Archaeological Musings

On Egypt's Late Period

It has been suggested that the Late Period of Egyptian history can be defined as ‘the last gasp of a once great culture’ (Lloyd 2000: 369). We think, however, that something of Egyptian culture did transcend the Late Period, enough of it to be significant, distinct and influential upon its foreign occupiers and neighbours. Whether this was in the continuance of the Egyptian administrative system under Persian or Greek rule, transmission of artistic style to the Greek and Roman states or use of Egyptian deities in the Mediterranean, the culture although changed lived on. Egyptian artefacts and monumental architecture retain a strong influence today, perhaps more so outside Egypt than within it with many examples of modern uses of ‘classic’ shapes and structures (see pictures below). It is therefore difficult, even with the eventual extinguishing of Ancient Egypt’s religious beliefs and associated practices, to support the notion of the Late Period as the ‘last gasp of a once great culture’.

Pyramidal structures built in 1989 at Musée du Louvre in Paris and mixture of Egyptian monumental and architectural themes at the Raffles Dubai hotel (opened 2007). Compare with the Great Pyramid of Giza (arrow indicates people amongst the blocks at near the base of the pyramid).

Archaic and Classical Greek sanctuaries

In many ways, the ‘real story’ behind what has become the stereotypical Greek sanctuary-temple are the people who devoted physical efforts to their construction; their mental energy to understanding the role of supernatural beings in the world; and the social networks that sustained their community and ultimately the state. Indeed, Whitely (2001: 134) states that “it is impossible to imagine ancient Greece without its sanctuaries.” With the physical remains of the past available to scholars what we can know of the people is limited to what is recorded in their surviving histories and monuments. However, for Archaic and more so for Classical sanctuaries the remains are extensive in both site-based finds, the geographic distribution of many sanctuaries, and historical references such that it is possible to build-up reasonable understandings of the people who used sanctuaries in both periods, recognising that religious practices between cults and from one community/polis to another, at least during the Archaic period, varied greatly (Ammerman 1991: 227).

Sanctuaries have been seen by the ancient Greeks as places sacred to the deity associated with the sanctuary, places that the gods themselves have protected from defilement. For example, Herodotus records the revenge Demeter inflected upon a Persian army ‘who would not receive them’ and caused them to die outside the grounds of her sanctuary at Pataia for their previous defilement or what Herodotus thought was the destruction of her sanctuary at Eleusis around 480/79 BC (Shear 1982: 133).

In terms of the people of the time, religion may have been widely discussed in the community (den Boar 1973: 11) suggesting a pervasive sense of supernatural attribution to mortal existence. However, there is an interesting direction the discussion of the Archaic and Classical religious worship practices can take. Essentially, this view develops the idea that the meaning surrounding worship/religious practices shifted from the individual/family through to community and finally to the state which supplants the person-deity relationship to progress state political gains. Factors, discussed individually above, which lead to this conclusion include the Classical tendency to develop new and existing sanctuaries of increasing magnificence as part of cities with expanded functions (Whitley 2001: 304). In addition, this assertion correlates with the eventual separation of athletic stadia from their associated and often co-located sanctuaries (Whitely 2001: 305). This sees the physical if not actual schism between an individual’s triumph that was an honour to the deity and the political goals of the state advanced through the manipulation of religion. Eventually, with greater state control over sanctuaries the individual purposes and traditions were overtaken, paving the way for broad social change to overturn past religious practices.

The circular Archaic altar at the Sanctuary of Apollo near the ancient city of Kourion in Cyprus. Finds at this site included all the typical hallmarks of sanctuaries, including votive offerings and burnt remains of sacrifices.

Development of towns in NW Europe during the earlier Middle Ages

The early Medieval period is regarded as a time of rapid social change across northwest Europe, in some measure due to the collapse of the ‘order’ imposed by the Roman Empire (Hamerow 2003: 2). The development of towns in this period has become “one of the perennial topics” of the period (Postan 1975: 235) but is fraught with challenges such as defining what a town is in the continuum of urban forms; regional variations in urban forms and rationales for development; and a lack of sources that examines in parallel town development trajectories and relational networks of influence (Verhulst 1994). However, the reward for surmounting these and similar challenges is a richer understanding of a ‘dark’ historical period – one where northern Europe achieved political and intellectual dominance (James 2001: 63) – that helps to explain continuity (and terminations) and change in urban development.

Some key factors revealed in the literature that strongly influence urban society in northwest Europe during the early Middle Ages (between about the sixth and tenth centuries) indicate the difference between town and countryside through economic prerogatives; primacy of the emerging Christian church; and military considerations. A prevailing theme across these issues in the context of town development is continuity and change.  A prime example is the impact of Viking settlement and raids on town development, settlement morphology and socio-cultural influence (see Richards 2004: Ch. 4). Fortunately, it would seem archaeological research is well-placed to provide answers that consider historical sources while remaining grounded in material evidence in understanding town development (Hamerow 2003: 3).

Towns absorb a considerable amount of archaeological, historical and contemporary geographic attention due partly, at least, to what Relph (1976: 30) suggested was a town’s very obvious appearance on a landscape and any number of intangible qualities that prompt a scholar’s peculiar interest in their form and meaning. There is also the theme of continuity and change which impacts the major issues of town development: Cheyette (1977: 184) captures this when reflecting on how “the image of the immemorial village assumes historical continuity”. Of course, discontinuities are just as much a part of town development as well.

Major issues of town development included economic rationales to do with specialisation of labour and trade; growth in a sense of community or social cohesion aided by the growth of Christianity and associated dogma and power interactions; and military and security considerations prompting town growth on the back of defensive bastions. It is therefore necessary to acknowledge that there is great diversity in development of towns in northwest Europe during the early Middle Ages (Hamerow 2003: 1-2) where each issue of town development is coloured by many interacting factors. However, while these are all important considerations, none fully explain the development, growth or in some cases the decline of towns. It is therefore important to understand all the interactions between these areas, joining them appropriately with the evidence to more fully understand and explain the development morphology of towns in northwest Europe during the early Middle Ages.

Accounting for the emergence of early states

Many models have been proposed to explain the emergence of early states, where a state can be defined by the tendrils of power that unify territory and the people that inhabit it. Proposing models that help to explain the emergence of early states is, however, not as simple as making the claim that some power or another is present in a territory. The ideological bent of modern thinkers on the matter has tended to complicate the matter (i.e. Castells 1977: 86; Rothman 2004: 75, 105) which is not helped by the claim that our understanding of the ‘state’ is a relatively recent (European) concept (Anderson 1997; Taylor 1994). Nevertheless, despite the limitation of written evidence across a spectrum of societies that did emerge as states, Stein (1998: 10-11) notes a recent focus on understanding early states that draws in heterogenous avenues of research in order to improve our understanding on key features that enabled states to emerge.

As a startign point, Fagan (2004: 338-346) considers six ‘classic theories’ of how state socio-political structures emerged, although a literature search reveals several other models. Under Fagan the theories include:

1. Urban Revolution: Proposed by V. Gordon Childe, the ‘Urban Revolution’ was based on the premise that the emergence of craft specialists in areas such as metalworking caused the restructuring of social relations between those individuals in these occupations and agriculturalists (see also Schortman & Urban 2004).
2. Ecology and irrigation: Also known as the ‘hydraulic theory’ (Allen 1997: 136), there are a number of ecological theories which focus on the productive capacity of land to support non-agricultural activity.
3. Technology and trade: Trade in agricultural and other goods are seen as being a cause for promoting complexity and state structures in societies (Fagan 2004: 343). Fagan (2004: 343) declares both trade and ecology theories as consequences rather than causes of states, questioning their validity in being considered models to explain the emergence of states.
4. Warfare: Warfare, or Robert Carneiro’s (1970) coercive or circumspection theory (Allen 1997: 137) uses the idea that limited agricultural resources (i.e. an oasis of productive land amidst a desert) and the competition for survival between growing populations exploiting limited resources caused conflict.
5. Cultural systems and civilisation: Takes elements of previous theories to build a notion of complexity. Here Fagan (2004: 344) shows that Adams’ (1966) “complex theories” used irrigation agriculture, warfare and local availability of resources as factors that contributed to positive feedbacks that in turned spurred social stratification in increasingly populous settlements.
6. Environmental change: Fagan (2004: 345) arrives at “ecologically based theories” which just happen to draw heavily upon systems theory as the final major model to explain civilisation/cities (although note now Fagan calls the other theories “hypotheses”!). This explaination focuses on the extent of environmental resources required to be exploited to produce a surplus in turn suggesting that the state was required to organise the production of food.

All models have some valid points which to varying extents appear supported by some archaeological evidence. Thus after analysis it emerges from the literature that a number of prompts from essentially environmental factors can spur the growth of states. A model that appreciates this is world systems theory (Frank 1993). Here, there is a strong ecological basis to the growth of civilisations and states that “point to the inherent instability of the urban civilisations and the states” derived from both economic limitations of the ecosystem and strategic considerations (Gills & Frank 1993: 82). Political intervention must be applied to counter this instability in order to sustain the state. It is evident that world systems theory draws strongly on cultural systems theory outlined in Fagan which has been further developed by Rothman (2004), who also declares that world systems theory will fail in its explanatory power for Mesopotamia‘s state evolution (Rothman 2004: 106-107).

Recognising that early states were not as bound by territorial limits as modern states, network models also offer an avenue for fruitful investigation (Smith 2005) although if analysed in conjunction with world systems theory it is likely a very useful model could be devised, as Chase-Dunn and Jorgenson (2003) begin to explore starting with the ‘political/military networks’ of the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilisations from 3000 BCE onwards. It can be concluded that by seeking to incorporate the environmental conditions within which people live with an emergent political structure that is forced to incorporate non-kinship ties in an effort to maintain territorial integrity, then there is a model that can help to explain the emergence of early states. In consequence, this defies the notion that any one model suggested above has the explanatory power necessary to fulfil the task. Consequently, the most reasonable model may well be a combined world systems and network model that draws upon environmental and complexity models.

Ritual/religious organisation of the first farmers of Neolithic Europe

The Neolithic period saw increased sedentism of peoples who turned from a hunting-gathering lifestyle to permanent settlements where agricultural activities began to define society (Fagan 2004: 251). Bogaard (2005:177) makes clear the major areas of Neolithic agricultural practice, which include directly agricultural issues (such as dietary mix and labour time required for farming) and what she calls “the course of indigenous acculturation to a ‘Neolithic’ lifestyle.” While a number of hypotheses have been put forward to explain the reasons for change, there has been the assumption that Neolithic agricultural development was a factor (if not a cause) that increased the human population and complexity of society. A result was the expansion of the “knowledge industry” and retaining of intergenerational knowledge “which is the ultimate source of all societal evolution since that date” (Boulding 1978: 217-218).

While much is necessarily inferred from the Neolithic remains of the European past, it is clear that the organisation of communities was beginning to get increasingly complex with the increased sophistication and frequency of social encounters and capability to efficiently exploit and discover new ways to transform natural resources. Much evidence exists that helps us to understand Neolithic farmers in terms of their society, economic activity and somewhat of their religious/ritual organisation. While broad European generalisations are not possible, not least due to the diversity of ecosystems that influenced agricultural activity, it is clear that there was a shift away from hunting-gathering towards permanent settlements. Farmers manipulated the surrounding environment to grow a narrow range of selected crops and husband suitable animals. In addition, natural resource extraction was also practiced in conjunction with agriculture that saw specialised rock fragments, copper products, pottery and cult material used if not exchanged, with distant settlements.

Evidence of social organisation that stretched to cooperatives beyond the family group are also present in Neolithic settlements. The construction of ‘common goods’ such as possible defensive frameworks, temples and megaliths plus many items of pottery, stone tools and even houses indicate a level of economic and possibly social diversification. People, if they became specialists in certain economic activities, may have not only exchanged their produce for goods they needed, but may also have gained status or had a position in a social hierarchy as a result. In turn, this status may have been transferred into the afterworld as some funerary practices seem to suggest that may well have been used as a social tool to maintain inheritance and ownership patterns. This necessarily presupposes an advanced level of cultural organisation such that resources can be mobilised to protect and sustain the communities and cultures that arose in Europe.

References