparison with the world of Attic vase painting a millennium later is instructive.We have none of the sophistication of J.D. Beazley in the Bronze Age31 — and, when it comesdown to it, what does such categorizing in fact achieve, apart from make us feel comfortablein reducing a mass of material into some form of order,32 or create modern problems?33 Wewould not even recognise the wonderful Exekias if we bumped into him in the Agora. Suchstudy certainly takes us no nearer understanding even the few major events in ancient history,yet alone the mundane. Mary Beard writes:

What, I wonder, would be the effect on archaeological practice if every artefact ... came withthe name of its maker — reliably, unquestionably and miraculously inscribed? What thenwould be the focus of our debates? The answer is simple. Not only would we still findourselves arguing about all those questions that attribution could never — or barely — touch... we would also no doubt be divided in our views of the best use of such unquestionableinformation. My guess is that it would be the same old story all over again...34

______________________28 This now infamous debate over exactly when (sic) LH IIIA2 ends, depends on whether or not WARREN

and HANKEY (supra n. 3) 149, Figs.8-9 are correct to identify as stylistically LH IIIB1 two stirrup jar sherdsfrom an otherwise LH IIIA2 assemblage at Tell el-Amarna. The debate, and the contrasting views of otherscholars like E. French and P. Mountjoy who consider these same sherds as best dated LH IIIA2, aresummarized in M.H. WIENER, “The absolute chronology of Late Helladic IIIA2” (in press). LH IIIA2 styleis certainly still current among imports for deposit in Egypt from late in the reign of Amenhotep III throughto during the reign of Akhenaten: WARREN and HANKEY (supra n.3) 148-54; V. HANKEY and D. ASTON,“Mycenaean pottery at Saqqara: finds from excavations by the Egyptian Exploration Society of London andthe Rijksmuseum Van Oudheden, Leiden, 1975-1990,” in J.B. CARTER and S.P. MORRIS (eds.), The ages ofHomer: a tribute to Emily Townsend Vermeule (1995) 67-91 at p. 69.

29 On the chronology of LH IIIB, see recently P.M. THOMAS, LH IIIB:1 pottery from Tsoungiza and Zygouries,Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1992) esp. pp. 460-510.

30 E. FRENCH, “Pottery groups from Mycenae: a summary,” BSA (1963) 44-52 at p. 44.31 E.g. J.F. CHERRY, “Beazley in the Bronze Age? Ref lections on attribution studies in Aegean prehistory,”

in EIKVN 123-44. Other scholars maintain the ability to go some way toward recognizing individual artists,e.g. C. MORRIS, “Hands up for the individual! The role of attribution studies in Aegean prehistory,”Cambridge Archaeological Journal 3 (1993) 41-66, but this is both contentious, and with none of thesophistication, nor initial potter/painter signature basis, of Beazley’s work with Black and Red Figurepottery.

32 See e.g. H. HOFFMAN, “In the wake of Beazley: prolegomena to an anthropological study of Greekvase-painting,” Hephaistos 1 (1979) 61-70; Idem, “Why did the Greeks need imagery? An anthropologicalapproach to the study of Greek vase painting,” Hephaistos 9 (1988) 143-62; M. BEARD, “Adopting anapproach II,” in T. RASMUSSEN and N. SPIVEY (eds.), Looking at Greek vases (1991) 12-35.

33 E.g. D.W.J. GILL and C. CHIPPINDALE, “Material and intellectual consequences of esteem for Cycladicfigurines,” AJA 97 (1993) 601-659.

34 M. BEARD in MORRIS (supra n. 31) 60.


It is only recently that classical scholarship has started seriously to try to view, read, andunderstand ancient imagery in its own terms, and as communication.35

We also need to be honest. Despite the loving elaboration, and the many books onaspects of the classification of Aegean pottery, the chronology available after over a century ofeffort is remarkably poor. ‘So loose is the chronology ... that we must count ourselves fortunateif we can tie down some object or innovation to a century’.36 For example, the genesis of thestate on Crete is a very big moment in Minoan and indeed Aegean history.37 John Cherrycreated a famous stir at the Minoan Society conference of 1981 by proposing that thedevelopment of the state (the first palaces) on Crete was the outcome of a rapid process ofchange, and not of a long, gradual, evolution of nearly a millennium as Keith Branigan andothers had assumed, or argued (and still do).38 But given the nature of the subject, Cherrycould only quantify his ‘revolution’ to a period of a couple of centuries! Basically, anytimefrom the French Revolution to President Clinton. In other words, the two very differentmodes, or processes — of evolution or revolution — could be proposed, but in fact neither sidecould quantify the necessary time scale to decide — even approximately — whichcharacterization is correct. Sixteen years on this key debate remains unresolved.

Another topical example is the controversy concerning the site of Tell el-Dabca in theNile delta, and related matters.39 This huge 250 hectare site, the Hyksos capital of Avaris, withEgyptian, Palestinian, Cypriot and Aegean linkages promises a relationship with the precisechronology and history of Egypt; the excavator, Manfred Bietak, gives precise dates for the

______________________35 See supra n. 32; also e.g. C. BÉRARD, Images et société en Grèce ancienne: l’iconographie comme méthode

d’analyse: actes du Colloque international, Lausanne 8-11 février 1984 (1987); BÉRARD et al., A city of images:iconography and society in ancient Greece, Trans. D. LYONS (1989); C. SOURVINOU-INWOOD, ‘Reading’Greek culture: texts and images, rituals and myths (1991); M. SHANKS, “Art and an archaeology of embodiment:some aspects of Archaic Greece,” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 5 (1995) 207-244. J. ELSNER, Art and theRoman viewer: the transformation of art from the Pagan world to Christianity (1995); A. STEWART, Art, desire,and the body in ancient Greece (1997).

36 J.F. CHERRY, “Polities and palaces: some problems in Minoan state formation,” in C. RENFREW and J.F.CHERRY (eds.), Peer polity interaction and socio-political change (1986) 19-45 at p. 45.

37 J.F. CHERRY, “Generalization and the archaeology of the state,” in D.R. GREEN, C.C. HASELGROVE andM.J.T. SPRIGGS (eds.), Social organisation and settlement: contributions from anthropology, archaeology andgeography (1978) 411-437; Idem, “The emergence of the state in the prehistoric Aegean,” Proceedings of theCambridge Philological Society 30 (1984) 18-48; Idem (supra n. 36); S.W. MANNING, Before Daidalos: the originsof complex society, and the genesis of the state on Crete, Ph.D. Dissertation, Cambridge (1995).

38 J.F. CHERRY, “Evolution, revolution, and the origins of complex society in Minoan Crete,” in O.KRZYSZKOWSKA and L. NIXON (eds.), Minoan society. Proceedings of the Cambridge colloquium 1981 (1983)33-45. For the gradual evolution view, see e.g. K. BRANIGAN, Pre-palatial. The foundations of palatial Crete:a survey of Crete in the Early Bronze Age, 2nd. ed. (1988); Idem, “Social transformations and the rise of thestate in Crete,” in Politeia, 33-42; P.M. WARREN, “The genesis of the Minoan palace,” in R. HÄGG and N.MARINATOS (eds.), The function of the Minoan palaces. Proceedings of the fourth international symposium at theSwedish Institute in Athens, 10-16 June, 1984 (1987) 47-56. M.K. DABNEY, “The later stages of state formationin palatial Crete,” in Politeia, 43-47 argues that the first Middle Minoan (Old) palaces were only a formativeor intermediate stage on the way to full states, and thus state and palace are not entirely synonymous. Thereis not space to discuss this issue here, but I disagree, and see the Old Palace phenomenon as the key changeto statehood (even if to ‘formative,’ or ‘early,’ statehood).

39 M. BIETAK, “Avaris and Piramesse: archaeological exploration in the eastern Nile Delta,” Proceedings of theBritish Academy 65 (1979) 225-90; Idem, “Problems of Middle Bronze Age chronology: new evidence fromEgypt,” AJA 88 (1984) 471-485; Idem, “The Middle Bronze Age of the Levant — a new approach to relativeand absolute chronology,” in High, Middle or Low?, Part III, 78-120; Idem, “Egypt and Canaan during theMiddle Bronze Age,” BASOR 281 (1991) 27-72; Idem, “Connections between Egypt and the Minoan world:new results from Tell el-Dabca/Avaris,” in Egypt, the Aegean and the Levant, 19-28; Idem (ed.), Hyksos Egyptand the Eastern Mediterranean World; Idem, Avaris: the capital of the Hyksos (1996); O. NEGBI, “The ‘Libyanlandscape’ from Thera: a review of Aegean enterprises overseas in the Late Minoan IA period,” JMA 7(1994) 73-112; E.H. CLINE, “Rich Beyond the Dreams of Avaris: Tell el-Dabca and the Aegean World — AGuide for the Perplexed,” BSA 93 (1998; in press).


various contexts. Since the discovery of fragments of wall-paintings similar in technique andimagery to Aegean examples (first published in 1992),40 the rush and number of Dabca-relatedstudies by Aegean archaeologists has been quite extraordinary and unashamed: ex oriente lux.Aegean archaeologists seem to have been embarrassingly keen to endeavor somehow to linktheir data and arguments with this apparent precision, with lux orientis — we are in awe, wecrave such ‘historical’ credibility.

First, when Bietak said some fresco fragments found in secondary, rubbish, contexts,were late Hyksos, we saw suggestions of a Minoan princess marrying a Hyksos ruler takenalmost seriously.41 Professor Peter Warren even argued that perhaps the first Minoan (sic)frescoes were not painted in Crete, but in Egypt.42 Why the ‘first,’ despite such implausibility?Well, because the fragments were dated to the Hyksos period, and thus rather early for anadvocate of a low Minoan chronology, and hence special pleading. Now Bietak says that themassive platform and associated architecture is in fact early 18th Dynasty.43 Most of our fieldseems only too happy to accept this, and is now doing as told by this Egyptological authority,and writing a new Aegean history — despite Bietak providing no credible explanation for thisdramatic change of mind/interpretation. First, we have now in fact lost the Hyksos palace, yetKamose tells us there was one.44 Second, why did Ahmose build a huge palace afterconquering Avaris when it was not then strategically important to him, and he was off fightinga war in Palestine, and why, if he did build such an impressive structure complete with Aegeanstyle frescoes, and by whom, was it totally destroyed only a few decades later and replaced bymundane 18th Dynasty houses? Instead, surely this is the destroyed foundations of the Hyksospalace45 replaced by ordinary 18th dynasty houses.

But, regardless of the above debate, what about the fresco fragments? They somehowall became Late Minoan (LM) IA in stylistic date when they were originally thought to beHyksos in date. But in fact several elements would as easily, even better, date to LM IB (orlater Neopalatial) in stylistic terms. Bietak and Marinatos expressly voice concern over thisproblem.46 Paul Rehak thus correctly writes:

According to the low (traditional) Aegean chronology, the early 18th Dynasty Dabcapaintings should be contemporary with LM IA. But as several recent studies have pointedout, the spread of bull iconography outside of Knossos is a feature of the end of theNeopalatial period. The Dabca frescoes thus fit better into the revised high Aegeanchronology, which makes them contemporary with LM IB.47

The fresco fragments showing ivy from the area/context of what is stated to be an early18th Dynasty portal are also of great interest in this regard.48 Bietak and Marinatos state thatthis is the only fresco fragment specifically linked — in situ — with the early 18th Dynasty. Asin other examples from Tell el-Dabca, the colours are not particularly Aegean. More

______________________40 M. BIETAK, “Minoan wall-paintings unearthed at ancient Avaris,” Egyptian Archaeology 2 (1992) 26-28; M.

BIETAK and N. MARINATOS, “The Minoan wall paintings from Avaris,” in Hyksos Egypt and the EasternMediterranean World, 49-62; P. JÁNOSI, “Die Stratigraphische Position und Verteilung der minoischenWandfragmente in den Grabungsplätzen H/I und H/IV von Tell el-Dabca,” in Hyksos Egypt and the EasternMediterranean World, 63-71; etc. References to the recent plethora of Dabca-related work seem unnecessary.

41 E.g. BIETAK, “Connections” (supra n. 39) 26 and refs.; NEGBI (supra n. 39) 87.42 P. WARREN, “Minoan Crete and Pharaonic Egypt,” in Egypt, the Aegean and the Levant, 4-5.43 BIETAK, Avaris (supra n. 39) 67ff., and subsequent publications and presentations.44 H.S. SMITH and A. SMITH, “A reconsideration of the Kamose text,” ZÄS 103 (1976) 48-76.45 See P. JÁNOSI, “Die Fundamentplattform eines Palastes (?) der späten Hyksoszeit in ‘Ezbet Helmi (Tell

el-Dabca),” in M. BIETAK (ed.), Haus und Palast im alten Ägypten (1996) 93-98.46 BIETAK and MARINATOS (supra n. 40) 60.47 P. REHAK, “Interconnections between the Aegean and the Orient in the second millennium B.C.,” AJA 101

(1997) 399-402 at p. 400. On the bull iconography he refers to the studies by B. and E. HALLAGER, andJ. YOUNGER in Politeia. See also M. SHAW, “Bull leaping frescoes at Knossos and their inf luence on theTell el-Dabca murals,” in Hyksos Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean World, 91-120.

48 BIETAK and MARINATOS (supra n. 40) 49 and Fig. 13.


interesting though are the stylistic comparisons. LM IA frescoes show ivy in a notablynaturalistic style (if simplified), with solid or part-solid leaves,49 and most examples fromceramic decoration are similar.50 Indeed, if one rules out a relief sculptural form of the motiffrom a MM III columnar stone lamp,51 where the medium perhaps partly promotes this formof representation (ditto the later form on a metal cup),52 then the best comparisons for theless naturalistic, more stylised, representation of ivy, with attention paid to curving/spiralinterior decoration (what Furumark refers to as the open and volute type of the motif),53 come— from Cretan material — from LM IB, and onwards into LM II, and LM III, with an exampleon a LM IB sherd from Kythera both very similar in type and as part of a running sequenceoff a stem as in the Dabca fresco.54 Indeed, it is perhaps notable that good comparisons ofform and style may be found in Mycenaean LH IIA ceramic decoration,55 and one might begineven to wonder if the earlier fresco fragments found as rubbish and debris widely mixed intostrata near the platform are ‘Minoanizing,’ and the later early 18th Dynasty ones‘Mycenaeanizing?’ Very little verifiable LM IB pottery reached Egypt,56 in contrast to severalLH II examples. In conclusion, there seems no good reason for this ivy to be compared to LMIA examples (and MM III comparisons are too early on any chronology); it is also in contrastto the naturalistic, LM IA style, plants found in other Tell el-Dabca fresco fragments.57 Thusit may be that the fresco associated with an early 18th Dynasty portal is best compared to LMIB/LH IIA styles, and that the LM IA style fragments from other areas are therefore bestdated to the late Hyksos palace.

The point is that all is confusion, a priori assumptions, and ambiguity. As Rehak writes,‘interpretation of the frescoes has far outpaced their scholarly presentation.’ It is not at allclear that these paintings were ever the work of actual Minoan artists (as widely stated alreadyin print), rather than products of an ‘Aegeanizing’ fashion elsewhere.58 What do the frescofragments therefore tell us? The majority of the fresco fragments which might be thoughtsimilar to LM IA or IB examples from the Aegean — and also several other key late MBA toearly LB 1 sites in the eastern Mediterranean — found in secondary, rubbish, contexts of anunknown terminus ante quem inform us that either or both the later Hyksos or early 18thDynasty elite of the site valued such artwork as part of what in fact seems a late MBA(especially) to early LB east Mediterranean international koiné of elite, prestige, expressionespecially in main meeting, feasting, rooms,59 but in fact give no precise data for the Aegeanworld itself. Reported Middle Minoan III and LM IA ceramics, and Cypriot White Slip I

______________________49 C. DOUMAS, The wall-paintings of Thera (1992) pls.78-79, 83; W.-D. NIEMEIER, Die Palaststilkeramik von

Knossos: Stil, Chronologie und Historischer Kontext (1985) 66, Figs. 22.1-4.50 NIEMEIER (supra n. 49) Fig. 22.9-14, 15; M. POPHAM, “Late Minoan pottery, a summary,” BSA 62 (1967)

337-51 at Pls.76.i, 77.d.51 A.J. EVANS, PM I 344-45, Fig. 249.52 S. HOOD, The arts in prehistoric Greece (1978) Fig. 165.53 A. FURUMARK, The Mycenaean pottery: analysis and classification (1941) 268.54 J.N. COLDSTREAM and G.L. HUXLEY (ed.), Kythera. Excavations and studies conducted by the University of

Pennsylvania Museum and the British School at Athens (1972) 199 no. 287, Pl. 57.287. Generally, see:NIEMEIER (supra n. 49) 67, Fig. 22.18, 22.23, 22.40; POPHAM (supra n. 50) Pl. 82.a, pl. 83.b, pl. 84.c; W.W.CUMMER and E. SCHOFIELD, Keos III. Ayia Irini: House A (1984) 56 no. 175, Pl. 49.175, 62 no. 274, Pl.51.274. The climbing motif in less naturalistic, more stylised, form occurs in LM II: NIEMEIER (supra n.49) Fig. 22.45-46.

55 NIEMEIER (supra n. 49) 72, Fig. 23; FURUMARK (supra n. 53) esp. Fig. 35 top, letters s, t, x, Fig. 35 nos. 2,3, 8, Fig. 36 nos. 9, 10, 30; P.A. MOUNTJOY, Mycenaean pottery: an introduction (1993) Fig. 57, p. 53 no.74.

56 The conference presentation at Cincinnati by A. Leonard and V. Hankey also noted that some pottery fromEgyptian-Palestinian contexts previously thought to be LM IB has in fact proved to be Mycenaean onscientific and further analysis.

57 BIETAK and MARINATOS (supra n. 40) Figs. 12, 14.58 REHAK (supra n. 47) 401.59 W.-D. NIEMEIER, “Minoan artisans travelling overseas: the Alalakh frescoes and the painted plaster f loor

at Tel Kabri (western Galilee),” in Thalassa, 189-201; Idem, “Minoans and Hyksos: Aegean frescoes in theLevant,” BICS 40 (1995) 258-61; NEGBI (supra n. 39).


sherds, all from secondary contexts at Dabca, may, or may not, offer a correlation with eitherthe later Hyksos phase or the early 18th Dynasty — although, in this case, the total absence todate of LM IA material from any other 18th Dynasty context anywhere in Egypt might againsuggest that the Dabca material best dates to the Hyksos period, and the late MB Hyksostrading world in the east Mediterranean. One may recall Kamose describing 300 ships ofRetenu in the Hyksos harbour of Avaris. An axe and dagger of Ahmose found in Aahotep’stomb are frequently compared to Aegean comparanda60 — especially the Shaft Grave daggers— but in fact parallels exist in the Hyksos world. Further, as Kantor pointed out in hermonograph,61 the niello technique did not originate in Mycenae, but in west Asia, and a sitelike later MB Byblos was perhaps the source of such prestige technology, then imitated anddeveloped in Greece, Crete, and the Hyksos centres. Again, what exact time is compared withwhat, and why and how contemporary the imagery chosen by Ahmose for his ceremonial axeto celebrate his conquest of the Hyksos, is unclear. Was LH I/LM IA Aegean style thecontemporary new thing seized upon by Ahmose, or was it instead a symbol of the eastMediterranean trading world of the Hyksos now annexed by him (Ahmose as Griffin underconquest of foe — other side Ahmose as Egyptian sphinx with head of enemy in hand)?

I do not wish to pursue this subject further here — we could be at it for many pages. AllI wish to draw attention to is that such traditionally-situated studies have not provided theAegean with a precise or accurate chronology. We have been desperate to try to belong to thehistory of Egypt, but all is conf lict of evidence types, ambiguities, and impossibilities. Errorsof a large, but unquantified, nature exist. It is an understatement to say that things do seemto keep moving; that firm conclusions and precision remain absent.

This brings us to the other great divide relevant to our field. In the AD 1980s and 1990sseveral leading Aegean archaeologists — Colin Renfrew, Anthony Snodgrass, Stephen Dyson,Michael Shanks, etc. — variously commented on, bemoaned, or critiqued, what they saw as alack of contact, dialogue, and involvement between Aegean and classical archaeology, andanthropology and archaeological theory.62 They argued that if we were to move beyondceramic periods, art history, and the most general of generalities, we would have to engagewith theory, anthropology, economics, politics, and so on. Over that same modern timeperiod we have moved from the world of processual to post-processual archaeology.63 Inmodern archaeology and anthropology, individuals, and individual decision making byintelligent, self-interested, agents are recognized as the core to any understanding andhistorical analysis, from so-called egalitarian hunter-gatherers (Palaeolithic to modern) tocomplex societies. Both the modern processual (or ‘cognitive’) and the post-processual campsstate and accept this; the latter based on the writings of Bourdieu, Giddens, Foucault, etc., theformer based on models for evolution and decision-making. Trade is between individualpeople, not somatized groups; social and political change comes about through the interplayof individual people; human landscape, architecture, and material culture are the products of,and were viewed, constructed, and understood by, individuals in relation to other individuals;

______________________60 EVANS PM I, 551 Fig. 402, Fig. 537; L. MORGAN, The miniature wall paintings of Thera: a study in Aegean

culture and iconography (1988) 51, 53, 186 n. 80, 187 n. 112, Pl. 63; WARREN (supra n. 42) 5.61 KANTOR, 65.62 C. RENFREW, “The great tradition versus the great divide: archaeology as anthropology?,” AJA 84 (1980)

287-98; A.M. SNODGRASS, “The new archaeology and the classical archaeologist,” AJA 89 (1985) 31-37;Idem, An archaeology of Greece: the present state and future scope of a discipline (1987); S.L. DYSON, “From newto new age archaeology: archaeological theory and classical archaeology — a 1990s perspective,” AJA 97(1993) 195-206; SHANKS (supra n. 11).

63 HODDER (supra n. 11); R.W. PREUCEL (ed.), Processual and postprocessual archaeologies: multiple ways ofknowing the past (1991); R.W. PREUCEL and I. HODDER (eds.), Contemporary archaeology in theory (1996).


a society consists of different individuals and their unique lived biographies, and the structureand interplay of their lives.64

Even the mundane world of craft and technology is involved — it too has a social contextand role — rather than merely some disembedded material, functionalist, or economicjustification. Technology provides one of many ‘arenas’ in which a variety of different,overlapping, and similar interests may be defined, expressed, and negotiated. As Ingold states:‘while technical routines can be thought of as the mundane arena of the everyday, they are alsoarenas wherein skill, craft and knowledgeable practice are developed into mechanisms toeffect social interests.’65 Thus the very types of evidence employed in conventionalchronology studies must in fact be considered and understood in social terms — via agencyand practice theory.

Anthony Snodgrass has observed our dilemma. Archaeology as conventionallypracticed in our region provides broad scale patterns with a chronology not capable of relationto the individual human: ‘...archaeological material and historical events are hard to bringtogether, because they represent different facets of human experience.’66 Decades, centuries,come and go. We are very much trapped in the world of the long durée. But, in contrast, weknow that major historical events and developments occur in hours, days, weeks, a few years —they are the work of key individuals and the interplay of these people with others. A womenwas buried in a wooden coffin cut in the summer months of 1370 BC at Egtved in Jutland,67

and, as Julius Caesar chastised himself, before lifting his game considerably, Alexander theGreat died in his early thirties — but in the second half of his life he had changed the world.68

And, even if we cannot identify such moments or specific individuals, major changes andmovements in human history and fashion occupy the scale of a generation or a couple ofdecades (what might be termed an ‘analytical individual’),69 and this time scale at least mightbe capable of archaeological resolution. Indeed, if we are ever to bring archaeology togetherwith history, to explain the human, then we must find a new chronology on the scale of theindividual human, of years and decades and generations. As Snodgrass writes:______________________64 See e.g. HODDER (supra n. 11); references given supra n. 2; M.H. JOHNSON, “Conceptions of agency in

archaeological interpretation,” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 8 (1989) 189-211; M. SAHLINS,Historical metaphors and mythical realities: structure in the early history of the Sandwich Islands kingdom (1981);S.J. MITHEN, Thoughtful foragers: a study of prehistoric decision making (1990); Idem, “Individuals, groups andthe Palaeolithic record: a reply to Clark,” Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 59 (1993) 393-98; J. THOMAS,Rethinking the Neolithic (1991); Idem, Time, culture, and identity: an interpretative archaeology (1996); M.CARRITHERS, Why humans have cultures: explaining anthropology and social diversity (1992); P.B. ROSCOE,“Practice and political centralization: a new approach to political evolution,” Current Anthropology 34 (1993)111-40; M. POSTONE, E. LiPUMA and C. CALHOUN, “Introduction: Bourdieu and social theory,” in C.CALHOUN, E. LIPUMA and M. POSTONE (eds.), Bourdieu: critical perspectives (1993) 1-13; R. BRADLEY,Altering the earth: the origins of monuments in Britain and continental Europe (1993); J. ROBB, “Gendercontradictions, moral coalitions, and inequality in prehistoric Italy,” Journal of European Archaeology 2.1(1994) 20-49; GOSDEN (supra n. 18); D.J. SAITTA, “Agency, class, and archaeological interpretation,”Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 13 (1994) 201-227; J.C. BARRETT, Fragments from Antiquity: anarchaeology of social life in Britain, 2900-1200 BC (1994); C. RENFREW and E.B.W. ZUBROW (eds.), Theancient mind: elements of cognitive archaeology (1994); C. TILLEY, A phenomenology of landscape: places, paths andmonuments (1994); M.-A. DOBRES and C. HOFFMAN, “Social agency and the dynamics of prehistorictechnology,” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 1 (1994) 211-58; L. MESKELL, “The somatizationof archaeology: institutions, discourses, corporeality,” Norwegian Archaeological Review 29 (1996) 1-16; H.LOURANDOS, Continent of hunter-gatherers: new perspectives in Australian prehistory (1997) esp.10-11.

65 T. INGOLD, “Tools, minds, and machines: an excursus in the philosophy of technology,” Techniques etCulture 12 (1988) 151-76.

66 SNODGRASS (supra n. 22) 150.67 K. RANDSBORG, “Historical implications: chronological studies in European archaeology c.2000-500

B.C.,” Acta Archaeologica 62 (1991) 89-108 at p. 95.68 Suetonius, Divus Ivlivs, 7; Dio Cassius, 37.52.2; Plutarch, Caesar, 11.3.69 C.L. REDMAN, “The ‘analytical individual’ and prehistoric style variability,” in J.N. HILL and J. GUNN

(eds.), The individual in prehistory: studies of variability in style in prehistoric technologies (1977) 41-53. AsCHERRY in MORRIS (supra n. 31) 60 points out, Morris’ more successful, and useful, attempts to isolate‘individuals’ are of this scale (cf. MORRIS, supra n. 31, 47).


It is surely clear that any kind of ‘historical’ narrative, for a culture in which any of thedates may be even fifty years out, let alone two hundred, in either direction, is animpossibility.70

Without the chronological resolution to define individuals in prehistory, we are unableto consider historical-level analysis, and are left describing sets of objects and monuments invery general and non-human terms, and can never know the answers to the importantquestions which all start with ‘why...’ or ‘how...’ or ‘when...’. At best we are left in the worldof the longue durée, and guesswork. Of course, I readily agree that much can be learnt bystudying the big picture and long-term patterns and processes,71 and archaeology has beenrather good at this: a grand narrative may indeed be written.72 But we have very muchreached the productive limits of macro-analysis, we have the outline and even the broad brushstrokes; to significantly advance our analysis and interpretation in the future we need toacquire the ability to approach the micro-scale, to be able to produce historical narrative. AsCherry writes:

This degree of chronological imprecision presents a real impediment ... The core of theconcept, after all is interaction between living individuals or societies. ... While resolutionto the level of the individual is scarcely ever possible in fully prehistoric contexts, one mightat least hope to be able to work with a chronology that allowed the study of the materialrecord of contemporaneous social groups in different places (i.e. a single generation).73

We must find the means to learn to see the necessary detail. As highlighted earlier, thissort of information is not available from conventional archaeological dating techniques.Indeed, these chronologies are so culturally constructed and determined — so relative — as todefeat the object. Just as longitude could only be conquered by the breaking of relative timeand the imposition of independent absolute time; high resolution and independentchronology is necessary for the peopling of the past and the end of an impersonal, general,prehistory. We need to escape the diffusionist background still inherent in muchchronological analysis, and instead de-couple cultural interaction, and absolute dating.

When asked to discuss the topic ‘The future is now: where do we go from here’ at thisconference, I therefore say that the next great revolution in Aegean archaeology should, andwill, be the active and urgent development of chronological precision on the order of anhistorical, individual- to generational-scale, resolution; to bring the frames of reference forthe Aegean into the same order of magnitude as available in Egypt and the historical NearEast. We can then address the issues of theory, anthropology, and art-history with anappropriate data resolution. We can look to models and explanation, versus generaldescription and process. We can move from processual archaeology and broad datasets, to ahumanistic, post-processual, archaeology. We can people prehistory.

How will this be achieved? What is required is a high resolution chronology for theindividual archaeological contexts. This cannot come through tracing scarce, even unique,imports or exports over long distances and through the hands of an unknown number ofpeople. The dating must be direct on the subject of interest. For example, if it is a building,we want to know when it was constructed, how long it was used and in what phases, when werealterations made, and when did it go out of use. We then want the same information for all______________________70 SNODGRASS, “The new” (supra n. 62) 37.71 An ‘Annales’ perspective in archaeology is well discussed in A.B. KNAPP (ed.), Archaeology, Annales, and

ethnohistory (1992). The analysis and explanation of the human colonization of the Mediterranean islandsoffers a good example of the study of such pattern and process: J.F. CHERRY, “The first colonisation of theMediterranean islands: a review of recent research,” JMA 3 (1990) 145-221; idem, “Pattern and process inthe earliest colonisation of the Mediterranean islands,” PPS 47 (1981) 41-68.

72 E.g. A. SHERRATT, “Reviving the grand narrative: archaeology and long-term change,” Journal of EuropeanArchaeology 3.1 (1995) 1-32; Idem, “Plate tectonics and imaginary prehistories: structure and contingency inagricultural origins,” in D.R. HARRIS (ed.), The origins and spread of agriculture and pastoralism in Eurasia(1996) 130-40; Idem, “Climatic cycles and behavioral revolutions: the emergence of modern humans and thebeginning of farming,” Antiquity 71 (1997) 271-87.

73 CHERRY (supra n. 36) 45.


its neighbors. We can then see the evolution of people and space on a lived, individual, timescale. We can then compare quantified assemblages against divided time and see how fashionevolved, overlapped, and changed — independent of such issues. This information will comethrough the proper and rigorous application of integrated radiocarbon anddendrochronological analysis.74 The beginning of the end of Aegean prehistory is alreadywith us, through the important and painstaking work of the Aegean Dendrochronology Projectunder Peter Kuniholm et al. Since AD 1996 this brings the potential of absolute and precisedates for more than half the Bronze Age,75 and the rest is very close to being achieved.However, direct dendrochronology can only be applied in a relatively limited range of cases inthe Aegean. Situations like Acemhöyük or Uluburun are not usual in the Aegean (andcertainly outside Anatolia)!

In general, refined radiocarbon dating offers the prospect of a near historical time scale— of the approximately generational level. The particular benefit of radiocarbon is the veryproblem usually bemoaned by Aegean archaeologists: the wiggly calibration curve. Yet thisnon-monotonic record of past atmospheric levels of radiocarbon offers a unique,independent, fingerprint on time. Events happened at specific points on this wiggly andunique path through time, not during some vague, general, statistical, range. What is refinedradiocarbon dating? I mean the simultaneous calibration of sets of quality seriated data —wiggle-matching, using the shape of the calibration curve and the solution of multipleparameters to resolve each individual case with precision — which can offer data for specifictarget events of near decadal to generational resolution. Further, I mean the increasinglyrefined, rigorous, accurate, and precise calibration data that is now available (June 1997 at the16th International Radiocarbon Conference at Groningen), and is becoming available (newgeneral calibration data to be published in 1998, new Aegean-specific calibration data in 1999,see below).

The application of radiocarbon wiggle-matching on fixed sequence dendro-data is wellknown, but the identical taphonomic logic may be applied to a variety of archaeologicalcircumstances.76 In the future, we should expect through the combination ofdendrochronology, high-precision radiocarbon dating, high-precision radiocarbon calibrationdata, and sophisticated statistical analysis and modeling,77 precise dendrochronological or

______________________74 For examples from Britain and Ireland, see M.G.L. BAILLIE, A slice through time: dendrochronology and

precision dating (1995) 57-72; it is both notable and interesting that prehistoric archaeology in northernEurope — unfettered by embarrassed and envious associations with Near Eastern history — is much furtheradvanced on this task: e.g. RANDSBORG (supra n. 67). Peter Kuniholm has been on a lonely crusade inthe Aegean and Near East until very recently.

75 P.I. KUNIHOLM, B. KROMER, S.W. MANNING, M. NEWTON, C.E. LATINI, and M.J. BRUCE, “Anatoliantree-rings and the absolute chronology of the east Mediterranean 2220-718 BC,” Nature 381 (1996) 780-83.

76 See e.g. G.W. PEARSON, “Precise calendrical dating of known growth-period samples using a ‘curve fitting’technique,” Radiocarbon 28 (1986) 292-299; B. WENINGER, “Die Radiocarbondaten,” in M. KORFMANN(ed.), Demircihüyük. Die Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen 1975-1978. Band II. Naturwissenschaftliche Untersuchungen(1987) 4-13; Idem, “Stratified 14C dates and ceramic chronologies: case studies for the Early Bronze Age atTroy (Turkey) and Ezero (Bulgaria),” Radiocarbon 37 (1995) 443-56; S.W. MANNING and B. WENINGER,“A light in the dark: archaeological wiggle matching and the absolute chronology of the close of the AegeanLate Bronze Age,” Antiquity 66 (1992) 636-63; KUNIHOLM et al. (supra n. 75) 780-81; Y. KOJO, R.M. KALINand A. LONG, “High-precision ‘wiggle-matching’ in radiocarbon dating,” Journal of Archaeological Science 21(1994) 475-79; C.B. RAMSEY, “Radiocarbon calibration and analysis of stratigraphy: the OxCal program,”Radiocarbon 37 (1995) 425-30; J.A. CHRISTEN and C.D.LITTON, “A Bayesian approach towiggle-matching,” Journal of Archaeological Science 22 (1995) 719-25; B. VAN GEEL and W.G. MOOK,“High-resolution 14C dating of organic deposits using natural atmospheric 14C variations,” Radiocarbon 31(1989) 151-55; M.R. KILIAN, J. VAN DER PLICHT and B. VAN GEEL, “Dating raised bogs: new aspects ofAMS 14C wiggle matching, a reservoir effect and climatic change,” Quaternary Science Reviews 14 (1995)959-66; J. VAN DER PLICHT, E. JANSMA and H. KARS, “The ‘Amsterdam Castle’: a case study of wigglematching and the proper calibration curve,” Radiocarbon 37 (1995) 965-68.

77 Especially the use of Bayesian approaches: e.g. RAMSEY (supra n. 76); CHRISTEN and LITTON (supra n.76).


radiocarbon dates for the start of built structures — from wood or charcoal relating toconstruction, or even organics in mud-bricks — generational or so precision dates for eachdefined phase of use of such buildings (potentially dendrochronology for changes or repairsto built structures, otherwise radiocarbon data on organic materials used within thebuildings), or other areas at a site (constrained both by terminus post quem data fromcharcoal/wood, and contemporary data from dates on short-lived samples), and generationalor so precision dates for the last use of buildings, or of outside areas. And then for the variousphases at the site through the century, centuries, or millennia, of occupation. Therequirements are appropriate high-quality excavation, a growing understanding of short-termsite formation processes and the taphonomy of materials in archaeological deposits,78 adeliberate strategy to try to acquire relevant data, and the appropriate analytical expertise.Perhaps not every site can yield everything one might want, but, with f lotation of deposits,with micromorphology, most non-acid environments should be amenable — the wonderfuldata from Troy hint at the possibilities already,79 and a reading of the excavation reports tellsus what might have been at Knossos, and so on. I admit that the foregoing might be deemedslightly optimistic, but even significant progress towards these goals would mark a revolutionin current Aegean prehistory. And, I suggest Aegean sceptics and pessimists pause andconsider the extraordinary revolution, and diachronic precision, in the dating of Stonehenge(and its phases) via just such sophisticated radiocarbon analysis,80 and then ref lect on our ownsorry situation.

The final issue of relevance is the radiocarbon calibration curve. There is not one, butseveral in the current literature, and they are not all exactly identical.81 A small problem withsuch work at present is therefore the question of which radiocarbon calibration curve toemploy in the Aegean. The available choices are Belfast data on Irish wood, or Seattle dataon German wood, and in particular the revised versions of these data to appear soon as aresult of extensive intra- and inter- laboratory analysis. There are small differences —sometimes perhaps critical in cases such as the dating of the Thera eruption, where theexisting published Irish data make a later 17th century BC date very likely, but theSeattle-German data render it a 50:50 split between the later 17th and mid-16th centuries BC,and so would be compatible with a modified ‘lower’ chronology. Which is right? Or, morecorrectly, which is appropriate for the Aegean and east Mediterranean? To answer this, weneed some accurate and precise calibration data specifically relevant to the Aegean and theeast Mediterranean. Work is now underway towards this task.82 When completed, acombination of direct dendrochronology, and wiggle matched radiocarbon analyses against aprecise and accurate calibration dataset known to be appropriate for the Aegean and eastMediterranean, will permit the building of a mixture of an annual, and decadal togenerational level chronology for the Aegean Bronze Age given appropriate excavation andrecovery procedures.

______________________78 E.g. M. BELL, P.J. FOWLER and S.W. HILLSON (eds.), The experimental earthwork project, 1960-1992 (1996);

M.B. SCHIFFER, Formation processes of the archaeological record (1987).79 M. Korfmann and B. Kromer, “Demircihüyük, Besik-Tepe, Troia — Eine Zwischenbilanz zur Chronologie

dreier Orte in Westanatolien,” Studia Troica 3 (1993) 135-71; WENINGER “Stratified” (supra n. 76); S.W.MANNING, “Troy, radiocarbon, and the chronology of the northeast Aegean in the Early Bronze Age,”paper in press for volume from the conference ‘Poliochni and the northeast Aegean in the Early BronzeAge’ at the Italian School in Athens in April 1996.

80 A. BAYLISS, C. BRONK RAMSEY, and F.G. McCORMAC, “Dating Stonehenge,” in B. CUNLIFFE and C.RENFREW (eds.), Science and Stonehenge. Proceedings of the British Academy 92 (1997) 39-59 and furtherreferences.

81 See data in Radiocarbon 28B (1986); Radiocarbon 35(1) (1993). Issues of regional differences in atmosphericradiocarbon levels, or of systematic offsets between some of the datasets, were raised by F.G. McCORMAC,M.G.L. BAILLIE, J.R. PILCHER, and R.M. KALIN, “Location-dependent differences in the 14C content ofwood,” Radiocarbon 37 (1995) 395-407. Intensive analysis of datasets in 1996-1997 has resolved some of theproblems, and new consensus datasets will be published in 1998; other work on the topic is in progress.

82 The Aegean-East Mediterranean Radiocarbon Calibration Project, directed by the present author with anumber of collaborators, and supported by INSTAP.


This is the future, and work is required from now. We will then know when our frescoeswere painted as an independent fact, and not have to rely on rubbish deposits in Egypt. Wewill then be able to side-step the circular, relative, and fuzzy ceramic style chronologies.83

Only when the Aegean has an independent, near historical, chronology will we truly be ableto escape the current relative, and diffusionist, filters, and so address Kantor’s subject of theAegean and the Orient in the second millennium BC in a proper and rigorous manner.Kantor’s monograph may be 50 years old, but work towards a new paradigm — ‘beyond Kantor’— is only just beginning now.

Sturt W. MANNING

______________________83 Apart from discussions above, see also e.g. A. LEONARD, Jr., “Some problems inherent in

Mycenaean/Syro-Palestinian synchronisms,” in E.B. FRENCH and K.A. WARDLE (eds.), Problems in Greekprehistory. Papers presented at the centenary conference of the British School of Archaeology at Athens, ManchesterApril 1986 (1988) 319-30; K. KRISTIANSEN, “The place of chronological studies in archaeology: a viewfrom the Old World,” OJA 4 (1985) 251-66; H.J. BRUINS and W.G. MOOK, “The need for a calibratedradiocarbon chronology of Near Eastern archaeology,” Radiocarbon 31 (1989) 1019-29.


Discussion following S.W. Manning’s paper:

E.S. Sherratt: I appreciate the fact that Sturt’s being outrageously provocative as usual, but I would liketo say, and he knows it perfectly well, that he’s living in “Cloud-Cuckoo Land” if he thinks thateven out of the most wonderful mixture in the world of calibrated radiocarbon dates anddendrochronology, we can construct an historical chronology for the Aegean, and in any case wedon’t want it. We’ve had quite enough pseudohistory written out of archaeology in the Aegeanas it is anyway. (Laughter and Applause).

S.W. Manning: I assume that’s one of these questions to which you don’t actually want a response. Youeither accept and look for micro-scale data and approaches — like gender and foodprocessing/production and consumption work in Andean society by Hastorf — or you look foroverarching laws and models, such as Wilkinson’s ‘Central Civilisation’ construct. All I can sayis that if you consider the dendrochronological-dating work that’s now being done atHerculaneum, including now that of Peter Kuniholm et al., the work that’s been done in medievalEngland, Germany, etc, the work that’s been done in the American southwest, the answer is, infact, the other way around. We need an historical level of timescale for refined analysis andinterpretation. Consider as an analogy work in Mayan archaeology. The elaborate calendar, andthe translation of the Mayan glyphs and the creation of ‘history,’ have totally revolutionized thefield over the last couple of decades. In the Aegean we may never be able to achieve a text-aidedarchaeology, but with a truly rigorous and refined chronology, allied with the text-aided datafrom surrounding civilisations, and partial such data from the MM and especially LM/LHperiods, we could hope to make significant new progress. So, I agree that it’s not somethingthat’s going to happen between now and tomorrow, but the question asked of speakers in thissession was ‘where do we go in the future.’ This is where the future does lie, and for majorstructures and monuments (and I particularly think of Knossos, a site that has — or had —everything that’s required) we should be able to have a chronology that is on the order of plus orminus twenty or thirty years. I’m not trying to reinvent a “myth history.” I appreciate what Sueis getting at, but we’ll be able to produce the models that are proposed for how we explain changeat the appropriate level. At present, we’re talking about things like, ‘is it in fact “punctuatedequilibrium”?,’ and we don’t have the data to be able to answer the question. That’s what I’mgetting at.

M.J. Mellink: I have a comment and a question. The first one is really more an archaeological response:what we can do about it is dig very carefully and make certain that we get the data required bythe specialists. From there on, it’s not our responsibility — we wait for their analyses and results,and we also take the privilege of asking critical questions and being so skeptical about some oftheir recommendations, and seeing the ups and downs that are taking place, and living withthem. The question is, are we deliberately leaving out other data because we don’t think they are“scientific” enough? If you say that we don’t know history, we don’t know the historical figuresof the Bronze Age, we don’t know Minos, or we don’t know the parallels for Sargon or Shamshi-Adad, well, maybe we should do our best to get at them. One way is, of course, practiced mildly,and that is tying in with Near Eastern history. That could be done, fortunately, in a few instances,and it may be increasing again, if archaeologists do their best at finding the historical recordsthat will allow us to make these links. It’s not very fashionable to believe in all of the links thatare being constructed — we have the Ahhiyawa problem as an example, and we have theAleksandus Treaty to work with and make progress in what you refer to as a reconstruction of thegreat figures of history. We have also great Late Helladic enterprising heroes such as Attarissiyas,and we can line up characters who belong to history and who are great figures of the Bronze Age.The other material that we aren’t supposed to look at is mythology. I think we should look at it;it’s our business. We should not say ‘oh, it’s been so poorly handled, it’s wishful guessing andimagination,’ but what has been done with it, and what people like Nilsson did with it, is nothingto be neglected. One should just try to do it again, but in as moderate and critical a way aspossible. The data are hidden in there; that’s another kind of excavation that we should still makeour task. There’s a great residue there, maybe a confused residue, but we should try to straightenit out and use it. It is not common form to bring that in nowadays, but I think that we shouldn’tbe ashamed of it.

S.W. Manning: Thank you, Machteld. I only comment on the Hittite history aspect. I was very pleasedwith the way Chris Mee mentioned the links between the early Late Helladic sequence and the


Hittite annals. This is an exact situation, and you can think of the Keftiu as well. It may be truethat I can’t create real people, but once we know which particular period and little group ofKeftiu we are seeing in these paintings, we then understand that late in Thutmose III’s reign,when Thutmose has conquered most of western Asia, the prince of Keftiu comes along with therest of the world and effectively signs up to make sure that Thutmose knows that they’re friends,because he doesn’t want the same thing to happen to him. We know the proper people who aredoing this, through resolving LM IB - IIIA1 chronology [slides shown during talk]; we knowwhich prince is involved. And, with Attarissiyas, we effectively now know the right period thathe belongs with, and we can start to see, along the lines of Emily Vermeule and others, some formof history, both in epic tradition and the artwork. This possibility is open to us already and I feelwe can do better than that as well. I support most of the rest of the things that you said.

J.D. Muhly: If you look at the history of radiocarbon dating over the past forty-some years, it’s a prettysorry mess. There’s a good reason for this, and as archaeologists we’re largely responsible for it.We collected our charcoal and samples, and sent them off to the physicists, and waited for theresults in the mail. There was no communication whatsoever between the archaeologist and thescientist. We began that way and it was a fundamental mistake. I think it’s been maybe one of themain factors responsible for so much of the confusion over radiocarbon dating. What hashappened in the past few years is a tremendous revolution, renaissance, whatever you want to callit. The archaeologists are really working with the scientists now, and I think that this is one of themain reasons responsible for the tremendous progress that is being made these days.

S.W. Manning: I’m obviously going to recommend Jim’s comments. I hope that the American Schoolwill be pursuing a much more active scientific approach in the future. (Applause).


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