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Author(s): M. I. Finley
Source: Daedalus, Vol. 100, No. 1, Historical Studies Today (Winter, 1971), pp. 168-186
Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & Sciences
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20023997
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M. I. FINLEY
Momigliano began
his elegant obituary of Mikhail Rostovtzeff by
the "unforgettable made on students of his
recalling impression"
( and my ) generation by the publication in 1926 of the Social and
Economic History of the Roman Empire:
All seemed, and indeed was, extraordinary in the book. Even the
external was unusual. We were accustomed to books on an
appearance
cient history where the archaeological evidence, if used at all, was never
a lavish series of
presented and explained to the reader. Here plates intro
duced us directly to the archaeological evidence; and the caption of each
us understand what one could learn from apparently
plate really made
items . . . Rostovtzeff us by what
insignificant delighted and surprised
seemed to us his uncanny gift of calling ancient things to life. He guided
us through the streets of Rome, Pompeii, N?mes and Tr?ves and showed
how the ancients had lived.1
168
Archaeology and History
170
Archaeology and History
are asked
to "overhaul present theories very
prehistoric religion"
doubt but it is not mere Besser
critically."10 Beyond they must,
wisserei to point out that some of us?archaeologists as well as
historians and anthropologists?have been challenging the Mother
Goddess for years. Even without Ucko's breakdown, other methodo
logical objections had been raised?for
instance, that the Mother
Goddess devotees made no to explain
effort the complete disap
pearance of these figurines in the Minoan
period, and offered no
foundation for their vast superstructure other than the vaguest
subjective verbiage about the "meaning" of big breasts and heavy
buttocks. It should be recorded that Ucko had published his Cretan
as as 1962 in the authoritative official
analysis early organ of the
Royal Anthropological Institute,11 with little visible impact.
How, then, do we interpret such remains as the anthropomorphic
figurines? The archaeological Young Turks reject Piggott's kind of
pessimism. "The argument," writes L. R. Binford, "that archaeolo
gists must limit their knowledge to features of material culture is
open to serious question; and second, the dichotomy between ma
terial and nonmaterial aspects of culture itself and the relevance of
this dichotomy for a proposed hierarchy of reliability have also been
the subject of critical discussion ... It is virtually to
impossible
imagine that any given cultural item functioned in a socio-cultural
system independent of the operation of 'non-material' variables.
item has its within a socio-cultural
Every history system?its phases
of procurement of raw material, manufacture, use, and final discard
. . .There is
ing every reason to expect that the empirical properties
of artifacts and their arrangement in the record will
archaeological
exhibit attributes which can inform on different of the arti
phases
fact's life history" (my italics ) .12
Of course no one imagines that cultural items function inde
pendently, least of all the pessimists whom Binford is attacking.
The issue lies in the final sentence I have quoted. Is there any
reason to can offer
expect what Binford expects, and significantly
as an rather than as a for which there
only expectation proposition
is available evidence? On the contrary, there is sufficient evidence
that identical artifacts and arrangements of artifacts can result from
different socioeconomic arrangements of procurement, manufacture,
or distribution. For example, we know from the chance
preservation
of accounts inscribed on stone, that the most delicate stone
carving
on the
temple in Athens known as the Erechtheum was
produced
men and slaves
by free working side by side at the end of the fifth
171
D DALUS
173
DAEDALUS
II
174
Archaeology and History
to history is, in a to the quantity
rough way, inversely proportionate
and quality of the available written sources. It is also self-evident
that the line between and history is not a that
prehistory sharp one,
for centuries after the introduction of writing, the historian's evi
dence remains almost at least for some
exclusively archaeological,
civilizations, notably the Greek and the Roman. Perhaps the most
is that of the Etruscans: some 10,000
frustrating example despite
more or less texts and a considerable, late and
deciphered though
distorted, Roman tradition behind them, assemblages of artifacts
remain not only the base of all accounts but nearly the whole of the
evidence. An Etruscan tomb is nothing more than an assemblage
of artifacts, despite the sophistication of the technology or of the
so as there is no
wall-paintings, long adequate literary key to the
conventions and values represented by the artifacts. Nowhere is
hard doctrine more necessary, and nowhere is it more
Piggott's
in a continuous of "counterfeit
systematically ignored outpouring
history"?with notable exceptions that need not be named here,
I cannot refrain from noting that what needs to be said in
though
protest against the methods that produce that counterfeit history
will be found inMassimo Pallottino's The Etruscans.25
For the earliest historical periods, an
extraordinary complication
is introduced by oral tradition and historical
legends. The problem
is then not simply one of and literary evi
correlating archaeological
dence but of using to assess whether, and how far, the
archaeology
literature has any worth at all. How difficult that is, and how little
agreement has been reached so far, in large part because of unclarity
about the canons of discrimination, are clear from the current de
bates about the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations and the Trojan
War.26 Apart from the anomalous Linear B tablets, there is no con
temporary written evidence for this long period, and it remains the
?province of the prehistorian rather than of the historian; in the final
analysis the work is one of reconstruction from archaeology, even if
one is to take more from the legends than I am.
prepared
The earliest Roman a different situation, because
history presents
it began late to fall within the period of literacy and be
enough
cause the Roman traditions about their origins, unlike the Greek,
have the external appearance of a very detailed history, full of nar
rative and of constitutional and institutional information ordered in
a coherent time sequence. Roman cannot be said to
history begin
before the period of Etruscan rule, the sixth century b.c., and the
contemporary documentation for the century, the first
following
175
DAEDALUS
gists most directly involved in the discussion insist, for some reason
I am unable to fathom, that the literary chronology must be down
dated by about half a century.29 And in the third place, we are in
all other respects left with no tools of analysis other than those in
herited from the nineteenth century, refined, occasionally supple
mented new checked com
by epigraphic fragments, by modern
parative studies, but unchanged in their fundamental nature.
From this particular, pessimistic report it is tempting to draw the
rather paradoxical conclusion that the contribution of archaeology
to becomes as the volume and of non
history greater reliability
evidence increase (until the latter reaches the volume
archaeological
and nature of modern, even
early modern, documentation ). There is
truth in that proposition, I believe, but not the whole truth, as I
shall illustrate in a moment. It would be pointless to catalogue the
contributions has in fact made to our
many important archaeology
knowledge of ancient history. Instead, I have selected three further
that raise major problems about future possibilities and
examples
needs, examples that fall within the field of economic history.
The first example is at the same time a demonstration of the lim
its of my history of what is convention
paradoxical proposition?the
n?
Archaeology and History
in reality the history of Greek ex
ally called Greek "colonization,"
between about 1000 and 550 b.c., to Asia Minor and the
pansion
coastal areas surrounding the Black Sea in the east, to southern
both shores of the Mediterranean in the
Italy, Sicily, and along
west. The Greek tradition, scattered in a multitude of writers from
Herodotus to Eusebius, consists of a chronological framework ( and
in dates anachronistic on be
by the end very precise ), propaganda
half of the Delphic oracle, and anecdotes. No history of coloniza
tion was possible on that basis. Archaeology has confirmed the chron
frame, of course not the precise dates ( as with early
ological though
Rome), but it has also achieved very much more. In combination
with the literary materials, it has made possible a kind of
history,
not a narrative account but a picture of settlement, growth,
political
and movement, of urban organization, of trade and manufacture, of
relations with the native populations, of cults and temples. The pic
ture exists only in broad outlines, it is very incomplete, much is un
certain and controversial, but hardly any of it could be derived from
the ancient traditions alone?or from the archaeology alone.30 The
lines of further archaeological are now clear?and so are
exploration
the difficulties and weaknesses in our methods of interpretation.31
The second is the history of money and coinage in an
example
tiquity. Systematic study began
in the century, but it was
eighteenth
dominated, almost monopolized, by the interests of collectors until
the last few decades, and that interest still retains a strong hold.
However, the function of coins, as distinct from their rarity or their
aesthetics, has become an increasingly prominent subject of research,
and the results have been considerable. Discussions of money and
are uncommon in both Greek and Roman literature; only
coinage
from the coin finds can significant conclusions be drawn about the
volume of minting, for example, or the circulation of coin. As a pre
it was necessary to devise better for dating
liminary step, techniques
Greek coins than the aesthetic canons that once prevailed ( since the
coins lack dates and, before the Hellenistic period, portraits), and
this has been achieved by intensive studies of the dies. It was also
necessary to appreciate that coin hoards, not excavation coins, are
the fundamental source of material; that hoards must therefore be
178
Archaeology and History
179
D DALUS
year of the destruction of the city. Thus we have some indications with
regard to those stamps which belong to the period between 220 and 146
b.c. .
. . We statistics of the various for each
require comparative stamps
place where Rhodian stamps have been found in order to determine
whether modern scholars are right in assuming that the Rhodian stamps
of the period 220 to 146 are the most common stamps in all the centers
of Rhodian commercial activity. As things stand, we must confine our
selves to some very general statements [my italics].38
Bronze Iron
Swords 20+ 1
Spearheads 30+ 8
8 2
Daggers
Knives 15+ 0
Axe-heads 4 0
180
Archaeology and History
That illustration?and I hasten to add that there are others?ex
an interest in on a par
plains why
I rank precise historical questions
with numeracy and closer attention to statistics in stating what I
consider to be the urgent requirement in the immediate future.
own suggests that Snodgrass' task was exacerbated
My experience
state of the archaeology and the
by the poor archaeological report
with respect to graves and grave-goods. I have twice in recent
ing
years tried to use such evidence, first for the complicated and ill
understood situation in Roman Sicily, then for the history
linguistic
of military in Greece during the late Bronze Age and
grave-goods
the subsequent "Dark Age." Both times I was reduced to impres
sionistic remarks and to complaints, much like those of Rostovtzeff
about the Rhodian jar-stamps. In too few cemeteries have both the
excavation and the subsequent publication been systematic and
Worse still, it would a research on
complete.42 require large project
its own merely to collect the
bibliography. Whereas the historian of
has Audrey Meaney's Gazetter of Early An
Anglo-Saxon England
glo-Saxon Burial Sites,43 I know of no comparable guide to any
district of Greece or any province of the Roman Empire.44
We have thus come full circle to Ucko and the Mother Goddess.
To multiply examples further would be pointless.45 But it is nec
essary to look at the other side, at the historian's needs from the
of the One common can be dis
viewpoint archaeologist.46 objection
missed out of hand: classification and chronology are still uncer
it is and until are fixed more
tain, argued, they firmly, historical
questions must wait. That is nothing but Cornford's Principle of
Time. More serious is the that are al
Unripe plea archaeologists
ready overworked, that there is so much excavation still to be done,
that publication would be even further delayed. There is no an
swer to that, a choice of values. Of what use, I should is
only reply,
the vast outpouring of annual reports on the year's work from which
nothing emerges except the occasional isolated fact, often canceled
or corrected in the next work or the third or the fourth
year's
Of what use are more and more excavations when so many
year's?
older ones have not been fully reported, and no small number have
not been published at all? And, use is
finally, of what archaeology
anyway, apart from the museum that sometimes come out
pieces
of the debris, if it leads to more than reports?
nothing
One solution that is to the cre
being mooted genuine difficulty
ated by overwork, insufficient manpower, and insufficient funds is
the of good techniques. I must demur. No
employment sampling
181
DAEDALUS
Ill
182
Archaeology and History
more or
less unnecessary. If one posed the Akragas
archaeology
for the Middle one would find the answer in
question Ages, papal
and diocesan records. And one final example. By an ingenious cal
culation, based wholly on the results of
stylistic analysis of re
mains, R. M. Cook arrived at a reasonable estimate of the
recently
number of men engaged in the Athenian fine pottery industry in
b.c.49 That was an to eco
the fifth century important contribution
nomic history. The same about the English in
question potteries
1800 would be answered with far greater precision, and with a
remains out of reach for
breakdown by skills and functions which
Athens, to the pottery archives. It is hardly sur
simply by going
therefore, that the new field of industrial ar
prising, relatively
remains a backwater. I should be much more surprised if
chaeology
it ever turns out to be more than that.
References
5. Jacquetta Hawkes, Dawn of the Gods (London: Chatto and Windus, 1968),
p.e.
7. P. and Neolithic
J. Ucko, Anthropomorphic Figurines of Predynastic Egypt
Crete . . . II.
(London: Szmidla, 1968), part
183
D DALUS
10. Ibid.
21. The Minoan bull-cult needs the same sort of scrutiny Ucko
desperately
gave to the Mother Goddess.
24. who
believes that it may be easy to draw safe inferences from
Anyone
certain of objects, at least, will from P. J. Ucko,
types profit reading
"Penis Sheaths: A Comparative in Proceedings of the Royal
Study,"
Institute Great Britain and Ireland for 196g, pp. 27-67.
Anthropological of
26. See, for M. I. Finley and others, "The Trojan War," Journal of
example,
Hellenic Studies, 84 (1964), 1-20.
184
Archaeology and History
27. See E. H. Warmington, ed., Remains of Old Latin, III-IV, in the Loeb
Classical Harvard University Press.
Library,
185
D DALUS
38. Mikhail Rostovtzeff, The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic
World, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941), pp. 775-776.
186