Dr. Robin Osborne of King’s College began his lecture with an excerpt from James Whitley which discusses the burial practices of different ancient cultures through the years. He explains that though this passage can seem merely descriptive, it has embedded in it mountains of assumptions on which archaeologists and historians alike have been operating for years. Osborne emphasizes the idea that the “story we should be telling is about individuals” and the goal of the lecture is to figure out how to turn a mere description of archaeological finds into history; into someone’s story.
As we are reading two texts which deal mainly with histories, be they supposedly true or “True” in Lucian’s sense of the word, I found myself sitting in the lecture hall wondering how a textual history would be translated into a story differently than a description of an archaeological site or find. Often in archaeology the only information available is whatever can be ascertained from the surroundings and the specific artifact being looked at. Literary works, on the other hand, might have the advantage of explaining themselves clearly to the reader. Classical writers might provide much detail, both relevant and sometimes not quite so relevant. This added information lends itself to clarifying the verity of a statement or, in other situations, confirming the fantastical quality of a reportedly true story. However, as with physical archaeology, we must be cognizant of common assumptions and misconceptions embedded in the literary material with which we are working. As we talked about in class the other day, there will be sensitive topics in the works we are reading. It’s important that while dealing with these issues tactfully, we must also be sympathetic to the biases and/or assumptions that we adopt from the discipline of Classics itself. When reading passages about cities or towns, how do we imagine the inhabitants? Do we picture plain marble statues in sanctuaries, devoid of color? These are just a couple of assumptions that could detract from the authenticity of reading a history by a classical author.
Dr. Osborne focused on one instance in particular of an archaeological find that has grand implications, the means of which are not quite clear from the available material. He explains the discovery of a mass grave in Phaleron, where 79 skeletons were found shackled at the wrists and lying face-down in the ground. All the skeletons are posited as male, and the unique positioning of their bodies in a neat row lead initial hypotheses to be made about the circumstances of their deaths. People jumped on the idea of a mass execution, and pointed to sources from Herodotus and Thucydides to back up these claims. I find this interesting, as the specific Thucydides passage tells of Athenian guards who, upon killing some visitors looking for food and water, are subsequently banished from the city. It seems as though the state does not necessarily want their guards mass murdering citizens – however, Dr. Osborne seems to suggest that any execution/massacre of this scale and organization would likely have been performed by the state, as they have the power and resources. If I had looked up the specific passages cited by archaeologists for their mass execution hypotheses, I would have loved to ask for Dr. Osborne’s thoughts on this. He concludes his talk with the message that we cannot be too careful about jumping to unwieldy conclusions; the only thing we can be sure about from the site is that an event occurred in which a large percentage of the city’s male population was killed, and that such an affair must have been performed by a group with the means and needs to control 79 men. These are extremely vague terms for such a consequential event, but any more positing would truly just be guesses. Dr. Osborne mentioned that they are conducting further bioarcheological analysis, and I would be interested to see what, if anything, comes from that data.
