Decolonizing Greek archaeology: indigenous archaeologies, modernist archaeology and the post-colonial critique

No abstract availabl

THE COLONIAL, THE NATIONAL, AND THE LOCAL: LEGACIES OF THE ‘MINOAN’ PAST

The ‘Minoan’ past was constructed at the beginning of the 20th century by colonial and national processes as the first ‘European civilisation’. The remnants of the Cretan Bronze Age were recast, reordered, re-created, and forged to produce a world of objects, sites, and images that would satisfy the Eurocentric colonial imagination and its territorial aspirations as well as the national project of the Cretan intellectuals. The European imagination produced its ‘future anterior’ and, given the background of some of its architects, a mirror image of the British Empire. Local Cretan intellectuals saw in this construction an important resource in their struggle for the unification of Crete with Greece. Since then, the ‘Minoan’ past has been acting as a signifier of a strong and distinctive local and regional identity, a performative enterprise which is mediated by key apparatuses such as tourism and the State Archaeological Service. This local and regional identity is, at the same time, incorporated in the broader Hellenic narrative as an important precursor of the Hellenic Classical ‘civilisation’. This is, however, an ‘ambivalent incorporation’, for the local reserves the right to negotiate the terms of this process and affords multiple readings

ARCHAEOLOGY AND EUROPEAN MODERNITY: STORIES FROM THE BORDERS

Archaeology has recently started engaging in a critical manner with its disciplinary heritage and its position within the discourses and practices of Western modernity

Archaeology and Language: The Indo-Iranians

This review of recent archaeological work in Central Asia and Eurasia attempts to trace and date the movements of the IndoIraniansspeakers of languages of the eastern branch of ProtoIndoEuropean that later split into the Iranian and Vedic families. Russian and Central Asian scholars working on the contemporary but very different Andronovo and Bactrian Margiana archaeological complexes of the 2d millennium b.c. have identified both as IndoIranian, and particular sites so identified are being used for nationalist purposes. There is, however, no compelling archaeological evidence that they had a common ancestor or that either is IndoIranian. Ethnicity and language are not easily linked with an archaeological signature, and the identity of the IndoIranians remains elusive

How landscapes remember

This paper considers the possibility that as subject or agent, the landscape might have the potential to contain, store or transmit memories of their past, which are engaged experientially as uncanny. In a simple sense it asks why there are some landscapes – or landscape features – that are regarded as spiritually animated by different social groups, at different times. The paper focuses on the Neolithic temple site of Borġ-in-Nadur, in Southern Malta, which as well as having been a site of prehistoric ritual activity has more recently been the site of a significant devotion to the Virgin Mary, who graced the site with regular apparitions, and a focus for national and transnational Goddess pilgrimage. The paper suggests that sites such as Borġ-in-Nadur can be seen as palimpsest landscapes, in which memory is layered such that experiential engagements with them draw the past in to the present, and forwards into the future. The paper examines the intertwining of prehistoric, Catholic and Neo-pagan engagements with Borġ-in-Nadur, extending Pierre Nora’s concept of lieux de memoire (sites of memory) to encompass the milieux de memoire, or memorial environments, which are themselves also context of, and for, the uncanny

Tracking the Near Eastern origins and European dispersal of the western house mouse

Abstract: The house mouse (Mus musculus) represents the extreme of globalization of invasive mammals. However, the timing and basis of its origin and early phases of dispersal remain poorly documented. To track its synanthropisation and subsequent invasive spread during the develoment of complex human societies, we analyzed 829 Mus specimens from 43 archaeological contexts in Southwestern Asia and Southeastern Europe, between 40,000 and 3,000 cal. BP, combining geometric morphometrics numerical taxonomy, ancient mitochondrial DNA and direct radiocarbon dating. We found that large late hunter-gatherer sedentary settlements in the Levant, c. 14,500 cal. BP, promoted the commensal behaviour of the house mouse, which probably led the commensal pathway to cat domestication. House mouse invasive spread was then fostered through the emergence of agriculture throughout the Near East 12,000 years ago. Stowaway transport of house mice to Cyprus can be inferred as early as 10,800 years ago. However, the house mouse invasion of Europe did not happen until the development of proto urbanism and exchange networks — 6,500 years ago in Eastern Europe and 4000 years ago in Southern Europe — which in turn may have driven the first human mediated dispersal of cats in Europe

Decolonizing Greek archaeology: indigenous archaeologies, modernist archaeology and the post-colonial critique

No abstract availabl

Time, materiality, and the work of memory

An introductory, agenda setting chapter for the volume, "Remembering and Forgetting on Europe's Southern Periphery"