Dr. Robin Osborne of King’s College delved into the ways in which history can be extrapolated from archaeology. Specifically, Dr. Osborne focused on the implications associated with the discovery of a mass grave of 79 supposedly male bodies that were chained and seemed to have all been executed by a blow to the head. This is especially interesting since there seems to be no direct recorded history of this event despite a fairly significant portion of the male population being executed.
This talk made me wonder what extent of speculation is required in these situations. Dr. Osborne proposed that this mass execution could have been a sign of a change in power, yet he also indicated that there was no evidence of a violent power struggle. I wonder how so many people could be executed for the sake of power without more evidence of violence between the two groups. Furthermore, I would think that people who resort to mass executions as displays of power would also use violence to achieve said power. This makes me question whether it is possible that this was a mass murder done for the pleasure of one or multiple people, especially with the prominence of slavery in Ancient Greek culture. I am also curious about how much of what we know about history is made up of well-educated guesses, considering that many of the sources we pull from may be unreliable and that historical records have a strong focus on those who were in power. Additionally, I wonder whether archaeology can also prove to be useful in separating reliable and unreliable literary sources, especially as many historical accounts are written long after the event that is being recorded.
I found the flaws that occur when trying to learn more about history really interesting. On the one hand, models derived from known historical events can be useful in parsing the unknown. However, this is vulnerable to the influence of modern perspectives, and it is possible for the actions taken by people at a particular point in time to be inconsistent with patterns established by their previous actions and beliefs. Furthermore, it is possible that interpretations of history are stretched or molded to fit the pre-existing model, which can cause the interpretation to be wildly different from the actual event. Another issue with this is that it does not always take false accounts into account. Recorded history is susceptible to both the biases of the author and the lack of knowledge on the part of the author. The mass extinction that Dr. Osborne discussed may be an example of this, especially as there is much speculation surrounding it, and it does not seem to be particularly consistent with some records.
I think that this talk intersects with the ways in which the authors of the works we are reading know that some of the things that they are writing are false. Specifically, it seems that accounts like these may contribute to the difficulties associated with parsing out history. While it is clear that Lucian’s True History is false, I wonder whether it was always known that there are falsehoods within Herodotus’ Histories. I feel that Dr. Osborne’s lecture helped open my eyes more to the flaws that are inherent in the process of investigating history, and it makes me wonder about the extent to which falsehoods are accepted as truths and how historians decipher the truth when there are multiple contradicting accounts. Even though I think that reding sources in the language that they were originally written in (like we are doing in this class) can provide clarity by maintaining nuances that cannot be fully translated, I also find that it is difficult as an intermediate Greek student to decipher these nuances while keeping the piece in context. I am curious to see how further study of various Greek authors will allow the fine details to become more clear to me and how this will contribute to my interpretations of the texts we read.
