The New Archaeology and the Classical Archaeologist

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The New Archaeology and the Classical ArchaeologistAuthor(s): A. M. SnodgrassReviewed work(s):Source: American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 89, No. 1, Centennial Issue (Jan., 1985), pp. 31-37Published by: Archaeological Institute of AmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/504768 .

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This articlewas presentedas the first in a series of lectureson archaeology ponsoredointlyby the Archaeological nstitute of Americaandthe 92nd Street YMHA in New YorkCity inApril 1984.

The New Archaeologyandthe ClassicalArchaeologist*A.M. SNODGRASS

The topicof this paperis no longera novel one. It isnow over fouryearssincemy colleagueat Cambridge,ProfessorColin Renfrew, delivered a clarion call inthe shapeof his lecture at the Centennialcelebrationsof the Archaeological Institute of America, "TheGreat Tradition versus the Great Divide."' Sincethen,we have hadStephenDyson'sconciliatorypaper"AClassicalArchaeologist'sResponseto the New Ar-chaeology," in the Bulletin of the American Schools ofOrientalResearchfor 1981, not to mentiona few oth-er attemptsby Americanand Britisharchaeologistsoaddressthemselves,brieflyand usually in passing, tosimilar questions2;while from France has come theone really extended treatment of the problem, ema-nating from within what Renfrew called the "GreatTradition" and taking a searchingly critical lookacross his "GreatDivide":Paul Courbin'sconsistent-ly witty and often scathing book of 1982, Qu'est-ceque l'Archdologie?What is the issue that has so agitated all of us?Roughly speaking (and there is no analysis of theproblemthat would commanduniversalacceptance),it is this. There exists a more-than-century-oldradi-tion of archaeologyin the Mediterraneanlands andthe Near East. Becauseof the historical mportanceofthe civilizationswith which it deals, it occupiessomeplace in the intellectualbackgroundof everyeducatedman, woman or child. Because of the material bril-liance of these samecultures, t has filledhalf the mu-seumsof the worldwith impressiveobjects.Becauseofthe select recruitingground from which many of itspractitionershave come, it has produceda literaturewhich contains its fair share of works,whetherexca-

vationreportsor syntheses,which havebecome"clas-sics." Without being by any means universally ac-ceptedas a universitydiscipline-a pointonwhichwemight reflect-it is in everyotherway an establishedsubject,occupying he time of a small armyof academ-ics and governmentemployees in every developedcountry,andenjoyingat leastthe statusof an up-mar-ket hobby among tens of thousands of others. Formany laymen,and for the whole of the entertainmentindustry, it representswhat the word "archaeology"actually means: indeed there is one language, Ger-man, in which it actuallyis a large part of what theword"Archiologie"means,in contradistinctiono an-otherterm,"Praihistorie"r "Vorgeschichte," hichisused for the archaeologyof all pre-literateand mostnon-literatecultures.Archaeology n the Mediterra-nean world and the Near East is closelylinkedwith,andwas indeedfora longtimemerelyan integral partof, the linguistic, literary and historicalstudy of thecorrespondingpartsof the globein antiquity.The New Archaeology,by contrast,is even todayless than twenty years old, and is generallydescrib-able in terms of a polaritywith the kind of archaeo-logy that I havejust described. t and its practitionershave little or nothingto do with linguistic,literaryorhistoricalstudies.It dealsprimarilywith pastcultureswhich are not recognizedas havinghad an importantrole in history, and it is emphaticallynot orientatedtoward the recoveryof objects,beautifulorotherwise.Geographically, its origins lie in two areas of re-search, North America and northern Europe; butfromthis base it has expanded ts scopeto coverworkin Africa (which is still "Vorgeschichte"),n Latin

* I am most grateful to Paul Halstead for guidance amid un-familiar literature.1 C. Renfrew, "The Great Tradition versus the Great Divide:

Archaeology as Anthropology?" AJA 84 (1980) 287-98.2 S. Dyson, "A Classical Archaeologist's Response to the 'NewArchaeology'," BASOR 242 (1981) 7-13. Compare also J. Wise-

man, "Conflicts in Archaeology: Education and Practice," JFA 10(1983) 1-9, with references to earlier papers; J. Boardman inbriefer references, e.g., CR 25 (1975) 118-20; "The Athenian Pot-tery Trade," Expedition (1979) 33-39; "Remnants of History,"Encounter 40.4 (April 1973) 67-69.

3 P. Courbin, Qu'est-ce que l'Archdologie? (Paris 1982).

American Journal of Archaeology 89 (1985)Centennial Issue31


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32 A.M.SNODGRASS [AJA89America(thus enteringthe domainof "Archiologie"),and even in certain periods of the past of lands likeMesopotamia,Greece andItaly, thus at leastmargin-ally overlappingwith the field of the traditional ar-chaeology that I spoke of first. It has a tremendousfollowing among archaeologists under the age ofabout 35; it has establisheda definiteniche, as an in-tellectual approach, among a somewhatwider rangeof disciplines, mostly lying within the social sciences;but it has, as yet, made little impacton the imagina-tion of the educated general public. Its commoneststance in regardto the traditionalschool of archaeo-logy rangesfrom reasonedcriticismandremonstranceto contemptuous indifference. The main chargesbrought against the traditionalarchaeologyare thoseat which my earlier descriptionperhaps hinted. It isan undisciplined discipline. It is pragmatic,and em-ploys no explicit bodyof theory.Lulled into compla-cencyby the benevolent nterest of the educatedpub-lic, it is content with the goal of description.It de-scribes everything, analyzes and synthesizes a re-strictedrange of aspects, and explains nothing. It isconcernedwith the unique and the particular, notwith generalities:the classic works in its literature,which I mentioned earlier, betray this position bytheir titles: books like Ur of the Chaldees, The Palaceof Minos, The Tomb of Tutankhamen are unasham-edlybooks abouta singlesite.They relyon the impor-tance of Ur, Knossos or the Valley of the Kings todetermine he importanceof what theydescribe.Theyuse archaeologyas a means of addingto what was al-ready known about these sites; they do not use theirsites as exemplificationsof the principlesand methodsof archaeology,andanyonewho used one of them as ahandbook o help in theexcavationof, say, a puebloinArizona would be bitterly disappointedin the out-come. Where such books go beyond pure descriptionand become interpretative,the interpretationsthatthey offer are not testableby any objectivecriterion:rather, they reflect the unspoken prejudicesof theirauthors-by any Europeanwriting in the 1920s, forinstance, imperialism and its concomitant featureshad been unconsciouslyassimilated as a way of life,and this acceptanceaffectedhis view of the past too.Thus there has grown up what Colin Renfrewcalled the "Great Divide." His own appeal was di-rected to the bridgingof this divideby means of somesplendid,no doubt cantileveredstructure,which wasto be built from both ends until it met in the middle,thus letting loose an intense two-way traffic whichwould enormouslyenrich both sides of the gap. Ste-phen Dyson's proposal,on the otherhand,seems tobe

for a more modest rope-bridgeover the gulf, whichwould allow some part of the intellectualbaggageofthe New Archaeologyto be humped across into the"GreatTradition";while the resultof Courbin'sme-ticulousfeasibility studyis that, on balance,the hugecosts of buildinga bridgewould notbejustified by themeagerbenefitsthat it would bring.Most of these writers, and several others whom Ihave not mentioned,have approachedthe problemfrom one side of the divide:they ask themselves thequestion, "What (if anything) is Classical Archaeo-logy goingto do aboutthe New Archaeology?" wishto begin by raisingthe conversequestion:"What s theNew Archaeology going to do about Classical Ar-chaeology?" andthe othercomponentsof the "GreatTradition").Now ClassicalArchaeology, rom withinwhich I speak, surely lies at the veryheart of the tra-ditional archaeologythat has lately been put underscrutiny.It is the oldestcomponentof the "GreatTra-dition" n archaeology,andit is thebiggest, n termsofthe numberof its practitionersand its students,and ofits published output. In its own estimation at least, itis also probablythe most distinguishedcomponentofthat tradition.To adopta morecriticalvein, if the as-semblageof data and the tidy orderingof material areactivities that epitomizethe sterilityof the traditionalarchaeology, hen what branchof it can offer a massso large and so thoroughlyordered as Classical Ar-chaeology?If the aim of mere description,howeverfull, is stigmatizedas an unworthyonefor a disciplinesuch as archaeology,then what branch of it has ac-ceptedthat aim with more complacency han Classi-cal Archaeology? f a concentrationon the particularat the expenseof the universalwas one of the flaws atthe heart of traditionalarchaeological hinking,thenwhat couldbe moreparticularized han Classical Ar-chaeology,in which half a dozen books may be de-voted to a single building,and even two or three to asingle statue,and in which everything s conceived ntermsof its impacton a singleculture?All of this suggeststhat a re-orientationof the disci-pline of archaeologymightbe expectedto begin withClassicalArchaeologyand its methods,as a paradigmof the approach hat had beenpracticedhitherto,andthat must now be either abandonedas sterile,or de-flected nto a moreproductive hannel.Butnothingofthe kindhas happened.The pioneersof the New Ar-chaeology have in the main ignored Classical Ar-chaeology,whether for praiseor forblame,almost asif it did not exist. The "traditional rchaeology"whichthey haveheldup forscrutinyand ultimatedismissal,where it has beenclearlyspecified,has appeared o be


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1985] THE NEWARCHAEOLOGY ND THE CLASSICAL RCHAEOLOGIST 33a version of Europeanarchaeology n the generationafter Gordon Childe, or of Mesoamericanarchaeo-logy (one thinks of that riotouslyfunny and not en-tirely fictitious"strawman"createdby Kent V. Flan-nery, the "RealMesoamericanArchaeologist"4)f thesameperiod.Thus most ClassicalArchaeologistshavebeen left with the feelingthatthey are outside the tar-get area of the new criticisms,and that the conflictprovokedby thesehardlyconcerned hem. Let me givea statistic. One other majorevent in the four yearssince Colin Renfrew's address has been the appear-ance of a volume of collectedpiecesby Lewis H. Bin-ford, under the title In Pursuit of the Past.s This ex-tremely stimulatingwork contains a bibliographyof,on my count, 293 items. Of this total, there is (againon my count)not a singleone which is primarilycon-cernedwith any part of the Mediterraneanworld atany period:the nearest approach,geographically, sperhaps Gordon Childe's The Danube in Prehistory.As a statistic, this may seem amazing, but it is notuntypical or freakish in respectof the output of theNew Archaeology.What attitudes or motivesdoes itimply? One explanationthat may suggest itself is adiscreditableone that I shall not adopt:it is that theNew Archaeologistsareafraid ofventuring nto a spe-cialist domain where a vast body of pre-existingknowledgehas to be assimilated.I donot advance hisview, firstbecausethere areexamplesof distinguishedworkwhich has been undertaken n areas like the ar-chaeology of Roman Britain,6 where the difficultymentioned exists in almost as intense a form as inMediterranean ands;and secondlybecausethe prob-lems of such an undertakingcouldanywaybe readilyovercomeby collaborationbetween a theory-orientedNew Archaeologistand a sympatheticClassicist (aswe have seen, this latter breed does exist). A morelikely explanation is surely that New Archaeologistsdo not considerthat suchan attemptwould be worth-while orjustifiable.Nor would such an attitude-if I have correctlydiagnosedit-be altogetheran injusticeto the senti-ments of Classical Archaeologiststhemselves. Theview that, for example, the general principlesof ar-chaeology consist of nothing more than commonsense, or that archaeology is not an independentbranch of knowledge, is sufficiently widespreadamongClassicalArchaeologists o need no individualattribution. It constitutes a majordeterrentto NewArchaeologists,againstholding up their principlesto

potentialdiscreditby testingthemin a contextwhichthe practitionersthemselvesoften do not considerafair and comparableone; where the formulationoffree hypotheses is constrainedon every side by thebodyof pre-existingknowledge-and I am not refer-ring only,nor evenmainly,to the knowledgeprovidedby documentaryand historical sources:the body ofpurely archaeologicalknowledgeis, in its own right,colossal,as maybe seenby comparing he sizeof hold-ings of a really well stocked ibraryof Classical Ar-chaeologyand a comparableone of generalarchaeo-logy: the sheer volume will bear no resemblancewhatever to the proportionsof the two geographicalareas covered,and will indeed be by no means dis-paratein absoluteterms.But, whatever the reasons for it, the gulf undeni-ably persists: he criticismsof the New Archaeologistsareprimarilydirectedat, andthe rejoindersprimarilycomefrom, the non-Classicalfields of traditionalar-chaeology. The New Archaeologyhas not pressedhome any criticism of Classical Archaeology, andClassicalArchaeologyhas therefore elt free to ignoreboththe criticismsand the constructiveproposals.

But there are ClassicalArchaeologistswho do notshare this feeling, and it is becauseI am one of themthat I am speakingon this subject.Like StephenDy-son, like James Wiseman,7I feel that Classical Ar-chaeologycould learn salutarylessonsfrom the writ-ings and the example of the New Archaeology.In-deed, I shall go furtherthan they might wish to go,and certainlyI do not want to saddle them with anycomplicity n what I am goingto say next. I feel thattraditional archaeologyhas, in the past generation,enteredsome kind of minorintellectualcrisis,at leastin Britainand in someotherEuropeancountries hatI could name. The traditionallyminded archaeolo-gists seemto me rathercut off fromthe mainstreamofthat kind of intellectualadvancewhich can manifestitself in several disciplines at the same time. Theirwork does not elicit productiveresponsefrom peoplein other subjects,beyond the immediately adjacentones (suchas the historiansof the same culturewhosearchaeology they themselvespractice.) It is not easyfor them to point to excitingtheoreticalor methodo-logical advances n the recenthistoryof their subject,as distinctfrom the new applicationof technicalad-vances made in other disciplines:obvious exampleshere are the "radiocarbonevolution"of morethan a

4K.V. Flannery ed., The Early Mesoamerican Village (NewYork1976).s L.H. Binford, In Pursuit of the Past: Decoding the Archaeo-logical Record (London 1983, J.F. Cherry and R. Torrence eds.).

6 See, e.g., I.A. Hodder and C. Orton, Spatial Analysis in Ar-chaeology (Cambridge 1976); Renfrew (supra n. 1) 297, ns. 28-33.

7 See supra n. 2.


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34 A.M. SNODGRASS [AJA89generationago, andthe "dendrochronologicalevolu-tion" of twenty years later, where the advances inideas seem confined o the more or less common-sensedeductions hat follow from the discovery hat a groupof finds is much earlier(orlessoften,muchlater)thanhad previously been thought. Real conceptual ad-vances are seldom sought, and even less oftenachieved.Consider,for example, the chilly receptionthat has been given, outside and at times even insideFrance, to the work of the "Paris School" n recentyears.Here is a groupofpeople studyingthe Classicalworld through what may (very roughly) be called astructuralist approach: an approach in which themethods of Classical Archaeology,or some of them,are closely integratedwith the anthropological radi-tion of Louis Gernet andothers,andappliedto manydifferentaspectsof ancientsociety,especiallyreligiouscult and ritual, but also ancient literary works ofmany kinds. If there is anywherein the world wherethe materialof ClassicalArchaeology s being put tonovel uses, and the subjectas a whole embroiledinwide intellectualexplorations,it is here.8Yet the re-ward has been, in general, the unjust one of beingread, or at least taken seriously, by very few of theircolleagues n ClassicalArchaeology,and none at all oftheircounterpartson the other sideof theAtlantic,theNew Archaeologistswho are also (althoughin a verydifferentway) linking the approachesof archaeologyand anthropology.One reason for ClassicalArchaeologistso welcomethe challengeof the New Archaeology s thus, in myview at least, the fact that they badly need the stimu-lus which it can offer. A secondreason is that thereare already at least one or two encouragingprece-dents,such as the case of AegeanBronzeAge archaeo-logy to which I shall turn in a moment. First, how-ever, I should state clearlywhat it is that I think theNew Archaeologyhas to offer.Even in its short life sofar, the new discipline has undergone some ratherdrastic re-orientations. A leading figure like LewisBinford has to expend some of his energiesin rebuk-ing over-enthusiasticollowers,who havepressednewdoctrines too far.9 The early insistenceon pursuinguniversallaws of humanbehavior,exemplified n thearchaeologicalrecord,has (probably ustifiably) metwith recentdiscouragementrom within the New Ar-chaeology.This processof distillation has been salu-tary: it dispensesthe rest of the archaeologicalworld

from the arrogantand laboriousoperationof "choos-ing the best"out of what the New Archaeologyhas tooffer, since this operation has already been carriedout, at least in part.Andthecontribution hat remainsis still an importantone. It is to the New Archaeologythat we owe our growingself-awareness,ourrealiza-tion of the highly debatable nature of what we aredoing when we make archaeological nferences.An-other of its services has been to inculcaterespectforthe quantitativemethod: so many of the argumentsand generalizations n traditionalarchaeologyhave acovertlyquantitativebasis,yet only recentlyhas it be-come common to express this basis in numericalterms-the size of a sample, the degreeof a prepon-derance,the changesin a proportion hroughtime-so that a preliminaryevaluation of the argumentbe-comespossible,before one moves on to the more crit-ical task of evaluatingthe basis itself--is the samplevalid? is the proportionbiased? and so on. It is in thislatter area, I believe, that the New Archaeologyhasmadeits mostsignificantcontributionof all. Here weenter the territory of what Binford calls "MiddleRange Theory,"10 of what David Clarke called "Pre-depositionalandDepositionalTheory,"''"f what stillothers call "BehavioralArchaeology."The differencesin terminologyshouldnot disguisethe factthat, mostof the time, these different authorities are talkingabout the samekind of thing:that is, the truemeaningof the archaeologicalrecord. For some of these in-sights,we should not have had to wait for theenlight-enment given by the New Archaeology: he lessonscould have been learnedfromquitea differentsource,namely the view of archaeology akenby the outsideworld. A good startingpointwould havebeenthe car-toons of the New Yorkeror Punch: the image of thearchaeologisthere is often that of an enterprisingper-son, perhaps a lucky person, but not usually a verycleverperson.A recurrent heme is the misinterpre-tation,by archaeologists f the future,of somebizarrecreationof ourcontemporary ulture.The mainpointof such humormay be to ridicule the eccentricitiesofmodernsociety,but a second mplication s that theseveryeccentricities re what makesocietyso difficult ounderstand,and so easyto misinterpret, orthose whobelongto anotherage.Now it would be possible to argue that ClassicalArchaeologyhas longbeenpracticing,underdifferentnames,theveryprocedures hatthe New Archaeology

8 See, e.g., G. Gnoli and J.-P. Vernant eds., La mort, les mortsdans les societis anciennes (Cambridge 1982); Institut d'archbolo-gie et d'histoire ancienne (Lausanne) and Centre de recherchescompar~es sur les sociitis anciennes (Paris), La cite des images(Paris 1984).

9 Binford (supra n. 5) 15, 106-108.1o Binford (supra n. 5) 76, 194-95, citing Binford ed., For Theory

Building in Archaeology (New York 1977) 1-10.'1 Cf. D. Clarke, "Archaeology: The Loss of Innocence," Anti-quity 47 (1973) 6-18 (16).


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1985] THE NEWARCHAEOLOGYND THE CLASSICAL RCHAEOLOGIST 35is advocatingwhen it urgesthe developmentof middlerangetheory,for instance.It would be a satisfying n-dulgenceforme to developthis line of argument,but Iam not sure that it would serve any greater purposethan to boostthe self-confidence f ClassicalArchaeo-logists. What I will assert, however, is that ClassicalArchaeologystill offersan incomparable ield forput-ting into further practicethe principles of the NewArchaeologists. Let it not be forgotten that DavidClarke himself once offered encouragement:"Text-aided archaeology,"he wrote, would "providevitalexperiments"by offeringthe controlof documentarysourcesoverpurelymaterial-basednferences,as longas the inherent biases of each were borne in mind.12Was this a declaration of intent, or an invitationtoothers? Whichever it was, he made the statementin1973; three years later, he was dead; and his col-leagueshavenot shownmuchinclinationto followhislead. Yet I am convinced hat he was right,and that aphase of intensive experiment within a "controlled"field like that of Classical Archaeologywould workwonders for the mutualrespect,andthe generalcred-ibility,of both sides.There are,of course,majordiscouragements till inthe way. There is a deepdifferenceofmentalityonthetwo sides, shown by what each regardsas "interest-ing."'3For Binford,particularizingapproachesare intheir nature "trivial"and "uninteresting."Now it ispossible,in mathematicsor philosophyforinstance, ouse the word "interesting"n a way that at least pur-ports to be objective; hat is, to use it of findingsandargumentswhich have repercussionsor implicationsbeyondthe immediatecontext in which they arose.Itmay be that Binford uses these words, at times, insome such sense; but I am sure that he also meansthem in their familiar everydaysense (as indeed issuggested by his also using the word "boring" f par-ticularizing approaches),and I am equally sure thathe is sincere. Yet many ClassicalArchaeologistspur-sue the particularizedpreciselybecausethey person-ally do findit interesting;a conclusionaboutfifth cen-tury Athens, even if valid for no other societyin his-tory, neverthelessintereststhem very much. All thatthis shows is that the mentalityof late twentiethcen-tury western man is still a very heterogeneousone.There is also the issueof language'4-the languageinwhich the two sidesexpressthemselves:an especiallysensitive area for Classicists,who are trained, oftenfrom their early youth, in the habit, whenever theyuse a word, of automaticallyasking themselves its

exact meaning. But I promised myself that I wouldsay nothing about this, and I shall try to keep mypromise.It is time, instead, to turn to what I considerthestrongest argument n favor of collaborationbetweenthe New Archaeologyand traditionalClassical Ar-chaeology n its strict sense:namely,the precedentof-feredby recentexperience n the closelyalliedfieldofAegeanBronzeAge archaeology.What I am goingtosay now will not, I fear, makeme manyfriends-es-pecially not in Britain, that longstandingstrongholdof Aegean BronzeAge studies. But for some twentyyears past I havebeenexperiencinga feelingof grow-ing unease about the progressof this subject,quitedistinct fromthat arousedby contemplation f Classi-cal Archaeologyproper.In the BronzeAge field, thefeelingrelates not so much to the methods,orthe nar-rowness of the aspectsusually studied,but to some-thing harderto describe.I felt it again very stronglywhen, two yearsago, I reada statementby one of themostthoughtfulAmericanpractitioners f the subject:"After more than a century of scholarship",writesPhilip Betancourt,"Mycenaeanstudies are still intheir vigorousyouth."" What is worryingaboutthisstatement s that it is so absolutelytrue. The vigorofAegean BronzeAge studies is of course a matterforsatisfaction,but should they not by now have out-grown their youth? One is glad that the subjectis avolatile and exciting one, but one would expect it tohave acquiredmaturityas well. One of the connota-tionsof youthis conveyedby a remarkof William Pittthe elder (froma speechmadein his late middleage):"Youth s the season of credulity." n AegeanBronzeAge archaeology, ndeed,too much has beenbelievedtoo readily, and repeated in a series of secondarytreatments o the pointwhere it acquired he status ofan axiom. The great names in Aegean Bronze Agearchaeologyarethenames not of its thinkersnorof itsmastersof the visual approach(as is largely true inClassical Archaeology),but of its excavators.Theplace which in ClassicalArchaeology s occupiedbythe ancientsources,and in Near Easternarchaeologyby the cuneiformandhieroglyphic extsandthe Bible,is taken in the Aegean BronzeAge by the early ex-cavators'nterpretations f theirowndiscoveries and,muchmoresporadically,by Homer). By this I mean,not that these men's everyword is believeduntil it isproved false, which todayespeciallywould be mani-festly untrue, but that their vision of Aegean prehis-tory has been perpetuated as a framework within

12 Clarke (supra n. 11) 18."13Cf. Courbin (supra n. 3) 211-12.14 Courbin (supra n. 3) 130-35, 147-48.

1s P.P. Betancourt, "Introduction," Sixth Temple University Ae-gean Symposium (Philadelphia 1981) 1.


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36 A.M.SNODGRASS [AJA89which everyonehas worked-until, that is, the adventof a new approach in the last fifteen years or so, apoint to which I shall return.What was that vision like? Essentially, the earlyexcavators elt calleduponto presenttheir reconstruc-tions in a historicalform,of the most traditionalkind.In these reconstructions, ventsdominated.A handfulof these supposedevents has survived,until recently,as the main landmarksfor most research,and almostall teaching,of theAegeanBronzeAge:the Comingofthe Greeks, the Rise of Mycenae, the Eruption ofThera, the Mycenaean Ascendancy n Crete,the Fallof Knossos,the Trojan War, the Fall of MycenaeanCivilizationandthe Dorian Invasion. Most text booksoffer approximatedates for these events, and muchresearch is devoted to refiningthe dates and investi-gating their causes, nature and effects. Why did theearlyexcavators eel calleduponto offer a reconstruc-tion so much more "event"-ful han what has beenproposed for other areas and epochs with a similarkind of archaeologicalrecord?The answer is in partthat the strictly archaeologicalrecord is not the onlyone availablein the BronzeAgeAegean.There is alsoGreek heroic legend, the avenue which first gave ac-cess to this field of study; legends deal, at the super-ficial level, with deeds and events; most people stillbelieve that the Greek legends in some degreereflectthe realities of the later BronzeAge, and in the pastscholarswent much further,acceptingthem in detailandtryingto match them with the archaeological ec-ord. A furtheranswer lies in the deciphermentof Lin-ear B. For a time in the 1950sthere were some-and Iwas one of them-who really thought that the laterAegean Bronze Age was going to emerge as a semi-historicalepoch.A betterunderstandingof the natureof the texts, togetherwith the fact that no majorar-chives have been foundsince,has broughtthis view--probably permanently-into eclipse. Finally, andmoreobjectively, t is true that the archaeological ec-ord of the periodis rich in destruction ayers.To col-latethese destructiondeposits nto broad"horizons" fdestructionis a more questionablestep, but it is anextremely temptingone. Its attractionsare still pow-erfully at work today, and I would argue that theyexercise a patent influence on the discussion of thedates of such controversialepisodes as the Theraeruptionand the destructionof the palaceat Thebes.But why shouldit be thought misleadingto see the

BronzeAge of the Aegeanin such terms?I would ar-gue that the primeobjectionarises from the nature ofthe archaeologicalchronology.The basis for the dat-ing of the Aegean Bronze Age consists of a smallgroupof associations, ome of them at secondor thirdremove,betweenAegeanartifacts and datableEgyp-tianor Near Easterncontexts,or vice versa. The flim-sy nature of this structure of dates is not always re-membered.One episodewhich cast some doubt on itwas the emergenceof radiocarbondating and, moreparticularly,the calibration of radiocarbondates bycross-reference o dendrochronology,which for thisperiodresults n a distinctly"higher" hronology.Theimpact on the debate about the Thera eruptionwasespecially interesting.Here, the archaeologistswerein disputeover a marginof aboutfiftyyears:was theeruptionto be equatedwith the end of Late MinoanIA (conventionally"ca. 1500 B.C.")or the end of IB("ca.1450")?By 1976,a scientistwas claimingon thebasis of calibratedradiocarbondates that it must havehappened150 to 200 yearsbefore the earlier of thesetwo dates.'16 he view was received with some deri-sion in manycircles,and taken as an illustrationof thecrudityand unreliabilityof "scientific" ating meth-ods as comparedwith the relativeaccuracyof the tra-ditional, "protohistorical"hronology. But then in1980 a book'7appearedwhich,by a close re-examina-tion of the traditionalbasis of dating and altogetherindependentlyof the radiocarbon vidence,reached arathersimilar conclusion:n the earlierpartof the Ae-gean Late BronzeAge, the accepteddates might in-deed be more than a centurytoo late.But does the absolutechronologyreallymatter?Isit not the relative dating of the episodes within theAegean area which really counts, and does this notstandindependentlyof actual dates in years?The an-swer is that absolutechronologymattersvery much,as soon as connectionsare drawn (as they often are)betweenAegean developmentsand the moresecurelyattestedepisodesof early Near Easternhistoryand, Imight add, between the Aegean and other culturesdatedby radiocarbononly. There is a rather impor-tant point involved n this last connection.Someyearsago I argued-twice over, althoughthat did not ap-pear to increase the impactof the claim18'-that theseries of radiocarbondates available from the AegeanBronzeAge itself must be taken seriously,as an in-dependentalternative o the conventionalchronology

'6 H.N. Michael, "Radiocarbon Dates from Akrotiri on Thera,"(First) Temple University Aegean Symposium (Philadelphia 1976)7-9.

17 B.J. Kemp and R. Merrillees, Minoan Pottery in Second-Mil-lennium Egypt (Mainz 1980).

18 A.M. Snodgrass, "Mycenae, Northern Europe and Radiocar-bon Dates," Archaeologica Atlantica 1 (1975) 33-48; "An Out-sider's View of Radiocarbon Calibration," in T.F. Watkins ed.,Radiocarbon: Calibration and Prehistory (Edinburgh 1975) 39-46.


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1985] THE NEWARCHAEOLOGY ND THE CLASSICAL RCHAEOLOGIST 37describedjust now. If an irreconcilablediscrepancyemergedbetween the two-and the then recentcali-bration of the radiocarbondates made it more clearthan ever that it did emerge-then one (or both) oftwo conclusions must surely follow. Either radiocar-bon dates,which elsewherewere oftenexclusivelyre-lied on for the dating of archaeologicalsequences,should not be relied on after all; or the conventionalchronologywas significantlywrong. This is just thesort of challengethat I havein mind for the New Ar-chaeologyto test its theories on in the Classicalcon-text. But the firstalternativewas widely foundrepug-nant; the second seemedvery unlikely;and the pointwas not generally taken up.19 What the sequel hasshown is perhaps that the second alternative is notafter all to be excluded;the conventionalchronologymay indeed be less trustworthy than had beenthought,althoughthis in itself does notnecessarilyre-assure us on the other count-the radiocarbondatescould be wrongtoo. The real lesson,reinforcedby theappearanceof furtherradiocarbondates from the Ae-gean, is surely that we must use these radiocarbondates as the basis for all chronological comparisonsbetween the Aegean and other radiocarbondated se-quences;for such relativedating,they are not only inthe appropriateform, but they may also be the bestevidence that we have. By comparisonwith this fact,argumentsabout the choice between different"cali-brationcurves," o establish the absolutedating,are aside-issue.

My centralpoint,however,concerns heAegeanit-self. Even where only the internal chronologyis in-volved,the argumentsare sometimesbased on the ab-solutedurationof periods: s a century ong enoughforthis development?s fifty yearstoo long for this inter-val? and so on. It is surelyclear that any kindof "his-torical"narrative,for a culture in which any of thedates may be even fifty years out, let alone two hun-dred,in eitherdirection, s an impossibility.The verylanguage of political developmentsand military epi-sodes, in which narrativesof the Aegean BronzeAgehave for long been couched,seemsinappropriate.But we come at last to the denouementof the story.In the last fifteenyearsor so of research n theAegean

BronzeAge, the approach hat I have beencriticizinghas no longer been unchallenged.Alongside it haveemergedthe exponents, in ever-increasingnumbers,of a very different kind of archaeology.The new-comersdeal, not in events,but in processes; hey re-constructnot immutablepoliticalandmilitaryevents,butvariegated ystems; hey studysomepreviouslyne-glectedclassesof evidence,butthey alsoapplythe tra-ditional materials-including, conspicuously, theLinear B tablets-to the investigationof new prob-lems.In short,theysharemanyorall of the aimsoftheNew Archaeology. amspeakingsubjectively, know,but I find thatthese recentdevelopments fferAegeanBronzeAge studiesa brighterfuturethan their past,in terms of intellectualvitality, notwithstandingtheglamourof the earlydiscoveries n the field.Can this initiative be extended to Classical Ar-chaeologyproper?For the New Archaeologists, s wehaveseen, ClassicalArchaeology eemsat best to be asmall regional application of their subject;and atworst, not to be counted as archaeologyat all. Themost natural responseto this positionis also the onewhich will do most to reinforce he existing attitudesof the New Archaeologists:t is to stress the contentofClassical Archaeology,that is, the unique culturalachievements f the GreeksandRomans.This is not agood line to pursue;and in any case,most features ofGreek and Roman material culture are far fromunique. A much betterreply is one based on the stateof the subject: he huge bodyof purely archaeologicalknowledge,and the close associationwith other,non-archaeologicaldisciplineswhich have reached a highlevel of sophistication.Even if the chargeis true thatall this knowledgewas amassed in order to answer"yesterday's uestions, f any,"which is highly debat-able,20 does not the whole historyof scienceteach usthat suchknowledge,acquired or differentreasonsorout of sheerdisinterested uriosity,can be put to dra-maticallyinnovatoryuse?

MUSEUM OF CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGYSIDGWICK AVENUECAMBRIDGE CB3 9DAENGLAND

19See, however, C. Renfrew, Problems in European Prehistory(Edinburgh 1979) 281-82, 326.20 Renfrew (supra n. 1) 295.

The New Archaeology and the Classical Archaeologist

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