by Paphitis » Thu Apr 30, 2009 9:13 am
Does it really take a Mycenaean to use or even to make a Mycenaean pot?
Consequently the main objection lies in the use of certain groups of artifacts, pottery
in particular, as criteria for the presence of a Greek ethnic group in 12th/ 11th century
Cyprus. Excavated remains are fragmentary and static while the concept of ethnic
identity is fluid and particularly elusive. Ethnic and cultural boundaries are socially
constructed and therefore dynamic, infinitely variable and not always archaeologically
tangible. As Hall has demonstrated it is entirely possible for cultural contacts,
including processes as migrations and invasions, to occur with virtually no perceptible
change in the material record (Hall 1997: 111-142).
The direct translation of artifacts into historical events led researchers to
another widely criticised equation: that of absolute/ historical with relative/ stylistic
time. We cannot possibly regard all destructions that occurred while a particular ware
was in use, i.e. within a particular stylistic phase, which corresponds to a period of
thirty-fifty years in Cypriot Late Bronze Age, as synchronous. If we do make this
error, however, it is fairly easy to jump from this point to a further assumption: these
synchronous events were most probably the result of the same cause. Maier believes
that this tendency “is clearly but subconsciously influenced by an event orientated
view of history focussed far too exclusively on wars and migrations. It is also
conditioned by a contortion of our chronological perspective, which makes a span of
50 or 70 years in the 12th century seem a very short period” (Maier 1986: 317; 1994:
306-307).
As a consequence of the above fundamental errors various problems of
practical nature have arisen: numerous mistakes concerning the classification of the
material culture, pottery in particular, have been made. As the colonization theory is
largely based on the interpretation of certain categories of artifacts, archaeologists
have tried to define the boundaries of these categories as clearly as they could. This is
usually a very difficult task: material culture is not the product of programmed
machines; it is the result of human activity, which can be planned, organised and
imitative but also spontaneous and innovative. Kling, for example, has demonstrated
that the so-called Mycenaean IIIC:1b pottery, that has been regarded as the trademark
of the Mycenaean immigrants, cannot always be distinguished from the rest of the
local painted Mycenaeanizing wares (Kling 1989; 1991).
More assumptions and practical misunderstandings have emerged through the
uncritical association of some Aegean or even un-Aegean looking groups of artifacts/
architectural features with the immigrants. An example: the rectangular capitals with
stepped sides, that have been found in most of the major Late Cypriot sites and dated
around the end of the 13th century. For this reason they are thought to have been
connected with the Mycenaeans (Karageorghis 1971) although no parallels have been
recovered anywhere in the Aegean. Nevertheless every time the Cypriot soil reveals
such a capital, it is usually reported as evidence for monumental construction built by
the Mycenaeans (Karageorghis-Maier 1984: 99-101).
The above observations have instigated a series of studies, including my own
research, that have dismissed the use of artifacts as “defining criteria” of ethnic
identity; artifacts can, however, be used as “emblemic indicia” of ethnic boundaries in
the similar way as language and religion (Hall 1997: 20-1). What we archaeologists
have to do is to “illuminate the ways in which ethnic groups actively employed
material culture in making boundaries that have already been discursively
constructed” (Hall 1997: 142).