Barbarians

This post is a bit overdue, but I couldn’t resist the urge to comment on Norman Etherington’s article, “Barbarians Ancient and Modern” in the February volume of The American Historical Review (116 (2011), 31-57).  Etherington compares debates over the role of migrations called the mfecane in southern Africa to the invasions of Rome’s northern borders in the 4th to 6th centuries.

Etherington is particularly interested in considering how scholars of southern Africa could use Walter Goffart’s theory of accommodation in the Late Roman West to reflect on the controversial invasions of that region in the early 19th century. Goffart’s Barbarians and Romans, A.D. 418-584: The Techniques of Accommodation argued that the so-called invaders of the Late Roman state were, in fact, groups who had enjoyed a long period of cultural, social, and political interaction with the Roman state and were nearly as Roman as the Romans themselves. Moreover, he undermined various longstanding efforts to identify these groups as belonging to particular identifiable ethnicities, claims that these groups represented vast quantities of displaced people, and arguments for the role of so-called “barbarians” for the destruction of the Late Roman state.  While not all scholars have accepted Goffart’s arguments, they have continued to be a significant point of contention in arguments for the collapse of the Roman empire in the West.

The significance of these debates for scholars studying southern Africa stems from the value judgments associated with scholarly views of “barbarians” and arguments for ethnogenesis which tend to see migrations as being based upon or leading to the formation of identfiable (typically modern) ethnic groups. Apparently the practice of using oral accounts to identify (and ultimately vilify) groups as the Zulu, for example, during the period of the mfecane movements in southern Africa has clear parallels with Roman and modern practices of identifying the Goths, the Vandals, and even the Huns on the basis of problematic ancient literary accounts.  Modern scholars steeped in 19th century ideas of ethnicity, nationalism, and colonialism read ancient texts and oral histories as confirming their own views of ethnogensis in both Africa and antiquity.  These views, then, served to justify colonialist practices in southern Africa just the same way that modern (and ancient) readings of ethnicity in the Late Roman West served as foundation myths for modern nation states.

While reading this article, I couldn’t help but think of the controversies involving the so-called “Slavic invasions” of Greece in the 6th and 7th centuries which have played such a key role in the construction of periodization schemes for the Late Roman East and arguments for the persistence of a Greek ethnic identity through time.  The parallels between this narrative and the better known narratives involving the “fall of Rome” in the western part of the Late Roman Empire are obvious.  I wonder what role periodization played in the reading of the mfecane in South Africa? Historical periodization often depends, particularly in a colonial context, on identifying the arrival of one group and the displacement of another. In other words, ethnicity, ethnogenesis and periodization have a clear points of interdependence which are all the more striking in the context of the colonial encounter.

This article also provided me with food for thought when I realized how influential arguments for the end of antiquity have been for the genesis of modern nation-states in Europe, for the architects of the colonial encounter abroad, and for more recent scholars who have sought to understand the colonialization process. In the 19th century, administrators and scholars attempting to understand the migrations and bloodshed associated with the mfecane in South Africa looked to the Late Roman invasions for points of comparison. The flurry of relatively recent activity in the fields associated with Late Antiquity has called into question not only the foundations for the “modern” West, but also the basic interpretative paradigms used by contemporary Western scholars (or in fields indebted to Western epistemologies) to understand the past in a colonial context.

Hybridity in Byzantine Archaeology

As readers of this blog know, I’ve been thinking about hybridity in Late Antique and Byzantine material culture for the past 4 or 5 years.  I started to try to articulate some of my conclusions in 2008 and in a stalled paper that I presented a few times, tried to develop into an article, and then left half-formed deep in some corner of my hard-drive.

More recently I’ve decided to write up a short article on the topic for a volume that I’m editing on Method and Theory in Byzantine Archaeology.  While I have some of the basic ideas pulled together, I have only managed to erect a very basic framework for my observations.

Byzantine archaeology deserves to engage the ideas of hybridity in a more theoretically robust way because discussions of cultural exchange are already so central to how we understand the significance of Byzantium in the greater narrative of national, Western and even World history. As many scholars have seen Byzantium as sitting outside the master narrative of the West – with its emphasis on earlier cultures representing clear stages in a development toward our modern world, Byzantine culture appears as a static and potentially inert body of cultural characteristics that functioned primarily to absorb features from other societies and pass them on.

As such hybridity in the discourse of Byzantine archaeology manifests itself in two mains ways:

1. Byzantium as Colonizer. As the Byzantine State sought to project authority across the Eastern Mediterranean, it refracted into a myriad of region styles as the practices of the Byzantine capital projected against the traditions, resources, and requirements of “local” practice. Like so many interpretative paradigms established to evaluate the limits and extent of an imperial power’s influence, the question of regionalism and regional styles in Byzantine architecture, art, and decoration has become an important avenue for understand both the character of the so-called “Byzantine commonwealth” and the significance of the capital and its patrons as producers of cultural and political power.

On Cyprus, the juxtaposition of imported Proconessian marble columns at the basilicas of Ay. Georgios – Peyias and the limestone vaulting at the nearby and contemporary basilicas at Polis reflects the interplay between the wider Aegean world and local traditions. The limits to how far external traditions could penetrate the Cypriot landscape and how they influenced the development of local “regional” styles of building, for example, not only forms a key debate among contemporary archaeologists, but also represents a tool for recognizing Byzantine culture. The hybridity of the Byzantine periphery required scholars to define the essential characteristics of the Byzantine capital, identify “the other”, and make arguments for how the two responded to one another in a colonial encounter.

2. Byzantium as Colonized. With the arrival of the Crusaders in the East, the Byzantine state had to endure a period of colonization by Western Frankish powers.  Scholars have already applied the term hybridity to the results of this period of intense cultural contact. While scholars have yet to apply this term with its full post-colonial coloration, they have nevertheless recognized the contact between two essentialized cultures – the west and Byzantium. The resulting hybrid which sought to deploy features associated with both cultures in a strategic way, formed the foundation for the Late Byzantine cultural flourishing and exerted significant influence on the development of West.

The instability of the Fanco-Byzantine hybrid and its threatening position in relation to our own cultural expectations has rarely been engaged explicitly. Implicitly, however, our inability to understand, for example, the “Byzantine” church at Merbaka which may have been built by a local (albeit idiosyncratic) Frankish aristocrat, likely represents an intense discomfort associated with the fluid nature of identity in societies deeply invested in dynamic, hybrid, forms of expression.

These two features of Byzantine culture do not stand as independent past realities, but already exist as core features of the discourse in Byzantine archaeology. The place of Byzantium outside of the master narrative of the West contributed to efforts to essentialize Byzantium (and associate it with the Oriental “Other”). This facilitated efforts to consider Byzantine material culture as capable of producing hybrids with both regional styles and the styles of the “colonizing” West.

The added complication to this is the position of Byzantium as a contributing component of Greek nationalism, for example. In this context, Byzantium is bot

A new semester and a new year…

The new semester begins tonight at 5 pm (or something). This is my first semester with tenure which I officially received on August 15.  It felt a lot like my team winning the World Series (which I have experienced) or the Super Bowl.  I woke up the next day expecting things to be or feel different and then was disappointed when they were the same. My coffee tasted the same, the sky looked the same, my office did not become larger or smaller.

And my teaching and research loads did not change either. So here’s my fall semester:

1. Two old classes. I’m teaching two classes that I’ve taught every semester for the past four years. I love the routine, the opportunity to tweak the classes minutely and judge the results the next semester, the battle with boredom of going through the same material each semester (which I liken to acedia, a kind of monastic boredom), and the chance to compare students in very similar situations. And I often think of it as a kind of cricket match (as I watch Sachin Tendulkar in what is likely his last at bat in England). The patience to do the same thing over and over, but also the flexibility to adjust to variables and changes. The two classes are: History 101: Western Civilization I (online) and History 240: The Historians Craft, which is the required course for our majors.

2. A new class. I am also teaching a new class of sorts. I am teaching a digital and public history practicum. This course will focus on developing a boutique-y collection of digital artifacts to celebrate the Chester Fritz Library’s 50th Anniversary (The Fritz @ 50: 1961 to 2011).  I have a class of four diligent but inexperienced graduate students, some good allies in the Department of Special Collections, a Gigapan, a brilliant tech advisor, and a bunch of good will.  Like my effort in the Spring, our goal is to produce a small, well-curated digital exhibit, for the library using off the shelf components as much as possible.

3. Got Papers? I have somehow committed to four (?) conference papers this fall and winter. I have no idea how this happened. I’ve posted a rough draft of the first one here already. I’ll be giving “Liminal Time and Liminal Space in the Middle Byzantine Hagiography of Greece and the Aegean” at the International Anchoritic Society Conference here in Grand Forks. At the American Schools of Oriental Research Conference, I’ll be (co-)authoring a paper on our ongoing work at the site of Pyla-Vigla on Cyprus. (I might also be involved in a paper on my work on Polis at this conference, although this is not at all clear). Finally, in January I’ll be giving a paper with David Pettegrew at the Archaeological Institute of America’s Annual Meeting titled “Producing Peasants in the Corinthian Countryside“. This paper will draw on our decade old survey data from around the Corinthia.  (To make my life easier, I’ve decided not to actually attend ASOR or the AIA.)

4. Publication Projects. I also have four ongoing publication projects. The first and most pressing one is to shape my paper, “The Ambivalent Landscape of Christian Corinth” from the Corinth in Contrast Conference into publication shape. I’ve received really good feedback from the editors of a volume that will come from this conference, and now I need to take it all in. I also need to push into final form my short encyclopedia article on Early Christian Baptisteries. I’ve also (more or less) committed to writing up a piece on post-colonialism in Byzantine Archaeology.  This will develop from a paper I wrote years ago, with every intent of publishing, and gave at a working seminar at the Gennadius Library in Greece. The last publication project involves the results of our survey on Cyprus. We have finally decided to publish the results of the survey aspects of the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Survey separate from the results of our excavations at the site. We have a completed draft of this manuscript more or less prepared and have submitted a book proposal to the American Schools of Oriental Research Archaeological Reports Series.

5. And the other stuff:

• Did I mention that we’re moving?
• I continue to tilt at windmills in an effort to document an early 20th century church here in Grand Forks. We have a verbal agreement with an architect to illustrate the building.
• I’ve been working with some people looking to revitalize the College of Arts and Sciences webpage (ssshhhh… this is the top secret not ready for primetime development page.)
• Teaching Thursday!
• At least one book review.
• Following Formula 1, NASCAR, Cricket, Baseball, the NFL, and College Football.

So it should be a fun semester!!!

Anchorites in Grand Forks

The conference website is up, so it must be official! The University of North Dakota will host the International Anchroitic Society conference this fall (September 16th-18th).  In my effort to shatter a personal record for conference papers in a single semester (my personal best is 4), I have submitted an abstract for consideration at this conference.

Also, the Cyprus Research Fund is one of the sponsor (check us out on the sponsorship page!). It seemed like a really good thing to have Cyprus Research Fund support this conference as the Cypriot St. Neophytos ranks high on any list of dedicated anchorite saints.

So here is my hastily written abstract. If you can make anything of this, I hope you can see my shift from an interest in space (e.g. my work on St. Theodore of Kythera, in particular) to an interest in time (e.g. my recent reading and comments on Kathleen Davis’s Periodization and Sovereignty.)  The paper has not been accepted and the abstract is a bit on the raw side, but it is not dissimilar to some ideas that have been contemplating lately.

“Margins of Space and Time in Hagiography of Middle Byzantine Greece”
Abstract for the 2011 International Anchoritic Society Conference

The early Middle Byzantine Era in Greece is a dynamic period in both the history of the region and in the literature of Byzantine monasticism. In general, scholars have argued that this period saw a shift from individualized asceticism to practices oriented around more coenobitic forms of monasticism. At the same time, the region of Greece and the Aegean witnessed significant shifts in population that produced new areas of wilderness in which various monastic vocations could engage. The activity of Arab raiders in the Aegean depopulated islands making them into deserts, coastal regions went from being literally liminal to politically liminal, and geopolitical shifts re-opened for Christian settlement territories abandoned as too exposed to the Muslim raids.

This paper looks at several locally produced saints’ Lives from the Aegean basin and considers the role of the wilderness and liminality in the interplay between Byzantine monasticism and Byzantine society. In particular, this paper will argue Middle Byzantine hagiography from the Peloponessos played a key role in the re-occupation and appropriation the margins of both space and time. Unlike better-known saints associated with the Imperial capital of Constantinople, the lives of more obscure and often neglected local saints, like St. Nikon, St. Luke of Steiri, St. Theodore of Kythera, and St. Ioannis “the Stranger”, engaged a local landscape at a moment when Byzantine institutions were undergoing a significant change.

Spatially, the middle Byzantine saint – through their authors – sought to re-center the profane world by traveling out into the wilderness. By focusing their sacred activities in the margins, the Byzantine saint created a spiritual counter-weight to the populated centers of institutional authority in the towns and cities under Byzantine control. The demographic, political, and economic changes of the so-called Byzantine Dark Age and the revived fortunes of the Byzantine state and local communities stimulated the need to reinforce social and institutional centers. Sacred margins implied profane centers and bonded human to the divine by spatializing this fundamental Christian duality.

The authors also discovered in these liminal spaces evidence for the margins of local time. Local saints wandered not only the depopulated spaces beyond the edge of local settlement, but also among the ruins left by the earlier inhabitants. By setting their sacred dramas among these earlier buildings, largely in ruins, the authors and their holy men and women marked out not only the end of inhabited space but also the edge of the present. The visible remains of past prosperity reminded local residents of the disruptions of 7^th and 8^th centuries and located the sacred world of the saint on the ragged edge of the local present. Reclaiming the ruins of the past for the present re-established local continuity and like the monastic occupation of the wilderness, re-centered the profane world through contact with the sacred.

By focusing largely on local saints, this paper is able to contextualize the efforts of those authors in a specific time, place, and historical circumstances. In these narratives, holy men and women incorporate the margins into a renewed Byzantine landscape by appropriating it for the sacred center. The profound division between sacred and profane in Byzantine Christianity paralleled the distinction between the wilderness and the reviving profane centers of Byzantine society, economy, and administration. The activities of local saints to reclaim the margins for the sacred landscape reinforced profane centers by establishing the limits in time and space of their opposite.

Cypriot Contrasts

Larnaka is a brilliant example of a postcolonial town. The intersection of tourism and the postcolonial identity of Cypriot culture has created wondrous juxtapositions.

An island themed restaurant with a marketing tie in to Havana club shares a block with a sushi bar.

Goodys and Flocafe, Greek chains, shares a block with Starbucks and McDonalds.

Falafel and Lebanese food on a side street:

A café with Coca-Cola advertising fronting one of the few remaining 19th-century, waterfront mansions.

American steaks.

And just in case you need a juice, you have options:

Postcolonial Archaeology

Last week, World Archaeology published a volume dedicated to exploring recent trends in the intersection of postcolonialism (and postcolonial studies) and archaeology.  Peter van Dommelen edited the volume. Dimitri Nakassis brought the volume to my attention.  I have recently been contemplating  a short article on postcolonialism and Byzantine Archaeology.  The volume was a significant help in assessing some recent trends in the field.

1. Reassessing Hybridity. The volume featured a number of articles that sought to re-position the concept of hybridity within the discourse of archaeology. Homi Bhabha’s use of the term brought it into vogue in the mid-1990s, but few within the archaeological (or even historical) community have been able to use the term successfully to understand the process of cultural interaction. In fact, the worst uses of the term have merely reified long-standing notions of cultural (bolstered by typological) essentialism. In this simplistic appraisal, two distinct cultures come into contact a hybrid Alicia Jimenez study of Iron Age sculpture in southern Iberia introduces Bakhtin’s ideas of heteroglossia and Bhabha’s idea of “third space” to take the notion of the hybrid from the realm of cultural product to the time and process of cultural production.  This process of communication that relies upon multiple discursive positions within a single object presents a profoundly destabilizing event that (in the end) establishes the act of viewing as a subversive to essentialized culture or types.  By moving the hybrid from the object itself to the process of cultural production in which the object is a part, archaeologists are again called to question the fetishization of the object and recognize the archaeological context as a vital for understanding the past in a meaningful way.

2. Time and Periodization. Periodization schemes are among the most sacred and more disturbing aspects of  archaeology as a discipline. Replete with strange bias and remarkable utility, the ability to group objects and events to particular periods has deep roots in a range of historical structures developed in the West.  The intersection of periodization schemes and teleological understandings of the past has continued to influence the way that we understand broad cultural, social, economic, and political trends playing out in history and archaeology. (As someone who studies Late Antiquity, I am particularly sensitive to the institutional problems associated with our current view of periodization that continues to regard later forms as decaying forms once pure cultures.) Like the critique of hybridity, Darryl Wilkinson’s article “The Apartheid of Antiquity” places the intellectual and institutional division between pre-historic times and classical antiquity proper within a historical context and deeply embedded in the realization of archaeology (and anthropology) as scientific disciplines. Classical antiquity included the cultural products of our common ancestors, whereas prehistorical times reveals the “other” susceptible to scientific methods and inquiry.

Byzantine Archaeology has the advantages of falling outside of the traditional periodization schemes both as “other” and as analogous to “Medieval” archaeology in the west.  This dual position – at least among most practitioners of Byzantine archaeology in a Western European or American academic setting – allows Byzantine Archaeology to call into question the teleological assumptions which form the basis of the Middle Ages in the west (although the shadow of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall continues to loom large) and to offer the study of Byzantium a critique of the Orientalist Other.  The hybridized position of Byzantium at the fringes of “our” Middle Ages and the ahistorical space of the Orient suggests at its potential to destabilize ossified understanding of the West.

3. Maps and Practice. There continues to be a clear interest in the way in which mapping and planning creates colonial space. Jeff Oliver’s description of mapping colonial space in the Pacific Northwest, “On mapping and its afterlife: unfolding landscapes in northwestern North America” showed how even the scientific process of mapping engaged fully with the hybridized practices of colonial engagement. Marcia Bianchi Villelli article on the archaeology of the short-lived, planned settlement of Floridablanca in Patagonia likewise showed how even the most administratively and institutionally regimented spaces could reveal the irregular signs of practice that subvert and challenge the idea of a singular colonial experience.

As archaeology is both based on mapping and consistently interested in spatial structure, these two articles provide useful challenges to the notion that even the most scientifically conceived map represents real space (or even a singular concept of space) and that it is possible to read the function space without considering the tension presented by practice.

4. Violence. The most chilling article in the volume was Gonzalez-Ruibal, Sahel, and Vila’s “A Social Archaeology of Colonial War in Ethiopia” which explored the cave of Zeret where Italian troops massacred a large guerrilla group during the efforts to pacify Ethiopia in 1939. The report on the work to document the cave shelter when the guerrilla group holed up revealed the efforts of the members of this group to maintain some form of social normalcy despite their somewhat desperate conditions.  From a postcolonial perspective, it reminds us of the role archaeology can play in revealing the violence of the colonial encounter.

Postcolonialism and Cricket on ESPN

A rare Saturday post. I woke this morning to see an image from the Cricket World Cup on the main page of ESPN’s website.  In other words, cricket graced the webpage on opening weekend of baseball and on the day of the Final Four showdown in College Basketball.

In case you don’t believe me:

Cricket is the quintessential postcolonial sport. The World Cup Final is Sri Lanka versus India, and just over a billion people really, really, really care who wins.

You can read Homi Bhabha, scrutinize Said, ponder Gayatri Chakrovorty Spivak’s Postcolonial Reason, or spend a week or so watching cricket