Author's reply

TRANSFORMATIONS AND SOCIETIES IN THE NEOLITHIC OF CENTRAL ANATOLIA

Frédéric GERARD                                                                                
frederic.gerard@isbank.net.tr

I want to thank sincerely all the debating people who expressed freely their remarks and oppositions to my simple and untrue endeavour – ‘that sort of evolutionary, linear thinking’ (Eleni Asouti, see the discussion) – to give reasons for the transformations of the Neolithic societies of Central Anatolia. I will here conclude with some basic and provocative ideas that are not directly linked to the discussion above, but that everybody involved in archaeology had in mind at one moment or another. [Don’t worry, I won’t talk about all the mad guys and girls who make our job so active, tricky and funny].

Of course, the reality of these multiple societies was much more complex than the one we will ever fabricate. But, trying to interpret the past is not recreating any truth, but producing scientific knowledge that corresponds to specific paradigms that vary through time according to fashions and the archaeologists’ new visions on the world. It’s not the reality, it’s just ideas and illusions we create; it is in a way a reflection of our own representation of the world. And one of my points when bringing these hypotheses to the debate was in fact to make people react to such epistemological topics, because in practice I was presenting quite a poor explanation not supported on strong theoretical grounds. But who is nowadays, since the New Archaeology, really able to theorise concepts that turn out to be field-efficient and useful in our young discipline?

The Neolithic people challenge our imagination with their numerous and variable adventures. And it is of course our duty to keep trying to provide a schematic big picture of their ways of life, of their ways of mind. We cannot enter into the mega-complexity of the individuals, and we are generally only able to conceive their early societies in the long range, as open complex groups, as a ‘moving nebula’. Without any dogmatism on methods, traditions in archaeology or theories – Prehistory vs. Protohistory, post-processualism vs. structuralism, etc. – we have to think bigger than the specific analyses on lithics or ceramics or whatever is used to consolidate the citadels of micro-branches, and to bring all assemblages of data in a global perspective; simultaneously we have to adopt structural models from other disciplines, for example from ethnology. That is of course evident to everybody, but how many people do really apply this gorgeous guidance?

The very positive thing I noticed in the CANeW Table Ronde is that at least some of the participants – Eleni Asouti and Louise Martin, just to give an enthusiastic example out of the specialists – tried to catch the wide-ranging spirit of the pioneers of prehistoric and protohistoric archaeology in Central Anatolia, such as James Mellaart and David French. We are, for sure, in debt to the British archaeologists in showing us the way in the region, setting up the first reference sequences, digging extensively and quickly, understanding what they were doing and interpreting in the field – stratigraphy, excavation strategy, etc. –, knowing how to manage their good workmen and not being afraid of destroying some evidence in order to get the whole big representative picture. These are all things which are rarely appreciated nowadays.

All of this slightly atypical attempt – and perhaps the whole CANeW project itself – was in fact a tribute to these efficient and brilliant excavators who were to some extent disapproved of since the time they stopped excavating. Despite all unquestionable improvements in digging techniques and in registering artefacts, despite all archaeologists’ specialisations and despite an increasing bulk of data which generally are not (and perhaps cannot be) integrated in global analyses in a time of high technology and fashionable theories expressed through complex terminologies, we miss the real generalists. What we now need is to value again people just good at interpreting while digging. Isn’t that the lost basis of archaeology?