Closing Session

CLOSING SESSION AND FINAL REMARKS

Chaired by Eric H. CLINE E.H. Cline: We are running about a half an hour late, and I know that many of you must catch the five o’clock shuttle back to the hotel. I would like, therefore, to focus these final discussions and end promptly on time, hoping of course that the discussions which we generate now will be continued in the taxi cabs, on the airplanes, and perhaps even on Aegeanet. We asked the speakers concerned with “The Future is Now: Where Do We Go From Here?” to address this broad topic from their own area of expertise, and we suggested that perhaps they might also want to try to answer some questions, such as: 1) where did they see themselves going in the future? 2) where did they see the field as a whole going? 3) what would they recommend to their graduate students who want to work in their area of expertise, or somebody else’s? While this final discussion session provides an opportunity for us to ask questions and make comments about the papers presented yesterday and today, since we had no Final Discussion yesterday, and in some cases perhaps to continue debates cut short by coffee and lunch breaks, I would prefer to focus the discussion session by asking everyone else here in this auditorium the same questions: Where do you see yourself going in the future?; Where should our field as a whole go?; What would you recommend to graduate students who want to work in your area of expertise?; Can we come up with some sort of blueprint for the future, as we head into the third millennium AD? We as individuals have our differences, we have our arguments over Tell el-Dabca or the High Chronology, over the past three days we have had discussions and disagreements over this, that and the other points, but we all do have some common goals — most particularly, the furthering of our discipline and the ultimate discovery of the Truth and of the nature of the events that unfolded during the second millennium BC. We have just heard what Cynthia Shelmerdine, Sarah Morris, Sturt Manning, Aslihan Yener, Joan Aruz, and the Sherratts think about the future directions of our field; I would like to hear from a few other scholars, some of whom have been relatively silent thus far — for instance, John Cherry, what do you think? Chris Mee, what do you think? Guenter Kopcke, we need to hear from you. Jack Davis and John Bennet, what do you think? You graduate students, who have spent your hard earned money to come here, what do you think? While Jack, and John, and Chris, and Gunter, and others in the audience, I hope, gather your thoughts about where we are headed and what we should be doing in the coming years, I would like to ask four specific graduate students who are here with us today, and who will be (one hopes) actively pursuing their careers during the third millennium AD, to brief ly share with the audience the nature of their projects and their thoughts about what they hope their research will contribute to our field. I single out Nicolle Hirschfeld from the University of Texas, Gert Jan van Wijngaarden from the University of Amsterdam, Ioulia Tzonou from our own University of Cincinnati, and Michael Sugerman of Harvard University, who have agreed to brief ly describe their dissertation research and what they hope it will contribute to our field. I should tell you that I have told them that they have only two minutes: one minute to describe what they are doing, one minute to describe what they hope it will contribute. So, if I could call upon Nicole... N. Hirschfeld: Well, it’s certainly hard to follow after the Sherratts. I’m from the University of Texas at Austin. My project, my dissertation, concerns marks on pottery and what that can tell us about exchange, the mechanisms of exchange. We’ve talked a lot about general inf luences and about things being traded from here and there; I’m very interested in trying to pinpoint as much as possible, in terms of time and individuals, how these pots got from one place to another and the mechanisms by which they were exchanged. There are many ways to approach this; the little

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Eric H. CLINE handle I’ve found is to look at pots that are exchanged in the Mediterranean. My study right now is limited to the Mycenaean period. I’m looking at vessels that are exchanged — Mycenaean pottery, Cypriot pottery, and Canaanite jars — and the kind of labels that they carry on them: signs put on after firing and that give us some sense of who’s keeping track of the pots. The sort of questions I’m beginning to start to answer, although I may not get to all of it, and the evidence may not be able to support it all, is making observations about, for example, some of the signs that I know are connected specifically with Cypriot marking systems. So when I find a Mycenaean vase in the mainland with a Cypriot sign on it, that tells me that a Cypriot came to the mainland to pick up the vase, or that someone who knew something about the Cypriot trading system and how they organized their pots had marked the vase. And the same thing [holds] about finding a vase in Egypt that has a Cypriot mark; I know that somehow it’s passed through Cypriot hands. So, I’m looking at questions of defining directional trade, individuals involved in trade, and then how systems change over time. The Mycenaean system is very, very different from [both] what happened before and the whole track of what happens afterwards. I think my two minutes are up!

G.J. Van Wijngaarden: I work at the University of Amsterdam under the supervision of Joost Crouwel and the co-supervision of Vronwy Hankey, Al Leonard, and Lucia Vagnetti. The title of my dissertation, which is not finished, of course, is provisionally: Use and Appreciation of Mycenaean Pottery Outside Greece: Context of LH I - LH IIIB Finds in Anatolia, Cyprus, the Levant, Egypt, and Italy. On the basis of the distribution of Mycenaean pottery, I have singled out a number of sites for which publications are suitable to a contextual analysis. I am trying to analyze these sites by asking myself ‘who used these vessels?,’ and ‘what did they use them for?,’ and ‘what did they mean to these people?.’ First I study the onsite distribution of the Mycenaean pottery, then its contextual distribution in the sense of domestic contexts, funerary contexts, and ritual contexts. Next, I look at closed contexts: both in settlement deposits — what other objects surround it — and in funerary contexts. Eric [Cline] asked what kind of impact I was hoping to make? I would like to show that an object, once it is imported somewhere, becomes in a sense a different kind of object. A Mycenaean stirrup jar in Greece is something different than the same object in Anatolia or Syria. Its cultural meaning is determined by the context of the society which uses it, and we have to take that into account. I’m often reminded of MacDonalds hamburgers: in Moscow, Paris, or New York they taste exactly the same; however, the connotations attached to them are completely different. Similar processes probably occurred when objects were distributed in the Mediterranean during the Bronze Age. In my opinion, such differences in cultural meaning are essential to understand the inter-regional interactions that have been debated at this conference. I. Tzonou: It is certainly very intimidating for me to talk about my contribution in this group of people. I certainly feel the burden of all this knowledge in my stomach right now! I want to say that I intend to study Mycenaean ethnicity, but I know that Bernard Knapp is going to jump on me and say ‘how do you define ethnicity?’ This conference has taught me that there is a unity in the area of the Aegean and the Orient, and yet there is a distinctiveness among the peoples that populated these areas. Now I would like to find out who the Mycenaeans were, and I’d like to do this by tracing the development of the term “Mycenaeans,” ever since Schliemann’s publication, and then see the material culture of peripheral areas like the [Cycladic] Islands: how do we find the Mycenaeans in the Islands? What do we need to define the “Mycenaean-ness,” as Sherratt defined it, in the Islands? That’s about it — my two minutes are up. It’s been a great experience for me being in this conference. Thank you. M. Sugerman: My project is actually a rather simple one in idea, but a bit more difficult in practice, as many simple ideas are. Like the other three students who have just spoken, I’m studying neither time nor space, but rather practice, and trying to define some of the people that we’re talking about in terms of practice. My particular focus is a study of the distribution and production of Canaanite jars in the Late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean. Over the past three years, I’ve been collecting samples of Canaanite jars from sites in Israel, Cyprus, and Greece, and now the Uluburun shipwreck as well. I’m dividing them up in terms of their fabric and then, through petrographic analysis, trying to find the sources of these jars and hoping to find some sort of pattern in the production and distribution. The main goal behind this is to balance a lot of what I’ve seen this weekend, actually, which is the recognition that almost all of the study of the movement of material culture between the regions that we’re discussing is in the study of what

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we would normally term “prestige goods” and may not actually apply to the great majority of cultural contact between them. On the other hand, I may find that is the great majority of cultural contact, but that is part of what the project is about. I also asked for, and was graciously granted, an extra minute to respond on behalf of the graduate students here to Sarah Morris’ exhortation this morning, although it might not be my place to do so. I don’t know if all of you here are aware of the fact that there are graduate students here at this conference representing either Programs or Departments of Ancient Studies, Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World, Art History, Classics, Mediterranean Archaeology, Nautical Archaeology, Near Eastern Studies, Near Eastern Languages and Civilization, and West Asian Archaeology. If that’s not an interdisciplinary gathering, then I don’t know how much more interdisciplinary we’re likely to get. The discourse between these graduate students over the last two evenings, suitably aided by various sorts of celebration and libation (laughter), have actually come up with some very interesting discussions. We found that we have students who are working in analytical methods, not limited to, but including, art historical, archaeological, textual, and material analysis. My exhortation to you, the faculty, those of you who are still here, is first, to second Sarah Morris’ statement that you should all do what you can to cement your positions and to cement the importance of ancient studies of various kinds in your academic institutions, so that there will be a third millennium for the studies that we’re interested in. (Applause). And, second, also to recognize that in these interdisciplinary studies, if the discussions of the last two evenings have been any example, you’re likely to be approached by a number of very strange ideas. I would hope that you will receive them with the same frame of mind that Helene Kantor’s advisors did when she came up with some of her very strange ideas fifty years ago, in order to allow some of these ideas to come to the surface and to further affect the field that we’re all taking part in. Thank you. (Applause). E.H. Cline: Thank you all. Speaking for myself, and I’m sure the rest of the audience as well, we wish you all luck and look forward to reading your final products. And as for me, my E-mail is always open. I’ll try and respond — try not to get too strange! Now, how about the rest of us? Where do we go from here? Thoughts? We have the “Dream Team” of Bronze Age Archaeology at this conference; let’s take advantage of that fact and do a little brainstorming, for if we can’t come up with a plan for the third millennium, then we are in danger. Do we have comments from members of the audience? J.L. Crowley: I’ll be brave enough to start, but I haven’t got the “Grand Plan.” I’d just rather like to say where I think the conference has brought us, at least as it seems to me. For many of us who have worked in this area for some time, we’ve all had our battles actually establishing the fact that these interconnections or transferences did indeed occur, and some of us have had more battles than others. When I said in my talk that with this conference I think the topic has come of age, I think this is the very great value — we’ve gathered ourselves all here, and we’ve heaved ourselves up onto a platform, if you like, or perhaps the brow of a low hill, and we can say that we don’t have to argue anymore that these things happened. What we can now go on and do is be much more subtle about how we tackle the challenges ahead — take as granted the interconnections out there — and now try and refine every aspect of assessing them. And I see from the students that they’ve already started. I hope the next hill we climb is very high and we see a long way. . L.V. Watrous: Just about one small remark. I think this is very important what we’re talking about, and I’d like to second the enthusiasm about Sarah Morris’ talk this afternoon. It seems to me, one of the key things that’s important about the past is that we’re all alive today and our society exists in the present. The value of the past is that we use the past as a paradigm often. We use it as a sign post. We use it all the time to guide our actions, and we usually do it in a way which is unconscious. I think that it’s important that since we are all working in the past, in a sense, we’re the guardians of the past in some way for the present. When we write, we [should] write for the wider audience more, and we [should] try to show the relevance of what we’re doing for today. V. Karageorghis: I was glad to hear one of the graduate students saying that he is including the central Mediterranean in his research. I think it is high time that we brought down the wall which separates the Mycenaean world from the rest of the Mediterranean, that is the West. In the Phoenician period, that is, later in the eighth and seventh centuries BC, in order to study the Phoenicians we have to consider the whole of the Mediterranean littoral, and the Phoenician scholars are doing it much better, I think, than we are. We have to include the Western

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Eric H. CLINE Mediterranean, from the Levant to the Atlantic coast, in fact, if you want to have a global view of what happened in the Bronze Age in this cultural lake which is the Mediterranean.

K. Rubinson: I will ask to move in the other direction as well. I come at this from the outside. I do work in central Asia and Transcaucasia/Eastern Anatolia. There is metalwork in the Caucasus that’s the same as in Mycenae. Therefore, one can’t really turn one’s back on the east either. And so, beyond the high culture states with the chronologies and everything else, is an additional world which I think is relevant at least in terms of raw materials, that one cannot lose sight of. A.B. Knapp: I wanted to come right in after Vassos [Karageorghis] and say that you now have the medium, and have had for the last ten years to write, or submit your ideas to, in the form of the Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology, but that’s not merely what I wanted to say. My observation on the directions and inf luences and ideas that people here have, have been nicely summarized by three of the last speakers. Joan Aruz says, from a very detailed and learned perspective, that we need to move from the data out. Sturt Manning has said, with a broad scope of knowledge and avant-garde mentality, that we need to have some chronological parameters to do what we want to do. Sue and Andrew Sherratt have called upon — I suspect Andrew Sherratt has called upon — geography and anthropology to become, or to continue to be, part of the perspective of Mediterranean prehistorians. I haven’t heard any of these people talk about looking at all of these ideas within a conceptual framework that is broad far beyond chronology, anthropology and geography. If I read the graduate student mentality correctly, what they’re interested in is some of the things that Sturt was talking about, like individuals and agents, but they’re also interested in ideology, gender, ethnicity, post modernism, images, icons, pictures, different ways of looking at the past, and that’s what you’ve got to be prepared for next week, when somebody knocks on your door. Thank you. C. Mee: I’d just like to reiterate the point which several speakers have made. For those of us who are Aegean prehistorians, it’s absolutely vital that we look beyond the narrow confines of Greece and the Aegean, both to the west and to the east. The question is, how do we do this? I’d like to use my own personal experience to illustrate one means. Liverpool University, although it has a long tradition in archaeology, only formed a single department six years ago. The advantages of this for me have been enormous, because it has brought together colleagues who are prehistorians, people who teach theoretical archaeology, but also Egyptologists and Near Eastern specialists. I’m now in a position where I can walk ten yards down the corridor if I want to consult Ken Kitchen on chronological matters, and with luck, in a day or so, he’s finished with me. Alan Millard, our distinguished Near Eastern specialist, again, is on the same corridor as myself. I have to say this has been enormously advantageous. I do think that in America, where archaeology seems to be split so much, it’s going to be important to integrate, if our subject, Aegean archaeology, is to develop. E.J.W. Barber: I think we’re teetering on the verge of a whole series of wonderful new tools that can help us reach some of these goals, some of which have been brought up here this weekend in interesting ways, such as this World Systems analysis, the dendrochronology, and so forth, which are going to make all sorts of things possible. I think there are a number of other things out there. Machteld Mellink mentioned mythology. It is certainly something that we have not learned to use properly. There is, in addition to the East and the West, the great North. There is the Balkans, Central Europe, the steppelands, and so forth, which have contributed greatly to the North Mediterranean world. There are other things: mathematics is providing us with such things as symmetry analysis, which has the interesting property, parallel to linguistics, that in language, phonology is subconscious whereas the borrowing of words is conscious. It seems as though the borrowing of motifs is a conscious process, but symmetry systems do not get borrowed except with massive cohabitation. These are interesting kinds of things that people have hardly explored in the archaeological world. I think there are a whole raft of very new and interesting techniques that will open our eyes; we should not be afraid of math books and things like that. A. Bauer: This conference has all been about interaction. What I think is interesting is that, rather than looking at the relationship between specific groups, East and West, we might begin to, as some people in different papers here have done, look at interaction as an entity in and of itself — with its own multiple layers, multiple characteristics, as well as multiple routes, etc, and its own

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ideological significance for each person or group involved in it. This is one of the things that Dr. Knapp addressed in his paper. I think this is definitely the way to go, in looking at the second millennium in the Mediterranean. With that in mind, and this may be nothing new to some people here, [we should consider] what the Sherratt’s said in their paper about looking at the routes themselves as significant, or as personalities or entities in and of themselves. Perhaps that’s the way we should look at some of these questions — for example, when we’re looking at the Sea Peoples, perhaps we should look at the Sea Peoples not as a people at all, but as the route, and therefore meaning different things to different people involved. E.H. Cline: Perhaps a final comment or two from Jim Muhly? Jack Davis? Jerry Rutter? John Bennet? J.D. Muhly: Well, I think one of the things I’d like to see is a return to some of the old skills as well as developing new ones. I would like to see more detailed analysis of individual objects. I realize this is a style of scholarship rather out of fashion these days, but I think it still has a great deal to teach us. Take, for example, the pyxis lid from Minet el-Beidha. Everyone talks about it, but no one knows what to do with it. That object has a great deal of very detailed information encoded in it, but it’s going to take a sophisticated analysis to really exploit the information contained in that object. One of the things I’m talking about here is “style.” No one likes to talk about “style” anymore because no one knows what “style” is. I would simply encourage everyone to go back and read Meyer Shapiro’s great essay on “style.” It would be of great benefit to many of the scholars here in this audience. E.H. Cline: Thank you. Well, I must admit I have been asking myself, what do I think? I agree vehemently with what Jim Muhly said last night, that the next generation of graduate students needs more years of training, not less. We need to tell our university administrators this, and not kick the students out after five years. As we get more specialized, we are losing our breadth. If we are to further our investigations into the ancient world, and particularly into the connections between Greece, Egypt, and the Near East in the second millennium BC, we need scholars trained in both the Classical and Near Eastern worlds and in both Classical and Near Eastern languages. Though I myself am trained in both, I am still very painfully aware of the large gaps in my own knowledge. I plan to continue learning and extend my education through the rest of my life, remaining a perpetual student as well as a scholar. I sincerely hope that it is never too late to learn something new, for I do believe that an active mind is an open mind. We are coming to the end here, and running out of time, so in closing, let me simply say that on behalf of Diane [Harris-Cline] and myself, and the entire Classics Dept, including the graduate students, here at the University of Cincinnati, I would like to thank you all very much for your participation in this conference, and for helping us to honor the work of Helene Kantor, Carl Blegen, Marion Rawson, and Jim Muhly. We hope that you all agree that it was indeed worthwhile to spend three days investigating the second millennium BC, by both looking back at our past accomplishments during the second millennium AD, and looking forward to the future possibilities in the next millennium. I, for one, must say that I am overjoyed by the discussions of the past few days, and I’m greatly looking forward to our united accomplishments during the coming millennium. Thus, it is with a deep sense of satisfaction, a small sense of sadness (because we’ve been living with this conference for more than two years now), and an even greater sense of relief that I hereby declare this conference to be at an end. I thank you all for participating.