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cus on chronology and typology in a manner reminiscent of the 1950s in the west. Radiocarbon dating is still regarded with enough suspicion so that
it is often discarded if it contradicts seriation-based
chronologies - although this is changing. The collection of essays reviewed here exhibits all of these
characteristics. Different agendas can make conversation and cooperation between post-Soviet and
western archaeologists an exercise in patience and
tolerance, on both sides. The continuing effort is
worthwhile because it helps to shed light on a large,
influential and too-little-understood part of the ancient world.
Mediterranean myopia
RICHARDE. BLANTON*
JOHN BINTLIFF & KOSTAS
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REVIEW
REVIEW
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from the POPULUS colloquia, Mediterranean researchers will employ the intensive methods as a startingpoint in their research designs,but will then be restricted
to comparing ceramic densities of a few scattered villas, villages or microregions (and will have detailed
data on the comparatively trivial matter of off-site artefact densities), and will have only a limited ability
to address the kinds of issues pertinent to the sociocultural evolution of complex societies that currently
engage researchers in other world areas.
Historically, Mediterranean settlement pattern
researchers, some of whose methods are now thought
primitive according to POPULUS logic, addressed
issues relevant to understanding the causes and consequences of change over time at regional and macroregional scales of social interaction (I include Alcock,
Bintliff, Cherry, Davis, Jameson, Mantzourani,
Ponsich, Potter, Renfrew, Runnels, Wagstaff, Wright
and van Andel, among others). They investigated
periphery incorporation in world-systems, production for long-distance trade, the interaction of local
populations with metropolitan cultures, state formation, imperialism, interregional migration, urbanrural relations and related topics pertinent to
understanding the dynamics of complex human societies. A few chapters in the POPULUS volumes
reflect this tradition, most notably those by Martin
Belcher et a]. (vol. 3), Simon Keay (vol. 5), Franco
Cambi (vol. 5), Vince Gaffney et al. (vol. 5) and especially Todd Whitelaw (vol. 5). But as I read the
POPULUS volumes, I was impressed with how Mediterranean survey archaeology as a whole has lost
interest in the kinds of large-scale social and demographic processes that engaged earlier researchers
and, instead, now prioritizes high-resolution method
over theory and problem orientation. Because so many
of the recent methodological advances make possible sophisticated environmental and landscape reconstruction, the theoretical orientation now favoured
by many of the archaeologists featured in the
POPULUS volumes is a dated environmental and
demographic determinism that had its heyday in anthropological archaeology three to four decades ago.
This human ecology, according to Barker & Bintliff
(vol. 2) understands humans in dynamic landscapes.
This is the rationale for using the more environmentally determinist phrase landscape archaeology
routinely in the POPULUS volumes, rather than the
regional analysis, or settlement pattern archaeology more commonly expressed in the literatures of
other world regions. It is unfortunate to see Mediterranean survey archaeology take such a strong turn
towards a landscape approach that sees humans
adapting primarily to local environmental conditions
and in which archaeological method is demoted to
a kind of anthropological geomorphology.