Manning

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Australian historians speak frequently of the tyranny of distance. The seminal work is Geoffrey Blainey’s The tyranny of distance: how distance shaped Australia’s history (1966, rev. ed. 1983). Over the last couple of decades archaeologists have increasingly appreciated the importance of distance; the very different time-space geography of the world before the Industrial Revolution, and the power of the distant, exotic and unknown. Fernand Braudel’s La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’époque de Philippe II (2nd ed. 1966) first brought the topic to wider note in the Mediterranean field, and Mary Helms’ Ulysses’ Sail: an ethnographic odyssey of power, knowledge, and geographic distance (1988) has become widely referred to, and used.1 Archaeology is good at recognizing and providing spatial data. So far, so good. But the power of distance lies in its dialectical relationship with time: structuring, defining, and creating human perceptions and actions within and across lived experiences and lifetimes.2 Helms is careful to note ‘and time’ when she analyses distance and knowledge (esp. pp. 7-11). Space and time create the human landscape and world. However, archaeology is rather less comfortable, or good, at time. In our field of Aegean and east Mediterranean archaeology, we are still very much ruled by the tyranny of time. The theme of this paper is that we need to try to begin to understand, and escape, this tyranny, just as we are now increasingly confident with distance. I wish to critique the current status quo, and suggest where the future lies. Chronology is often said to the backbone of history, and, under this rubric, a great deal of attention has been devoted to the subject from traditional or positivist viewpoints.3 Time and chronology are also central to post-modern and post-processual scholarship, and its relativist critique and concentration on the active creation of the past in the present: ‘Time is central to archaeology. It constitutes the major problem of interpretation and yet is the reason for the discipline’s existence.’4 To our post-Renaissance, and especially Victorian and 20th century eyes, the past has little meaning unless neatly ordered into a linear sequence — the vicious scholarly disputes that erupt if anyone questions either the neat linear order, or the neat numbers associated

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I wish to thank Eric Cline and Diane Harris-Cline for inviting me to the Cincinnati conference, and for making my attendance possible. I thank Eric and Diane, and Jack Davis, along with Libby, Phoebe, et al., for all their very generous hospitality over a most enjoyable week. In an Aegean context, e.g. C. BROODBANK, “Ulysses without sails: trade, distance, knowledge and power in the early Cyclades,” World Archaeology 25 (1993) 315-31. Generally, see e.g. E.M. SCHORTMAN and P.A. URBAN (eds.), Resources, power, and interregional interaction (1992). Before Helms, see J.M. WAGSTAFF (ed.), Landscape and culture: geographical and archaeological perspectives (1987). D. GREGORY and J. URRY (eds.), Social relations and spatial structures (1985); D. GREGORY, Geographical Imaginations (1994); A. PRED, Place, practice and structure: social and spatial transformation in southern Sweden, 1750-1850 (1986); Idem (ed.), Space and time in geography: essays dedicated to Torsten Hägerstrand (1981); E.W. SOJA, Postmodern geographies: the reassertion of space in critical social theory (1989); Idem, Thirdspace: expanding the geographical imagination (1996). B. GRÄSLUND, The birth of prehistoric chronology (1987); B.G. TRIGGER, A ‘history’ of archaeological thought (1989). And for Aegean examples, e.g. P.M. WARREN and V. HANKEY, Aegean Bronze Age chronology (1989); S.W. MANNING, The absolute chronology of the Aegean Early Bronze Age: archaeology, radiocarbon and history (1995). M. SHANKS and C. TILLEY, Re-constructing archaeology: theory and practice, 2nd. ed. (1992) 7.

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therewith, are ample testimony.5 Flexible, cultural, pasts such as the Heroic Age of the ancient Greeks, or the Dreaming of Australia,6 are bizarrely different to our sensibilities, and perceived as of no use — excepting to post-modern literary/post-processual/myth types — unless we can create order out of the chaos (we tame, recognise, and simplify what is in fact a non-linear, dynamic, reality7). We take for granted what Joseph Scalinger only learnt of near the end of his life (died AD 1609): the ability to give years, numbers, to ancient history,8 and to argue incessantly over such details. In general, most archaeological scholarship has not moved on from an innate fascination at, and satisfaction with, the mere naming of parts. The great works of archaeological-historical scholarship a century and more ago were about the chronology of the Old World,9 or about the categorization and typology of the past.10 A century later the situation has not significantly changed. Things must be categorised and placed. Typology and chronology reign still in Aegean and Classical archaeology. We accept easily that we cannot ever know for sure many aspects of prehistory, that it is a foreign

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Examples are numerous, one might consider the EC IIB or EC IIIA and/or EC III ‘gap’ debate in the Cyclades: J.B. RUTTER, “Some observations on the Cyclades in the later third and early second millennia BC,” AJA 87 (1983) 69-76; Idem, “The Early Cycladic III gap: what it is and how to go about filling it without making it go away,” in J.A. MacGILLIVRAY and R.L.N. BARBER (eds.), The prehistoric Cyclades (1984) 95-107; R.L.N. BARBER, “The definition of the Middle Cycladic period,” AJA 87 (1983) 76-79; J.A. MacGILLIVRAY, “The relative chronologies of Early Cycladic IIIA and Early Helladic III,” AJA 87 (1983) 81-83; or the last decade of controversy over the date of the Thera eruption. Only if a change is effectively just a renaming, such as C. RENFREW’s culture names in his Emergence of Civilization (1972), is it acceptable — although even here there was a controversy: J.E. COLEMAN, “The chronology and interconnections of the Cycladic islands in the Neolithic Period and the Early Bronze Age,” AJA 78 (1974) 333-44; Idem, “Chronological and cultural divisions of the Early Cycladic period: a critical appraisal,” J.L. DAVIS and J.F. CHERRY (eds.), Papers in Cycladic prehistory (1979) 48-50. E.g. J.-P. VERNANT, Myth and society in ancient Greece, trans. J. LLOYD (1990); E. KOLIG, Dreamtime politics: religion, world view and utopian thought in Australian Aboriginal society (1989). In general, see T. MASUZAWA, In search of dreamtime: the quest for the origin of religion (1993); and, on non-modern, non-linear, past worlds, see also H.P. DUERR, Dreamtime: concerning the boundary between wilderness and civilization, trans. F.D. GOODMAN (1985). I. PRIGOGINE, “Time, structure and f luctuations,” Science 201 (1978) 777-85; S.E. VAN DER LEEUW and J. McGLADE (eds.), Time, process and structured transformation in archaeology (1997). L. DEPUYDT, “More valuable than all gold: Ptolemy’s Royal Canon and Babylonian chronology,” Journal of Cuneiform Studies 47 (1996) 97-117. For a collection of all Scalinger’s works, and for antiquarian books about Scalinger, see R. SMITSKAMP et al., The Scalinger collection (1993). E.g. J.B. DE LA BASTIE, “De la manière dont les Égyptiens comptoient les années du regne des empereurs,” Histoire de l’Academie royale des inscriptions et belles-lettres (1740) 136-52; R. LEPSIUS, Die Chronologie der Ägypter (1849); Idem, über einige Berührungspunkte der ägyptischen, griechischen und römischen Chronologie. Abhandlungen der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (1859); Idem, über den chronologischen Werth der Assyrischen Eponymen und einige Berührungspunkte mit der Aegyptischen Chronologie. Abhandlungen der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (1869); H.K. BRUGSCH, Nouvelles recherches sur la division de l’année des anciens Égyptiens suivies d’un mémoire sur des observations planétaires consignées dans quatre tablettes égyptiennes en écriture démotique (1856); F.J. LAUTH, Aegyptische Chronologie: basirt auf die vollständige Reihe der Epochen seit Bytes-Menes bis Hadrian-Antonin durch drei volle Sothisperioden = 4380 Jahre (1877); K.L. PETER, Chronological tables of Greek history: accompanied by a short narrative of events, with references to the sources of information and extracts from the ancient authorities, trans. G. Chawner (1882); C. TORR, Memphis and Mycenae: an examination of Egyptian chronology and its application to the early history of Greece (1896); E. MEYER, Aegyptische Chronologie. Abhandlungen der Königl. Preuss. Akademie der Wissenschaften vom Jahre 1904 (1904); Idem, Die ältere chronologie Babyloniens, Assyriens und Ägyptens: Nachtrag zum ersen Bande der Geschichte des Altertums (1925); D. SIDERSKY, Étude sur la chronologie assyro-babylonienne (1916); S. LANGDON, J.K. FOTHERINGHAM and K. SCHOCH, The Venus tablets of Ammizaduga, a solution of Babylonian chronology by means of the Venus observations of the first dynasty (1928); E.J. BICKERMAN, Chronologie (1933); Idem, Chronology of the ancient world, rev. ed. (1980); L. BORCHARDT, Die Mittel zur zeitlichen Festlegung von Punkten der ägyptischen Geschichte und ihre Anwendung (1935) R.A. PARKER and W.H. DUBBERSTEIN, Babylonian chronology 626 B.C. - A.D. 45, 2nd. ed. (1946); A.E. SAMUEL, Greek and Roman chronology: calendars and years in classical antiquity (1972). TRIGGER (supra n. 3).

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country, that degrees of relativism exist, and that there are a plurality of possible interpretations,11 but as long as we establish a chronology, and categorize those pots, we feel we have at least a visitor’s visa, and so a means to some understanding. If something can be organised we feel comfortable — we have control over it, it has been domesticated. The chronology, and the entailed attention to detail, in fact serve to hide how little we know. The subject becomes the chronology, rather than the past society. Shanks chides the field: ‘So, for example, what stage in the pottery sequence was reached when Knossos was destroyed? Was it Late Minoan II or IIIA1 or IIIA2? ... These are typical questions which have concerned, sometimes obsessed, Aegean prehistorians...’.12 And he is right. We are failing to look at the big questions, and are bogged down in one small area of preliminary detail — and then in attacks and defenses of this detail.13 There are far too few books in Aegean archaeology like Barry Kemp’s exciting Ancient Egypt: anatomy of a civilization (1989), where he has ‘deliberately not allowed chronology and history to intrude too conspicuously into ... [his] text’ (p.15). The volcano of Thera is another, topical, example. The question of the date has seen dozens and dozens of publications over the last 20 years (mea culpa), likewise the description and analysis of the finds buried under the eruption, but the more interesting and important topic of the effect of the eruption on Aegean society has received but a handful of publications in the last 20 years,14 and is only now being rescued from obscurity by the new book of Jan Driessen and Colin Macdonald.15 Such linear, ordered, chronological, views of the world are relatively recent. Knowledge of a secure pre-Roman chronology can hardly be said to have existed before AD 1600, and the general conquest of time, and the annihilation of distance, date back no further than the invention of the accurate clock by John Harrison in AD 1735, which enabled the ordering and subjugation of the world into our modern linear terms;16 and, in terms of every day life, such developments only really ended relative systems of Parish time, etc, with the advent of the railways.17 Such views are also rather problematic when applied to human culture. They make time one-dimensional, whereas the study of history reveals that very different concepts

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E.g. D. LOWENTHAL, The past is a foreign country (1985); S.D. HOUSTON, “How ‘natives’ think, about the soul, for example (with apologies to Sahlins)” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 7 (1997) 145-47; M. SHANKS, Classical archaeology of Greece: experiences of the discipline (1996); M. SHANKS and C. TILLEY, Social theory and archaeology (1987); SHANKS and TILLEY (supra n. 4); I. HODDER, Reading the past: current approaches to interpretation in archaeology, 2nd. ed. (1991); Idem, Interpreting archaeology: finding meaning in the past (1994). SHANKS (supra n. 11) 157. The recent attacks on conventional Old World chronology by P. JAMES, I.J. THORPE, N. KOKKINOS, R. MORKOT and J. FRANKISH, Centuries of Darkness (1991) and D.M. ROHL, A test of time. Volume One: the Bible — from myth to history (1995) and widespread counter-attacks by conventional scholarship numbering many hundreds of pages of scholarly literature, offer a good example of this self-fulfilling obsession. The ‘Bernal Industry’ is another case where an attack on the conventional classifications, chronology, and models by one author has seen many dozens of scholars and many, many hundreds of pages of response. It is almost as if conventional, mainstream, scholarship has nothing better to do than to denounce targets we identify as wrong-headed critics. Everything went silent after the elegant, but brief and disproved, hypothesis of D.L. PAGE, The Santorini volcano and the desolation of Minoan Crete (1970). About the most recent, and I think almost never read, example is in fact S.W. MANNING, “The volcano of Thera and the destruction of Minoan Crete,” Kretika Chronika KZ’ (1987) 59-85 with bibliography up to 1985. This ends (adding p. 85 no. 3) suggesting the indirect trigger role of the eruption in the subsequent collapse of LM I Crete, a model developed in detail by DRIESSEN and MACDONALD (infra n. 15). The troubled island: Minoan Crete before and after the Santorini eruption. Aegaeum 17 (1997). I thank Jan Driessen for letting me read a draft copy. W.J.H. ANDREWES, The quest for longitude: the proceedings of the Longitude Symposium, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, November 4-6, 1993 (1996); D. SOBEL, Longitude: the true story of a lone genius who solved the greatest scientific problem of his time (1996); H. HOBDEN and M. HOBDEN, John Harrison and the problem of longitude, 5th ed. (1995). For an Australian example, see G. DAVISON, The unforgiving minute: how Australians learned to tell the time (1993) 50-51.

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and scales of time operate in human history;18 moreover, in the pre-modern period, time was also social in perception and construction.19 We place great weight on the unforgiving minute. Time orders and controls our modern lives; it is our key discipline in Foucauldian terms. Thus when a past culture recorded time in a fashion which we can relate to our linear timescale, this information is accorded great esteem. We use it in a modern way. We ignore or work around the fact that such recordings of the past were ideological — ‘Legitimizing the present by revering an edited version of the past,’20 and so very different in their aims to our notions of time. We ignore the fact that the ability to relate historical or biographical time to material culture remains is often problematic or impossible. The general result has been a great divide, or structure, which has operated for over a century in Aegean and east Mediterranean Bronze Age archaeology. Egypt and Mesopotamia have historical chronologies (and so therefore, to an extent, do parts of Syria and Anatolia), whereas the Aegean and beyond is strictly prehistoric. This has led to very different traditions of scholarship in the respective areas. Egyptian and Near Eastern scholars have long discussed key individual historical figures, and the history is a biographically informed one, and the minutiae of much scholarship is directed at textual matters and specific historical events. Thus major sites must have names from among those known, and key horizons evident at these sites are linked to historically recorded events.21 In contrast, Aegeanists have instead concentrated on typological studies of material culture, studied large sets of data, and kept to general issues. They envy the event-historical mode of Egypt and the Near East, but find themselves forced to remain vague, general, and non-biographically specific. Was Knossos (personified) the ruler of all Crete in LM I, or not; was there a Minoan thalassocracy, or not? We do not know, or even dare to know, Rhadamanthus, Minos, Merones, et al. We have no Sargon the Great, Shamshi-Adad I, or Thutmose III; we must satisfy ourselves instead with key forces called meaningful, made-up, names like Daidalos and Homer. In practice, the two approaches are almost exclusive (whereas, in fact, they should be complementary), and usually match unhappily when Aegeans or Egyptians come across each other and a material culture ‘set’ meets a specific individual, or event-historical nexus, or vice versa. Confusion or debate is the inevitable outcome in modern scholarship. Virtually every Aegean-Egyptian linkage offers an example in one way or another. Archaeology and history offer different types of data, and different time scales.22

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G.N. BAILEY, “Concepts, time-scales and explanations in economic prehistory,” in A. SHERIDAN and G.N. BAILEY (eds.), Economic archaeology: towards an integration of ecological and social approaches (1981) 97-117; Idem, “Concepts of time in quaternary prehistory,” Annual Review of Anthropology 12 (1983) 165-192; Idem, “Breaking the time barrier,” Archaeological Review from Cambridge 6 (1987) 5-20; J. FABIAN, Time and the other: how anthropology makes its object (1983); A.B. KNAPP, “Archaeology and Annales: time, space and change,” in A.B. KNAPP (ed.), Archaeology, Annales, and ethnohistory (1992) 1-21; C. GOSDEN, Social being and time (1994). GOSDEN (supra n. 18); A. GELL, The anthropology of time. Cultural constructions of temporal maps and images (1992); B. ADAM, Time and social theory (1990); M. ELIADE, Myth and reality (1963); Idem, Images and symbols (1969). B.J. KEMP, Ancient Egypt: anatomy of a civilization (1989) 22 Fig. 4 caption, generally, pp. 20-27. For two examples, critically analyzed, see S. FORSBERG, Near Eastern destruction datings as sources for Greek and Near Eastern Iron Age chronology. Archaeological and historical studies: the cases of Samaria (722 B.C.) and Tarsus (696 B.C.) (1995). The scholarship and debates over Alalakh offer another example: S. SMITH, Alalakh and chronology (1940); L. WOOLLEY, Alalakh: an account of the excavations at Tell Atchana in the Hatay, 1937-1949 (1955); J.D. MUHLY, “Near Eastern chronology and the date of the Late Cypriot I period,” in N. ROBERTSON (ed.), The archaeology of Cyprus: recent developments (1975) 76-89; N. NA’AMAN, “A new look at the chronology of Alalakh VII,” AnatSt 26 (1976) 129-43; D. COLLON, “A new look at the chronology of Alalakh Level VII: a rejoinder,” AnatSt 27 (1977) 127-31; M.-H. GATES, “Alalakh levels VI and V: a chronological reassessment,” Syro-Mesopotamian Studies 4 (1981) 11-50; Eadem, “Alalakh and chronology again,” in High, Middle or Low?, Part II, 60-86; A. KEMPINSKI, Syrien und Palästina (Kanaan) in der letzten Phase der Mittelbronze IIB Zeit (1650-1570 v. Chr.) (1983); T.L. McCLELLAN, “The chronology and ceramic assemblages of Alalakh,” in A. LEONARD, Jr. and B.B. WILLIAMS (eds.), Essays in ancient civilization presented to Helene J. Kantor (1989) 181-212; M. HEINZ, Tell Atchana/Alalakh (1992). A. SNODGRASS, “Archaeology,” in M.H. CRAWFORD (ed.), The sources for ancient history (1983) 137-84.

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In the Aegean, prehistory is broken up into ceramic periods, or architecturalcum-cultural phases.23 Development, trade, change, collapse are all described and placed in terms of these periods. There are no people, just broad patterns and processes. The chronology of these periods has conventionally been determined by the examination of exchanges of the products or inf luences of each of these fashion or building phases with the historical worlds of Egypt and the Near East.24 In this way, the periods are variously surmised to be of several decades to a couple of centuries duration, give or take usually unknown errors. But problems abound. As Shanks writes ‘...little account is taken of social processes that condition the design, consumption and deposition of artefacts’.25 Fashion is neither linear across a society, nor capable of precise definition. Objects traded over long distances may have been in circulation for long or short periods before final deposition; objects or styles may be emulated by others if they are perceived as valuable, or powerful, or exotic; old objects deemed interesting or powerful or exotic may be recycled and redeposited much later than their original period of manufacture;26 objects may become heirlooms and be curated long past their period of manufacture; objects and fashion may be produced by a craftsperson who is active for a few years, or someone extraordinary like Paul Jesselin who worked at the Gien Faïencerie from age 10 in 1866 until age 76 (médaille de Bronze au titre de collaborateur de la Faïencerie in 1889, the same in gold in 1900, and finally the legion d’honneur in 1932); etc. It is also usually difficult to firmly relate any archaeologically ‘sealing’ horizon with a specific historical event, and so on. The initial creation of the archaeological record is subject to many different past cultural factors. For example, we have a reason for mortuary display of prestige imports from the outside world in the Shaft Graves of the then emergent civilization of Mycenae, where a specific form of conspicuous consumption and display competition was in practice among competing, and narrowing, lineages seeking to distance and distinguish themselves from the rest of their society in a special, demarcated, disposal area,27 whereas, there is no such socio-political context, indeed graves, on established state-level LM I Crete, where the focus is instead on established living rulers, and not on lineages and ancestors as part of a dynamic and emerging socio-political competition. And then biography is at issue. What exactly does any synchronism mean? Who does it relate to? Societies do not trade, do not make history — individual people do, and the study of Aegean vases found in Egyptian graves may tell us something about a contemporary Egyptian family, and their values and aspirations, but rather less about Aegean people.

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See in e.g. O.T.P.K. DICKINSON, The Aegean Bronze Age (1994). E.g. G. CADOGAN, “Dating the Aegean Bronze Age without radiocarbon,” Archaeometry 20 (1978) 209-214; WARREN and HANKEY (supra n. 3); V. HANKEY, “From chronos to chronology: Egyptian evidence for dating the Aegean Bronze Age,” Journal of the Ancient Chronology Forum 5 (1991/92) 99-105; S.W. MANNING, “Dating the Aegean Bronze Age: without, with, and beyond, radiocarbon,” in K. RANDSBORG (ed.), Absolute chronology: archaeological Europe 2500-500 BC. Acta Archaeologica 67 - Acta Archaeologica Supplementa 1 (1997) 15-37. SHANKS (supra n. 11) 158. In general, see SNODGRASS (supra n. 22) esp. 149-58. Scarabs are an obvious example. Many are found in contexts centuries after manufacture, or centuries after the time that a particular style should have been manufactured. I thank James Weinstein for discussion. G. GRAZIADO, “The process of social stratification at Mycenae in the Shaft Grave period: a comparative examination of the evidence,” AJA 95 (1991) 403-440; S. VOUTSAKI, “Social and political processes in the Mycenaean Argolid: the evidence from the mortuary practices,” in Politeia, 55-65.

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Chronology, or rather its lack, is the bane of Aegean archaeology. Scholars eagerly engage in long-running and somewhat absurd debates, such as whether or not a couple of sherds from Tell el-Amarna in Egypt are early Late Helladic (LH) IIIB or still LH IIIA2,28 whereas this fashion/style border is inherently fuzzy as most earlier LH IIIB motifs were also employed in LH IIIA2.29 The very considerable quantity of Mycenaean pottery which has been discovered in the Mediterranean area, and the studies of it which have been published in the last twenty-five years, have produced the impression that Mycenaean pottery is ‘well-known.’ Indeed, such pottery is, on the whole, easily recognized but there is often great difficulty in dating it.30 Yet, in awe, and rivalry, of the Egyptian and Near Eastern world, we pretend we have this fine precision, but as if this debate really tells us anything, or helps us to understand Aegean history. Comparison with the world of Attic vase painting a millennium later is instructive. We have none of the sophistication of J.D. Beazley in the Bronze Age31 — and, when it comes down to it, what does such categorizing in fact achieve, apart from make us feel comfortable in reducing a mass of material into some form of order,32 or create modern problems?33 We would not even recognise the wonderful Exekias if we bumped into him in the Agora. Such study certainly takes us no nearer understanding even the few major events in ancient history, yet alone the mundane. Mary Beard writes: What, I wonder, would be the effect on archaeological practice if every artefact ... came with the name of its maker — reliably, unquestionably and miraculously inscribed? What then would be the focus of our debates? The answer is simple. Not only would we still find ourselves arguing about all those questions that attribution could never — or barely — touch ... we would also no doubt be divided in our views of the best use of such unquestionable information. My guess is that it would be the same old story all over again...34

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This now infamous debate over exactly when (sic) LH IIIA2 ends, depends on whether or not WARREN and HANKEY (supra n. 3) 149, Figs.8-9 are correct to identify as stylistically LH IIIB1 two stirrup jar sherds from an otherwise LH IIIA2 assemblage at Tell el-Amarna. The debate, and the contrasting views of other scholars like E. French and P. Mountjoy who consider these same sherds as best dated LH IIIA2, are summarized in M.H. WIENER, “The absolute chronology of Late Helladic IIIA2” (in press). LH IIIA2 style is certainly still current among imports for deposit in Egypt from late in the reign of Amenhotep III through to during the reign of Akhenaten: WARREN and HANKEY (supra n.3) 148-54; V. HANKEY and D. ASTON, “Mycenaean pottery at Saqqara: finds from excavations by the Egyptian Exploration Society of London and the Rijksmuseum Van Oudheden, Leiden, 1975-1990,” in J.B. CARTER and S.P. MORRIS (eds.), The ages of Homer: a tribute to Emily Townsend Vermeule (1995) 67-91 at p. 69. On the chronology of LH IIIB, see recently P.M. THOMAS, LH IIIB:1 pottery from Tsoungiza and Zygouries, Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1992) esp. pp. 460-510. E. FRENCH, “Pottery groups from Mycenae: a summary,” BSA (1963) 44-52 at p. 44. E.g. J.F. CHERRY, “Beazley in the Bronze Age? Ref lections on attribution studies in Aegean prehistory,” in EIKVN 123-44. Other scholars maintain the ability to go some way toward recognizing individual artists, e.g. C. MORRIS, “Hands up for the individual! The role of attribution studies in Aegean prehistory,” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 3 (1993) 41-66, but this is both contentious, and with none of the sophistication, nor initial potter/painter signature basis, of Beazley’s work with Black and Red Figure pottery. See e.g. H. HOFFMAN, “In the wake of Beazley: prolegomena to an anthropological study of Greek vase-painting,” Hephaistos 1 (1979) 61-70; Idem, “Why did the Greeks need imagery? An anthropological approach to the study of Greek vase painting,” Hephaistos 9 (1988) 143-62; M. BEARD, “Adopting an approach II,” in T. RASMUSSEN and N. SPIVEY (eds.), Looking at Greek vases (1991) 12-35. E.g. D.W.J. GILL and C. CHIPPINDALE, “Material and intellectual consequences of esteem for Cycladic figurines,” AJA 97 (1993) 601-659. M. BEARD in MORRIS (supra n. 31) 60.

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It is only recently that classical scholarship has started seriously to try to view, read, and understand ancient imagery in its own terms, and as communication.35 We also need to be honest. Despite the loving elaboration, and the many books on aspects of the classification of Aegean pottery, the chronology available after over a century of effort is remarkably poor. ‘So loose is the chronology ... that we must count ourselves fortunate if we can tie down some object or innovation to a century’.36 For example, the genesis of the state on Crete is a very big moment in Minoan and indeed Aegean history.37 John Cherry created a famous stir at the Minoan Society conference of 1981 by proposing that the development of the state (the first palaces) on Crete was the outcome of a rapid process of change, and not of a long, gradual, evolution of nearly a millennium as Keith Branigan and others had assumed, or argued (and still do).38 But given the nature of the subject, Cherry could only quantify his ‘revolution’ to a period of a couple of centuries! Basically, anytime from the French Revolution to President Clinton. In other words, the two very different modes, or processes — of evolution or revolution — could be proposed, but in fact neither side could quantify the necessary time scale to decide — even approximately — which characterization is correct. Sixteen years on this key debate remains unresolved. Another topical example is the controversy concerning the site of Tell el-Dabca in the Nile delta, and related matters.39 This huge 250 hectare site, the Hyksos capital of Avaris, with Egyptian, Palestinian, Cypriot and Aegean linkages promises a relationship with the precise chronology and history of Egypt; the excavator, Manfred Bietak, gives precise dates for the

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See supra n. 32; also e.g. C. BÉRARD, Images et société en Grèce ancienne: l’iconographie comme méthode d’analyse: actes du Colloque international, Lausanne 8-11 février 1984 (1987); BÉRARD et al., A city of images: iconography and society in ancient Greece, Trans. D. LYONS (1989); C. SOURVINOU-INWOOD, ‘Reading’ Greek culture: texts and images, rituals and myths (1991); M. SHANKS, “Art and an archaeology of embodiment: some aspects of Archaic Greece,” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 5 (1995) 207-244. J. ELSNER, Art and the Roman viewer: the transformation of art from the Pagan world to Christianity (1995); A. STEWART, Art, desire, and the body in ancient Greece (1997). J.F. CHERRY, “Polities and palaces: some problems in Minoan state formation,” in C. RENFREW and J.F. CHERRY (eds.), Peer polity interaction and socio-political change (1986) 19-45 at p. 45. J.F. CHERRY, “Generalization and the archaeology of the state,” in D.R. GREEN, C.C. HASELGROVE and M.J.T. SPRIGGS (eds.), Social organisation and settlement: contributions from anthropology, archaeology and geography (1978) 411-437; Idem, “The emergence of the state in the prehistoric Aegean,” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 30 (1984) 18-48; Idem (supra n. 36); S.W. MANNING, Before Daidalos: the origins of complex society, and the genesis of the state on Crete, Ph.D. Dissertation, Cambridge (1995). J.F. CHERRY, “Evolution, revolution, and the origins of complex society in Minoan Crete,” in O. KRZYSZKOWSKA and L. NIXON (eds.), Minoan society. Proceedings of the Cambridge colloquium 1981 (1983) 33-45. For the gradual evolution view, see e.g. K. BRANIGAN, Pre-palatial. The foundations of palatial Crete: a survey of Crete in the Early Bronze Age, 2nd. ed. (1988); Idem, “Social transformations and the rise of the state in Crete,” in Politeia, 33-42; P.M. WARREN, “The genesis of the Minoan palace,” in R. HÄGG and N. MARINATOS (eds.), The function of the Minoan palaces. Proceedings of the fourth international symposium at the Swedish Institute in Athens, 10-16 June, 1984 (1987) 47-56. M.K. DABNEY, “The later stages of state formation in palatial Crete,” in Politeia, 43-47 argues that the first Middle Minoan (Old) palaces were only a formative or intermediate stage on the way to full states, and thus state and palace are not entirely synonymous. There is not space to discuss this issue here, but I disagree, and see the Old Palace phenomenon as the key change to statehood (even if to ‘formative,’ or ‘early,’ statehood). M. BIETAK, “Avaris and Piramesse: archaeological exploration in the eastern Nile Delta,” Proceedings of the British Academy 65 (1979) 225-90; Idem, “Problems of Middle Bronze Age chronology: new evidence from Egypt,” AJA 88 (1984) 471-485; Idem, “The Middle Bronze Age of the Levant — a new approach to relative and absolute chronology,” in High, Middle or Low?, Part III, 78-120; Idem, “Egypt and Canaan during the Middle Bronze Age,” BASOR 281 (1991) 27-72; Idem, “Connections between Egypt and the Minoan world: new results from Tell el-Dabca/Avaris,” in Egypt, the Aegean and the Levant, 19-28; Idem (ed.), Hyksos Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean World; Idem, Avaris: the capital of the Hyksos (1996); O. NEGBI, “The ‘Libyan landscape’ from Thera: a review of Aegean enterprises overseas in the Late Minoan IA period,” JMA 7 (1994) 73-112; E.H. CLINE, “Rich Beyond the Dreams of Avaris: Tell el-Dabca and the Aegean World — A Guide for the Perplexed,” BSA 93 (1998; in press).

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various contexts. Since the discovery of fragments of wall-paintings similar in technique and imagery to Aegean examples (first published in 1992),40 the rush and number of Dabca-related studies by Aegean archaeologists has been quite extraordinary and unashamed: ex oriente lux. Aegean archaeologists seem to have been embarrassingly keen to endeavor somehow to link their data and arguments with this apparent precision, with lux orientis — we are in awe, we crave such ‘historical’ credibility. First, when Bietak said some fresco fragments found in secondary, rubbish, contexts, were late Hyksos, we saw suggestions of a Minoan princess marrying a Hyksos ruler taken almost seriously.41 Professor Peter Warren even argued that perhaps the first Minoan (sic) frescoes were not painted in Crete, but in Egypt.42 Why the ‘first,’ despite such implausibility? Well, because the fragments were dated to the Hyksos period, and thus rather early for an advocate of a low Minoan chronology, and hence special pleading. Now Bietak says that the massive platform and associated architecture is in fact early 18th Dynasty.43 Most of our field seems only too happy to accept this, and is now doing as told by this Egyptological authority, and writing a new Aegean history — despite Bietak providing no credible explanation for this dramatic change of mind/interpretation. First, we have now in fact lost the Hyksos palace, yet Kamose tells us there was one.44 Second, why did Ahmose build a huge palace after conquering Avaris when it was not then strategically important to him, and he was off fighting a war in Palestine, and why, if he did build such an impressive structure complete with Aegean style frescoes, and by whom, was it totally destroyed only a few decades later and replaced by mundane 18th Dynasty houses? Instead, surely this is the destroyed foundations of the Hyksos palace45 replaced by ordinary 18th dynasty houses. But, regardless of the above debate, what about the fresco fragments? They somehow all became Late Minoan (LM) IA in stylistic date when they were originally thought to be Hyksos in date. But in fact several elements would as easily, even better, date to LM IB (or later Neopalatial) in stylistic terms. Bietak and Marinatos expressly voice concern over this problem.46 Paul Rehak thus correctly writes: According to the low (traditional) Aegean chronology, the early 18th Dynasty Dabca paintings should be contemporary with LM IA. But as several recent studies have pointed out, the spread of bull iconography outside of Knossos is a feature of the end of the Neopalatial period. The Dabca frescoes thus fit better into the revised high Aegean chronology, which makes them contemporary with LM IB.47 The fresco fragments showing ivy from the area/context of what is stated to be an early 18th Dynasty portal are also of great interest in this regard.48 Bietak and Marinatos state that this is the only fresco fragment specifically linked — in situ — with the early 18th Dynasty. As in other examples from Tell el-Dabca, the colours are not particularly Aegean. More

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M. BIETAK, “Minoan wall-paintings unearthed at ancient Avaris,” Egyptian Archaeology 2 (1992) 26-28; M. BIETAK and N. MARINATOS, “The Minoan wall paintings from Avaris,” in Hyksos Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean World, 49-62; P. JÁNOSI, “Die Stratigraphische Position und Verteilung der minoischen Wandfragmente in den Grabungsplätzen H/I und H/IV von Tell el-Dabca,” in Hyksos Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean World, 63-71; etc. References to the recent plethora of Dabca-related work seem unnecessary. E.g. BIETAK, “Connections” (supra n. 39) 26 and refs.; NEGBI (supra n. 39) 87. P. WARREN, “Minoan Crete and Pharaonic Egypt,” in Egypt, the Aegean and the Levant, 4-5. BIETAK, Avaris (supra n. 39) 67ff., and subsequent publications and presentations. H.S. SMITH and A. SMITH, “A reconsideration of the Kamose text,” ZÄS 103 (1976) 48-76. See P. JÁNOSI, “Die Fundamentplattform eines Palastes (?) der späten Hyksoszeit in ‘Ezbet Helmi (Tell el-Dabca),” in M. BIETAK (ed.), Haus und Palast im alten Ägypten (1996) 93-98. BIETAK and MARINATOS (supra n. 40) 60. P. REHAK, “Interconnections between the Aegean and the Orient in the second millennium B.C.,” AJA 101 (1997) 399-402 at p. 400. On the bull iconography he refers to the studies by B. and E. HALLAGER, and J. YOUNGER in Politeia. See also M. SHAW, “Bull leaping frescoes at Knossos and their inf luence on the Tell el-Dabca murals,” in Hyksos Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean World, 91-120. BIETAK and MARINATOS (supra n. 40) 49 and Fig. 13.

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interesting though are the stylistic comparisons. LM IA frescoes show ivy in a notably naturalistic style (if simplified), with solid or part-solid leaves,49 and most examples from ceramic decoration are similar.50 Indeed, if one rules out a relief sculptural form of the motif from a MM III columnar stone lamp,51 where the medium perhaps partly promotes this form of representation (ditto the later form on a metal cup),52 then the best comparisons for the less naturalistic, more stylised, representation of ivy, with attention paid to curving/spiral interior decoration (what Furumark refers to as the open and volute type of the motif),53 come — from Cretan material — from LM IB, and onwards into LM II, and LM III, with an example on a LM IB sherd from Kythera both very similar in type and as part of a running sequence off a stem as in the Dabca fresco.54 Indeed, it is perhaps notable that good comparisons of form and style may be found in Mycenaean LH IIA ceramic decoration,55 and one might begin even to wonder if the earlier fresco fragments found as rubbish and debris widely mixed into strata near the platform are ‘Minoanizing,’ and the later early 18th Dynasty ones ‘Mycenaeanizing?’ Very little verifiable LM IB pottery reached Egypt,56 in contrast to several LH II examples. In conclusion, there seems no good reason for this ivy to be compared to LM IA examples (and MM III comparisons are too early on any chronology); it is also in contrast to the naturalistic, LM IA style, plants found in other Tell el-Dabca fresco fragments.57 Thus it may be that the fresco associated with an early 18th Dynasty portal is best compared to LM IB/LH IIA styles, and that the LM IA style fragments from other areas are therefore best dated to the late Hyksos palace. The point is that all is confusion, a priori assumptions, and ambiguity. As Rehak writes, ‘interpretation of the frescoes has far outpaced their scholarly presentation.’ It is not at all clear that these paintings were ever the work of actual Minoan artists (as widely stated already in print), rather than products of an ‘Aegeanizing’ fashion elsewhere.58 What do the fresco fragments therefore tell us? The majority of the fresco fragments which might be thought similar to LM IA or IB examples from the Aegean — and also several other key late MBA to early LB 1 sites in the eastern Mediterranean — found in secondary, rubbish, contexts of an unknown terminus ante quem inform us that either or both the later Hyksos or early 18th Dynasty elite of the site valued such artwork as part of what in fact seems a late MBA (especially) to early LB east Mediterranean international koiné of elite, prestige, expression especially in main meeting, feasting, rooms,59 but in fact give no precise data for the Aegean world itself. Reported Middle Minoan III and LM IA ceramics, and Cypriot White Slip I

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C. DOUMAS, The wall-paintings of Thera (1992) pls.78-79, 83; W.-D. NIEMEIER, Die Palaststilkeramik von Knossos: Stil, Chronologie und Historischer Kontext (1985) 66, Figs. 22.1-4. NIEMEIER (supra n. 49) Fig. 22.9-14, 15; M. POPHAM, “Late Minoan pottery, a summary,” BSA 62 (1967) 337-51 at Pls.76.i, 77.d. A.J. EVANS, PM I 344-45, Fig. 249. S. HOOD, The arts in prehistoric Greece (1978) Fig. 165. A. FURUMARK, The Mycenaean pottery: analysis and classification (1941) 268. J.N. COLDSTREAM and G.L. HUXLEY (ed.), Kythera. Excavations and studies conducted by the University of Pennsylvania Museum and the British School at Athens (1972) 199 no. 287, Pl. 57.287. Generally, see: NIEMEIER (supra n. 49) 67, Fig. 22.18, 22.23, 22.40; POPHAM (supra n. 50) Pl. 82.a, pl. 83.b, pl. 84.c; W.W. CUMMER and E. SCHOFIELD, Keos III. Ayia Irini: House A (1984) 56 no. 175, Pl. 49.175, 62 no. 274, Pl. 51.274. The climbing motif in less naturalistic, more stylised, form occurs in LM II: NIEMEIER (supra n. 49) Fig. 22.45-46. NIEMEIER (supra n. 49) 72, Fig. 23; FURUMARK (supra n. 53) esp. Fig. 35 top, letters s, t, x, Fig. 35 nos. 2, 3, 8, Fig. 36 nos. 9, 10, 30; P.A. MOUNTJOY, Mycenaean pottery: an introduction (1993) Fig. 57, p. 53 no.74. The conference presentation at Cincinnati by A. Leonard and V. Hankey also noted that some pottery from Egyptian-Palestinian contexts previously thought to be LM IB has in fact proved to be Mycenaean on scientific and further analysis. BIETAK and MARINATOS (supra n. 40) Figs. 12, 14. REHAK (supra n. 47) 401. W.-D. NIEMEIER, “Minoan artisans travelling overseas: the Alalakh frescoes and the painted plaster f loor at Tel Kabri (western Galilee),” in Thalassa, 189-201; Idem, “Minoans and Hyksos: Aegean frescoes in the Levant,” BICS 40 (1995) 258-61; NEGBI (supra n. 39).

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sherds, all from secondary contexts at Dabca, may, or may not, offer a correlation with either the later Hyksos phase or the early 18th Dynasty — although, in this case, the total absence to date of LM IA material from any other 18th Dynasty context anywhere in Egypt might again suggest that the Dabca material best dates to the Hyksos period, and the late MB Hyksos trading world in the east Mediterranean. One may recall Kamose describing 300 ships of Retenu in the Hyksos harbour of Avaris. An axe and dagger of Ahmose found in Aahotep’s tomb are frequently compared to Aegean comparanda60 — especially the Shaft Grave daggers — but in fact parallels exist in the Hyksos world. Further, as Kantor pointed out in her monograph,61 the niello technique did not originate in Mycenae, but in west Asia, and a site like later MB Byblos was perhaps the source of such prestige technology, then imitated and developed in Greece, Crete, and the Hyksos centres. Again, what exact time is compared with what, and why and how contemporary the imagery chosen by Ahmose for his ceremonial axe to celebrate his conquest of the Hyksos, is unclear. Was LH I/LM IA Aegean style the contemporary new thing seized upon by Ahmose, or was it instead a symbol of the east Mediterranean trading world of the Hyksos now annexed by him (Ahmose as Griffin under conquest of foe — other side Ahmose as Egyptian sphinx with head of enemy in hand)? I do not wish to pursue this subject further here — we could be at it for many pages. All I wish to draw attention to is that such traditionally-situated studies have not provided the Aegean with a precise or accurate chronology. We have been desperate to try to belong to the history of Egypt, but all is conf lict of evidence types, ambiguities, and impossibilities. Errors of a large, but unquantified, nature exist. It is an understatement to say that things do seem to keep moving; that firm conclusions and precision remain absent. This brings us to the other great divide relevant to our field. In the AD 1980s and 1990s several leading Aegean archaeologists — Colin Renfrew, Anthony Snodgrass, Stephen Dyson, Michael Shanks, etc. — variously commented on, bemoaned, or critiqued, what they saw as a lack of contact, dialogue, and involvement between Aegean and classical archaeology, and anthropology and archaeological theory.62 They argued that if we were to move beyond ceramic periods, art history, and the most general of generalities, we would have to engage with theory, anthropology, economics, politics, and so on. Over that same modern time period we have moved from the world of processual to post-processual archaeology.63 In modern archaeology and anthropology, individuals, and individual decision making by intelligent, self-interested, agents are recognized as the core to any understanding and historical analysis, from so-called egalitarian hunter-gatherers (Palaeolithic to modern) to complex societies. Both the modern processual (or ‘cognitive’) and the post-processual camps state and accept this; the latter based on the writings of Bourdieu, Giddens, Foucault, etc., the former based on models for evolution and decision-making. Trade is between individual people, not somatized groups; social and political change comes about through the interplay of individual people; human landscape, architecture, and material culture are the products of, and were viewed, constructed, and understood by, individuals in relation to other individuals;

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EVANS PM I, 551 Fig. 402, Fig. 537; L. MORGAN, The miniature wall paintings of Thera: a study in Aegean culture and iconography (1988) 51, 53, 186 n. 80, 187 n. 112, Pl. 63; WARREN (supra n. 42) 5. KANTOR, 65. C. RENFREW, “The great tradition versus the great divide: archaeology as anthropology?,” AJA 84 (1980) 287-98; A.M. SNODGRASS, “The new archaeology and the classical archaeologist,” AJA 89 (1985) 31-37; Idem, An archaeology of Greece: the present state and future scope of a discipline (1987); S.L. DYSON, “From new to new age archaeology: archaeological theory and classical archaeology — a 1990s perspective,” AJA 97 (1993) 195-206; SHANKS (supra n. 11). HODDER (supra n. 11); R.W. PREUCEL (ed.), Processual and postprocessual archaeologies: multiple ways of knowing the past (1991); R.W. PREUCEL and I. HODDER (eds.), Contemporary archaeology in theory (1996).

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a society consists of different individuals and their unique lived biographies, and the structure and interplay of their lives.64 Even the mundane world of craft and technology is involved — it too has a social context and role — rather than merely some disembedded material, functionalist, or economic justification. Technology provides one of many ‘arenas’ in which a variety of different, overlapping, and similar interests may be defined, expressed, and negotiated. As Ingold states: ‘while technical routines can be thought of as the mundane arena of the everyday, they are also arenas wherein skill, craft and knowledgeable practice are developed into mechanisms to effect social interests.’65 Thus the very types of evidence employed in conventional chronology studies must in fact be considered and understood in social terms — via agency and practice theory. Anthony Snodgrass has observed our dilemma. Archaeology as conventionally practiced in our region provides broad scale patterns with a chronology not capable of relation to the individual human: ‘...archaeological material and historical events are hard to bring together, because they represent different facets of human experience.’66 Decades, centuries, come and go. We are very much trapped in the world of the long durée. But, in contrast, we know that major historical events and developments occur in hours, days, weeks, a few years — they are the work of key individuals and the interplay of these people with others. A women was buried in a wooden coffin cut in the summer months of 1370 BC at Egtved in Jutland,67 and, as Julius Caesar chastised himself, before lifting his game considerably, Alexander the Great died in his early thirties — but in the second half of his life he had changed the world.68 And, even if we cannot identify such moments or specific individuals, major changes and movements in human history and fashion occupy the scale of a generation or a couple of decades (what might be termed an ‘analytical individual’),69 and this time scale at least might be capable of archaeological resolution. Indeed, if we are ever to bring archaeology together with history, to explain the human, then we must find a new chronology on the scale of the individual human, of years and decades and generations. As Snodgrass writes:

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See e.g. HODDER (supra n. 11); references given supra n. 2; M.H. JOHNSON, “Conceptions of agency in archaeological interpretation,” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 8 (1989) 189-211; M. SAHLINS, Historical metaphors and mythical realities: structure in the early history of the Sandwich Islands kingdom (1981); S.J. MITHEN, Thoughtful foragers: a study of prehistoric decision making (1990); Idem, “Individuals, groups and the Palaeolithic record: a reply to Clark,” Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 59 (1993) 393-98; J. THOMAS, Rethinking the Neolithic (1991); Idem, Time, culture, and identity: an interpretative archaeology (1996); M. CARRITHERS, Why humans have cultures: explaining anthropology and social diversity (1992); P.B. ROSCOE, “Practice and political centralization: a new approach to political evolution,” Current Anthropology 34 (1993) 111-40; M. POSTONE, E. LiPUMA and C. CALHOUN, “Introduction: Bourdieu and social theory,” in C. CALHOUN, E. LIPUMA and M. POSTONE (eds.), Bourdieu: critical perspectives (1993) 1-13; R. BRADLEY, Altering the earth: the origins of monuments in Britain and continental Europe (1993); J. ROBB, “Gender contradictions, moral coalitions, and inequality in prehistoric Italy,” Journal of European Archaeology 2.1 (1994) 20-49; GOSDEN (supra n. 18); D.J. SAITTA, “Agency, class, and archaeological interpretation,” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 13 (1994) 201-227; J.C. BARRETT, Fragments from Antiquity: an archaeology of social life in Britain, 2900-1200 BC (1994); C. RENFREW and E.B.W. ZUBROW (eds.), The ancient mind: elements of cognitive archaeology (1994); C. TILLEY, A phenomenology of landscape: places, paths and monuments (1994); M.-A. DOBRES and C. HOFFMAN, “Social agency and the dynamics of prehistoric technology,” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 1 (1994) 211-58; L. MESKELL, “The somatization of archaeology: institutions, discourses, corporeality,” Norwegian Archaeological Review 29 (1996) 1-16; H. LOURANDOS, Continent of hunter-gatherers: new perspectives in Australian prehistory (1997) esp.10-11. T. INGOLD, “Tools, minds, and machines: an excursus in the philosophy of technology,” Techniques et Culture 12 (1988) 151-76. SNODGRASS (supra n. 22) 150. K. RANDSBORG, “Historical implications: chronological studies in European archaeology c.2000-500 B.C.,” Acta Archaeologica 62 (1991) 89-108 at p. 95. Suetonius, Divus Ivlivs, 7; Dio Cassius, 37.52.2; Plutarch, Caesar, 11.3. C.L. REDMAN, “The ‘analytical individual’ and prehistoric style variability,” in J.N. HILL and J. GUNN (eds.), The individual in prehistory: studies of variability in style in prehistoric technologies (1977) 41-53. As CHERRY in MORRIS (supra n. 31) 60 points out, Morris’ more successful, and useful, attempts to isolate ‘individuals’ are of this scale (cf. MORRIS, supra n. 31, 47).

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It is surely clear that any kind of ‘historical’ narrative, for a culture in which any of the dates may be even fifty years out, let alone two hundred, in either direction, is an impossibility.70 Without the chronological resolution to define individuals in prehistory, we are unable to consider historical-level analysis, and are left describing sets of objects and monuments in very general and non-human terms, and can never know the answers to the important questions which all start with ‘why...’ or ‘how...’ or ‘when...’. At best we are left in the world of the longue durée, and guesswork. Of course, I readily agree that much can be learnt by studying the big picture and long-term patterns and processes,71 and archaeology has been rather good at this: a grand narrative may indeed be written.72 But we have very much reached the productive limits of macro-analysis, we have the outline and even the broad brush strokes; to significantly advance our analysis and interpretation in the future we need to acquire the ability to approach the micro-scale, to be able to produce historical narrative. As Cherry writes: This degree of chronological imprecision presents a real impediment ... The core of the concept, after all is interaction between living individuals or societies. ... While resolution to the level of the individual is scarcely ever possible in fully prehistoric contexts, one might at least hope to be able to work with a chronology that allowed the study of the material record of contemporaneous social groups in different places (i.e. a single generation).73 We must find the means to learn to see the necessary detail. As highlighted earlier, this sort of information is not available from conventional archaeological dating techniques. Indeed, these chronologies are so culturally constructed and determined — so relative — as to defeat the object. Just as longitude could only be conquered by the breaking of relative time and the imposition of independent absolute time; high resolution and independent chronology is necessary for the peopling of the past and the end of an impersonal, general, prehistory. We need to escape the diffusionist background still inherent in much chronological analysis, and instead de-couple cultural interaction, and absolute dating. When asked to discuss the topic ‘The future is now: where do we go from here’ at this conference, I therefore say that the next great revolution in Aegean archaeology should, and will, be the active and urgent development of chronological precision on the order of an historical, individual- to generational-scale, resolution; to bring the frames of reference for the Aegean into the same order of magnitude as available in Egypt and the historical Near East. We can then address the issues of theory, anthropology, and art-history with an appropriate data resolution. We can look to models and explanation, versus general description and process. We can move from processual archaeology and broad datasets, to a humanistic, post-processual, archaeology. We can people prehistory. How will this be achieved? What is required is a high resolution chronology for the individual archaeological contexts. This cannot come through tracing scarce, even unique, imports or exports over long distances and through the hands of an unknown number of people. The dating must be direct on the subject of interest. For example, if it is a building, we want to know when it was constructed, how long it was used and in what phases, when were alterations made, and when did it go out of use. We then want the same information for all

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SNODGRASS, “The new” (supra n. 62) 37. An ‘Annales’ perspective in archaeology is well discussed in A.B. KNAPP (ed.), Archaeology, Annales, and ethnohistory (1992). The analysis and explanation of the human colonization of the Mediterranean islands offers a good example of the study of such pattern and process: J.F. CHERRY, “The first colonisation of the Mediterranean islands: a review of recent research,” JMA 3 (1990) 145-221; idem, “Pattern and process in the earliest colonisation of the Mediterranean islands,” PPS 47 (1981) 41-68. E.g. A. SHERRATT, “Reviving the grand narrative: archaeology and long-term change,” Journal of European Archaeology 3.1 (1995) 1-32; Idem, “Plate tectonics and imaginary prehistories: structure and contingency in agricultural origins,” in D.R. HARRIS (ed.), The origins and spread of agriculture and pastoralism in Eurasia (1996) 130-40; Idem, “Climatic cycles and behavioral revolutions: the emergence of modern humans and the beginning of farming,” Antiquity 71 (1997) 271-87. CHERRY (supra n. 36) 45.

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its neighbors. We can then see the evolution of people and space on a lived, individual, time scale. We can then compare quantified assemblages against divided time and see how fashion evolved, overlapped, and changed — independent of such issues. This information will come through the proper and rigorous application of integrated radiocarbon and dendrochronological analysis.74 The beginning of the end of Aegean prehistory is already with us, through the important and painstaking work of the Aegean Dendrochronology Project under Peter Kuniholm et al. Since AD 1996 this brings the potential of absolute and precise dates for more than half the Bronze Age,75 and the rest is very close to being achieved. However, direct dendrochronology can only be applied in a relatively limited range of cases in the Aegean. Situations like Acemhöyük or Uluburun are not usual in the Aegean (and certainly outside Anatolia)! In general, refined radiocarbon dating offers the prospect of a near historical time scale — of the approximately generational level. The particular benefit of radiocarbon is the very problem usually bemoaned by Aegean archaeologists: the wiggly calibration curve. Yet this non-monotonic record of past atmospheric levels of radiocarbon offers a unique, independent, fingerprint on time. Events happened at specific points on this wiggly and unique path through time, not during some vague, general, statistical, range. What is refined radiocarbon dating? I mean the simultaneous calibration of sets of quality seriated data — wiggle-matching, using the shape of the calibration curve and the solution of multiple parameters to resolve each individual case with precision — which can offer data for specific target events of near decadal to generational resolution. Further, I mean the increasingly refined, rigorous, accurate, and precise calibration data that is now available (June 1997 at the 16th International Radiocarbon Conference at Groningen), and is becoming available (new general calibration data to be published in 1998, new Aegean-specific calibration data in 1999, see below). The application of radiocarbon wiggle-matching on fixed sequence dendro-data is well known, but the identical taphonomic logic may be applied to a variety of archaeological circumstances.76 In the future, we should expect through the combination of dendrochronology, high-precision radiocarbon dating, high-precision radiocarbon calibration data, and sophisticated statistical analysis and modeling,77 precise dendrochronological or

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For examples from Britain and Ireland, see M.G.L. BAILLIE, A slice through time: dendrochronology and precision dating (1995) 57-72; it is both notable and interesting that prehistoric archaeology in northern Europe — unfettered by embarrassed and envious associations with Near Eastern history — is much further advanced on this task: e.g. RANDSBORG (supra n. 67). Peter Kuniholm has been on a lonely crusade in the Aegean and Near East until very recently. P.I. KUNIHOLM, B. KROMER, S.W. MANNING, M. NEWTON, C.E. LATINI, and M.J. BRUCE, “Anatolian tree-rings and the absolute chronology of the east Mediterranean 2220-718 BC,” Nature 381 (1996) 780-83. See e.g. G.W. PEARSON, “Precise calendrical dating of known growth-period samples using a ‘curve fitting’ technique,” Radiocarbon 28 (1986) 292-299; B. WENINGER, “Die Radiocarbondaten,” in M. KORFMANN (ed.), Demircihüyük. Die Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen 1975-1978. Band II. Naturwissenschaftliche Untersuchungen (1987) 4-13; Idem, “Stratified 14C dates and ceramic chronologies: case studies for the Early Bronze Age at Troy (Turkey) and Ezero (Bulgaria),” Radiocarbon 37 (1995) 443-56; S.W. MANNING and B. WENINGER, “A light in the dark: archaeological wiggle matching and the absolute chronology of the close of the Aegean Late Bronze Age,” Antiquity 66 (1992) 636-63; KUNIHOLM et al. (supra n. 75) 780-81; Y. KOJO, R.M. KALIN and A. LONG, “High-precision ‘wiggle-matching’ in radiocarbon dating,” Journal of Archaeological Science 21 (1994) 475-79; C.B. RAMSEY, “Radiocarbon calibration and analysis of stratigraphy: the OxCal program,” Radiocarbon 37 (1995) 425-30; J.A. CHRISTEN and C.D.LITTON, “A Bayesian approach to wiggle-matching,” Journal of Archaeological Science 22 (1995) 719-25; B. VAN GEEL and W.G. MOOK, “High-resolution 14C dating of organic deposits using natural atmospheric 14C variations,” Radiocarbon 31 (1989) 151-55; M.R. KILIAN, J. VAN DER PLICHT and B. VAN GEEL, “Dating raised bogs: new aspects of AMS 14C wiggle matching, a reservoir effect and climatic change,” Quaternary Science Reviews 14 (1995) 959-66; J. VAN DER PLICHT, E. JANSMA and H. KARS, “The ‘Amsterdam Castle’: a case study of wiggle matching and the proper calibration curve,” Radiocarbon 37 (1995) 965-68. Especially the use of Bayesian approaches: e.g. RAMSEY (supra n. 76); CHRISTEN and LITTON (supra n. 76).

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radiocarbon dates for the start of built structures — from wood or charcoal relating to construction, or even organics in mud-bricks — generational or so precision dates for each defined phase of use of such buildings (potentially dendrochronology for changes or repairs to built structures, otherwise radiocarbon data on organic materials used within the buildings), or other areas at a site (constrained both by terminus post quem data from charcoal/wood, and contemporary data from dates on short-lived samples), and generational or so precision dates for the last use of buildings, or of outside areas. And then for the various phases at the site through the century, centuries, or millennia, of occupation. The requirements are appropriate high-quality excavation, a growing understanding of short-term site formation processes and the taphonomy of materials in archaeological deposits,78 a deliberate strategy to try to acquire relevant data, and the appropriate analytical expertise. Perhaps not every site can yield everything one might want, but, with f lotation of deposits, with micromorphology, most non-acid environments should be amenable — the wonderful data from Troy hint at the possibilities already,79 and a reading of the excavation reports tells us what might have been at Knossos, and so on. I admit that the foregoing might be deemed slightly optimistic, but even significant progress towards these goals would mark a revolution in current Aegean prehistory. And, I suggest Aegean sceptics and pessimists pause and consider the extraordinary revolution, and diachronic precision, in the dating of Stonehenge (and its phases) via just such sophisticated radiocarbon analysis,80 and then ref lect on our own sorry situation. The final issue of relevance is the radiocarbon calibration curve. There is not one, but several in the current literature, and they are not all exactly identical.81 A small problem with such work at present is therefore the question of which radiocarbon calibration curve to employ in the Aegean. The available choices are Belfast data on Irish wood, or Seattle data on German wood, and in particular the revised versions of these data to appear soon as a result of extensive intra- and inter- laboratory analysis. There are small differences — sometimes perhaps critical in cases such as the dating of the Thera eruption, where the existing published Irish data make a later 17th century BC date very likely, but the Seattle-German data render it a 50:50 split between the later 17th and mid-16th centuries BC, and so would be compatible with a modified ‘lower’ chronology. Which is right? Or, more correctly, which is appropriate for the Aegean and east Mediterranean? To answer this, we need some accurate and precise calibration data specifically relevant to the Aegean and the east Mediterranean. Work is now underway towards this task.82 When completed, a combination of direct dendrochronology, and wiggle matched radiocarbon analyses against a precise and accurate calibration dataset known to be appropriate for the Aegean and east Mediterranean, will permit the building of a mixture of an annual, and decadal to generational level chronology for the Aegean Bronze Age given appropriate excavation and recovery procedures.

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E.g. M. BELL, P.J. FOWLER and S.W. HILLSON (eds.), The experimental earthwork project, 1960-1992 (1996); M.B. SCHIFFER, Formation processes of the archaeological record (1987). M. Korfmann and B. Kromer, “Demircihüyük, Besik-Tepe, Troia — Eine Zwischenbilanz zur Chronologie dreier Orte in Westanatolien,” Studia Troica 3 (1993) 135-71; WENINGER “Stratified” (supra n. 76); S.W. MANNING, “Troy, radiocarbon, and the chronology of the northeast Aegean in the Early Bronze Age,” paper in press for volume from the conference ‘Poliochni and the northeast Aegean in the Early Bronze Age’ at the Italian School in Athens in April 1996. A. BAYLISS, C. BRONK RAMSEY, and F.G. McCORMAC, “Dating Stonehenge,” in B. CUNLIFFE and C. RENFREW (eds.), Science and Stonehenge. Proceedings of the British Academy 92 (1997) 39-59 and further references. See data in Radiocarbon 28B (1986); Radiocarbon 35(1) (1993). Issues of regional differences in atmospheric radiocarbon levels, or of systematic offsets between some of the datasets, were raised by F.G. McCORMAC, M.G.L. BAILLIE, J.R. PILCHER, and R.M. KALIN, “Location-dependent differences in the 14C content of wood,” Radiocarbon 37 (1995) 395-407. Intensive analysis of datasets in 1996-1997 has resolved some of the problems, and new consensus datasets will be published in 1998; other work on the topic is in progress. The Aegean-East Mediterranean Radiocarbon Calibration Project, directed by the present author with a number of collaborators, and supported by INSTAP.

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This is the future, and work is required from now. We will then know when our frescoes were painted as an independent fact, and not have to rely on rubbish deposits in Egypt. We will then be able to side-step the circular, relative, and fuzzy ceramic style chronologies.83 Only when the Aegean has an independent, near historical, chronology will we truly be able to escape the current relative, and diffusionist, filters, and so address Kantor’s subject of the Aegean and the Orient in the second millennium BC in a proper and rigorous manner. Kantor’s monograph may be 50 years old, but work towards a new paradigm — ‘beyond Kantor’ — is only just beginning now. Sturt W. MANNING

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Apart from discussions above, see also e.g. A. LEONARD, Jr., “Some problems inherent in Mycenaean/Syro-Palestinian synchronisms,” in E.B. FRENCH and K.A. WARDLE (eds.), Problems in Greek prehistory. Papers presented at the centenary conference of the British School of Archaeology at Athens, Manchester April 1986 (1988) 319-30; K. KRISTIANSEN, “The place of chronological studies in archaeology: a view from the Old World,” OJA 4 (1985) 251-66; H.J. BRUINS and W.G. MOOK, “The need for a calibrated radiocarbon chronology of Near Eastern archaeology,” Radiocarbon 31 (1989) 1019-29.

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Discussion following S.W. Manning’s paper: E.S. Sherratt: I appreciate the fact that Sturt’s being outrageously provocative as usual, but I would like to say, and he knows it perfectly well, that he’s living in “Cloud-Cuckoo Land” if he thinks that even out of the most wonderful mixture in the world of calibrated radiocarbon dates and dendrochronology, we can construct an historical chronology for the Aegean, and in any case we don’t want it. We’ve had quite enough pseudohistory written out of archaeology in the Aegean as it is anyway. (Laughter and Applause). S.W. Manning: I assume that’s one of these questions to which you don’t actually want a response. You either accept and look for micro-scale data and approaches — like gender and food processing/production and consumption work in Andean society by Hastorf — or you look for overarching laws and models, such as Wilkinson’s ‘Central Civilisation’ construct. All I can say is that if you consider the dendrochronological-dating work that’s now being done at Herculaneum, including now that of Peter Kuniholm et al., the work that’s been done in medieval England, Germany, etc, the work that’s been done in the American southwest, the answer is, in fact, the other way around. We need an historical level of timescale for refined analysis and interpretation. Consider as an analogy work in Mayan archaeology. The elaborate calendar, and the translation of the Mayan glyphs and the creation of ‘history,’ have totally revolutionized the field over the last couple of decades. In the Aegean we may never be able to achieve a text-aided archaeology, but with a truly rigorous and refined chronology, allied with the text-aided data from surrounding civilisations, and partial such data from the MM and especially LM/LH periods, we could hope to make significant new progress. So, I agree that it’s not something that’s going to happen between now and tomorrow, but the question asked of speakers in this session was ‘where do we go in the future.’ This is where the future does lie, and for major structures and monuments (and I particularly think of Knossos, a site that has — or had — everything that’s required) we should be able to have a chronology that is on the order of plus or minus twenty or thirty years. I’m not trying to reinvent a “myth history.” I appreciate what Sue is getting at, but we’ll be able to produce the models that are proposed for how we explain change at the appropriate level. At present, we’re talking about things like, ‘is it in fact “punctuated equilibrium”?,’ and we don’t have the data to be able to answer the question. That’s what I’m getting at. M.J. Mellink: I have a comment and a question. The first one is really more an archaeological response: what we can do about it is dig very carefully and make certain that we get the data required by the specialists. From there on, it’s not our responsibility — we wait for their analyses and results, and we also take the privilege of asking critical questions and being so skeptical about some of their recommendations, and seeing the ups and downs that are taking place, and living with them. The question is, are we deliberately leaving out other data because we don’t think they are “scientific” enough? If you say that we don’t know history, we don’t know the historical figures of the Bronze Age, we don’t know Minos, or we don’t know the parallels for Sargon or ShamshiAdad, well, maybe we should do our best to get at them. One way is, of course, practiced mildly, and that is tying in with Near Eastern history. That could be done, fortunately, in a few instances, and it may be increasing again, if archaeologists do their best at finding the historical records that will allow us to make these links. It’s not very fashionable to believe in all of the links that are being constructed — we have the Ahhiyawa problem as an example, and we have the Aleksandus Treaty to work with and make progress in what you refer to as a reconstruction of the great figures of history. We have also great Late Helladic enterprising heroes such as Attarissiyas, and we can line up characters who belong to history and who are great figures of the Bronze Age. The other material that we aren’t supposed to look at is mythology. I think we should look at it; it’s our business. We should not say ‘oh, it’s been so poorly handled, it’s wishful guessing and imagination,’ but what has been done with it, and what people like Nilsson did with it, is nothing to be neglected. One should just try to do it again, but in as moderate and critical a way as possible. The data are hidden in there; that’s another kind of excavation that we should still make our task. There’s a great residue there, maybe a confused residue, but we should try to straighten it out and use it. It is not common form to bring that in nowadays, but I think that we shouldn’t be ashamed of it. S.W. Manning: Thank you, Machteld. I only comment on the Hittite history aspect. I was very pleased with the way Chris Mee mentioned the links between the early Late Helladic sequence and the

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Hittite annals. This is an exact situation, and you can think of the Keftiu as well. It may be true that I can’t create real people, but once we know which particular period and little group of Keftiu we are seeing in these paintings, we then understand that late in Thutmose III’s reign, when Thutmose has conquered most of western Asia, the prince of Keftiu comes along with the rest of the world and effectively signs up to make sure that Thutmose knows that they’re friends, because he doesn’t want the same thing to happen to him. We know the proper people who are doing this, through resolving LM IB - IIIA1 chronology [slides shown during talk]; we know which prince is involved. And, with Attarissiyas, we effectively now know the right period that he belongs with, and we can start to see, along the lines of Emily Vermeule and others, some form of history, both in epic tradition and the artwork. This possibility is open to us already and I feel we can do better than that as well. I support most of the rest of the things that you said. J.D. Muhly: If you look at the history of radiocarbon dating over the past forty-some years, it’s a pretty sorry mess. There’s a good reason for this, and as archaeologists we’re largely responsible for it. We collected our charcoal and samples, and sent them off to the physicists, and waited for the results in the mail. There was no communication whatsoever between the archaeologist and the scientist. We began that way and it was a fundamental mistake. I think it’s been maybe one of the main factors responsible for so much of the confusion over radiocarbon dating. What has happened in the past few years is a tremendous revolution, renaissance, whatever you want to call it. The archaeologists are really working with the scientists now, and I think that this is one of the main reasons responsible for the tremendous progress that is being made these days. S.W. Manning: I’m obviously going to recommend Jim’s comments. I hope that the American School will be pursuing a much more active scientific approach in the future. (Applause).