John K. Papadopoulos. The Early Iron Age Cemetery at Torone (Monumenta Archaeologica 24).

John K. Papadopoulos. The Early Iron Age Cemetery at Torone (Monumenta Archaeologica 24). JOHN K. PAPADOPOULOS. The Early Iron Age Cemetery at Torone(Monumenta Archaeologica 24). xliv+1281 pages, 245 figures, 540 plates,21 tables. 2 volumes. 2005. Los Angeles (CA): Cotsen Institute ofArchaeology The Institute of Archaeology is an academic department of University College London (UCL), in the United Kingdom. The Institute is located in a separate building at the north end of Gordon Square, Bloomsbury. at UCLA UCLA University of California at Los AngelesUCLA University Center for Learning Assistance (Illinois State University)UCLA University of Carrollton, TX and Lower Addison, TX ; 1-931745-16-1 hardback $200. The site of Torone lies near the very end of the Sithoniapeninsula, the 'middle finger' of the Chalkidiki in thenorthern Aegean. Today, the area forms a rather remote part of GreekMacedonia, remote that is from modern centres of power and population inboth Athens and Thessaloniki. It is Papadopoulos' thesis that thesite occupied a similarly ambiguous, if less remote, position in theEarly Iron Age, between a fully Hellenic Aegean world (characterised bysites such as Lefkandi and Athens) and a Balkan Macedonia, characterisedby its prominent settlement mounds (toumbes and trapezes) such asAssiros, Toumba Thessaloniki and Kastanas. This ambiguity is captured inthe pottery found at Torone, divided between 'Macedonian'hand-made wares, and Aegean-inspired Late Mycenaean and Protogeometricwheel-made, painted pottery. A similar ambiguity surrounds the publication. The two volumes hererepresent the fruits of excavation directed by Alexander Cambitoglou inthe early 1980s, begun under the auspices of the Archaeological Societyof Athens The Archaeological Society of Athens (Εν Αθήναις Αρχαιολογική Εταιρεία , which indeed has been responsible for the publication ofvolumes on other parts of the site; later, once the Australian Institutehad been established, the excavations were conducted jointly. Yet thesevolumes appear as an entirely American, indeed 'West Coast'affair. A final ambiguity surrounds the purpose of these volumes. At first sight, this is a straightforward site report, on the 134tombs (118 cremations, and 16 inhumations) and their contents fromterrace V on a hill above the settlement. But Papadopoulos also hopes to'attempt to (re)construct a picture of an Early Iron Age society inthe north Aegean' (p. xvii). This admirable ambition leads to somequite radical changes in layout. After an introduction (chapter 1) andan account of the progress of the excavation (chapter 2), chapter 3 (onthe tombs and their contents) breaks with the 'ceramocentric'traditions of earlier scholarship by putting the people in the cemeteryfirst. Thus we are told immediately whether the burial is burnt orwhole, of an adult, child, man or woman, statements backed up byJonathan Musgrave's detailed osteological analysis in Appendix A.Appendices A, B, C and D, on the human, animal, mollusc molluscmembers of the phylum Mollusca, which comprises about 50,000 species. Includes snails, slugs and the aquatic molluscs��oysters, mussels, clams, cockles, arkshells, scallop, abalone, cuttlefish, squid. and plantremains respectively are interleaved between chapter 3 and chapter 4, ananalysis of the mortuary practices. Here Papadopoulos is keen to demonstrate that he is no less of asocial archaeologist than any other Early Iron Age scholar. His approachfollows that of Ian Morris (1987) as applied to Athens.Papadopoulos' conclusions too are much the same. He considers firstwhether the cemetery is organised by kin groups, evident in the several'clusters' he identifies; and then goes on to argue that,despite the paucity of grave goods, the cemetery is not representativeof the population as a whole, but only of its upper stratum. That is, asin contemporary Athens, only a proportion (the higher status portion) ofthe population receives visible burial. Whereas Athenian Early Iron Agesociety was 'already highly stratified' (Morris 1987: 1),Papadopoulos infers that the community at Torone was 'highlyranked' (p. 404), a terminology that may puzzle many of hiscolleagues in anthropology departments. This interpretation I finddifficult to accept. Torone, at 2-3 hectares, was, by any measure, asmall community by the standards of the Early Iron Age Aegean--perhapsfalling below the 'Bintliff threshold' of c. 500 persons,beyond which some kind of non-egalitarian social order is a necessity.Morris's argument works for Athens because Athens was, by anystandards, large. Athenian tenth- and ninth-century graves may seem poorby the standards of Gordion or Etruria, but its richest graves have muchfiner and more abundant grave goods than those of Torone, and its burialpractices are clearly more formalised Adj. 1. formalised - concerned with or characterized by rigorous adherence to recognized forms (especially in religion or art); "highly formalized plays like `Waiting for Godot'"formalistic, formalized . Papadopoulos discerns no clearrules in mortuary patterning, which for me is an argument against anyclearly established social hierarchy in that community. The next section (chapter 5 and Appendix E) deals with pottery,using standard typological and scientific (chemical and petrographic pe��trog��ra��phy?n.The description and classification of rocks.pe��trogra��pher n. )analyses (the latter undertaken by Richard Jones and Ian Whitbread). Thebulk of the assemblage is local wheel-made, with shapes and decorationfollowing Aegean prototypes; there are some local (different,'Macedonian') handmade shapes and some imports, principallyEuboean and Attic, and some mysterious black- and red-slip varieties.Generally, typology typology/ty��pol��o��gy/ (ti-pol��ah-je) the study of types; the science of classifying, as bacteria according to type. typologythe study of types; the science of classifying, as bacteria according to type. and fabric analysis match up, with two local fabricsidentified chemically--though the chemical methods used (AAS) produceresults not directly comparable to those obtained by ICP (1) (Internet Cache Protocol) A protocol used by one proxy server to query another for a cached Web page without having to go to the Internet to retrieve it. See CARP and proxy server. or neutronactivation. Chronologically, only two phases are distinguished;'early', i.e. eleventh to early tenth century, and'late' i.e. late tenth century to c. 850 BC. Chapter 6considers potters' marks, and chapter 7 the sparse small finds. The concluding chapter (8) is entitled, rather grandly,'Between Archaeology and History'. No work of Papadopouloswould be complete without his denunciations. The'Euboiocentric' views of British scholars, and the notion thatChalkidiki and Chalkis might have anything to do with each other, arerounded upon with verve. There is method to his mockery--the furtheraway one is from the new centres of academic power in UCLA and Stanford,and the closer to the older of Oxford and Cambridge, the more likely oneis to be denounced. So the volumes end on a sour note. This, theextensive 'thick referencing' (usually in text but with addedendnotes), and the author's coyness about dating, make it a moredifficult site report to use than it could have been. In between thepages of these fat volumes are two slimmer ones trying to get out. Reference MORRIS, I. 1987. Burial and Ancient Society: The Rise of the GreekCity-State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press (known colloquially as CUP) is a publisher given a Royal Charter by Henry VIII in 1534, and one of the two privileged presses (the other being Oxford University Press). . JAMES WHITLEY Cardiff School of History and Archaeology & British School atAthens The British School at Athens (BSA) (Greek: Βρετανική Σχολή Αθηνών) is one of the 17 Foreign Archaeological Institutes in Athens, Greece. , Greece (Email: director@bsa.ac.uk)