Island Archaeology and the Mediterranean
An Odd Couple?
ReMA Thesis
Art History and Archaeology
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Pieter Swart
s1912240
Begeleiding: Dr. Lidewijde de Jong
Groningen / Rhauderfehn (D), 2014 / 2015
1
The Mediterranean is an absurdly small sea; the length and greatness of its history makes us dream it larger than it is.
From: The Alexandria Quartett (Balthazar) Lawrence Durrell
“Dieser klar umrissene Flecken Land war ganz und gar vollkommen und gleichzeitig verloren, wie das lose Blatt auf das er gezeichnet worden war. Jeglicher Bezug zum Festland war hier abhanden gekommen. Der Rest der Welt wurde einfach verschwiegen. Eine einsamere Insel habe ich nie gesehen“.
From: Atlas der abgelegenen Inseln, Judith Schalansky.
“…..maar de harpoenier blijft ondertussen de enige man die ik gekend heb die Bouvet-eiland ooit heeft zien liggen”.
From: Het IJspaleis,
Boudewijn Büch.
“…I once found a list of diseases as yet unclassified by medical science, and among these there occurred the word Islomania, which was described as a rare but by no means unknown affliction of spirit. There are people…who find islands somehow irresistible. The mere knowledge that they are on an island, a little world surrounded by the sea, fills them with an indescribable intoxication. These born “islomanes”…are direct descendants of the Atlanteans”
From: Reflections on a Marine Venus Lawrence Durrell
2
Content
Abbreviations ... 4
Acknowledgements ... 5
1. Introduction ... 6
1.1 Island archaeology, a grown-up sub-discipline? ... 8
1.2 Problem definition ... 13
1.3 Structure of the thesis ... 15
2. Island archaeology, description of a sub-discipline ... 17
2.1 Origins and sources of inspiration of island archaeology ... 17
3. Phenotypes of islands ... 20
3.1 The real thing ... 20
3.2 The not so real thing: dry islands ... 21
3.3 The even less real thing: lost or phantom islands ... 22
3.4 The one-time island ... 23
3.5 The fantasy or literary island ... 24
3.6 Big island vs. small island ... 24
4. Islands in a non-geographical context ... 26
4.1 Social and psychological aspects of islands ... 26
4.2 Political and economic aspects ... 27
4.3 Philosophical aspects ... 30
4.4 The island as an artifact ... 31
5. The Mediterranean, its islands and their archaeology ... 32
5.1 Approach to a seascape ... 36
5.2 Island archaeology in the Mediterranean ... 39
6. Case studies ... 43
6.1 The Maltese archipelago, Rapa Nui in the Mediterranean ... 43
3
6.1.2. The temples ... 47
6.1.3. Isolation; an internal or external factor? ... 51
6.1.4 Unique or borrowed inspiration? ... 55
6.1.5 Malta as a benchmark for Mediterranean island archaeology ... 59
6.2 Crete, the labyrinth island ... 61
6.2.1 Monumental architecture ... 61
6.2.2 Possible examples ... 62
6.2.3 Monumental architecture: motives and functions ... 64
6.2.4 Crete versus Malta ... 64
6.2.5 Crete in its role as an island ... 65
6.3 Sardinia; the 8000 towers ... 66
6.3.1 Nuraghi and Mediterranean models ... 68
6.3.2 Sardinia as an island ... 69
6.4 Skyros ... 70
6.4.1 Island minus isolation ... 71
7. Evaluation and conclusion ... 74
7.1 The sea ... 74
7.2 The islands ... 75
7.3 Island archaeology in the Mediterranean ... 76
7.4 From the backyards of isolation towards an integration of archaeologies ... 79
Plates ... 81
4
Abbreviations
AD of the Christian era (Anno Domini) a.k.a also known as
BC Before Christ
BP before the present (era) ca. circa
e.g. for example (exempli gratia) EM I Early Minoan I (3100-2700) EM III Early Minoan III (2200-2000 BC) etc. and others/and so forth (et cetera) ft foot/feet
i.e. that is to say (id est) km kilometre(s)
km2 square kilometre(s)
LH IIIB Late Helladic IIIB (1300-1200 BC) LM IIIB Late Minoan IIIB (1300-1200 BC) p. page
pp. pages
5
Acknowledgements
My gratitude goes out to all those who, in one way or another assisted me in completing this thesis.
To the faculty and staff of the Groningen Institute of Archaeology at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen and the faculty and staff of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Malta for their patient assistance and guidance.
To my tutor Dr. Lidewijde de Jong and my mentor Dr. Elisabeth van ‘t Lindenhout, who is the second reader of this thesis and who was the one who convinced me that studying archaeology at an age of 61 years was definitely an option
To my mother whose motivation and inspiration encouraged me to keep going.
Last but not least to my associate ‘veterans’ Theo Verlaan and René Brandhoff, with whom I shared the first row of many a lecture room, this because our hearing and eyesight has deteriorated somewhat over the years. Their support and encouragement have been crucial factors in reaching the finishing line.
6
1. Introduction
In the British Museum there is a clay tablet on display that presumably depicts one of the oldest maps of the world dating from the 7th or 6th century BC. Remarkable is that this map from a Babylonian perspective portrays the world as surrounded by water (a bitter river or salt sea, as explained in the text on the tablet) and thus as an island. It is not clear whether the triangular protuberances from the circular image represent islands, mythical objects or a combination of the two (Brown, 1949, p. 33 and 38, Flygare, no date, p. 16, and Millard,
1987, p. 111).
Fig. 2: Sketched detail of Fig. 1: 14, 15, 16 & 17: salt sea
18, 19, 20, 21 & 22: islands?
The small circles represent cities (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_
Map_of_the_World#cite_ref- wikipedia_7-0)
Fig. 1: The map of the world, clay tablet found in Southern Iraq (700 – 600 BC)
(source: http://www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/cartography.htm)
7 only by geography, as being something like a ‘separate reality’. If the triangular shaped projections on the clay tablet are indeed meant to represent islands, which is suggested by the text on the reverse of the tablet, it is worth noticing that islands are located in an outsider position by the mapmaker, as being not quite of this world (Vallega, 2007, p. 284). The vagueness of the text on the tablet concerning the triangular shapes (Flygare, no date, pp. 13-16) intensifies this impression. The conception that islands are something special, separate from the rest of the world and even exotic or romantic is obviously very old and its impact, as we shall see, has not lost weight even in our days.
In the general (not necessarily scientific) perception of mankind islands play telling roles as isolated locations and stages for utopian fantasies (Lätsch, 2005, p. 17). This role is very visible in literature, not only because of the more often than not applied tropical, paradisiacal setting, but the natural wet enclosure can also serve to keep a story contained, easy surveyable (Myers, 2011, no page numbers) and manageable. Furthermore can influences from the outside and their consequences be administered by the discretion of the author. The preoccupation with sexuality present in the anthropological publications on islands and their inhabitants from Mead (1909-1978) and Malinowsky (1884-1942) is eagerly employed in literature. In a survey by Psychology Today from the 1990’s, islands scored as the most highly rated setting for men’s sexual fantasies (Myers, 2011). The attraction of islands was not lost on biogeography, anthropology, archaeology and other sciences that considered presumed island characteristics like isolation and a degree of deviance of the inhabitants useful in their research. Even in a perhaps more banal context like pop music, islands play a role which can be seen (or rather heard) in for instance “La Isla Bonita” by Madonna, “Going Back to
Okinawa” (Ry Cooder) or “Island in the Sun” (Belafonte) etc. Other outcrops are a
considerable number of movies like “Blue Lagoon” and the 150 episodes of the American television series “Fantasy Island” (1977-1984). In summary: islands whether existing, disappeared or fantasy, are popular if not sexy.
8 water, of course, should be called simply archaeology. We do not speak of those working on the top of a mountain as mountain archaeologists” (G. Bass, 1966, p. 15).
This sort of put downs and the fact that maritime archaeology in the beginning (and perhaps still ongoing) sometimes sailed closely to plain treasure hunting, caused maritime archaeology to adopt the insight that objects and subjects on dry land are unmistaken connected to the maritime world and to move closer again to ‘dry land or plain archaeology’. The somewhat exclusive combination of diving and archaeology in a difficult and exhausting context, diminished somewhat by this move. The definition that Muckelroy gives of maritime archaeology “the scientific study of the material remains of man and his activities on the sea” (Muckelroy, 1978, p. 4) avoids to this purpose consciously the word ‘underwater’ or as Dr. Gambin from the University of Malta in his opening lecture on maritime archaeology remarked: “You don’t have to bring your diving goggles for this course” (Gambin, 2011, personal communication). Horden and Purcell, in their relatively recent standard work on the Mediterranean, pay direct attention to the sub-field on three of their some seven hundred pages (Horden and Purcell, 2000, pp. 612 - 614). Horden and Purcell are of course historians, but still maritime archaeology has added considerable value to the history of the Mediterranean and other places both as watery subject as well as a solid ground subject.
1.1 Island archaeology, a grown-up sub-discipline?
9 lesser scale by ethnography (Binford, 1962, p. 224 and Trigger, 1996. pp. 386-387). Another point could be some premature enthusiasm for cultural evolutionism in the United States, where Darwin’s theory concerning biological evolution is generally eyed with suspicion if not downright dismissal. One could presume some overcompensation in a field not directly constrained by religious influences and argumentations although archaeology has long ago unsettled the religious dogma concerning the age of the earth and in particular its inhabitants being only 8000 years old.
Islands and their inhabitants have always been considered as special, different, exotic, faraway or remote by the rest of the world. This view is not restricted to islands but is also valid for other allegedly remote areas like Patagonia or the Dutch province Friesland. Islands, however, do have an additional factor, i.e. that man needs a certain degree of technology to leave or visit them (that is if we neglect the option of swimming, which in some rare cases could be a possibility). Homer (8th century BC?) acquaints us with the islands of the Phaeacians, the Laestrygonians, the Cyclopes, Calypso’s island, Circe’s pig-farm island, Ithaka, the home of Odysseus etc. Plato (428-348 BC approximately) in Critias and Timaeus refers to the island of Atlantis, situated outside the Pillars of Hercules. Even if the existence of these islands can be regarded as ‘under discussion’, whole libraries are filled with publications on their possible locations and history. Other libraries have been filled with tales of islands either existing or rather not since Homer’s and Plato’s days and this shows something of the near magical attraction of islands to mankind.
10 to another were scrutinized and the differences in the dynamics between plants and animals and islands versus the dynamics between humans and islands were judged as problematic (Broodbank, 2000, p. 30). The premise of an island as a Petri dish or laboratory, assuming a high degree of isolation, was also questioned (Fitzpatrick, 2004, p. 4 and Rainbird, 2007, p. 2) and island archaeology was reduced to a supporting role on the archaeological stage. Judging from the number of publications, the sub-discipline is celebrating a comeback since the beginning of the new millennium, however, with a changed repertoire. The concept of islands in a laboratory function has been abandoned, isolation is no longer the overall perspective and the focus is now more on how the inhabitants of islands acted in order to diminish or to maintain the effects of a relative isolation. This agency can only be achieved by coming to terms with nautical mobility in one way or another and so connectivity (Horden and Purcell, 2000), an emphasis on maritime identity (Boomert and Bright, 2007, p. 18) and “the archaeologies of the seas” (Rainbird, 2007, pp.172-173) now play a prominent role, a role that in the long run , however, could make island archaeology redundant.
Except for the thoroughly and not to be underestimated human inclination towards the presumed exotic and romantic characteristics of these literally and figuratively speaking geographical outliers, the sub-discipline of the ‘old’ island archaeology was based on more solid assumptions than the ‘new’ one (I hesitatingly use this denomination and do not intend to install this as jargon). The old reasons for the importance of island archaeology being isolation, laboratory function, islandness and clearly defined context have given way to a much broader approach, that instead of isolation emphasizes connectivity, an approach that invokes a downgrading of the position of islands as isolated cultural and social contexts and makes ‘team players out of loners’. This then hints that islands are not that special after all, albeit from the archaeological point of view.
I will now pay attention to the pronouncements of some of the protagonists of the ‘new’ island archaeology. To some, like Cyprian Broodbank the mere existence of islands is enough: “Island archaeology is worth doing because islands exist in profusion, and their archaeology is undeniable fascinating,….Or if there must a justification, let it be that island societies as they once existed have all but vanished, and that archaeology is our only avenue into most islands’ past for most of the time” (Broodbank, 2000, p. 32). This sounds a lot like Reinhold Messner1 who answered when asked by journalists why he deemed it necessary to
11 climb Mount Everest: “Because it is there”. Paul Rainbird makes minced meat of Broodbanks statement, calling it “ahistorical essentialist claptrap” from a “nesophile” (Rainbird, 2007, p.
168). Rainbird more or less dismisses the arguments of Broodbank as being comparable to a passion for the Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s travels romanticism. While the above cited Broodbank argument on first sight does not look decisive, it is very human, after all archaeologists are only humans too and the attraction of islands in whatever form is a through and through human and very old emotion as we have seen. Meanwhile Helen Dawson cites a more serious definition from Broodbank: ”Island archaeology can be broadly defined as a theoretical and analytical framework of comparison that recognizes a number of common themes and questions relevant to islands” (Dawson, 2014, p. 14).
The relevant common themes and questions are elaborated in the following definition stated by S.M. Fitzpatrick: “Different groups of people on islands, by virtue of their restricted territory and because they are surrounded by water, developed in at least partial isolation, which influenced how they evolved culturally. Isolation was not solely geographical, but had psychological aspects as well. If we agree that islands have some inherent ’boundary’, whether mental or physical, then we can approach islands as methodologically and theoretically different than continental landmasses, although this does not mean that islands were more or less isolated just because they are surrounded by water” (Fitzpatrick, 2004, p. 7). The emphasis on both the geographical and the psychological aspects of the isolation underline the possible ‘differentness’ of the human element of islands. The fact that the inherent ‘boundary’ of islands can have a mental or physical appearance widens the horizon considerably by annulling the myopic ‘land surrounded by water’ concept and increases the number of possibilities of an island. The mental or physical boundary should perhaps be expanded by a human agency factor: a willingness to either stimulate or challenge isolation. Although this factor is heavily influenced by mental and physical factors, degrees of isolation, supposed cults of insularity or their antipoles are to a large extent based on deliberate choices.
On the website of the Society for American Archaeology we find the Island & Coastal Archaeology Interest Group: “The Island & Archaeological interest group is aimed at archaeologists and other scientists with interest in the techniques, methodologies, and theories used to investigate island and coastal regions. The interest group provides an international forum for archaeologists from different scientific backgrounds who share a common interest
12 in studying islands, archipelagoes, and coastal regions across time and space. The goal of the interest group is to advance the field of island and coastal archaeology and facilitate the professional development and growth of scholars interested in questions related to the role that these environments played in human history” (Society for American Archaeology, 2013). We may note that in this recently (fall 2013) established interest group, the field has broadened from islands to archipelagoes and coastal regions and thus waters down the importance of the island as a solid context. Conspicuous is also that island and coastal environments are supposed to play a role and not the inhabitants of these environments. I somewhat distrust interest groups, they can quickly become a waste of time: are we into archaeology or interest groups? Remarkable in this statement is also that the explicit existence or perhaps the necessity for a sub-discipline is not clearly suggested or called for, a much vaguer term, ‘the field of island and coastal archaeology’ is being used.
“Island Archaeology is coming of age” writes Nellie Phoca-Cosmetatou and continues:”…it now constitutes a distinctive sub-field of Archaeology” (Phoca-Cosmetatou, 2011, p. 17). Judging by the flood of publications on the subject, it is obvious that island archaeologists consider islands as anomalous territories to such an extent that not merely archaeology applied to pieces of land surrounded by water, but a kind of ’special branch is’ called for (Boomert and Bright, 2007, p. 3). One gets the impression that alleged sub-cultures can only be treated by sub-disciplines or sub-fields. An important issue is whether islanders themselves do seem to perceive their territories as mysterious or fascinating (Nunn, 2006, p. 253, Büch, B., 1991, pp. 15-16 and Lipsius, A., 1892) and entertain a cult of insularity as suggested by island archaeologists. The experience of an island context by visitors and inhabitants is certainly different, whereby inhabitants (long term) usually judge their situation as less favorable while visitors due to their usually short sojourn only have eye for the positive factors (Vogiazakis, Mannion and Pungetti, 2008, p. 5-6).
13 2007, pp. 3 & 17-18). I consider the effort of cleaning up among sub-disciplines laudable, but when this should be achieved by the immediate founding of a new one, I am less enthusiastic. Boomert and Bright propagate “the study of human perspectives ….in archipelagic and coastal mainland, thus maritime, environments, where human societies are united by a focus on the sea….” (p. 18). If we consider for instance the Mediterranean only as a maritime environment, I consider this oversimplified because it is far more than that and in this perspective the study of maritime identity offers too limited a scope to handle this.
“Island archaeology is both the application of archaeology to islands and the study of the culturally distinctive developments and ecological changes that characterize the history of human settlement of islands around the world” (Fitzpatrick, Erlandson, Anderson and Kirch, 2007, p. 230). Fitzpatrick, Erlandson, Anderson and Kirch go along with island archaeology being the application of archaeology to islands, but insist on ‘islandness’ where it concerns distinctive developments and ecological characteristics of human activities on islands and well “around the world”. With this they declare all islands with their respective surrounding waters as a constant data set without taking account of the diversity of islands and their contexts.
1.2 Problem definition
14 Mead, published in the 1930s, was many years later, criticized by (among others) Derek Freeman in 1983 and Steven Pinker in 1997 and they practically invalidated Mead’s publications on human behavior and interaction on small Pacific islands (Freeman, 1983 and Pinker, 1997, pp. 368-369). In my perspective, anthropology is not specifically focused on islands but on groups of humans who preferably have their habitat in an exotic and isolated setting whereby the isolation at least partly must be understood as the ignorance of others (we) about their lives. Some influence on the above mentioned decline of island archaeology during the 1980s could well be ascribed to the impact of the criticism on Margaret Meads work.
Island archaeology has perhaps tried to jump on the bandwagon of anthropology, that had a very popular image (before the criticism on Margaret Mead’s work, that is) as being able to contribute considerably to human knowledge by performing fieldwork in exotic, isolated areas such as islands either in a wet or dry context, inhabited by people “whom they believe to be the guardians of a secret of great relevance to the rest of the human race” (Barley, 1983, pp. 9-11)
15 There is a long-lasting worldwide trend towards specializations, an inclination to wall in the own field of expertise: the above mentioned independent path of maritime archaeology is one. Up to a point specializations are just as important as necessary. The specializations in the medical science are a good example and archaeology also could not do without specializations in pottery, human and animal bones, architecture, agriculture, periods etc. We must be careful, however, that we do not blow up specialization to a ridiculous, ‘self destroying’ level that while wearing blinkers, looses all contact with the original science, and becomes an island of its own and a very isolated one at that. It is not my intention to portray maritime archaeology or island archaeology as being unserious but maritime archaeology only focused on items under water is too limited a field of research, something that the sub-field recognized and acted upon. Is Island Archaeology a ‘sub-discipline too far’, dimming the overall view and stimulating parochialism or is it an added value?
With this research I hope to add something to the current discussion on Island Archaeology turning up for instance in the Boomert and Bright publication “Island Archaeology. In Search of a New Horzon” (2007). Focus will be on the advantages and disadvantages of a sub-discipline that is not very exact in defining its fields of study, hardly pays attention to what is ‘the context of the context’ of their research objects and handles isolation more or less as a constant and perhaps thrives on its own isolation: a form of presumptuous exclusivity.
1.3 Structure of the thesis
This discourse will first generally describe the origins and the foundations of island archaeology rooted in biogeography and anthropology. The concept, the definition and the perception, the phenotype island and the attitude of mankind towards this, will receive elaborate attention. This will include a discussion of the role of islands with regard to geographical, social, psychological, economic, political and philosophical contexts. The relationship between man and islands and the perception man applies concerning islands, either conscious or unaware, will be exposed and this will also include the romantically inclined relationship of man concerning islands as exhibited both in classic and modern literature and its derivates. The discussion is about whether ‘the island’ exists or whether a random island is a notch on a scale of islandness.
sub-16 discipline island archaeology. If we look at the more conspicuous monuments present in the Mediterranean in a data range from the Neolithic up until now we encounter the Pyramids, Pompeii, the Parthenon, the ruins of Troy, Carthage, Leptis Magna etc. Remarkable, however, is that some of the more unique monuments in a sense of not or hardly repeated elsewhere, are located on islands. Three outstanding examples are the temples of Malta, the nuraghes of Sardinia and the palaces of Crete. These monuments, being more or less ‘one of a kind’, supply a special status to the accommodating islands and the discussion will be around whether the monuments present the islands as something special or whether the islands while being special (e.g. isolated) enabled the emergence of these unique monuments. In order to present a somewhat balanced unit of case studies, I have chosen two big islands (Sardinia and Crete) with monumental architecture, one medium sized archipelago (Malta) with monumental architecture and a medium sized island (Skyros) without this sort of architecture. Problematic in my choice of case studies, is the fact that both Crete and Sardinia are for some people too big to be considered islands in a Mediterranean context (Lätsch, 2005, p. 25). The problems arise around the fact that not to everybody an area of land, smaller than a continent, surrounded by water, is an island. I will elaborate on this subject below in 3.1 The real thing.
17
2. Island archaeology, description of a sub-discipline
The above cited Broodbank argument that Island Archaeology is worth doing because islands exist in profusion and their archaeology is “undeniable fascinating” (Broodbank, 2000, p. 32), has a twofold range: The first one about the profusion of islands is an argument analog to the MacArthur and Wilson argument that islands are more abundant (and easier to handle, in the sense of easier surveyable due to their relatively small size) than continents (MacArthur and Wilson, 1967, p. 3). The ‘undeniable fascinating’ aspect points again towards the deeply rooted human inclination to relish a certain affection for islands and their inhabitants, that some people (Rainbird for instance) would like to denominate as nesophilic or islomaniac romanticism, but still an attitude that should not be underrated.
2.1 Origins and sources of inspiration of island archaeology
The very roots of island archaeology can be found in the biogeography, the study of the distribution of species and ecosystems in geographic space and through geological time and they go back to the publications of James Cowles Prichard (1786-1848), Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, respectively Researches Into the Physical History of Mankind, The
Origin of Species and The Malay Archipelago. It is not exaggerated to claim that the modern
evolution theory is based on insular or island biogeography. Prichard, Darwin, Wallace and many others considered islands easy manageable units, that could serve as models, for other islands, for archipelagos and finally for whole continents (MacArthur and Wilson, 1967, p. 3).
Other arguments in favor of islands as tools or laboratories are the fact that islands are unique in their essence, multiplicity and variety as well as ample in supply (Boomert & Bright, 2007, pp. 4-5 and Giovas and LeFebvre, 2006, pp. 1-2).“An island is certainly an intrinsically appealing study object. It is simpler than a continent or an ocean, a visible discrete object that can be labeled with a name and its resident populations identified thereby. In the science of biogeography, an island is the first unit that the mind can pick out and begin to comprehend” (MacArthur and Wilson, 1967, p. 3).
The manageability of islands as a tool as introduced by Prichard, Darwin and Wallace was taken up by anthropologists in the beginning of the 20th century. Margaret Mead and Bronislaw Malinowski became epoch making protagonists with the publication of their books
18 preoccupation with sexuality should not lead to stereotyping the anthropology of that period (Parker & Murray, 2012, no page nrs.) but it certainly did enhance the exotic character of certain islands and archipelagos in the general perception. Anthropologists are in general not very explicit about descriptions or definitions of their research area, it seems that exoticness and presumed isolation (this enhances exoticness and exclusivity) are the main motives. Isolation in anthropology is always strongly attached to being untainted by bad influences from the outside, the noble savage postulate as in Dryden’s play “The Conquest of Granada” (Dryden, J., 1672, Part I, Act I, Scene I) is never far away. Anthropologists deigning to come up with a solid definition of an island other then the encyclopedia based ‘an area of land surrounded by water’ are hard to find and both Mead and Malinowsky do not give the subject much thought in their books on Samoa and the Trobriand Islands.
The first person to directly apply the biogeography tools, islands as small and handy test cases, on archaeology was J.D. Evans in 1973 when he pointed out that the characteristics of (small) islands “are particularly appropriate for the archaeological study of populations” (Rainbird, 2007, p. 32). These characteristics are based on a certain degree of isolation that the sea bestows on the inhabitants of islands and the limitations on contact, interchange or diffusion this brings along (Rainbird, 2007, pp. 32-33 & Evans, 1973, pp. 517- 520). In 1977 Evans complains in an article on the Maltese archipelago that Mediterranean archaeology has done next to nothing to make use of the guidelines of biogeography or anthropology, but admits that there is a large difference between the degrees of isolation of the Mediterranean islands and the islands of the Pacific. He depicts the contrasting situation in the Mediterranean
19 We can now discern at least four reasons why archaeology practises island archaeology:
-The appeal of well-arranged coherences as present in all sciences. In this case the field of research is so to speak clearly mapped out by nature and makes discussion about extent of the research area redundant.
-The close affinity of archaeology with anthropology: “(American) archaeology is anthropology or its nothing” (Willey and Phillips, 1985, p. 2).
-Psychology has found out that the phenomenon island in the human perspective is experienced as special, exotic or romantic, which is supported by an extensive utilization in literature through the ages. Archaeologists are well aware of this and are not below highlighting this symptom in their publications (Rainbird, 2007, pp. 4-11).
20
3. Phenotypes of islands
The semiotics of islands formed a gold mine for human imaginary since stories are being told or written down. In one of the oldest of these stories, Homer’s Odyssey, all island aspects, the utopian, the dystopian and the transition from the former to the latter are featured. The distinct role of islands in man’s history and fantasy is not only caused by the pronounced physical features, but the sheer number of available units, there are some 180.000 islands, could also have an influence. Besides the real island type, a landmass surrounded by water, there are other types that probably outnumber the real ones easily.
3.1 The real thing
According to the Encyclopaedia Brittanica “an island is an area of land smaller than a continent and entirely surrounded by water. Islands may occur in oceans, seas, lakes or rivers”. The biggest island is Greenland2
with a surface area of 2,166,068 km2. Australia, also an area surrounded by water (7,617,930 km2) is considered a continent. The difference between an island and a continent is only vaguely defined on the basis of size, an exact transition size, however, is not indicated. Geography curricula during the 1960’s, determined the difference between the two geographical units on the perceptibility of maritime influence of the ocean on the meteorology of the entire surface of a water surrounded landmass. Although differences in the texture of a terrain (like mountains or plains) might diminish or intensify the impact of maritime meteorological influence, natural sciences still make do with this criterion (Lätsch, 2005, p. 25), which for huge islands like Greenland, Borneo (Kalimantan) and New Guinea is highly problematic and in fact puts the island status of these landmasses under discussion. Geography is inaccurate in defining the difference between island and continent but then rather precise in identifying a particular geographic entity as one thing or the other.
The inaccuracy of the ‘maritime influence’ factor is also illustrated by the fact that a watermass from the size of the Pacific generates considerably more ‘maritime influence’ in terms of meteorology as does a sea of the size and characteristics of the Mediterranean. When the island status of New Guinea in the Pacific is questioned or even discarded, islands like
2
21 Crete, Sardinia, Cyprus or Sicily in the Mediterranean have slim chances of being recognised as such, moreover so while they all lie pretty close to continents and are thus strongly exposed
to ‘continental influence’. In some scientific analyses islands with a certain predisposition of terrain, like a mountainous surface, are excluded. Examples are Sicily, Crete and Euboia whereby Sicily and Euboia have the double handicap of being mountainous and a positioning close to a mainland (Lätsch, 2005, p. 25). Island archaeology has to my knowledge not explicitely followed this example, but it has certainly failed to define islands with respect to their different contexts.
More subjective arguments could play a role: one can suggest that the bigger an island is, the less it feels like one. On Schiermonnikoog one never forgets that one is on an island whereas on Borneo this feeling can disappear rather quickly: „Je kleiner die Insel, desto größer die Sehnsucht nach ihr“3 (Maak, 2014). The degree of ‘islandness’ of a landmass, whether surrounded by water or not, seems more susceptible to human perception or illusion than to scientific definitions. During frequent visits to Honshu, Japan’s main island and the 7th
largest island in the world, the perception of being on an island never eluded me and I am quite certain that this perception was mainly sustained by other phenomena than the plain knowledge that I wason a landmass surrounded by water. A foreigner in Japan does not only have the impression that he is on an island but also in a world that in many aspects perhaps looks like his own e.g. in urban architecture, but is entirely different in cultural and linguistic aspects. This discrepancy between being on an island, but not having the feeling that one is on an island or vice versa is also mentioned by Rainbird who claims that archaeologists working in Britain do not experience Britain as an island and they then will not consider themselves as being involved in island archaeology. Meanwhile the work of Parker Pearson on Madagascar (twice the size of Britain) seems to be considered by many as island archaeology (Rainbird, 2007, p. 139).
3.2 The not so real thing: dry islands
22 not surround” (Braudel, 1966, p. 160). Other dry island contexts are for instance land locked countries like Bolivia, Burkina Faso or Nepal. Bolivia whose landlocked status dates from 1904 still boasts a navy that operates on Lake Titicaca as well as on the world’s seas (its base of an island by being (relatively recently) is in Rosario on the Rio Plata in Argentina). This country then offers a very special example as an island, cut off from the sea, meanwhile acting as if it was not so.
Another such context was West Berlin during the time that the German Democratic Republic (DDR) still existed with multifarious forms of isolation culminating in the blockade of 1948/1949, during which the city was only accessible by air and some 200.000 flights had to be operated to provide the inhabitants with necessities like food and fuel. In the 1970’s the artificial island status of West Berlin was implemented by German marketing organisations as a sterile environment (in the sense of: without outside influences or interferences) to try out new strategies and products. The marketing organisations needed a geographically defined, conveniently arranged and handy area with a degree of isolation either fixed by geographical parameters or as in this case by political and military facts. Not only were the geographic, political and military characteristics of the city ‘special’: the inhabitants were also considered as being ‘special’. Illustrations of this outlier position are the famous words of John F. Kennedy “Ich bin ein Berliner” and the fact that male inhabitants of the city were exempted from military conscription. In the rhetoric of the Cold War the inhabitants of West Berlin were portrayed as standing firm in a bastion against Communism something that in today’s press jargon would make them ‘heroes’. It is noteworthy that marketing values the isolation characteristics of the ‘West Berlin island’ but ignores symptoms of connectivity e.g. a yearning to belong to the normal world. ‘Islandness’ expressed by a tendency of hoarding goods in order to cope with sudden, future shortages is also disregarded (Lachotsky and Taag, 1971, personal communication).
3.3 The even less real thing: lost or phantom islands
23 others. There are a number of good reasons for non-existing islands appearing on serious charts: navigational errors, mistakes in charting and typography, optical illusions, fraud and the possible disappearance of volcanic islands that vanish as quickly as they appear (Stommel, 1984, pp. xv-xvii and pp. 102-104). Satellite photography has put an end to the existence of the lost islands, well almost: Podesta Island can still be found on ONC (Operational Navigation Chart) R-22 from 1975 (Source: Defence Mapping Agency Aerospace Center, St. Louis Air Force Station, Missouri, 1975, http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/onc/txu-pclmaps-oclc-8322829_r_22.jpg).
Another category of lost island is an uninhabited island that is so far of the beaten sea track that hardly anybody has ever seen it. An example of this type would be Bouvetøya (Bouvet Island, also known as Lindsay or Liverpool Island), a Norwegian possession in the South Atlantic Ocean (54°25’S 3°21’ O). The nearest land is Antarctica (1700 km) or Tristan da Cunha (1910 km), it was discovered in 1739 and originally reported as being an archipelago of three islands (Schalansky, 2009, pp. 48-49 & Stommel, 1984, pp. 98-99).
3.4 The one-time island
An example would be Urk in the Netherlands, an 11 km2 former island in the former Zuiderzee that saw its position change from sea island, to lake island when the Zuiderzee was closed off (in 1932) to become the IJsselmeer, a lake that at first was still salty. In 1939 it lost its island status definitely when the dam between Urk and Lemmer was closed within the framework of the reclamation project of the Noordoostpolder. Although Urk lost its status as a water surrounded area of land, its island identity or ‘islandness’ still has a high profile. Some elements of this identity are the dialect that deviates considerably from common Dutch, the fact that fishing (access to the sea remained available though lengthy) is still the economic mainstay of the area and the religious (and thus political) principles which are conservative, to put it mildly.
24 factors but also by contacts with the outside world, i.e. connectivity (Barrowclough, 2010, p. 31-43). This again shows that isolation is not the sole prerequisite on ‘what makes islanders tick’. Since Great Britain in the perception of archaeologists (see p. 13) never was an island in the first place, its status of one-time island since the completion of the Channel Tunnel needs no further discussion.
3.5 The fantasy or literary island
The most famous of this type of island is Atlantis as described by Plato in Critias and Timaeus. Although it is now generally accepted that this is about an imaginary location, the believers have not died out and after unsuccessfully having attempted to link Plato’s remarks to the volcanic disaster on Thera (Santorini) or to a location outside the Strait of Gibraltar, the new location is now between the Maltese archipelago and the African coast. In this theory, the Maltese islands together with Pantelleria and Lampedusa supposedly form the remnants of Atlantis drowned by volcanic activity (Mifsud, Mifsud, Sultana, Ventura, 2001, pp. 12-16). I would like to stress that the argumentation of the four gentlemen is free from ‘von Däniken dramaturgy’. In this context, it should be noted that not only the Pacific Ocean is suffering from real but disappearing islands, the Mediterranean also has its share with the partly disappearance of Santorini and the total disappearance of Graham Island. The latter surfaced in the Straits of Sicily in 1831, grew to a length of 900 ft and a height of 107 ft after which it disappeared again below the surface of the water (Stommel, 1984, pp. 70-71 & Mifsud, Mifsud, Sultana, Ventura, 2001, p. 12).
3.6 Big island vs. small island
25 explicitly follow this and personally I tend to see it as an archipelago consisting of wet as well as dry islands as for instance the Baliem Valley.
The enormous attraction of islands to man can be measured by the bookshelves needed to store literary works featuring on either real or imaginary locations. Just as sailors, fishermen, circus performers, truck drivers, prize-fighters etc. through time are often perceived as belonging to sub-cultures (Muckelroy, 1978, p. 3), islands and their inhabitants are generally considered as being remote, romantic and somewhat exclusive and this makes the fascination for the subject obvious. One of the most popular books of all times is Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, about a sailor left behind on an island. The sceneries of Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, another all time bestseller, are laid out mainly on islands. The idealistic society of Utopia described by Thomas Moore, is located on a fictional island. Lord of the
flies by William Golding pictures the allegoric interactions of a group of boys whose plane
26
4. Islands in a non-geographical context
Not only anthropology, archaeology, marketing or literature favour islands as tools. Islands have a long standing reputation as an ideal location to isolate prisoners as on the Île du Diable (French Guiana), St. Helena or Alcatraz, as a last resort for the dead as on the Isola di San Michele in the lagoon of Venice or imaginary, on the painting ” The Isle of the Dead” by Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901). Islands through time also have offered refuge to people who felt they could no longer live in their usual surroundings, for instance Pitcairn or on a larger scale Formosa (Taiwan). Molokai in the Hawai archipelago served for more than a hundred years (1866-1969) as a leper colony where people suffering from the highly contagious illness leprosy (Hansen’s disease) were isolated (Tayman, 2006, p. 1 and p. 281) The United States government used the Bikini Atoll (Marshall Islands) from 1946 until 1958 a test site for nuclear device making the island de facto unfit for human habitation: the isolation of an island applied to perfection (Vallega, 2007, p. 284 &
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/366624/Marshall-Islands/53997/History).
4.1 Social and psychological aspects of islands
The foremost human experience concerning islands is one of isolation, in the case of prisoners or lepers this experience will be negative, where as tourists can experience the offered isolation as positive. This positive experience is obviously not for everybody: I have talked to a number of people who experienced Easter Island (Rapa Nui) as a ‘creepy place’ while they were not able to specify this experience in words. Jared Diamond calls Rano Raraku, the quarry where the giant Easter Island statues were sculptured, ghostly and explains this by his feelings of being on a site that was suddenly, as on a whim, abandoned by the sculptors (Diamond, 2005, p. 79-80). In 1971 two Dutch writers, Jan Wolkers (1925-2007) and Godfried Bomans (1913-1971) each spent a week on the uninhabited island Rottummerplaat, one of the West Frisian islands off the Dutch coast. To the former it was an adventure while the latter experienced it as a kind of hell (Wolkers, 1971 & Bomans, 1972).
27 observations of biogeographists and anthropologists, are matching if not outdoing literary imagination (Tresemer & Tresemer, 2012, p. 5).
“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main” (Donne, 1642, XVII. Meditation). This quote from John Donne (1572-1631) calls in
question the ‘islandness’ of another island context, in this case a human being. The very essence of an island, it being a solitary and more or less isolated unit, the prerogatives that make the concept so attractive to several sciences, disciplines and human emotional sensations is being eroded here. In the same way Horden and Purcell erode the ‘islandness’ of the separate units of the island world of the Mediterranean: “....the all-too-apparent
fragmentation can potentially unite the sea and its coastlands in a way far exceeding anything predicable of a continent” (Horden & Purcell, 2000, p. 24). The sea, seen by many as an
isolating factor, provides the highway of connectivity and with this no island is an island, entire of itself. It must be emphasized that Horden and Purcell are talking about the Mediterranean, the Pacific might lead them to different perceptions.
4.2 Political and economic aspects
Perhaps we are momentarily living in a time in which islands are involved in a balancing act between oblivion and a zenith in political and economic significance. In antiquity and before, islands had a function as homelands, landmarks, beacons and perhaps a safe harbor for seafaring, an activity that in those days is evaluated as a precarious enterprise by many. Many islands provided raw materials and produce not available in the homeland of the visitors like obsidian on Melos or cloves in the Banda archipelago. In some cases islands also played a strategic role: Pampus (actually an artificial island) controlled the entrance to the harbor of Amsterdam from 1895 until 1952 when it was decommissioned.
In the post colonial era many islands became some sort of a nuisance, fly specs with little economic viability so unmistakably characterized in the case of the Dutch Caribbean islands in “De laatste resten tropisch Nederland” by W.F. Hermans3. Small islands with a colonial past lead precarious existences as independent states (e.g. Barbados) or as millstones around the neck of the motherland (Saba, St. Eustatius etc.). With a few exceptions most former or
3 “The last remains of the tropical Netherlands”, Hermans included in his book also Surinam positioned on the north coast of South
28 still colonial islands hardly play a role in the present chess game of worldwide political and economic interests. The Falkland Islands or Malvinas (an archipelago of 768 islands) over
which Argentina and Great Britain staged an armed conflict in 1982, are an example of such
an exception. Another island conflict is the diplomatic dispute over the South Kuril Islands, Habomai, Shikotan, Eturofu and Kunashiri between Russia and Japan. The tiny islands were annexed by Russia in the aftermath of World War II, when Japan had already surrendered, and nevergiven back, which still obstructs the conclusion of a peace treaty between the two countries. In the Mediterranean the conflict between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus is worth
mentioning and the recent political developments in Greece. These presented us with the Greek minister of Defense Kammenos, who in order to divert the attention from Greece’s real problems, tries to focus worldwide attention on a couple of uninhabited rocks, the Imia (Kardak) island group situated north of Kos. The official deemed it necessary to fly over the islets and drop a flower wreath to the memory of Greek soldiers who died there in a skirmish with Turkish troops some twenty years ago. The rocks are officially Greek, but in Turkey this is accepted only with reluctance (Martens, 2015). In the case of the Falklands and Imia one
could identify a misuse of the isolation of islands: the isolation is (at least partially) lifted for propaganda reasons at the expense of inhabitants and/or soldiers.
The most spectacular roles today are performed by islands that most people have never heard of, that are difficult or even impossible to locate in an old fashioned atlas, that are virtually uninhabited and where it is sometimes difficult to keep your feet dry during high tide. Examples of these locations are the Paracel and Spratly archipelagoes (see fig. 3) in the South
China Sea, an assorted collection of mainly uninhabited maritime geological features consisting of rocks, reefs, islands, atolls, cays and banks, some of which disappear at high tide. Six nations, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Taiwan and Malaysia claim rights
to either all or some of these specs, while several other nations like Japan and South Korea see their oil supply lines threatened by the would be owners of the islands. The United States
29 harbors and on the high sea is welcomed by several countries such as Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei (Kaplan, 2012, p. 225). The number of these elevations above sea level (albeit that some are not permanent) is estimated at being around 900 with a total surface of 11.75 km2 and a coastline of 1444 km. The islands which are only fit for serving as geographical markers in allocating territorial waters, provide access to rich fishing grounds, enormous quantities of natural gas, oil and other minerals present on or under the seabed.
(Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracel_Islandshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spratly_Islands).
Fig. 3: The Spratley and Paracel archipelagos in the South China Sea (source: http://car-memes.com/spratly-islands-philippines/2/)
30 The intrinsic merit of islands has in a relatively short span of time shifted from a landmass with people on it, to a rock in the water from which only the geographical coordinates are of interest: human agency no longer concurs with the landmass, but rather with its position. Most of the assorted elevations above sea level forming the Spratley and the Paracel islands were never inhabited in the past and if they are now, then by military contingents from the claimants and most of them never formed a field of operations neither to anthropologists nor to archaeologists.
4.3 Philosophical aspects
Human fascination concerning islands and the surrounding element water, in the form of seas and oceans, and sometimes lakes and rivers, is perhaps one of the most basic and unintentional human enticements. The writings of Thales of Milete (620 BC-546 BC), if they existed, are not handed down to us but we know from Aristotle (384 BC-322 BC) that Thales considered water the basic element, that it was the material cause of all things and that the earth rests on water: “ἀλλὰ Θαλῆς μὲν ὁ τῆς τοιαύτης ἀρχηγὸς φιλοσοφίας ὕδωρ φησὶν εἶναι (διὸ καὶ τὴν γῆν ἐφ᾽ ὕδατος ἀπεφήνατο εἶναι)“ (Aristotle, Metaphysics, 983, β 20)4. In the ancient Greek world, water played an existential role: the Greeks lived on islands or at least peninsulas and their basic geographical notion was similar to that of the Babylonians, i.e. that the earth was a landmass surrounded by water (see above). Furthermore the Greeks had to 8. seek refuge on the sea and on other territories, for instance islands, because of the parsimony of their homeland: they were ‘condemned to the sea’.
The most basic and absolute island situation in the world is inside the uterus where the embryo is quasi his / her own island surrounded by water, a status only enjoyed for some nine months and thereafter lost forever. Before birth we are an island within an island, an embryo surrounded by water that itself is encircled by a female body, this being once again an island even if John Donne (see above) does not agree (ten Bos, 2014, p. 203). The wide spread, build-in craving or fascination of man for islands could have its origins from this prenatal context as well as from the above mentioned ‘sexiness’ of islands. When in 1961 all 264 inhabitants of Tristan da Cunha were evacuated due to the danger from an imminent volcanic eruption, some 200 inhabitants decided to return two years later when the danger had abated somewhat. Although life is hard on Tristan, they could not live without their island.
4
31 4.4 The island as an artifact
Except for the above mentioned island concepts not based on a landmass surrounded by water, but on other geological particulars, we encounter man made or artificial islands as in the case of Pampus (see above). The medieval castle furnished with a moat can be interpreted as an island with strategic purposes but also serving as a power symbol for a family in its self chosen isolation and degree of ‘islandness’. The Maunsell naval forts in the Thamesestuary, dating from the Second World War, were built as strategic fortresses against German air and naval attacks (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunsell_Forts). In the sixties of the last century some of these naval platforms gathered a reputation as a foothold for illegal commercial radiostations and playing grounds for would be island rulers who did not stop short of declaring independence, issuing passports and printing ‘local currency’ thus elaborating on some island aspects like isolation and ‘islandness’ with a heavy dose of romanticism or weirdness, whatever your interpretation calls for (Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paddy_Roy_Bates). Other examples of the island as an artifact are projects like the Palm Jumeirah on the coast of Dubai, the airports of Osaka and Nagoya in Japan and our own reclaimed land areas in the IJsselmeer. Even in this field there are ‘dry’ islands like the Biosphere 2 an experimental closed environment from the University of Arizona where a number of scientists lived and experimented during a period completely sealed off from the rest of the world.
32
5. The Mediterranean, its islands and their archaeology
After having discussed the multilateral appearances of islands I now turn to the surroundings of the islands of my case studies. These surroundings do have a wet, a dry and an imaginary or experienced context. Above I have argued that ‘the island’ perhaps does not exist and the context of islands is important. In order to demonstrate that the context of Pacific islands, Caribbean islands, Mediterranean islands and others is different, it is necessary to evaluate the Mediterranean, not only as a water surface but also as a land or seascape. Isolation as an important factor in island archaeology is moulded and influenced by the surrounding waters. This water surface in the case of the Mediterranean is relatively small, on the other hand is this seascape enlarged into a landscape that through its long history and enormous significance for mankind must have had influence on its islands, their possible isolation or connectivity.
The first time I saw the Mediterranean Sea was on June 3rd 1970 from a KLM DC 8 during its final approach on the international airport of Beirut. The wine colored sea of Homer, Cavafy and all the other real and fictional figures, was spread out below in the glaring light of the summer afternoon. The Mediterranean, ‘something in the middle of lands’ or “that which is
between the surrounding lands” (Abulafia, 2005, p. 64), is the largest inland sea in the world
and the continents Europe, Africa and Asia touch upon its shores. Although the cradle of mankind is positioned further East in the Euphrates and Tigris basin, the sea fulfilled a role as a cultural crucible from which our Western civilization arose. The sea can be an obstacle and an opportunity and in the Mediterranean context, the beginning of the opportunity function (in the form of the ability to cross the sea) according to Braudel is around the 12th and 11th millennia BC (Braudel, 2002, p. 13) but is meanwhile assumed to begin around 130.000 years ago during the Lower Palaeolithic period at the latest (Abulafia, 2012, p. 3, Strasser et al., 2010, pp. 145-190 and Gosden, 2011, p. 175). The latter activities, if proven true, must probably be qualified as what Broodbank calls “seagoing” in contrast to “seafaring” and
“journeying” and must have had a kind of ‘mission impossible’ like character (Broodbank,
33 Although the Mediterranean cannot be seen as the cradle of mankind it certainly is the cradle of archaeology that came into being during the Renaissance activated by the fascination for Greek and Roman art (Bietti Sestieri, Cazzella & Schnapp, 2002, p. 411). The Mediterranean viewed as a stretch of water has been many things to many people. To Homer it was the
oinopa ponton, the wine colored sea, to the Greeks he hemetera thalassa (Malkin, 2011, p. 3),
to the Romans it was mare nostrum (Horden & Purcell, 2000, p. 11), to many tourists it is a sort of paradise, to the Messrs Horden and Purcell it is the Corrupting Sea, to David Abulafia,
the Great Sea, to Dr. Gambin, maritime archaeologist attached to the University of Malta, it is work (Gambin, 2011, personal communication) and so on. The Mediterranean cannot only be
characterized as a sea, but can be seen as a geographical context, a landscape, that includes its islands, shorelines and areas far beyond those shorelines. Visions of this Mediterranean landscape include a lifestyle, a feeling, food, the (known) world, a climate, the gateway to a safer and better life, a graveyard5, a or several cultures, an archaeology and so on.
The exact borders of the landscape concept Mediterranean, consisting of a water surface, parts of several continents and some 100 bigger islands6 that have been subject to long-term human agency (Walsh, p. 210) are difficult to establish and prone to versatile interpretations. The sea should be easier to demarcate were it not that many people prefer to see it as a conglomerate of up 21 different seas (Meijer, 2010, pp. 104-105), not including the Black Sea. Abulafia and Horden & Purcell call it a group of interconnected seas, sub- or miniature Mediterraneans (Abulafia, 2005. p. 67). The fact that both the landscape and the aquatic concept have fleeting boundaries makes ‘Mediterranean’ as a noun as well as an adjective, subject to rather subjective, personal appraisal. When somebody uses the term ‘Mediterranean’ either as a noun or an adjective, we have no idea what he or she is talking about: it needs at least geographical clarification.
Archaeology presents an expansive example of this confusion of tongues: At some point in time, classical archaeology, that is Greek and Roman archaeology was renamed into Mediterranean archaeology and the innocent bystander would assume that this comprises the archaeology of the entire Mediterranean landscape in all its appearances, including the sea, the islands and a bandwidth of shore area. Mediterranean island archaeology in a strict sense,
5
Joseph Muscat, the prime minister of Malta in an interview with the BBC in 2013
(http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2013/10/migrant-deaths-prompt-calls-eu-action-2013101361646517233.html). 6
34 represents a sub-field of island archaeology as well as a sub-field of Mediterranean archaeology. Whether the latter arrangement is of advantage remains to be seen.
A regular visitor to Dutch workshops, symposia or conferences on Mediterranean archaeology or the attentive reader of publications on the same subject, might slowly become irritated by a kind of brainwashing that intentionally or not tries to corrupt one’s geographical image of the Mediterranean. The Dutch archaeological map of the Mediterranean in the sense of the Dutch interest and pursuit of archaeology, has the city of Rome as its most western reference point and from there the map draws a straight line to the Nile delta. The eastern boundary of this imaginary map is located somewhere behind the eastern coast line of the Mediterranean perhaps along the Euphrates, perhaps along the Tigris or even beyond. This creates a map of the Mediterranean with considerable white areas: North Africa west of the Nile delta does not exist, neither do the Spanish and French coastal areas. The same goes for some of the big islands in the Mediterranean like Sicily and Sardinia, not to speak of smaller archipelagos as the Baleares or the Maltese islands. Dutch Mediterraneanarchaeology is mainly involved in Greece and mainland Italy so the old classification ‘Classical’ covered the subject a lot better. It seems that this bias is not exclusively Dutch, Dawson detects an imbalance in surveys between the Aegean islands and most western Mediterranean islands, whereby the western Mediterranean islands were neglected (Dawson, 2014, p. 209). E.M. Moormann in an article in Tijdschrift voor Mediterrane Archeologie also expresses his irritation about the swap of Classical for Mediterranean, but he presumes that Mediterranean covers the subject better since Dutch archaeology moved away from art historical interests towards human interests in the area (Moormann, 2008, p. 52). I have the impression that we are dealing with deceptive packaging here since Dutch archaeology definitely concerns itself with only part of the Mediterranean. One could introduce the argument that Dutch Mediterranean archaeology does not have the dimension, man power and resources to engage in an all Mediterranean archaeology, but internationally the joint venture Mediterranean archaeology has just as little lead to a pan-regional perspective (Knapp and Van Dommelen, 2015, p. 3 and (Dawson, 2014, p. 209). The approach to this pan-regional discipline is viewed with growing weariness, as more scholars express their distrust in the concept Mediterranean, considering it a relic of
“cultural imperialism” (see below). The accentuation of its uniqueness also makes it
35 Besides Mediterranean archaeology and formerly classical archaeology there are a number of other archaeologies at work in the area. There is Assyriology, the study of the language, the history, and antiquities of Assyria, that during the reigns of Sargon II in the 8th century BC and Assurbanipal in the 9th century BC occupied a large area of the Mediterranean seashore (Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and parts of Turkey). Near Eastern Archaeology, formerly known as Oriental archaeology, a discipline that studies the Near East which also includes parts of the Mediterranean eastern coastal regions is also present and not to forget Egyptology a branch that seems to occupy the loner position, acting and being observed as if Egypt and the Nile, one of the biggest tributaries to the Mediterranean, are located on another planet. This outsider position could be caused by the fact that in the days of Greek and Roman antiquity the culture of Egypt was already considered as a past civilization (Trigger, 1996, p. 67). Another discipline that lately has lately sunk somewhat in oblivion but still dominates 273 km of Mediterranean coastline (the Israeli coastline including Palestine) is biblical archaeology. The main goal of this branch was and is, the shoring and buttressing of the Bible (i.e. the Old Testament), the ‘history’ book of the state of Israel. Archaeological research in a direction that might prove this book historically less relevant or even plain wrong, is discouraged by refusal of access to sources, material and sites. “Und die Bibel hat doch
recht”9
, the 1955 publication by W. Keller, is still the slogan of biblical archaeology or rather
Israeli archaeology(Swart, 2014, p. 4 and pp. 12-16).
The old saying attributed to Aesop ‘united we stand, divided we fall’ looks very applicable to archaeology in the Mediterranean. Archaeology compared to other sciences like history, is a very expensive enterprise and depends heavily on sponsors and they do not dole out money without a return on investment. In the case in question this return consists of publicity, prestige or political (religious) benefits and this causes a sponsor’s preference for excavations on sites (or research into matters) that promise spectacular results and so archaeology can become severely biased by political and economic arguments (Bietti Sestieri, Cazzella & Schnapp, 2002, p. 413). This argument is not only valid for the Mediterranean or archaeology per se, but parochialism in a relatively small geographical area, where the wider context could be rather accessible, complicates matters considerably and does not enhance a clear view of the overall picture.
36 5.1 Approach to a seascape
Europe is a landscape; East Asia is a seascape says Kaplan in “Asia’s Cauldron” (Kaplan,
2014, p. 19 in the Dutch translation). The Mediterranean can also be considered a seascape and it is interesting to notice that in the 21st century as some 20 to 25 centuries ago, the main playground for world politics is supplied by a somewhat identical geographical context. Identical, of course needs elaborate adjustment and in fact both seascapes can hardly be compared, but an interesting difference in the significance of islands situated in both seascapes can be perceived (see above). Besides the watery part of the seascape Mediterranean, the island fraction of the Mediterranean seascape consists of more than 5000 islands in total, some 150 are larger than 10 km2, 50 larger than 100 km2 and nine are more than 1000 km2 (Cherry and Leppard, 2014, p.10 & Vogiazakis, Mannion and Pungetti, 2008, p. 5) while a mayor number is tiny, hardly rises above sea level and is uninhabited like Comminotto, Filfla, the St. Pauls Islands and Manoel Island, just to name a few belonging to the Maltese Archipelago.
We now come to the very difficult problem of demarcating the borders of the combined Mediterranean land- and seascape in its totality, including water surface, islands and continental landmasses. The importance of this demarcation lies in the relative smallness of the Mediterranean compared to contexts like the pacific or the Caribbean, the dynamics of interaction in a smaller sea or landscape being more intensive. In the case of the Mediterranean the shorter distances and the weighted history and archaeology make it obligatory to consider the Mediterranean seas and landscape cape when studying islands and island archaeology. History and archaeology demonstrate a lively interaction between the three elements making out the Mediterranean, water, islands and landmasses and this makes a determination of the borderlines important. The delimitation of the water surface and the islands leaves little room for discussion except perhaps on the subject of the Black Sea. The dimension of the landmasses behind the shorelines is where the shoe pinches: which regions are parts of the Mediterranean, which are not?
