Lecture

ETHNICITY AS A FORM OF SOCIAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN NEOLITHIC CILICIA AND CENTRAL ANATOLIA

Isabella CANEVA                                                                                
Facoltà di Beni Culturali e Ambientali, Università di Lecce, IT.
isabella.caneva@uniroma1.it                                                                           

The focus of modern archaeology has, over the last decades, largely shifted from a ‘formalist’ vision of archaeology, based on chronology and artefact classification, to more sophisticated investigations on social structures and territorial organisation. Both hierarchical and functional social differentiations, as well as their implications, have been considered in recent archaeological studies.
Although this approach obviously offers a fundamental perspective to reconstruct the dynamics of past events, it only provides a somewhat schematic picture. What is still lacking is a more faceted overview of prehistoric societies, including group differentiation regardless of function or hierarchy. Ethnological studies have shown that there is considerable cultural variability even within a circumscribed, homogeneous territory and limited time span. This implies, on the one hand, that the concept of ‘adaptation’ in prehistory should not only be referred to human/environment/resources, but should be extended to similar human groups who share the same territory, with minor differences between them; on the other, it suggests that micro-dynamics and less ‘total’ explanations should also be considered when macro-scale global transformations, which have been given priority in the reconstruction of models of prehistoric development, are studied.

In this regard, archaeological debate has recently taken into consideration the notion of ethnicity in ancient societies. The ambiguity of this concept and its instrumental misuse in the past discouraged most archaeologists from discussing its definition and its application to ancient history. This misuse consisted in both the definition of ethnicity as an original, unchangeable property, whether it be genetic or cultural, and the application of this perspective to prehistoric phenomena, which were thus interpreted as resulting from invasions or migrations of foreign groups. After the sinister implications of Kossinna’s theories on European politics in the 1930s and the misunderstanding Gordon Childe was involved in as a result of his equation between ethnos and culture, the concept of ethnicity was, in order to avoid any further danger of political implications, abandoned. The debate was carried on only in the USSR and its satellite countries, where the limited time span of modern ethnic self-definitions was raised by Tallgren (1939), after the unstable, conscious nature of these definitions had been underlined by Shirokogoroff in 1936. The concept of ethnic variability was more recently resumed, though in a somewhat subdued manner, by F. Bordes in his debate with L. Binford (1973) on the variability of Mousterian lithic assemblages: using the same type-list, Bordes ascribed differences to different cultures, whereas Binford ascribed them to different functions of the sites according to the global perspective proposed in those years by the ‘New Archaeology’. Bordes’ perspective on the archaeological ‘facies’ was criticised as being too conservative, though also his picture could be interpreted as a global view of the world, without any hierarchical implications based on technological differences. In the same period, A. Leroi-Gourhan (1973) on several occasions redefined ‘ethnic groups’, on the basis of various ethnological works, as unstable organisms, largely constructed by their members under specific pressures (such as colonialism), whose fundamental characteristic was their constant interaction with the external world and, consequently, their constant modification according to changing conditions. The archaeological use of the concept of ethnicity was not developed further by either Bordes or Leroi-Gourhan, both authors later being cited for other aspects of their scientific production. Although Leroi-Gourhan’s definition of ethnicity contained important elements for a more general archaeological debate, namely the concept of contingency and reciprocity, the subject received little attention in the following years, with only indirect references being found in Bennet’s proposal to include human groups among the parameters used to define the environment (1976), or in Bender’s consideration of ‘political’ pressures as agents of prehistoric events, including the origin of food production (1978). It is only in the last decade that a serious discussion on the subject has been resumed, both on a theoretical level (Eriksen 1993; Gossiaux 1997; Demoule 1999) and applied to specific archaeological contexts, particularly as regards historical times, in which written documents make interpretation easier (Kamp and Yoffee 1980; Buccellati 1990; Yakar 2001, to mention but a few of those dealing with the Near East).

Among the important advances in this concept is the agreement that the definition of an ethnic group develops not in isolation but through contrast with others: contact and interrelationships are essential to identity definition. Eriksen (1993) defines ethnicity as one of the aspects of a relationship. As stressed by Rowlands (1998), ‘the essentialism of earlier anthropological writings on ethnicity came from a focus on individual groups through ethnographic fieldwork. A similar focus in archaeology on ‘cultures’ was biased towards cultural uniqueness over time’. Instead of viewing prehistoric societies as isolated and homogeneous units, ethnicity may, therefore, represent a useful means of depicting more dynamic regional combinations of varying contacts and mutual accommodation between similar groups.

A second key point is that ethnic identity, rather than being a ‘primordial’ phenomenon which is totally detached from modernity, is frequently a reaction to processes of modernisation: ethnic/cultural fragmentation and homogenisation are not two separate arguments, but two constitutive trends of global reality (Friedman 1990:311).

Demonstrations of group identity develop particularly when highly mixed peoples are concentrated in a restricted space (the so-called ‘melting pot’, in which people never actually melt, but where, on the contrary, diversity co-exists and is formally expressed). Modern examples of this phenomenon regard urbanised workers or emigrants, particularly when shrinkage of space or differences in social positions arise. We may argue that similar situations may also have existed in the past when people moved to new areas or were subdued by, or simply came into contact with, other groups. Though on a smaller scale than today, this phenomenon of identity manifestation may have been a recurrent one, for the afore-mentioned reasons. For instance, Neolithic fully sedentary groups seem to have needed, in what was becoming an increasingly rationalised perspective of the world, closer and more organised contacts than they had previously had, and ethnicity may have helped to establish territorial limits and rights on specific resources. The distinction between urbanised Cilician communities in Roman times was very recently reinterpreted in this way, with a complex military, political and cultural divide between the coast and the hinterland replacing the traditional stereotypical town/country, nomadic/sedentary, upland/lowland, state/banditry dichotomy (Lenski 2001). This hypothesis is supported by written documents, as is even earlier evidence of this phenomenon, from the second millennium Syro-Mesopotamian region under the Assyrian domination (Buccellati 1990; Kamp and Yoffee 1980, etc.).

It may be possible to ascribe both the cultural heterogeneity and political instability which characterised Cilicia throughout its history to the multi-ethnic composition of its population, known not only in Roman times but as far back as in the Middle and Late Bronze Ages (Yakar 2001). But how far back is it possible to find such evidence without written sources? A possible heterogeneous Cilician ethnicity may be postulated to explain as yet unclear cultural contacts or separations, both within the region and with neighbouring regions, in earlier times. Among the findings which can be interpreted in this perspective are the stamp seals which suddenly appear in the Neolithic settlements of the Amuq, Balikh and Cilicia. These regions are also related by a peculiar pottery, globally referred to as Dark-Faced Burnished Ware (DFBW). In this regard, the sites share numerous characteristics but are, at the same time, quite distinct from one another. At Yumuktepe, the presence of a few types of DFBW which are virtually identical to those found in the Amuq, but come under totally different ceramic repertories in the two regions, might be interpreted as an emblematic conservatism of some parts of the original culture, intended as symbols of ethnic pertinence.

Further clues of ethnic manifestations, though of a somewhat different nature, may be extrapolated from the peculiar pattern of resource exploitation which has been reconstructed for the earliest levels at Yumuktepe, dated to 7000 cal BC: all the recognised animals were domestic, belonging to sheep/goat, cattle and pig (Caneva 1999). Not a single wild animal bone was found to suggest the practice of more varied environment exploitation, e.g. hunting, trapping or fishing. Assuming that nutrition is a basic element of identity, the unusual picture of exclusively farming activities at Yumuktepe suggests a sort of ‘foreigner syndrome’, in which the newcomers maintained their own traditions, keeping themselves separate from native people, who were presumably more aware of the potential of their rich environment.

As for the relations of the Neolithic Cilician communities with Central Anatolia, a form of trade contacts is attested by the presence of obsidian of Cappadocian provenance in all the Cilician sites. However, no other cultural traits, whether they be related to the subsistence economy, architecture, funerary rites or handicraft production, were shared by these two groups. The traditional interpretation of this apparent incongruity is that of archaeologically invisible nomadic middlemen believed to have been involved in the obsidian trade, who would, consequently, have established only indirect links between the two areas. The peculiar situation in these regions might, instead, reflect a territorial notion linked to newly settled people. A complex land division, possibly based on ecological features and economic activities, but basically brought about by a concentration of heterogeneous peoples, would ultimately be ascribable to ethnicity. The exchange of raw materials, far from being hampered by this social heterogeneity, would have been essential to it, thereby formally and substantially establishing, through contact, the diversity of peoples and territories. If this were the case, exchange would have been less neutrally practised than has previously been thought, and would, on the contrary, have been held in high consideration and subjected to the discontinuity of relations between groups and to their related symbolic realm, as the archaeological documentation and the prestigious nature of the items exchanged seem to indicate.

References

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Bennet, J., 1976. The ecological transition: cultural anthropology and human adaptation. Oxford: Pergamon Press
Binford, L., 1973. Interassemblage variability – the Mousterian and the ‘functional’ argument. In C. Renfrew [ed.]. The explanation of culture change. Models in prehistory. London: Duckworth, 227–254
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