Parkinson Leads SAR Advanced Seminar

From March 11-16, 2007, Associate Professor of Anthropology William Parkinson led an Advanced Seminar at the prestigious School for Advanced Research (SAR http://www.sarweb.org/) in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Parkinson organized the seminar, entitled "Putting Aegean States in Context: Interaction in the Eastern Mediterranean and Southeastern Europe During the Bronze Age," with his colleague Michael Galaty (Millsaps College http://www.millsaps.edu/socio/galatybio.shtml).

Theoretical Scope: Putting Aegean States in Context

            This symposium explored anthropological models of social interaction between state societies and their neighbors. Specifically, we used the prehistoric eastern Mediterranean and southeastern Europe as a laboratory for reworking our anthropological understanding of the forms of interaction and exchange that linked and often transformed early pre-state and state societies. We brought together specialists who study Aegean, Near Eastern, southeastern European, and Egyptian societies in Santa Fe for five days of intensive discussion. In contrast to previous SAR symposia, which concentrated on the organizational features of archaic states sensu lato (e.g., Feinman and Marcus on archaic states), or which concentrated specifically on intra-regional interaction in one part of the Old World (e.g., Rothman on Uruk), this symposium aimed to explore in deep detail the changing nature of the social interactions that occurred between the pre-state and state societies of the Bronze Age Aegean and their adjacent contemporaries during the third and second millennia BC.

            By concentrating on how the Minoan and Mycenaean polities interacted with their adjacent contemporaries throughout their development and eventual ‘collapse’, we tried to shift the theoretical focus of the discipline away from traditional models of state formation towards more productive models of how different kinds of states interact with their contemporaries over time. Rather than asking “How do states come to be?” we tried to answer the question “How do states that develop differently, along different historical trajectories, affect each other and surrounding societies?” Such a shift in theoretical focus led us to exciting new anthropological perspectives on state variability that we hope will encourage our colleagues working in other parts of the world to explore more carefully the nature of social relationships between societies of varying scales and with dramatically different forms of economic and political organization.

            By bringing together theoretically sophisticated scholars who have a detailed understanding of the archaeological record in these different parts of the world, we hoped to bridge the gaps in theoretical perspective and knowledge of material culture that traditionally have separated anthropological archaeologists working in other parts of the world from Aegean pre-historians. In so doing, we hoped to rethink, refine, and more fully develop anthropological models of state interaction.

Goals of the Symposium: Beyond World-Systems

            Most recent investigations of interaction between states and their neighbors have relied upon – or drawn heavily from – world-systems theory. This research agenda has helped us understand some aspects of large-scale, exploitative core-periphery relationships over the Braudel’s longue durée. In such instances, the typical core is a large, hierarchical, economically and politically centralized state, and the periphery a smaller, less hierarchical, society. But world-systems frameworks are not as effective when applied to the more subtle relationships built between complex polities of varying scales with similar systems of political and economic organization. In these cases, our over-reliance on world-systems frameworks has hindered our ability to develop new models for understanding inter-regional social interaction.

            In its initial conception, world-systems theory (WST) was intended to explain interaction between culturally different societies linked via the vital exchange of food and raw materials. Wallerstein was concerned particularly with the nature of interaction as it developed between different kinds of state and non-state societies. He focused on the tendency of more powerful cores to exploit less powerful peripheries.

            Wallerstein’s initial model was applied explicitly to very recent or modern capitalist systems, but several authors have adapted it to very different historical contexts including smaller, non-capitalist systems, effectively extending its applicability several thousand years into the past. A critical shift in these adaptations has been a reworking of the model such that it no longer refers explicitly to vital goods that affect everyday life, but also includes prestige goods and items of symbolic importance.

            Sociologists Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas Hall, for example, prefer a general definition of WST that facilitates comparisons of interactions between societies of dramatically different political and economic organization. They define world-systems as “intersocietal networks in which the interactions are important for the reproduction of the internal structures of the composite units and importantly affect changes that occur in these local structures” (see “ Comparing World-Systems” in Social Forces 1993: 855). This definition encompasses interactions between states and stateless societies by approaching WST from a broad-brush, lumping perspective that masks socio-cultural variability.

            While these adaptations to Wallerstein’s initial formulation of WST allow general relationships between different societies at different levels of political and economic complexity to be analyzed, they ultimately dilute the descriptive and explanatory power of the model as initially formulated. In addition, these modified world-systems approaches are most effective when operationalized at wide geographic and temporal scales, encompassing long units of time and large units of space. When applied at narrow geographic and temporal scales, the utility of WST breaks down considerably, in particular when detailed understandings of specific cultural histories with highly refined chronologies are brought to bear on the model. In these instances, world-systems frameworks become significantly less useful for understanding inter-regional social interactions, and tend to encourage overly general, descriptive models of exchange, warfare, and inter-marriage.

Understanding Interaction: Bronze Age Aegean Societies and Their Adjacent Contemporaries

            The pre-state and state societies of the Bronze Age Aegean co-mingled and communicated with a remarkably wide variety of very different cultures, to the extent that WST alone cannot explain the multiple ties that bound them together. For this reason, theoretically informed, diachronic investigations of local patterns of social change are necessary if Aegean trajectories are to be related to the complex networks of inter-regional, pan-Eastern Mediterranean and southeastern European interaction that characterized the third and second millennia BC. In the Early and Middle Bronze Age, the Aegean boasted fledgling ranked societies that interacted, on the one hand, with larger, and much more politically and economically complex societies in the Near East and in northeastern Africa, and, on the other hand, with smaller-scale, more egalitarian, societies in central and southeastern Europe. By the Late Bronze Age, fully developed states emerged on the island of Crete (Minoan) and on the Greek Mainland (Mycenaean), the former employing a ‘corporate’ and the latter a ‘networked’ mode of political organization ( sensu Blanton et al. “Dual Processual Theory” in Current Anthropology 1996). Finally, the centralized states on both Crete and the Greek Mainland were replaced at the end of the Bronze Age by less politically and economically centralized societies with very different forms of social organization. Throughout this time of rapid and shifting social evolution, the nature and frequency of interactions between the Aegean societies and their adjacent contemporaries changed often, sometimes dramatically. The outstanding question is: why?

            The case for the Bronze Age Aegean as an ideal cultural context for developing anthropological models of interaction is bolstered by a highly refined ceramic and absolute chronology that allows precise dating well back into the Bronze Age. While most research that has been carried out in this region has been approached from a more traditional art-historical, rather than anthropological, perspective, well over a century of meticulous research has produced a rich material culture chronology that allows seriation and dating at levels unparalleled in most other parts of the world.

            Furthermore, the Aegean has been the focus of much recent research aimed precisely at understanding the political, economic, and ideological roles of palatial centers and their hinterlands. This research, in the form of both substantial excavations at centers, as well as systematic surface surveys around them, has rewritten our understanding of how these state societies functioned within their respective landscapes. Unlike other parts of the world, where the majority of archaeological information derives either from excavations at primary centers or from survey information around them, the Aegean offers both, and therefore a wealth of data that allow us to build richer diachronic models of economic, political, and ideological organization.

Seminar Timing, Structure, and Organization

            The seminar occurred during the week of March 11-16, 2007, at SAR in Santa Fe, NM. Each of the participants circulated position papers based on their research (see below) in advance of the seminar. The first two days of the seminar were spent discussing each of the individual papers. The next two days were spent discussing common themes that emerged from the discussion of the individual papers. The final day was spent explicitly discussing the organization of the edited volume and, in very specific terms, the contents and scope of each of the individual chapters in the volume. Ultimately, we hoped to arrive at better models that allow us to understand social interaction at several different geographic and temporal scales. In this regard we believe the seminar was a resounding success.

Results and Dissemination: New Models for Understanding State Interaction

            Two potential new general models for understanding social interaction at different geographic and temporal scales include Nick Kardulias’ concept of “negotiated peripherality”—the world-systems based notion that some individuals in peripheries are active participants who negotiate as independent agents with the core states. Another regards the “primary stimulus” of peer polity interaction—which seems to be related to the nearly simultaneous emergence of incipient elite and a sort of ‘high culture’.

            We also discussed the possibility that the dramatic changes at the beginning and end of the Bronze Age in the Aegean may be related to internal sociopolitical dynamics in the Levant and Africa. For example a deregulation of Egyptian trade practices towards the end of the third millennium BC may have encouraged Levantine seafarers to seek alternate trade routes, which eventually led to the establishment of trade contacts with incipient elites on the island of Crete. Alternatively, the “collapse” of Aegean palatial systems, towards the end of the first millennium BC also is associated with a trend towards decentralized trading practices in that part of the world.

            We currently are encouraging the participants to send us their revised chapters for the edited volume, which we expect to submit by the end of the year. In an attempt to be innovative and cutting-edge we have decided to write two introductions. The general introduction to the book will be written by William Parkinson and Michael Galaty and will summarize the main results of the seminar, primarily for consumption by scholars who are not specialists in Eastern Mediterranean prehistory. The second introduction will be written communally by all of the participants on a Wiki and will tell, from our perspective, the story of interaction throughout the Mediterranean during the Middle and Late Bronze Age. This chapter will contain within it some divergence of opinion by the various participants and will be written primarily for specialists who work in the region.

Participants:

The Co-Organizers, William A. Parkinson, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Florida State University, and Michael L. Galaty, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Millsaps College, are anthropologically-trained archaeologists interested in the development of states in the prehistoric Aegean from a cross-cultural, anthropological, perspective. They are co-editors of Rethinking Mycenaean Palaces (Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA, 1999). Parkinson edited The Archaeology of Tribal Societies (Int’l Monographs in Prehistory, Ann Arbor, 2002). Galaty authored Nestor’s Wine Cups: Investigating Ceramic Manufacture and Exchange in a Late Bronze Age ‘Mycenaean’ State (BAR, Oxford, 1999).

Robert Schon, Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics, Wesleyan College. Rob received his Ph.D. in archaeology from Bryn Mawr College in 2002. His research specialty is regional survey and the prehistory of the Mediterranean and the Balkans.

David Wengrow, Lecturer, UC- London. Wengrow’s research interests include the comparative archaeology of the Middle East and neighboring regions, and he is a specialist in Egyptian archaeology. His publications include The Archaeology of Egypt (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, Forthcoming).

Eric Cline, Associate Professor of Classics and Anthropology, The George Washington University. Cline is the international expert on trade and the Bronze Age Aegean.  His publications include Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: International Trade and the Late Bronze Age Aegean (Oxford, BAR Int’l, 1994) and Jerusalem Besieged: From Ancient Canaan to Modern Israel (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2004).

P. Nick Kardulias, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Sociology, Wooster College, specializes in the Aegean Bronze Age and WST. His publications include World-Systems Theory in Practice: Leadership, Production, and Exchange (Lanham, MD, Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), and he co-edited (with Mark Shutes) Aegean Strategies: Studies of Culture and Environment at the European Fringe (Lanham, MD, Rowman and Littlefield, 1997).

Helena Tomas, Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb, is a specialist in Balkan prehistory and contact between Balkans and the Aegean.

John F. Cherry, Professor of Classical Archaeology, University of Michigan, is a specialist in Aegean prehistory, surface survey, and Bronze Age trade. He co-edited Peer Polity Interaction and Sociopolitical Change (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1986, with C. Renfrew) and authored several articles on state formation in the Aegean.

Sue Sherratt, University of Sheffield, is a specialist in European prehistory and prehistoric exchange.