Theme:
1. The Material Record: Current Trends and Future Directions
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
Divided by ?Facts?: Re-thinking the Challenging Relationship between Ancient Written Sources and the Archaeological Record through Telling Case Studies
Content:
As suggested by Kristiansen (1998: 2), “[d]uring the 1st millennium BC [in Europe] we are for the first time confronted with literary evidence about prehistoric people, so we cannot and should not escape… the question of the meaning and maintenance of cultural traditions, of ethnicity and of cultural change…”. The ancient written sources seem to provide us with a plethora of potentially crucial information which archaeologists should use to get deeper insights into the past. It is, however, true that the link between historical data and archaeological record is at times very loose, ambiguous to say the least. A telling case is the c. 390 BC Gallic sack of Rome, still not supported by archaeological evidence. And the list goes on and on: e.g. the Galatian campaigns in Greece and Turkey and the plunder of Delphi, or the Roman warfare impacting Celtic sites – Numantia, Alesia, Gergovia and the battle sites of Orange and Bibracte – just to mention a few cases.
As suggested by Barker (1995: 2), ancient written sources are not unproblematic, as they are “written by the literate minority, frequently with a bias towards their own concerns”; it is, however, crucial to rely on them. In 1995 Barker suggested approaching both historical and archaeological data as material culture advocating for a unified theoretical framework. After nearly 30 years, where are we today?
This session particularly welcomes contributions (papers and posters) dealing with the complex relationship between ancient written sources and the archaeological record with no particular chronological and geographical boundaries. The main aim of the session is to compare theories and methodologies to understand whether Barker’s ‘unified’ approach is still supported by scholarship or a different path is preferred and why.
Keywords:
Archaeological record, Ancient written sources, Theory, Methodology, Interaction, Warfare
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Main organiser:
Fabio Saccoccio (United Kingdom) 1
Co-organisers:
John Collis (United Kingdom) 2
Raimund Karl (Austria) 3
Gonzalo Ruiz Zapatero (Spain) 4
Affiliations:
1. University of Nottingham, Department of Classics and Archaeology
2. University of Sheffield, Department of Archaeology
3. University of Vienna, Institute for Prehistory and Historic Archaeology
4. Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Departamento de Prehistoria, Historia Antigua y Arqueologia
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