Szczawlinska Muceniecks, Andre. "History as a Scam: Confrontation and Resentment between Archaeology and History." Theories of History: History Read across the Humanities. By Michael J. Kelly and Arthur Rose. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. 141–158. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 26 Sep. 2021. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781474271332.ch-008>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 26 September 2021, 05:05 UTC. Copyright © Michael J. Kelly, Arthur Rose, and Contributors 2018. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. 8 History as a Scam: Confrontation and Resentment between Archaeology and History Andre Szczawlinska Muceniecks Archaeology of a historical period is prehistory with one more problem.1 To begin this chapter with a short anecdote, when studying historical archaeology at a major Brazilian university in 2005, I frequently faced opposition and preju- dice from other colleagues for an unexpected reason: I was a historian among archaeologists. At the end of each class or topic covered, I repeatedly encountered the criticism that historians are naive when dealing with sources, when compared to archaeologists who are better prepared to deal with evidence and the past. The reason for this naivety, I was told, is because historians read texts superficially, deprived of any critical apparatus for interrogating those sources and thus were incapable of grasping subtle meanings. Moreover, as historians deal with docu- ments prepared by those with power their work simply involved rhetorical exer- cises, while archaeologists study material culture, a class of evidence incapable of deception, and very able of demonstrating the customs and manners of the power- less, the common folk, and the underprivileged, such as women and children. This type of critique was constant, not to mention annoying, until it was time to present our own research and to discuss texts in the seminars. One of the texts to be discussed was the article “Documento/ Monumento,” written by the French medieval historian Jacques LeGoff. While making my presentation, proud of my grounding in the Annales School and in the intellectual lineage of Fernand Braudel,2 although reticent to quote the multiplicity and—in Dosse’s words— “fragmentation” suffered by history in most recent times, I embodied the role of a crusader, of an advocate in defense of the aggrieved Clio. My enemies were those worshipers of Science and Progress, believers in objectivity and the 142 Theories of History univocal truth. The reaction to the article and my analyses of it was very positive, and the mutual accusations of positivism— in the most part by anthropologists, not archaeologists, as I had been lead to believe— were rescinded, with my col- leagues admitting that “History is not as outdated as we’d thought.” This incident seems, perhaps, a bit exaggerated and disparaging to the general alumni of one of the most influential Brazilian universities. At this point, I want to emphasize that that specific class was peculiar and that my other experiences with anthropologists and archaeologists— colleagues, lecturers, or professors— was largely positive to the point that I even became one of them.3 Nevertheless, the experience awakened in my mind the desire to know whether I had dealt with a particularly narrow scholarly environment or whether there was some deeper issue— theoretical, methodological, and widespread— hidden behind the anecdote. Perhaps the informed reader is aware of clues betraying theoretical schools involved in the aforementioned dispute, despite the fact that archaeological theory has received regrettably little attention from scholars of different feuds in comparison to other mainstream human sciences, such as philosophy and sociology. Anthropologists studying archaeology present a curious admixture of processualism4 with postprocessualism,5 using the criticism from the latter with a large share of the pretension of objectivity from the former. I shall briefly return to these schools and clarify their main tenets; for now, it is sufficient to note that the accusations made about history were addressed to a stereotypical history resembling the nineteenth- century Germanic and positivist discipline, summed up to classic processual resentment directed against culture- historical archaeology.6 Nevertheless, that episode came my mind more than once, draw- ing my attention to similar occurrences in other publications and regions of the world such as Israel, Scandinavia, Russia, and India. Indeed, the situation revealed a deeper issue with methodological consequences affecting interpret- ation and even influencing the course of an entire discipline. This chapter intends to briefly analyze some of the aspects of the complicated relationship between archaeology and history. As case study, I intend to present the “minimalist” versus “maximalist” dispute in biblical studies, not as some- thing doctrinaire or studied by its own merits, but as a circumstance exemplary to the issues pervading relations between history and archaeology, interpret- ation of the past, and different natures of primary sources. Since ultimately the main antagonism between minimalists and maximalists resided in the use of the written text— in this case, the Bible— my hypothesis is that their dispute should be understood as part of the larger discordance between culture- historical and processual archaeology. History as a Scam 143 In order to accomplish the interpretative task outlined, this chapter is divided into two main sections. In the first section, I discuss culture-historical archae- ology in conjunction with the development of the Albrightean paradigm in Biblical archaeology. In the second section, I analyze the development of New Archaeology and its manifestations in Biblical archaeology—a connection that has gone unnoticed, overshadowed by the heated debate between minimalists and maximalists. Culture- historical archaeology and Biblical archaeology: From the beginnings to the Bright- Albright paradigm7 Biblical archaeology is one of the pillars of biblical scholarship, along with the history of Israel, textual criticism, and linguistic studies. A primary con- cern here is the relation between Biblical archaeology and the history of Israel. Studied from a larger scope, the first stages of Biblical archaeology can be understood as an example of culture- historical archaeology. Being the most common archaeological school of thought supported outside of the English- speaking world, culture- historical archaeology was considered outdated after the 1960s, mostly by archaeologists of the processual school. However, its main ideas remain strong, mostly to scholars from other fields—including, of course, historians. This school was closely associated with European nationalism and the Kuturgeschichte, especially in Central Europe, as it promoted the concept of identity based upon ethnic parameters. From the unification and ascension of nationalisms in Germany to the independence of central and eastern European countries, culture- historical archaeology, although subordinate to history, pro- vided legitimacy to the study of the past. Culture- historical archaeology through its methods developed remark- able technical developments in description, typology, and excavation method- ology. In the field of theory, however, archaeologists—largely from subsequent schools of processualism and postprocessualism, or from movements such as Marxist archaeology8— became critics of what was called as a lack of theoretical breakthroughs.9 “Culture” was understood by culture- historical archaeology as something static, as the ways and customs of specific groups defined ethnic- ally in well-delimited spaces; the proper concept of ethnicity was directly con- nected with pseudo- scientific theories of biological ground as racial groups. A common practice to the culture- historical archaeologists was the definition of “archaeological cultures,” a category encompassing a territory inhabited by a 144 Theories of History specific ethnic group to which a specific material culture and production should be related. Cultural change was explained mostly by migration and diffusion, without regard for human creativity and a capacity for change.10 Many of the theoretical assumptions from culture- historical archaeology were shared by his- torians, as suggested by the nomenclature, and the existence of written sources was welcomed, even desired. All these features can be observed in the development of Biblical archae- ology: the conception of Culture, the legitimation of a supposed right of the Israeli people to the land, the technical developments, but, most of all, the spe- cial dynamics with the written sources. Palestine is considered a holy land by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The written sources produced in the area pro- vided material to the composition of the most widespread sacred texts of the world: the Torah, the New Testament, and the Koran. At the same time, land has been fought over for centuries, not only encompassing the use of the holy texts to legitimize contemporary land rights, but also involving the area in post- colonial disputes since the retreat/ defeat of European nations, and the increase in Western support for Jewish immigration.11 Despite the impressive number of extant Roman and medieval constructions, ancient Palestine has a relatively