Gender in Ancient Cyprus: Narratives of Social Change on a Mediterranean Island.

Knapp, A. Bernard

Gender in Ancient Cyprus: Narratives of Social Change on a Mediterranean Island. By DIANE BOLGER. Walnut Creek, Cal.: ALTAMIRA PRESS, 2003. Pp. xvii + 268, illus. $34.95 (paper).

Recent attempts to engender Cypriot archaeology have not always engaged successfully with current feminist theory or with the now immense corpus of published research on gender, the body, and sexuality. Diane Bolger's new monograph represents a pioneering attempt to highlight the role of women and men in reconstructing the Cypriot past. She roams widely and delves deeply into gendered relations and gendered identities on prehistoric Cyprus, tackling such issues as domestic space, the life-cycle, labor and technology, ritual performance, social agency, and sexual ambiguity. Bolger is more confident when treating archaeological data that lie within her own realm of expertise (the earlier prehistory of Cyprus, especially the Chalcolithic periods), but she treats a span of nearly eight thousand years with a fluency and competence that instill admiration and warrant recognition. She offers up-to-date, succinct overviews of the current literature--archaeological and otherwise--on gender, feminist theory, agency (chapter 3), the life-cycle (chapter 4), childhood and adolescence (chapter 5), and mortuary ritual and practices (chapter 6). Chapter 8--"Who Tells the Story?"--reveals how the published literature in Cypriot archaeology (as in archaeologies the world round) has been and continues to be dominated by men, and is written from an androcentric perspective, one in which women and children have counted for little, and where the "big issues"--social complexity, rise of the state, production and exchange, ritual and ideology--are still tackled by men, and are concerned primarily with men alone, whether implicitly (ungendered "elites") or explicitly (farmers, warriors, kings, priests).

Bolger's ambitious and wide-ranging enterprise, however, inevitably results in some contradictions and errors of fact. Moreover, and not at all atypically in gender-based research that seeks to expose earlier, androcentric biases, she has adopted an overly critical approach to the work of nearly all other archaeologists (with the unwarranted exception of her colleagues at the University of Edinburgh) who have worked on Cyprus. She begins (pp. 1-9), for example, by criticizing Hector Catling's use of the passive voice. James Stewart's retrodiction of the present onto the past, Einar Gjerstad's essentialist (binary) view of men/women, Bernard Knapp's unilinear, economic view of social development and change, Walther Fasnacht's stereotyped division of labor, and Sturt Manning's views on emergent (ungendered) elites as the prime forces of social change.

Those of us still living are all guilty (so too are many others that Bolger fails to cite). Those who are dead would (probably) not be writing today the way they did fifty years ago. And those who are still writing have engaged with theoretical issues such as agency and social identity, ritual and ideology, the social life of things, and many more, long before Bolger herself adopted such approaches. Over the past decade, for instance, both Manning and I have written on issues of gender, feminist theory, and masculinist approaches, in works that Bolger castigates, misunderstands, or overlooks. Granted that previous work must be critiqued and its shortcomings laid bare, it is still unfortunate that Bolger feels the need to criticize repeatedly those who would support her views most strongly.

Readers of this journal may wonder how Bolger views the place and role of Cyprus within the ancient Near East. Well, not very clearly. For the most part, she seems to regard Cyprus as part of the ancient Near Eastern cultural sphere (e.g., pp. xv, 8, 37, 65, 92, 174 [where Early Dynastic burials are compared, for no good reason, with those of Late Bronze Age Cyprus], 180). At other times, she seems to regard the island as part of "old Europe" (p. 93) or the Mediterranean (p. 190). In discussing spatial and architectural data (pp. 37-38), the two source areas are conflated, and both the PPNB Levant and Neolithic Greece are compared with Late Bronze Age Cyprus. In discussing issues of social complexity (pp. 195-96), it seems evident that Bolger regards Cyprus as part of the Near East, yet on the following page (197, discussing spatial aspects of gender), she states unequivocally that Cyprus was isolated from the neighboring cultures of Anatolia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and the western Mediterranean. Finally, in discussing intellectual developments in the field (pp. 199-202). Cypriot archaeology is firmly placed in its (Aegean) "Classical" context. Indeed, early (French) interests in Cyprus's distinctly Greek style of sculpture, exhibiting both Near Eastern and Egyptian traits, meant that Cypriot art was viewed primarily as a provincial imitator of a superior Aegean culture.

As I have pointed out frequently elsewhere, Cypriot material culture differs markedly, and continuously through time, from that of all surrounding regions. Apart from the inevitable colonization episodes during Cyprus's earliest prehistory, evidence of foreign contact remains highly circumscribed until the advent of the Bronze Age. To what extent this "isolation" was linked to the nature of insularity, or in what measure our interpretations stem from the erroneous concept that islands are self-sustaining systems to be understood primarily in their own terms, remain focal questions that are still largely understudied. Archaeologists must, in the first instance, examine the prehistory of Cyprus primarily from an internal perspective; such discontinuities that typify the archaeological record--from its earliest colonization through the Iron Age--equally demand that we consider internal developments within wider Mediterranean and Near Eastern contexts. Bolger does so, but in a vague and often confusing manner.

In virtually every section of this study, Bolger emphasizes the importance of context (pp. 16, 90, 102, 112, 189), the need to balance theory with closer scrutiny of objects (p. 109), and the failure of many archaeologists to examine the data they discuss "first hand" (pp. 101, 135). Whereas, in principle, I would agree with Bolger, it is not always possible to examine material "first hand" or through a "high powered lens" (p. 135); indeed Bolger herself has come up short in this respect. In discussing a well-known "genre scene" on an Early Cypriot Red Polished vessel, the "Marki Bowl" (pp. 115-17, fig. 4.10), Bolger illustrates an object that is indeed from Marki, but from Marki Pappara (not Marki Alonia as she has it--see Desmond Morris, The Art of Ancient Cyprus [Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1985], 274-75, fig. 488). More unfortunately, the "Marki (Pappara) Bowl" is not the one she goes on to discuss and interpret on pages 116-17. This is, rather, the "Pierides Bowl," said to have been found at Marki and now in the Pierides Collection in Larnaca (Morris 1985: 277-78, fig. 490).

Others have interpreted the actual "Marki (Pappara) Bowl" as depicting people engaged in grinding corn or making bread. On the Pierides Bowl, Morris (1985: 278) already had observed that its scenic elements--men, women, infants, animals, various other objects or installations--seem to be arranged in "a deliberate time sequence," whilst Stuart Swiny (in A History of Cyprus, ed. T. Papadopoulos [Nicosia: Archbishop Makarios III Foundation, 1997], 204-5), in his own interpretation of this same scene, added that what Morris saw as an "oven" might equally be seen as the stomion of a tomb, "... in which case this scene would represent the final event of the life cycle played out around the rim of this remarkable vessel" (emphasis added). Bolger adopts Swiny's interpretation wholesale (without citing him), but gives it a more gendered spin. She suggests that the portrayal on the bowl of nineteen men, women, pregnant women, unsexed individuals, and an infant represents a narrative of the life-cycle in prehistoric Cyprus, from pregnancy to childbirth, "partnering," parenting, working, and death.

Although one might question why Bolger interprets the scene depicted on the Pierides Bowl as representing a "nuclear family group," she has provided an appropriately gendered analysis of the overall composition, one that would have been more compelling had she presented a new line-drawing of the vessel (or at least illustrated the correct vessel). Given Bolger's insistence that archaeologists must take into account the contextual associations of all this evidence "amassed from decades of fieldwork and research" (p. 109), we might ask that she live up to her own expectations of others before offering such an elaborate interpretation that cites one object but describes and discusses another.

Contradictions are somewhat rife in this volume, and a close reading of the text will leave some readers wondering exactly where Bolger stands on such issues as evolutionary trajectories and unilineal approaches, the rise of the state, essentialist and binary approaches, the role of individuals in Cypriot archaeology, and more. For example, despite Bolger's disavowal of evolutionary approaches to the study of culture change (e.g., pp. 8, 36, 41, 76), this entire volume is patently evolutionary and "predetermined" in its orientation. Although monumental architecture, and particularly the Late Bronze Age "fortress" at Enkomi, are linked to the rise of state-level society (p. 47), and whereas we are told that the "first state societies" emerged in this period (p. 161), elsewhere Bolger states emphatically that Cypriot Late Bronze Age society never reached the state level (p. 50). By the end of the book. Bolger seems to have decided that "... [no] single authority ever managed to exercise control over the entire island at any time during the LBA [Late Bronze Age]" (p. 194). Specialists may be able to work out Bolger's reasoning in this matter, but non-specialists and students are bound to be confused by such lack of consistency.

Similarly, Bolger repeatedly and rightly critiques binary or "essentialist" divisions of labor, society, and people (e.g., pp. 51-52, 84, 107, 114; cf. p. 105), yet she frequently refers to public/private spaces, indoor/outdoor practices, and even binary male/female divisions in Bronze Age coroplastic art and mortuary practices (p. 174). At one point, she espouses but strongly questions the use of non-binary gender formulations, but then goes on to find biological, material and taphonomic evidence for a "third gender" and "transgender" burials (p. 175). Even specialists are going to be confused by this lack of consistency. In fact, the entire section on "gender mutability" in the Late Bronze Age (pp. 175-82) seems unduly speculative (even if challenging), somewhat forced, and assumes in any case that material objects are unproblematically gendered, thus accepting a notion seriously challenged by all gender-aware archaeologists, even Bolger herself elsewhere in this volume.

Finally, Bolger directly challenges (again, unilineal) models of social change that link the adoption of agriculture to specifically defined programs of task differentiation between males and females, including reduced participation by women in subsistence activities and a corresponding diminution in female status (pp. 59-60). Yet she follows this up by presenting (pp. 60-61) exactly such a model for Chalcolithic and Bronze Age Cyprus: "The increasing importance of pottery vessels [in the Cypriot Chalcolithic] ... is bound to have had an impact on the organization of labor and allocation of time ..., and the intensification of agriculture may have fostered the growth of task differentiation along lines of gender to accommodate more intensive work schedules. Certainly by the Bronze Age, it appears from evidence of scenic compositions depicting humans performing activities of daily life that male and female roles had begun to diverge" (p. 60). Based on her own earlier work on figurines, fertility, and the rise of social complexity on Cyprus, Bolger links this same unilineal trajectory to intensified agricultural developments and the corporate ownership of land in the Early Bronze Age (pp. 61-62). In contrast, she acknowledges (p. 106) that changes in gender constructs are not passive, but themselves form the basis for socioeconomic change. By now, even this specialist is confused about what Bolger actually believes with respect to unilineal models of change.

Some errors of fact should also be noted. Bolger (pp. 108-9, 188-89) questions the existence of "individuals" (or our ability to recognize them) in the Bronze Age, in particular arguing that the "plank figurines" of the Middle Cypriot period are no more "individual" than their Chalcolithic predecessors. Referring to an article that Bolger seems to find particularly problematic (A. B. Knapp and L. M. Meskell, "Bodies of Evidence on Prehistoric Cyprus," Cambridge Archaeological Journal 7 [1997]: 183-204), she (p. 189) denies our "claim" that individuals can first be observed in the archaeological record of the Cypriot Bronze Age. In fact, we claimed no such thing but instead noted that "... although the collection and deposition of these [Middle Chalcolithic] figurines may somehow represent communal action, the figurines could well have been used by individuals" (Knapp and Meskell 1997: 192).

Moreover, we argued that whilst Early-Middle Chalcolithic society on Cyprus was small in scale and egalitarian in nature, several of its material features might indicate an emerging individual status. We noted in particular that the increased attention given to children's burials in the Middle Chalcolithic cemetery at Souskiou Vathyrkakas might suggest the development of individual rights or status (Knapp and Meskell 1997: 199). Finally, we made the point that whilst we did not deny the existence of "individuals" in Cypriot prehistory prior to the PreBA, representations of individuals might change over time, and that the evidence for representing the self might be better or more extensive at one time than another (Knapp and Meskell 1997: 198). Given such clear statements of our position, it is difficult to see why Bolger sees fit to misrepresent them.

Bolger's own interpretation of the plank figurines only mentions in passing (p. 122) her earlier views (1993, 1996) in which these figurines were taken to represent an ideological shift in women's roles on prehistoric Cyprus. In that scenario, Bolger associated Chalcolithic figurines with women's procreative abilities, birthing, and fertility, firmly entrenched in an egalitarian society where women's status was held in high regard. By the Bronze Age, however, she argued that, under a patriarchal regime, centralized authorities had created structures and institutions that increasingly restricted women's roles. She thus sought to explain the origin of female oppression and women's diminished, "caretaker" status, as the result of social changes reflected in the figurines. Such changes thus signaled the emergence of the patriarchal family and the workings of state-level society. Bolger thus assumed, in her earlier work, that all plank figurines represented females, an interpretation that ignores the sexual ambiguity of these figurines, and fails to entertain the likelihood that sex per se may have had little relevance for those who produced and used them. We might also consider whether the apparent paucity of male figurines indicates that male authority was so firmly embedded in society that there was no need to signify it? Was masculinity, in the strictly Western sense, simply not a focus of social signification? Bolger's evolutionary meta-narrative, both here and in her earlier work, takes no account of such questions.

In an otherwise theoretically sophisticated (if occasionally confounding) work, it is disconcerting to see such a profound misunderstanding of Bourdieu's concept of habitus. Bolger, moreover, misspells his name (as Bordieu) throughout, even in the references (pp. 8, 9, 18, 189, 237). For Bourdieu, and most archaeologists who extrapolate from his work, habitus involves those unconscious, often subliminal dispositions towards certain perceptions and practices (e.g., sexual division of labor, morality, tastes, and the like) that may generate patterned behavior. Habitus is not, as Bolger seems to think, either "ritual behavior" (p. 118) or "new technologies and a new economic lifestyle" (p. 197).

Other, more minor errors of fact include:

pp. 22-23, 46, 75: contrary to what Bolger states, nobody has ever construed the Late Bronze Age administrative structures of Cyprus as "palaces."

p. 23: the "initial appearance" of multi-roomed structures in the Cypriot archaeological record occurred in the Early, not the Middle Bronze Age.

p. 155: the burials and related phenomena under discussion belong to the middle of the third, not the second millennium B.C.

p. 214: the first appearance of Cypro-Minoan writing took place in the sixteenth century B.C., not the fourteenth-thirteenth centuries B.C.

p. 224: archaeological evidence for the transitional Middle Cypriot III-Late Cypriot I period is not limited or unpublished, by any means; it is, perhaps, less well known to specialists, like Bolger, whose most important work is concentrated in the earlier prehistoric periods of the island.

Anyone with an abiding interest in Mediterranean, and especially Cypriot, archaeology can but gratefully acknowledge Bolger's fortitude and determination in undertaking this unprecedented foray into one of archaeology's most volatile and difficult interpretative arenas (gender relations), in a cultural area (Cyprus) that remains staunchly resistant to theoretical and social approaches. I have learned a great deal from Bolger's study, and will use this volume not only in my own research but also as a key reference work in courses I teach on Mediterranean and Cypriot archaeology, and on archaeological theory. Non-specialists, and in particular research students, however, need to be fully aware of its short-comings, especially the often confusing flaws that mar a better understanding of the crucial role that gender has to play in understanding the Cypriot past.

A. BERNARD KNAPP

UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW