Mediterranean Archaeological Landscapes: Current Issues.

Knapp, A. Bernard

Mediterranean Archaeological Landscapes: Current Issues. Edited by EFFIE ATHANASSOPOULOS and LUANN WANDSNIDER. Philadelphia: UNIVERSITY MUSEUM, 2004. Pp. xii + 242, illus. $39.95.

Ever since the onset of regional archaeological survey projects in the Mediterranean (arguably the British School at Rome's Central Italy and South Etruria Projects), not long after the publication of Gordon Willey's pioneering Viru Valley Project in Peru, it has seemed obvious that there is no single disciplinary canon to guide those who conduct field surveys, no blueprint for establishing a field methodology. Indeed, the very diversity of regional survey archaeology in the Mediterranean, and the very different histories, organizational and institutional structures, and attitudes to both methodology and theory within Mediterranean countries themselves, are what make the field so dynamic and interesting. More recently, however, and in particular with Mesoamericanist Richard Blanton's critical review ("Mediterranean Myopia," Antiquity 75 [2001]: 627-29) of the massive, five-volume set The Archaeology of Mediterranean Landscapes, ed. G. Barker and D. Mattingly (Oxford: Oxbow, 1999), it has become evident that practitioners of certain "schools" of regional archaeological survey no longer deem alternative or varying approaches to be equally viable.

The volume under review comprises revised versions of ten papers (plus an editors' introduction) first presented in an electronic symposium, "Crossroads in Mediterranean Landscape Archaeology," at the Society for American Archaeology's annual meeting in April 2001. It is co-edited by two scholars trained in very different archaeological traditions: Athanassopoulos (Old World or Mediterranean culture historical-geographic tradition) and Wandsnider (New World or Americanist processual tradition). The volume strives to bring together a diverse array of case studies stretching from eastern Spain (Barton et al.) to the Black Sea's Sinop peninsula (Doonan) and to the Jordanian plateau (Hill), and from the Middle Palaeolithic to the "Modern" periods, a temporal span of some 35,000 years and a spatial expanse of some 3700 kilometers (east-west). Wilkinson, moreover, supplies a chapter comparing and contrasting Mediterranean and Near Eastern survey methodologies, the latter avowedly extensive in approach and, as Wilkinson emphasizes, usually conducted at the "expense" of the "offsite" survey record, upland settlement, and habitation in the semi-arid steppe zone of the region. The attempt to produce a coherent volume out of all this diversity was no easy editorial task. How successful is the effort and, given that some scholars now seem to presume there are certain ways we must do field surveys, how worthwhile is it?

The first point that must be made relates to coverage: no matter how spread out in time and space the case studies may be, this volume certainly does not offer a representative sample of landscape archaeology in the Mediterranean. Of over 150 different islands in the Mediterranean, for example, it treats only two: Cyprus and Kythera in the Aegean. Beyond Greece, Turkey, and Italy, which do receive treatment, there are an additional thirteen "mainland" countries unrepresented in the volume. Thus prospective readers should be aware of the misleading title. The subtitle ("Current Issues") is equally misleading, as the range of viewpoints expressed is decidedly narrow, stemming primarily from an "Americanist" tradition. The introduction to the volume (Athanassopoulos and Wandsnider), for example, seeks to present the history and current state of landscape archaeology in the Mediterranean. This necessarily brief but knowledgeable overview touches upon many aspects of the history of regional survey archaeology in the Mediterranean; less satisfactorily, it implies that "current issues" in this field cannot but benefit from the methodological contributions of "Americanist New Archaeology."

Having suggested that postmodernist, agency-centered, revisionist critiques of the New Archaeology (and the critique of those critiques) have resulted in a "healthy diversity of archaeological approaches, as recently surveyed in Americanist archaeology" (p. 11), the authors list four different approaches to studying archaeological landscapes: (1) modified, environmentally oriented, functionalist, settlement-pattern studies; (2) studies that reflect human agency and the "reflexivity" of landscape monuments; (3) taphonomical and evolutionary studies of the landscape; and (4) attempts to relate monument construction to evolutionary principles (essentially unexplored here). Nowhere do they draw attention to phenomenological approaches, off-site survey techniques and analyses (except with reference to Given's paper), geomorphological studies (except by inference under taphonomic approaches), or the peopling of past landscapes, all of which are key features practiced by many regional survey projects in the Mediterranean today.

In her own contribution to the volume, co-editor Wandsnider suggests that because of difficulties in determining the spatial extent of "sites" as well as their temporal resolution, amongst other reasons, we should abandon regional settlement studies and adopt an approach based on the "complex formational nature of archaeological landscape deposits" (p. 72). A closer reading reveals that her agenda is Binfordian in inspiration, processual in approach, and (still) essentially anti-historical in attitude (compare the earlier volume Wandsnider co-edited with J. Rossignol, entitled Space, Time, and Archaeological Landscapes [New York: Plenum, 1992]). Her call for a "metaphysical shift" in conceptualizing archaeological landscapes (pp. 74-75) involves a change from focusing on people and individual activities to detailing places (a major step backward), a shift from site-based to an artifact- or feature-based approach (as long as the focus remains on taphonomic processes and the formational history of the landscape), and the indivisible nature of the interrelationships amongst people, artifacts, and landscape. Whilst much current work has long since adopted the last two aspects (and would, accordingly, find the first aspect somewhat contradictory), I doubt that many regional survey archaeologists in the Mediterranean would concur with Wandsnider's vision of this metaphysical shift: "where formerly functional, ethnographic, and historic models of agent, time, and causation were embraced, today we see increasing use of multi-temporal, multi-processual modes of interpretation" (p. 75, emphasis added).

To be sure, regional survey archaeology in the Mediterranean continues to change in response to ever more complex and engaging ways of treating past landscapes; in that respect it is useful to have a volume that offers different (i.e., non-European, non-Mediterranean) theoretical perspectives. A contextual-historical approach, however, offers a richer, more inclusive and interactive perspective on landscapes than one based on a narrowly conceived, ecologically based, processual design. By linking together dynamically the physical, environmental form, the human exploitation, and the social experience of the landscape, one gains a more comprehensive understanding of cultural process, human agency, and the reciprocal nature and mutual impact of the relations between people and their landscape(s).

The relentlessly processual focus championed by Wandsnider characterizes several other papers in this volume and distinguishes them markedly from most contemporary fieldwork and research in this region. Moreover, the "scientistic" jargon and quantitative analyses are as ubiquitous and impenetrable in these chapters as they are in the pages of American Antiquity. Compare, for example, the somewhat tortured and multi-layered discourse on a methodology grounded in the principles of adaptation and maladaptation (Hill), which goes on for pages, with the concise, clear statement on five key aspects of intensive survey archaeology in the Mediterranean (Given), which takes up one paragraph. Most Mediterranean survey archaeologists would not, I think, envision the long-term history of human occupation in the Mediterranean basin as "... the human transformation from simple consumer and ecosystem participant to ecosystem modifier to ecosystem manager" (Barton et al., pp. 101-2), with all its evolutionary overtones and implications.

The lack of a firm editorial hand leads to several contradictory statements on methodology: compare Gregory's sampling strategy (also Given, Hill) and his plea to leave as little trace of survey activity as possible on the landscape (i.e., collecting as few artifacts as necessary to identify temporal and cultural components) with Doonan's call for "total coverage" survey and a 100% collection strategy, or with Barton et al.'s strategy "to collect all prehistoric artefacts." In light of the last point, one can only wonder what the Spanish-American team (Barton et al.) does when it comes across Bronze and Iron Age, Classical, Byzantine, Medieval, and modern artifacts--do they discard them or ignore them? In either case, they are subject to the indignation rightly expressed in papers by Athanassopoulos and Diacopoulos, who criticize survey practices and approaches which fail to see that not only did people inhabit these landscapes between A.D. 700-2000, they also left behind--in most cases--the bulk of the material remains that pepper Mediterranean archaeological landscapes.

Finally, however much I applaud the use of archaeological theory to interpret and understand the past (and past landscapes), the prescriptive approaches that dominate the chapters by Doonan, Barton et al., Hill, and Kardulias and Yerkes seem to me to cut directly against the grain of survey methodologies as practiced in the Mediterranean. In other words, it is not World Systems theory, evolutionary adaptations, or even the Annales school of historical research that should set the parameters of regional survey methodology, but rather the landscape itself and the people who inhabit it--in all their diverse topographic, geomorphological, economic, and socio-political aspects.

The well-read Mediterranean survey archaeologist will realize that the contents of four chapters in this volume overlap very substantially with the same authors' publications elsewhere. Two other chapters stand out for all the wrong reasons. Athanassopoulos maintains quite perversely and incorrectly that the medieval period has been completely neglected by archaeological research in the eastern Mediterranean. To argue this point she sets up a series of straw men ("orthodox" Classical archaeology, the dominance of prehistorians over survey archaeology, the lack of sensitivity to particular historical contexts) and engages with very limited datasets through questionable assertions (e.g., difficulties in relating archaeological data to administrative documents) and dubious generalizations (e.g., the theoretical value or applicability of a Braudellian, Annales-oriented approach for structuring field methodology in Mediterranean surveys). Doonan sets up a series of issues--communication, interaction, production, consumption--that he proposes to examine by a "multi-sited" (whatever that means) and three-tiered approach, but fails utterly to convey to the reader how his ambitious, multi-layered methodologies (p. 48, table 3.1) will confront those issues, especially given the very limited tracts of land thus far covered in the Sinop peninsula (p. 51, table 3.2). Doonan's chapter describes an overly ambitious project too prescriptive in its assumptions and too keen to pack in every theoretical and procedural trend in contemporary archaeology.

This brief review has perhaps been overly critical and has given too little credit to the data-rich nature of several chapters in the volume. Many chapters are of interest on multiple levels, provide insight into periods too often neglected in Mediterranean archaeology generally, and merit attention for their very diversity of approach. Specialists will find much of this material transparent, and it does exemplify well the work and perspectives of some Americanist archaeologists working here and there in the Mediterranean. Its wider relevance to scholars working on landscape archaeology elsewhere in the world will likely be less transparent and appealing. This is unfortunate, as it will do little to dispel the misguided notion of "myopia" in Mediterranean landscape archaeology, or to convince skeptics that there is (still) more than one way to conduct regional archaeological surveys.

A. BERNARD KNAPP

UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW