Populism, Identity Politics, and the Archaeology of Europe
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
European Journal of Archaeology 2021, page 1 of 37 This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial reuse or in order to create a derivative work. Forum: Populism, Identity Politics, and the Archaeology of Europe 1 2 3 ̌4 DANIELA HOFMANN ,EMILY HANSCAM ,MARTIN FURHOLT ,MARTIN BACA , 5 6 7 SAMANTHA S. REITER ,ALESSANDRO VANZETTI ,KOSTAS KOTSAKIS , 8 9 10 HÅKAN PETERSSON ,ELISABETH NIKLASSON ,HERDIS HØLLELAND AND 11 CATHERINE J. FRIEMAN 1Department of Archaeology, History, Culture Studies and Religion, University of Bergen, Norway 2Amsterdam Centre for Ancient Studies and Archaeology, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands 3Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo, Norway 4Department of Archaeology, Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia 5Department of Environmental Archaeology and Materials Science, The National Museum of Denmark, Brede, Denmark 6Department of Ancient World Studies, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy 7Department of Archaeology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece 8Sydsvensk Arkeologi AB, Kristianstad, Sweden 9Department of Archaeology, University of Aberdeen, UK 10Department of Heritage and Society, Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research, Oslo, Norway 11School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia (a war crime if carried out), or a right-of- INTRODUCTION:ARCHAEOLOGY AND centre UK politician using a prehistoric POPULISM henge monument to argue that Britain’s Daniela Hofmann and Catherine future should lie outside the European J. Frieman Union (Brophy, 2019). These kinds of developments are generally described as The kind of liberal and open-minded ‘populist’, a term that refers to the simpli- society on which most academics rely to fication of complex problems and appeals to freely conduct their research is increasingly broad sectors of the population. Here, we under threat, even within democratic soci- follow Müller (2016:3–4) in arguing that eties of long standing. The past is by no ‘populism’ also implies exclusionary and means neutral in this, whether this be the polarizing identity politics in which differ- then American president threatening to ence and dissent are treated as moral fail- attack the antiquities of Iran in early 2020 ings rather than questions for compromise. Copyright © European Association of Archaeologists 2021 doi:10.1017/eaa.2021.29 Manuscript received 31 January 2020, accepted 14 June 2021, revised 22 February 2021 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.126, on 02 Oct 2021 at 03:44:36, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/eaa.2021.29 2 European Journal of Archaeology 2021 This frequently includes an element of pervasive populist debate that threatens anti-elitism. Such a discourse has often the discursive foundations on which (though not universally) been associated rational argument is possible. How should with the right of the political spectrum, we respond? How can we deal with the and many authors in this contribution thus sometimes uncomfortable limelight that is begin by tracing its roots in nationalism increasingly being trained on our discip- (e.g. Martin Furholt) or directly addressing line? What can be done when the public’s national populism (e.g. Elisabeth Niklasson expectations, or the use of the past by and Herdis Hølleland). However, as Martin various actors, run counter to our own Bacǎ reminds us, this is not the only populist convictions (and/or what can be reasonably strand there is, and we have not imposed an inferred from the available data)? overall definition on our authors. Their argu- There are no easy answers to these mentswillalsobeapplicabletoother questions, but our authors go some way situations. towards demonstrating the variety of the Yet,whilesimplisticelectionpromises problem across different archaeological sound convincing to increasing numbers of fields and in various European regions. people at both ends of the political spec- While this is first and foremost a call for trum, there is also a growing market for greater engagement and debate across the popular histories, including internationally discipline, we would argue that a con- chart-topping works by Yuval Noah Harari certed response to such developments (e.g. Harari, 2015) and others. Books on entails a two-pronged approach that archaeological topics can also reach a wide begins both at a high level of generality audience, with, for example, volumes on and at the level of daily working routines. the Nebra Sky Disc and on archaeogenetics ending up on the German Der Spiegel’s non-fiction bestseller list in 2019 (Meller The banality of evil &Michel,2018; Krause & Trappe, 2019). In addition, social media allow us (and Taking their cue from Hannah Arendt’s other interpreters of the past) to reach ever (1963) famous analysis of the 1962 greater numbers of people. Eichmann trial, several contributors (most The majority of the texts collected here directly Martin Furholt and Emily were first presented at a session of the Hanscam) point out that the basic tools of European Association of Archaeologists’ archaeological classification and interpret- conference in Bern in 2019, which ation already come with methodological attempted to address this dual develop- baggage. Foremost among them is the ment as it has gathered pace over the last culture concept, widely critiqued in a decade. While political engagement in variety of research traditions (e.g. Binford, archaeology is nothing new—and amongst 1962; Clarke, 1968; Wotzka, 2000) but others includes a long history of feminist astonishingly persistent in large swathes of scholarship (e.g. Conkey, 2002), strategies Europe. Using ‘culture’ as a foundational for democratization (e.g. recently Milek, concept is always in danger of succumbing 2018; Nilsson Stutz, 2018), and calls for a to methodological nationalism (Wimmer greater relevance of archaeology in envir- & Glick Schiller, 2003) since the concept onmental and social debates (e.g. Kiddey, assumes the homogeneity and internal 2017; Kohler & Rockman, 2020)—here unity of the entity under study and stresses we are particularly concerned with the very its separation from others. Yet ‘cultures’ current problem of an ever more vocal and are the basic chronological building blocks Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.126, on 02 Oct 2021 at 03:44:36, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/eaa.2021.29 Hofmann et al. – Forum: Populism and the Archaeology of Europe 3 of prehistory in many countries (Roberts & connected by arrows, immediately convey Vander Linden, 2011; Ivanovaitė et al., a raft of unconsidered assumptions, such 2020). Radiocarbon dating, an obvious as the idea that the movement of people alternative, is sometimes explicitly mis- in the past involved large groups moving trusted, and typological systems seen as pro- once from a clearly defined origin to a viding greater chronological precision. In a determined end point (see discussion in self-perpetuating spiral, this means that few Wiedemann, 2017: 145). Such convenient good-quality 14C dates are available to build visual simplifications hide the complexity secure absolute chronologies (the allegedly and diversity of the underlying processes, well-studied Linearbandkeramik is a case in but play to our present perceptions of, for point, as the protracted exchange among example, migration. Technologies for Jakucs et al., 2016; Bánffy et al., 2018; making more dynamic maps exist; but, in Strien, 2017, 2019 illustrates), effectively many cases, it remains difficult to find and forcing researchers to continue using encode location data, or to deal with often ‘culture’ designations, with all attendant coarsely dated sites spread across databases problems intact. in multiple countries using incompatible Recent aDNA studies have been criti- recording systems. Such very basic struc- cized for perpetuating and biologizing this tural problems are serious challenges to unsatisfactory model through the use of Big Data or synthetic approaches, and ‘culture’ names to refer to groups of there are no quick fixes. samples (Frieman & Hofmann, 2019; for Similarly, Panich and Schneider (2019) first steps towards a solution, see detail some of the challenges they encoun- Eisenmann et al., 2018). Again, this hides tered in trying to document Native diversity, both in the past and in the use American post-1492 persistence in parts of modern-day reference populations of California when there is no consistent which, depending on the aim of the ori- way in which this can be recorded in heri- ginal study from which they are derived, tage management databases. The resulting can often lump very large and heteroge- casual erasure of Native American voices neous national groups (e.g. ‘the French’) continues to affect heritage decisions and into a single dot on a graph. This ‘geneti- the presentation of Indigenous history to a cization of notions of citizenship and wider public.