Editorial. .

Stoddart, Simon ; Malone, Caroline

Archaeology is at its best when tackling the major transitions of humanity: the emergence of culture, the development of agriculture and the formation of the state. Even in a theoretical age that is suspicious of any remnant of cultural evolutionism, we maintain that these transitions, and the categories we necessarily employ to define them, are still fundamental to our knowledge of humanity, and thus to archaeological research. The first transition defines the onset of humanity, the second provides the intensive food production on which the full impact of `culture' is developed, and the third represents a major re-working of political values and organization. In our current archaeological discussions of theory, we are inclined to forget the effectiveness and primary importance of archaeology in exploring each of these central issues. In the next three editorials of ANTIQUITY, we will investigate these major transitions with the assistance of invited colleagues. We invite readers to add their reactions.

We start with the final transition, variously defined in ways that are not co-terminous, as the city or the state. This is a threshold forgotten by some (Mithen 1996) and criticized over a number of years by others (Gledhill 1988; Kohl 1987). For still others it is dangerously associated with neo-evolutionary theory (Shanks & Tilley 1987). We examine here two traditions, the Mediterranean Old World (see also Book reviews section), where the concept of the city was perhaps first studied, but is subject to major critique, and the New World tradition where the state remains the accepted mode of analysis. Whither are these two streams of thought developing?

The recent conference organized by Barry Cunliffe (Institute of Archaeology, Oxford) and Robin Osborne (University of Cambridge) on Mediterranean Urbanisation 800-600 BC took place at the British Academy in London on 15 &16 November 2001, and provided an opportunity to assess the Mediterranean flow. This was deliberately an interdisciplinary conference attended by both archaeologists and ancient historians. The main thrust of the meeting was to reject or, at least, heavily criticize the city and state as entities, with particular suspicion directed towards the historical validity of founders of cities. In this latter respect the work of Carandini (already assessed in the pages of ANTIQUITY 73: 463-7) was reviewed critically. More generally, retrojection of later textual sources, in the past a frequent approach for the classical world, was also attacked. This is an important point because, although state formation and urbanization are a transition that often introduces the technology of written history, only archaeology can study the formative phases of the earliest examples. Archaeology is now available to provide a primary source of evidence into which the partial written sources can be fitted. This has not prevented historians attempting to employ textual models for earlier periods, and indeed some of this approach was present at the meeting.

If such concepts are rejected, what should be put in their place? One proposition was a vaguely defined idea of community. Another was the concept of identity, a theme popular in non-Mediterranean Europe but perhaps less developed for the archaeology of the Mediterranean. There was also a thrust that dynamism (and thus instability) was the underlying force, fuelled by the frequently addressed mechanism in the Mediterranean sea, that of trade and interaction. In summary, a pattern emerged of dynamic and changing political worlds in strong contact with other equally evolving political structures. To our mind, however, this is the product of a text-led analysis. In the Mediterranean world, there is still a relative lack of attention to infrastructure (production rather than consumption or usually deposition; agriculture rather than feasting; rural settlement rather than city life or more usually death). The evidence for all this is now very available, but not fully incorporated in our understanding. Urban and state structures bring investment that militates against rapid change and it is perhaps this investment in intensive food production and the built environment that constitutes one major aspect of the threshold we are investigating. Some scholars find it difficult to envisage the active (and conservative) quality of material culture. In the Mediterranean, it is too tempting to be distracted by the elite, both by their writings and their luxury items.

We have asked MATTHEW FITZJOHN of St John's College, Cambridge, who is working on related issues in Sicily, to provide a more balanced and comprehensive account of the same meeting. He writes:

`Attempting to assemble scholars from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds and regional specialisms, this meeting was intended as an opportunity to question the definition of "urbanisation" and the extent to which it is possible to talk of a distinctly urban cultural life, through the integration of cross-cultural and cross-regional perspectives. The conference can thus be regarded as complementary to the University of Copenhagen's 1994 conference "Urbanisation in the Mediterranean in the 9th to the 6th centuries BC" in its attempts to investigate the particularities of urbanization in the Mediterranean world and clarification on the nature of early towns.

`Despite the desires of the organisers to gather specialists representing research from across the Mediterranean the omission of planned presentations by Frederic Trement (Southern France and Northeastern Spain) and Barry Cunliffe (The Mediterranean and Europe) resulted in the regional focus being placed rather heavily towards Italy and its islands, with Greece for once in a supporting role. Professor Maria Iacovou's paper on the Early Iron Age Urban forms of Cyprus offered the only research directing our attention away from Greece and Italy. Despite the lack of geographical diversity, the plenary sessions at the end of both days, presided over by Cunliffe and Osborne, successfully replaced the formal presentations of Trement and Cunliffe, providing an open forum for lively debate between the conference participants.

`Whilst most attention was focused upon the examination of details from excavated sites (Iacovou; De Polignac; Rasmussen; Smith; Riva; Osborne) and data from regional survey projects (Van Dommelen for Sardinia; Attema for Lazio, Apulia and the Sibaritide), argument was also supplemented by literary sources (Smith; Purcell; Foxhall).

`The distinctive feature of all of the presentations was the opposition to all encompassing definitions of urbanism and conceptions of urbanism as an evolutionary process (Iacovou; De Polignac; van Dommelen; Purcell). In Statics and Dynamics: Ancient Mediterranean Urbanism, Purcell proposed that definitions and approaches to urbanization have tended to reconstruct the built environment as a fixed entity emphasizing durable features and ignoring the regional and historical fluctuations of urban forms. Pointing to the normality of change in the modern Mediterranean world and by explaining environmental factors as the catalyst for change and causation of stress Purcell attempted to reveal the dynamic processes involved in urbanization resultant from the relationship between urban form and territory.

`A major characteristic of several contributors was their concentration on the relationships between the urban centre and the region, whether that was the rural community (De Polignac; Van Dommelen; Attema) or the Mediterranean as a whole (Iacovou; Riva; Foxhall). The urbanization process was shown to be greatly influenced by foreign relationships from the Late Bronze Age (LBA) and Iron Age (IA) in the case of Cyprus (Iacovou) and Central Italy (Riva). In Cyprus, urbanization was not seen as the result of long-term development, but the result of demographic reorganization across the island from the LBA and the establishment of an economy of metal which determined the islands passage to the IA. Ultimately connection with the Assyrian Empires was argued to have led to urbanization. However, the growth of urban sites was still explained as location specific, rather than as an island-wide trend. The orientalizing phenomenon visible in exotic items and prestige and conspicuous consumption by elites was argued to have played a primary role in the cultural dimension of Mediterranean urbanization (Riva). Contact with the Near East created a cultural koine shared by elite groups, which gave rise to aristocratic culture across the Mediterranean basin with regional modifications from the 8th century BC. This aristocratic culture created an ideal of urban living, whilst notions of civic community expressed through customs and practices within a ritual symbolic sphere were explained as the main stimulus of urbanization (Riva). Closely connected to Riva's conception of the Orientalising Koine, Foxhall's study attempted to move beyond simplistic conceptions of Orientalism and Hellenisation. Integrating archaeological and textual evidence, Foxhall explored the notion of fashion, the role of commodities and their use within specific social political and symbolic contexts. Volatile social and political structures are seen as providing the setting for the use of semi-luxurious goods (wool, olive oil, perfume, fruits, textiles and wheat) to express personal and social identities and ambitions. Clearly, we need to consider consumption as an elastic and dynamic concept involved in complex relationships.

`Whilst some of the presentations strove to understand Mediterranean-wide processes which influenced location-specific forms of urbanization, some scholars focused on the particular physical features of urban forms. The "Beginnings of Urbanisation in Rome" (Smith) were presented through a reflection of the recent Italian exhibition and catalogue Roma: Romolo, Remo e la fondazione della citta. Major new archaeological discoveries, reinterpretations of historical developments and a consideration of problems of how the curiae (wards) has been written into the political history of proto-urban Rome, were the main points of discussion. Rasmussen discussed what he felt to be the difficulties of tackling Etruscan urbanization, namely that both excavation and knowledge of sites is limited. Particular Etruscan sites were shown to be much better understood using indications of urbanization from features within the region: necropolises, sanctuaries and the organization of the agricultural landscape as exhibited in the creation and drainage channels, tunnels and other major engineering works. The presentation by van Dommelen nevertheless made it clear that assumptions about urban forms can often create misguided interpretations of function. In the Mediterranean, it has often been assumed that all colonial settlement is urban; in the instance of Sardinia, van Dommelen effectively illustrated how this is not always the case. Rather than establishing the status of a settlement from its later urban form or urban appearance, van Dommelen approached the evidence within a regional context, establishing function of the colonial sites from their inter-relationships with the rural area and the wider Mediterranean region.

`The examples of Greek colonization in the south of Italy (Attema) provided further impetus for the adoption of regional interpretations. The results of archaeological field survey established the complexities of urbanization in different regions of southern Italy: in the Sibaritide, the Greek colony of Sybaris is seen to create a colonial geography out of the pre-existing proto-urban patterns, while in Salento, Taras did not directly affect the indigenous settlement system; finally, in the Pontine region, urbanization cannot be seen in isolation from the settlement dynamics of the Alban Hills and south Etruria.

`Re-conceptualization of our classification of urban was a characteristic of several presentations. Definitions of urban, classifications of sites as urban and associations of urbanism with state development or civilisation are shown to hinder our interpretation of the Early Iron Age in the Mediterranean. As an alternative, Osborne proposed to adopt a minimalist definition of urban in order to examine the explosion of towns and what he argues to have been the striking advantages of the town from the 8th century BC.

`An alternative view of urban sites was presented by De Polignac, through his interpretation of sites across the Greek world. From mainland to colony, changes to the organization of space within a settlement and region are seen as identifiable traits of urbanization. Colonies have traditionally been discussed in terms of the planned organi'ation and separation of functional spaces: between private and public, living and dead, general and specialized. However, De Polignac presents a further level of analysis proposing how sites such as Megara Hyblaea and Selinunte in Sicily were specifically organized on different orientations to create polycentric sites for different communities.

`The conference fulfilled its aim of providing the environment for a number of stimulating presentations and fruitful discussion of approaches and methods for studying urbanization rather than produce conclusive definitions of urbanization. The contributions reflected the broader approaches to urbanization in the Mediterranean world through which urban areas are the discussed as the product of specific historical and local conditions that are continuously open to transformation.'

A curious aspect of recent work on state formation and urbanisation is the superficial similarity of the work of Carandini and Flannery: the first a classical archaeologist, the second a scientific scholar who has worked on the `primary' civilizations of both Mesoamerica and the Middle East. In both, the charisma and action of an individual are key to the act of state formation. For Carandini (1997; Carandini & Cappelli 2000), it is the founder. For Flannery (1999), it is the alpha male. The key issue -- and the point of controversy -- is the interpretation of what would be defined anthropologically as ethnohistory, and by Mediterranean scholars as written sources. As DEMARRAIS puts it below, how do we integrate the emic (indigenous) view with etic (the archaeologists' outside view)? The complication for Mediterranean Europe is that the textual sources are not always contextually emic (displaced as they often are by time and space, and often written about others) and the archaeologists are not always fully etic (writing as Europeans about the foundations of Europe). Nascent states are known to promote their claims to legitimization through a series of strategies, which included the promotion of real, imagined and reconstructed, local and exotic ancestors. The key difference between Carandini and Flannery is that Carandini investigates one case study, that of Rome, shrouded in mythical time, whereas Flannery investigates a suite of modern ethnohistoric cases (Madagascar, the Ashanti, the Zulu) by comparison with an effectively prehistoric archaeological example. As JAMES WHITLEY in this issue debates in his critique of the use of ancestors by archaeologists, we come back to a discussion of the validity of cross-cultural comparison, and by extension in the study of states, of how much diversity can be expected in the crossing of major socio-political thresholds.

We have invited ELIZABETH DEMARRAIS, one of our advisory editors and an important contributor to some of the debate (DeMarrais et al. 1996) to look at the direction that state formation is developing in the Americas. She writes:

`Archaeological investigations of New World states have long been associated with the processual and comparative traditions of American archaeology. Eco-systemic models, developing out of settlement pattern surveys, stressed features common to archaic states and showed how administrative hierarchies, central places, and institutions of political and religious authority contributed to the integration of large populations under a central authority. While processual models contributed significantly to understanding the forms and organization of early states, these models have been criticized as overly static (Marcus 1993; Feinman & Marcus 1998). Recent responses to this criticism include new research on historical dimensions of early states, undertaken in the context of comparative studies, analysis at macro-scales, and the construction of general models. A second development involves attention to indigenous conceptions of political organization and agency as sources of insight into `social strategies' that -- together with `ecological strategies' -- influence social reproduction and the longer-term dynamics of archaic states (Brumfiel 1992).

`In a recent edited volume devoted to archaic states (Feinman & Marcus 1998), contributions from American researchers (and a single British-based contributor, John Baines) demonstrate that the comparative tradition is alive and well. The book's case studies delve into the complexities of local historical sequences and investigate aspects of the internal workings of individual states without abandoning the search for general patterns and insights from cross-cultural comparison. An example is found in Joyce Marcus' chapter, which extends her Dynamic Model, developed in an earlier work on the Maya (1993), to other regions, including the Andes, Mexico, the Aegean, Egypt and Mesopotamia. The original model drew upon detailed analysis of indigenous conceptions of political structure from historical documents, maps produced by Maya scribes and native terms for political units. Marcus argued that the state emerged in the Maya region when one chiefdom was able to subjugate neighbouring polities, forming a powerful centralized state (Marcus 1993: 116-17). On-going conflicts characterized interactions between the central authority and provincial lords, leading to breakdown of the state into its constituent provinces, followed by subsequent cycles of alliance-building, political consolidation and then breakdown. Finding that this cyclical process is visible in other regions of the world, Marcus argues that perhaps much of the internal diversity documented for archaic states may be explained as different stages in a dynamic process common to a range of settings worldwide (Marcus 1998).

`Marcus' model depended upon access to detailed evidence for rapid shifts in political relationships among elites. Other researchers have pursued interests in political negotiation through debates about the role of agency in early state dynamics (Dobres & Robb 2000). Some researchers, influenced by processual models, have argued that agents in similar situations will share broadly similar goals cross-culturally. Efforts to explore these dynamics include studies of factional competition (Brumfiel & Fox 1994), political economy (Blanton et al. 1996; Blanton 1998) or the materialization of ideology (DeMarrais et al. 1996). Their joint aim is to identify the range of resources -- material and social/symbolic -- that social actors deploy in pursuit of their goals. Blanton (1998) has described this process in terms of variation in power strategies that produce different types of social formation. Blanton's recent (1998) work explores contrasts between consensus-building and `corporate' power strategies versus competitive, `exclusionary' power strategies. The former strategies generate states organized along `corporate' principles, exemplified by Teotihuacan, whose rulers remain virtually faceless in the archaeological record. The latter strategy produces an `exclusionary' hierarchically ordered state such as Tikal with a rich iconography depicting powerful rulers. Like Marcus, Blanton suggests that the dynamic character of political interaction generates ongoing shifts between corporate and exclusionary political formations visible in long-term cycles in Mesoamerica.

`Other researchers argue that agency is a subjective phenomenon, to be understood only in terms of a specific culture or set of historical circumstances (Gero 2000; Johnson 2000). Researchers seeking better understanding of the cultural backgrounds for early state formation are increasingly discovering discrepancies between indigenous conceptions of political structure and models based solely upon archaeological evidence. Archaeologists interested in the Maya, Aztecs, Mixtecs or Zapotecs, as well as Inka scholars, have access to varied forms of documentary evidence, including descriptions by Spaniards from the 16th and 17th centuries. For Mesoamerican scholars, additional sources include maps and other documents from native scribes, as well as elite propaganda inscribed upon monuments, stelae and other media. Scholars have undertaken detailed research comparing interpretations derived from archaeological remains with those emerging from documents. Ethnohistoric sources reveal significant variation over time, and from place to place, for example, in the use of indigenous terms to designate political units. Timothy Hare's (2000) analysis of Aztec documents uncovered a strong emphasis on smaller settlements -- towns, wards, and other rural sites -- as settings for elite-directed social and political interaction. This emic view contrasts markedly with interpretations based upon archaeological settlement-pattern studies, in which large urban centres figure most prominently as locations of political activities. Reconciling these differences remains a major challenge for New World scholars.

`Recent research in American archaeology reveals on-going interest in comparative studies and the formulation of general models, at the same time that archaeologists are grappling with accumulating evidence for the great diversity and complexity of early states. Marcus' Dynamic Model represents a major advance in modelling the dynamic character of political processes in the past; her work represents an important departure from the static models generated during earlier processual research. At the same time, detailed knowledge derived from ethnohistoric research has posed new challenges for archaeologists, who must reconcile disparate pictures arising from emic versus etic perspectives. Undoubtedly, on-going work on agency will help to uncover new ways of conceptualizing the complicated relationships that link culture, historical circumstances, political processes and the agency of individuals, all of which are acknowledged as significant factors shaping the dynamics of early states.'

References

BLANTON, R. 1998. Beyond centralization: Steps towards a theory of egalitarian behavior in archaic states, in Feinman & Marcus (ed.), Archaic States: 135-72. Santa Fe (NM): School of American Research.

BLANTON, R., G. FEINMAN, S. KOWALEWSKI & P. PEREGRINE. 1996. A dual-processual theory for the evolution of Mesoamerican civilization, Current Anthropology 37: 1-14.

BRUMFIEL, E. 1992. Distinguished lecture in archaeology: Breaking and entering the ecosystem -- gender, class and faction steal the show, American Anthropologist 94: 551-67.

BRUMFIEL, E. & J. FOX. 1994. Factional competition and political development in the New World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

DEMARRAIS, E., L.J. CASTILLO & T. EARLE. 1996. Ideology, materialization, and power strategies, Current Anthropology 37: 15-85.

DOBRES, M.-A. & J. ROBB. 2000.Agency in archaeology. London: Routledge.

FEINMAN, G. & J. MARCUS (ed.). 1998. Archaic states. Santa Fe (NM): School of American Research Press.

GERO, J. 2000. Troubled travels in agency and feminism, in Dobres & Robb (ed.): 34-9.

HARE, T. 2000. Between the household and the empire: structural relationships within and among Aztec communities and polities, in M. Canuto & J. Yaeger (ed.), The archaeology of communities: a New World perspective: 78-101. London: Routledge.

JOHNSON, M. 2000. Self-made men and the staging of agency, in Dobres & Robb (ed.), Agency in archaeology: 213-31. London: Routledge.

MARCUS, J. 1993. Ancient Maya political organization, in J. Sabloff & J. Henderson (ed.), Lowland Maya civilization in the 8th century AD: 111-83. Washington (DC): Dumbarton Oaks.

1998. The peaks and valleys of ancient states: An extension of the dynamic model, in Feinman & Marcus (ed.): 59-94. Ancestors are favoured by state authorities, archaeologists and the general public alike to judge from the collapse of the Public Record Office web site at the beginning of 2002. This issue of ANTIQUITY is much frequented by ancestors. We celebrate the lives of three very different archaeologists, PIERRE-ROLAND GIOT and PETER REYNOLDS, with a Celtic addendum to the life of RHYS JONES. We offer the varied and illustrated special section on Ancestral Archives which, as NATHAN SCHLANGER explains, is the product in large part of a European special project. This offers a menu for everyone, the illustrated de Mortillet menus themselves, wide geographical coverage, perceptive political comment and recoverable scientific information from early archaeological exploration. The final ancestral offering, by JAMES WHITLEY, however, provides a provocative warning that we may employ the science and even the nostalgia of ancestors too readily, and, by wider inference, could be accused of becoming not only a backward looking curiosity in the material that we study, but in the theory that we choose to apply to that material. To this we can counter that the use of ancestors is an anthropologically attested phenomenon both in state and non-state societies, as the late Art Saxe was one of the first archaeologists to illustrate.

PAUL ASHBEE has kindly commented on the ancestry of ANDREW HEALD's paper on knobbed spear-butts published in December. He writes that this subject `is something that Gordon Childe contemplated but never wrote. He had mentioned them in his Prehistory of Scotland (1935) and saw them as a product of a bronze technology akin to the production of socketed axes. T.D. Kendrick's British antiquity (1950) (VGC was sent a copy by TDK) had in it 16th-17th-century pictures of Ancient Britons and Picts all armed with spears that had knobbed butts.' [In our preparation of the Celts from Antiquity volume of reprinted ANTIQUITY papers we have noted the use of the same illustrations by Rieckoff & Biel (2001: 33) in their new work on the Celts. Ed.] `VGC was of the view that the sources of these depictions must be from descriptive passages by classical writers. He remembered reference to the knobbed spear butts in the 11th-century AD epitome of books 30-end of Dio Cassius by Joannes Xiphilinus. He began to assemble details and some Irish ones were probably supplied by S.P. O Riordain. Sadly he was overtaken by various events and the paper was never written.' We very much hope as editors to be able to publish more articles that take the very best of Childe -- his detailed knowledge of material culture-- and place them in a modern theoretical context.

A further ancestral mention we wish to make is to the publication of a celebration of female academics from one college, Newnham in Cambridge, a number of whom contributed to the early development of ANTIQUITY. The booklet, Pioneers of the Past (2001), is sold in aid of the college library, and edited by ANN HAMLIN. The concentration of excellence in one location is simply expressed by listing the archaeologists with their epithets as they appear in the text: Jane Harrison (celebrated classical archaeologist: 1850-1928), Gertrude Thompson (intrepid explorer of new archaeological fields: 1888-19850, Nora Chadwick (devotee and inspiring teacher of celtic studies: 1891-1972), Dorothy Garrod (distinguished pioneer of the palaeolithic and of archaeology in Cambridge: 1892-1968), Winifred Lamb (devoted scholar of Mediterranean archaeology: 1894-1963), Jocelyn Toynbee (outstanding historian of Roman art and dedicated teacher: 1897-1985), Jacquetta Hawkes (notable author and communicator of archaeology (1910-1996), Joan Liversidge (dedicated teacher and contributor to Roman archaeology: 1914-1984). The booklet can be ordered from the college.

In the year 2001-2, archaeology departments have been assessed on grounds both of teaching and of research. It is of immense credit to King Alfred's College, Winchester, one of the smaller, less resourced departments in the country, that they should have received the highest possible marks in teaching (24/24). No department received full marks in both teaching and research, but it is again worth noting that Cambridge arid Reading received the highest research rating (5*) and only lost one point on teaching (23/24), and Cardiff and Leicester received top marks on teaching (24/24 for Leicester and Excellent for Cardiff under an earlier Welsh exercise) and were awarded a 5 in their research rating. Archaeologists in the UK are increasingly investigating the issue of teaching as well as research, as the third Lampeter seminar in archaeology, now published (Rainbird & Hamilakis 2001), makes clear.

We are pleased to announce the winners of the ANTIQUITY QUIZ at the Dublin TAG: Gabriel Cooney, Tony Brown, Robert van der Noort, Aidan O'Sullivan and Annaba Kilfeather. They will receive two free subscriptions and two copies of Celts from Antiquity.

We are also pleased to announce the ANTIQUITY PRIZE winner for the best 2001 paper, RICHARD BRADLEY'S `Orientations and origins: a symbolic dimension to the long house in Neolithic Europe' (75: 50-56); runners-up, A.G. BROWN, I. MEADOWS, S.D. TURNER & D.J. MATTINGLY on Roman vineyards in Britain (75: 745-57). The CULLEN PRIZE for the best young scholar's paper, awarded each year by Ian Gollop in honour of Ben Cullen, who died tragically young, goes to M.K. HOLST, H. BREUNING-MADSEN & M. RASMUSSEN, for `The south Scandinavian barrows with well-preserved oak-log coffins' (75: 126-36); the runner-up is Estella Weiss Krejci on Restless corpses (75: 769-80).

COLIN BURGESS has pointed out that a gremlin has introduced two last-minute changes to his text included in the last editorial, and we apologise for change in meaning this implied. `Both are on p. 665: left column, 3 lines down -- a "w" has been added to "as" to make "was", and my point was that the profession (like professional archaeologists) was just beginning to emerge. One letter, but it completely changes the sense. Right column, -17, about two thirds of the way down, "they" has been inserted after "no more scientists than...", and this completely changes what Atkinson wrote. The point he was making was that archaeologists and art historians both, are not scientists just because they use scientific techniques.'

References

CARANDINI, A. 1997. La nascita di Roma. Dei, Lari, Eroi e Uomini all'alba di una civilta. Torino: Giulio Einaudi Editori.

CARANDINI, A. & R. CAPPELLI (ed.). 2000. Roma. Romolo, Remo e la fondazione della citta. Milano: Electa.

FLANNERY, K.V. 1999. Process and agency in early state formation, Cambridge Archaeological Journal 9(1): 3-21.

GLEDHILL, J. 1988. Introduction. The comparative analysis of social and political transitions, in J. Gledhill, B. Bender & T. Larsen (ed.), State and society: 3-21. London: Unwin & Hyman.

KOHL, P.L. 1987. State formation: useful concept or idle fixe?, in T. Patterson & C.W. Gailey (ed.), Power relations and State formation: 27-34. Washington (DC): American Anthropological Association.

MITHEN, S.J. 1996. The prehistory of the mind: a search for the origins of art, science and religion. London: Thames & Hudson.

RAINBIRD, P. & Y. HAMILAKIS. 2001. Interrogating pedagogies. Archaeology in higher education. (Lampeter Workshop in Archaeology 3). Oxford: British Archaeological Reports. International series S948.

SHANKS, M. & C. TILLEY. 1987. Social theory and archaeology. Cambridge: Polity Press.

ARTHUR APSIMON, a long-time research collaborator with PIERRE-ROLAND GIOT ,has kindly written an appreciation of his work.

Pierre-Roland Giot born 23 September 1919, died 1 January 2002 Giot's death at the turn of the year deprives us of a scholar and scientist who was the dominating figure in the development of archaeology in Brittany in the second half of the 20th century.

His university studies, begun with a brilliant licence in sciences in Paris, were interrupted in 1939 by conscription into the French Army, where he served in the anti-aircraft artillery. After the defeat of France in June 1940, his disarmed unit was employed on forestry work in the Pyrenees, first building their own log cabins. After demobilization his first research was done for the Diploma of Etudes Superieurs in Geology at Grenoble. In 1943 he was appointed as a researcher at the Centre Nationale de Recherche Scientifique [CNRS], for which he worked until 1986, rising to titular Director of Research `de classe exceptionelle', and becoming an Honorary Director on retirement. Posted to Brittany, in 1943-4 he did geological mapping by day, and by night gathered intelligence for the Resistance on German progress in building the `Atlantic Wall', counting the trains carrying cobbles, sand and cement to the works in progress. At the Liberation, alone, unarmed and not without inward qualms, he disarmed and detained the leader of the ill-advised Breton separatist movement.

By 1950 he had around 25 geological publications to his name, but a long-standing interest in archaeology and anthropology was marked by publications in those fields beginning already in 1944. In 1947 he was appointed Director of the Circonscription of Prehistoric Antiquities of Rennes (later of Brittany), and following the completion of his doctoral thesis in anthropology at the University of Rennes, was appointed in 1951 to set up and direct the Laboratory `Anthropologie-Prehistoire-Protohistoire et Quaternaire Armoricains' of the University of Rennes, a post he was to hold until 1986, overseeing meanwhile the development of modern archaeological methods in Brittany and nurturing the talents of very many capable researchers.

During these years he worked unsparingly and published abundantly; the list, complete to 1988, of his scientific publications in the celebratory volume dedicated to him (Monnier & Langouet 1990) contains 536 items. These publications cover all branches of the archaeology of Brittany from earliest prehistory to medieval, but there is also a substantial series of studies of the physical anthropology of Breton populations and his fieldwork took in study of Breton folk-music, costume and dialects.

The major project of his early years in Brittany was the petroarchaological study of groundstone axeheads from the region, modelled on that initiated by the South-West Museums group in England and begun in collaboration with J. Cogn6 c. 1947, which led to the discovery and eventual excavation of the Neolithic quarry site at Plussulien in the central hilly spine of Brittany, a site comparable in importance to Great Langdale in England but with a much wider geographic spread for its products. The work which made him internationally known and by which he will be best remembered was that on chambered passage tombs in Brittany, in particular the three sites of L'Ile Carn, Barnenez and L'Ile Guennoc, all on the northern coast of Finistbre, the first and third on offshore islands. All were the result of adventitious circumstances: Carn was dug in 1954 to safeguard a presumed corbelled vault, endangered by war-time interference; at Barnenez the complex of 11 tombs in a huge cairn was investigated between 1955 and 1968, following deliberate destruction by quarrying; and the complex of tombs on Guennoc, revealed by a sustained fire in 1953-4 and dug over 12 seasons in 196072, under extremely difficult conditions, since Guennoc is over I km offshore even at low tide, on the stormy northwest coast of Finistere. The results were spectacular: at Cam an undisturbed corbelled chamber was found, charcoal from which was dated at Groningen in 1959 giving a calibrated age between 4350 and 3800 BC (95% confidence), upsetting at a stroke the views of Piggott, Daniel and many others on the dating and significance of Armorican passage tombs; at Barnenez the scale of the monument attracted a visit in September 1955 by Sir Mortimer Wheeler with Glyn and Ruth Daniel, Paul Johnstone and BBC television, and the results of radiocarbon dating confirmed the pioneering result from Cam; while Guennoc, though perhaps less spectacular, corroborated the dating and confirmed and extended knowledge of the distinctive architecture and the material remains from Armorican passage tombs.

In the confines of this note it is impossible to do more than touch on Giot's contributions in other periods and areas of study, the application of radiocarbon dating and scientific procedures, his work on the archaeology of `Dark Age' Brittany, his encouragement of students, among whom Jacques Briard, the late Jean L'Helgouac'h, ]ean-Laurent Monnier and Yves Coppens, are but four among many illustrious names. Even in retirement he continued to work as hard as ever, his beautiful and pre-eminently practically useful and authoritative guide, Bretagne des Megalithes (1995), is but one example, while his annual summaries, `Chronique de prehistoire et de protohistoire finisteriennes ...', have prefaces fully equal to those of ANTIQUITY (e.g. the concluding remarks in that for 1996 (Giot 1997: 31-2)).

Giot's achievements won wide recognition both within and outside France; he was, inter alia, a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, an Honorary Fellow of the Societies of Antiquaries of London and of Scotland, President in 1996-97 of the Cambrian Archaeological Association and an Honorary Corresponding Member of the Prehistoric Society and the Societe Jersiaise. Half Scots, on his mother's side, he spoke a fluent if idiosyncratic English, his cramped apartment in Rennes home to a bookcase full of classic English literature, as well as all the archaeological books you have ever wanted to buy, and the armchair once belonging to Fouche, reputedly the favourite seat of Napoleon Bonaparte on his visits to that wily individual. Papers and reviews in ANTIQUITY and P.P.S., as well as reviews of English-language works, some extremely trenchant, in French periodicals, span his career from 1951 onwards.

Personally he was shy, dryly humorous, inclined to taciturnity, sometimes agitated, brusque, dismissive, but everlastingly kind and generous to his many collaborators, students, friends and children of friends. Yvan Onnee, his longtime colleague, writes: `La mort de Giot a ete pour nous une grosse perte en tant qu'archeologue visionnaire car il etait toujours parmi nous par ses ecrits at aussi, ses discussions tres pertinentes sur la penske et la theorie des nouvelles formes que prend l'archeologie actuelle, sur la remise en question des jeunes chercheurs sur le passe, en particulier l'anthropologie sociale et l'archeologie.

In Rennes in April 2001 when he came out to lunch with us and friends, he was lively, even `chipper', delighted to show a corner of old Rennes, to pass on a copy of work in progress. Sadly, he had deteriorated physically in recent months, so that his sudden death, which was a reprise of a close call at the beginning of the year, may have come as a mercy to him. His ashes were scattered by friends on the waters off Guennoc: `... elle rut le lieu de bien des experiences, le depart de quelques vocations, tout comme elle est restee pleine de souvenirs au milieu des brumes humides du crepuscule celtique. Pour beaucoup d'entre nous L'Ile Guennoc fut quelque temps la materialisation ireelle de la terre de l'immortelle jeunesse, Tir Na nog.' (Giot 1987: 5). We miss him.

References

GIOT, P.-R. 1987. Barnenez Cam Guennoc. Rennes: Travaux du Laboratoire `Anthropologie-Prehistoire-Protohistoire et Quaternaire Armoricains -- Rennes'.

1995. Bretagne des Megalithes. Rennes: Editions Ouest-France.

1997. Chronique de prehistoire et de protohistoire finisteriennes et des archeosciences pour 1996, Bulletin de la Societe archeologique du Finistere 126: 11-32.

MONNA, J.-L. & L. LANGOUET (ed.). 1990. La Bretagne et L'Europe Prehistoriques. Memoire en hommage a Pierre-Roland Giot. Rennes: Revue Archeologique de l'Ouest. Supplement 2 (1990).

MARTIN JONES, one of the participants in a celebration of the life of PETER REYNOLDS on 27 October 2001, writes of his important and unusual contribution to British archaeology. He was one of a number of people who inspired the editor as a Hampshire schoolboy to take up archaeology. Those who wish to make a contribution to safeguard his work in experimental archaeology may send donations (cheques made payable to The Friends of Butser Ancient Farm) to the following address: David Andrews, Hon. Treasurer, Friends of Butser Ancient Farm, c/o 25 Richmond Road, Gosport P012 30J. The website of the project is at www.butser.org.uk

Dr Peter J. Reynolds born 6 November 1939, died 26 September 2001 With the untimely death of Peter Reynolds at the age of 61, archaeology has lost a colourful and inspiring colleague. For three decades, Peter took a leading position in experimental archaeology, initially at Bredon Hill in the Cotswolds, and then from 1972 onwards at the internationally renowned Butser Hill Ancient Farm in Hampshire. His archaeological career grew from a restlessness experienced while classics master at Prince Henry's Grammar School at Evesham. While his passion for classical texts stayed with him throughout his life, he was anxious to get his hands and feet dirty and wrestle with the very basic questions of what life was like in the past. Experimental archaeology allowed him to do so with an enthusiasm that infected a very large number of people, amateurs and professionals alike.

The Council for British Archaeology instigated the Butser Hill Farm project at a time when experimental archaeology was beginning to take shape. A small number of reconstructions, for example at the Danish site of Lejre, and a series of one-off re-enactments are charted in John Coles' book, Experimental archaeology, but it was yet unclear how best to test the feasibility of theoretical ideas about prehistoric structures. Peter was asked in 1972 to lead the Butser project and quickly gave the field of experimental archaeology its shape. He believed that a finely detailed holistic reconstruction was the appropriate route, at every stage questioning and testing the premises that informed each component of the model. With this in mind, he transformed a spur of the Hampshire Chalklands into an `Iron Age farm'. At its centre was a thatched wattle-and-daub roundhouse. Round about lay a series of `Celtic fields' growing near-extinct cereal species, paddocks with Soay sheep, long-legged Dexter cattle and, for a short while, the unruly progeny of a wild boar and a Tamworth sow, the only living things whose stubborn determination surpassed Peter's own. Their abandoned pigsties were the only part of the remarkable scene that did not contribute to the entirely plausible view of a living Iron Age landscape.

Indeed, one of the most immediate and enduring contributions of Peter's work has been to the way in which the prehistoric landscape is envisioned. Prior to the Butser project, the circular gullies and post rings of the British Iron Age were typically interpreted by loose reference to ethnographic parallels from quite different regions, drawing on a motley array of structures that also happened to be circular, be they from North America, sub-Saharan Africa, or wherever. Peter's reconstructions had to be achievable from natural resources available in prehistoric Britain, and able to sustain the wind, rain and frost of these northern islands. Soon after the reconstruction of the first roundhouse, our image of prehistoric dwellings changed, and one or other of the Butser buildings continues to be the starting-point of any visualization of British prehistory.

A central theme of Peter's experimental work was constant interplay with the archaeological record. He instigated silting experiments within his field ditches, recorded the evolution of drip trenches around his houses, and performed repeated experiments on the storage of cereal grain in underground pits, the subject of his Ph.D thesis. His experiments demonstrated how this critical form of storage could actually work. His hypothesis, based on the idea of partial germination of the stored grain, was subsequently supported by my microanalysis of a burnt-out storage pit from the hillfort at Danebury. In the 1970s, Butser was one of the very few places known to be growing significant quantities of non-modern cereals, such as spelt and emmer wheat. Since the 1980s, the organic food industry has adopted them, and their survival has been recorded in a number of traditional farming regions. However, the early Butser harvests provided some novel and unique insights into a range of forgotten crops, in particular that the yield capacity of prehistoric cereals was surprisingly high. The widespread assumption that yield capacity was a major constraint to the productivity of prehistoric communities was ill founded.

An engaging speaker, Peter was always happy with an audience, and he travelled tirelessly as one of archaeology's most popular guest lecturers, both in Britain and throughout the world. He was familiar with a range of establishment venues, though these were possibly not his favourite environs. He was at his best in the lively and spontaneous debates in which he might engage in a pub with colleagues and students, in the field on the Turkish study tours he led, or beneath the rafters of one of his round houses.

The Butser Ancient Farm Project has so far had a varied and sometimes turbulent 30-year life, successively moving between three sites and teetering on a range of financial tightropes. The ups and downs never visibly dampened Peter's enthusiasm for the project's future, and belief in what could be achieved. I well remember being invited, along with all the principal figures of European archaeobotany, to an international conference at the newly established Nexus House. On our arrival we found our venue to be a small abandoned roadside cafe that Peter had acquired. Our enthusiastic host invited a group of mildly surprised East European professors to help nail boards to the skylights in order that we might show slides. The impact of Peter's indomitable spirit has been widespread. A recent meeting to look towards the Butser Project's future after Peter's death included several professors of archaeology, independent archaeologists, members of English Heritage and of the media, upon all of whom Peter's life work had made a considerable mark. He will be sorely missed, but each time an archaeologist uncovers a circle of posts, stone footings or ring ditch, and speculates upon lives once lived within them, his ideas will be brought back to life.

Professor VINCENT 1VIEGAW, for some 40 years friend and colleague of Emeritus Professor RHYS JONES, whose death on 19 September 2001 we reported in our last issue, adds what he terms:

Further reminiscences of a back-looking curiosity

It is hardly surprising that the life of one who, unlike the Aboriginal artist, Albert Namatjira, was not a `wanderer between two worlds' but rather a voyager between many worlds should already have been memorialized so frequently. Obituaries have appeared not only in London in the pages of The Times and Independent but also in the Welsh-based Western Mail, not to mention the Bungendore Bulletin, whose editor, Dougal Macdonald, has written a touching memorial of Rhys. Over the years, together with his wife and co-researcher, Betty Meehan, Rhys had become a local figure-head, drinking companion and font of much curious knowledge about this little New South Wales town.

One is used today to images of Rhys Jones, Australia's answer to Indiana Jones, Akubra hat, beard, braces over a respectably enhanced belly. But that was only one image; as I saw him first, short back-and-sides, fresh-faced and slim, with hindsight he looked every inch the Welsh-speaking schoolboy, attending Whitchurch Grammar School near Cardiff. Close by was Barry Boys County School, whose own star pupil was another Welsh speaker, Glyn Daniel, later to be Disney Professor of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge. Brought up in a Welsh-speaking family in Blaenau Ffestiniog in north Wales, Rhys moved south with his teacher mother, the incomparable Enid Watkin Jones, and his sister Non. In the Glamorgan Vales Welsh was not so common, but one of the other two native speakers in Rhys' new school was his second cousin Rhodri Morgan, now First Minister of the Welsh Assembly. In 1957 Rhys submitted an essay for the Trevelyan Scholarship based on his excavating more or less single-handedly a Bronze Age barrow at Sant-y-Nyll. He was successful, his assessors being Glyn Daniel and Richard Atkinson, the Foundation Professor of Archaeology at what was then University College, Cardiff.

My own first sight of Rhys was in the Royal National Park south of Sydney in August 1963 -- recently devastated by bush-fires. He had been welcomed off the `plane which had brought him from Britain as a 10 [pounds sterling] migrant by Richard Wright, another Cambridge graduate and Rhys' new colleague at Sydney University. The choice offered was simple -- back to Fivedock to sleep off the flight or to visit his first Australian excavation. There was no contest -- Curracurrang Cove it was.

I have emphasized the Welsh connection since it was his Welshness which meant so much to Rhys. I never heard him use that problematic word `multicultural' but it seems to me that Rhys' intense concern for what he regarded as the real indigenous culture of Australia sat easily with his own concern for the history and culture of his homeland, the culture of those he termed `the British Aborigines'. It is no accident that, while Rhys' first archaeological publication was in ANYTIQUITY for 1964 -- then edited by his teacher Glyn Daniel -- his second, on who were the Tasmanians, appeared in Welsh in the following year in the University of Wales' popular science journal Y Gwyddonydd. Tasmania was soon to become Rhys' Other Island, the focal point of his research culminating in his Ph.D, awarded by the Sydney University in 1972.

There was always a popular and popularizing side to Rhys; a natural story-teller and brilliant lecturer who offered evidence, if evidence was needed, that lecturing is a performance art. Once more the link with Glyn Daniel presents itself. There are those who have said -- as was said of the Disney Professor -- that there was too little of real substance in Rhys' more than 200 publications, that we still awaited the Great Book. Jealousy gets one nowhere, but it is true that Rhys was interviewed in 1979 for not one, but two articles on early Australian prehistory which appeared in Australian Playboy. Throughout his working life, Rhys demonstrated that for the past to retain any relevance in the present it was necessary to excite the minds -- and pockets -- of publicans as well as politicians, ace footballers as well as academics. A not infrequent face on television and an even more frequent voice on radio, it was only natural that Rhys should have been asked in 1978 by the late Tom Hayden to cooperate in a film called The last Tasmanian: A story of genocide, a film whose central character was Truganini, whose death in 1876 was regarded at the time as marking the passing of the last of her race. For this the makers of the film were at one and the same time seen as denying emergent Tasmanian Aboriginal activists their land rights and as having made a radical attempt to bring all Tasmanians, not just Aboriginal Tasmanians, face to face with their past. This was not the only occasion when Rhys, a fierce fighter for the rights of minority groups, found himself at odds with the very people which his work did so much to support.

Particularly in recent years, Rhys had many honours bestowed upon him, notably, but not exclusively, in Australia and in Wales. His appointment as Professor of Australian Studies at Harvard in 1995-96 was matched most recently by two honorary appointments at the University of Wales, a Visiting Fellowship at Lampeter and a Visiting Professorship at Newport College. Fellowship of the Society of Antiquaries of London was valued by Rhys no less than Fellowship of the Australian Academy of the Humanities while his Presidency of the Welsh Abroad was only overshadowed by his investiture in 1983 with the Gwisg Wen, the White Robe of the Gorsedd of the National Eisteddfod of Wales. Despite clear proof that Rhys was always at the cutting edge of his profession, there was after all more than a little of the antiquarian in him, a love of books, of the study of old collections, the poring-over of manuscripts in libraries across the Western world and beyond. Glyn Daniel, in his inaugural lecture of 1976, borrowed a phrase from the 16th-17th-century antiquary, William Camden, when he referred to `a back-looking curiositie', and this indeed was what drove Rhys forward into the past. One thinks of his brilliant but little-known study of contemporary views of Indigenous Australians as recorded in 1801-03 by Nicolas Baudin and his companions on the Geographe and Naturaliste. But one may be sure that Rhys gained almost as much pleasure from his discovery on a visit back to Llantrisant, where he and Betty had established a Welsh home following the death of his mother. Here, in the Wheatsheaf Inn, he found a `wanted' poster for Michael Dwyer, prominent member of the IRA and father of the first publican of Bungendore.

A final, and of necessity, sad memory -- no, two memories. Rhys shared with me what, driven by some sort of avoidance syndrome, I flippantly call `Membership of the Big C Club'. We both suffered from cancer and both had to face the reality that, while archaeology might be regarded as the ever-enduring study of humankind, ever-enduring we would certainly not be. In 1992, as I lay in my hospital bed recuperating from major surgery, Rhys, en route for the Nullarbor Plain -- a mere 1500 km drive away -- brought me a whole bottle of Russian vodka. Much of this we downed on the spot, so convinced was Rhys that this would be our last drink together. In June last year, during what was to be his penultimate public engagement, the dinner given in his honour in University House at the Australian National University, I publicly reminded Rhys, who had just been appointed Professor Emeritus, of the vodka incident. I remarked `It hadn't been our last drink together, it wasn't and we are both still here and both still drinking'.

I was right, of course, but only just.

Ffarwell fy hen gyfaill!

Note

There are two published sources currently available for the intending biographer of Rhys Maengwyn Jones. First is the record of a public interview given at Flinders University in October 1999 and second are several of the contributions to his Festschrift, presented to Rhys in Canberra on 28 June 2001:

JONES, R. & V. MEGAW. 2000. Confessions of a wild colonial boy, Australian Archaeology 50: 12-26.

ANDERSON, A., I. LILLEY & S. O'CONNOR (ed.). 2001. Histories of old ages: Essays in Honour of Rhys Jones. Canberra: Pandanus Books, The Australian National University.