Tom Leppard

A state of denial? Looking for 'state' in Mediterranean metanarratives

Illustrations (in progress. Please check back).

Horden and Purcell (2000) have argued that the Mediterranean should be understood as a contiguous series of microecologies or microcontexts, each one varying subtly from its neighbour in terms of environment, subsistence imperatives, and opportunities. Moreover, these microecologies are, in order to make habitation feasible, interconnected to a great degree. This interconnection (cabotage) takes several forms, but the imperative to distribute and exchange is nonetheless understood to be a sine qua non of human-Mediterranean interaction.
Although reacting to Braudel, Horden and Purcell are working within a Braudelian framework in that they wish to relegate the state to secondary importance as epiphenomenal, when compared to the substrate of exchange between micro-regions. That is, 'state' is understood to be a superstructure which bears little relation to ecological contingencies of the Mediterranean (cf. Braudel's cononctures versus the longue duree). The Bourdieuian/Foucauldian perspective outlined above would counter that the very act of necessary redistribution, as habitus, would be both constitutive of state and would be constituted by state. We may interpret these perspectives as differing models: 1) the epiphenomal model and 2) the mutually-constitutive model:

I would like to explore the competing validity of these models in relation to the sort of short-haul cabotage envisioned by, amongst others, Sherratt. I feel a way to test these opposed considerations of the importance of the state would be to examine whether alterations in micropractice over a suitably large area resulted in a different constitution of state. If these phenomena are, conversely, seen to be unrelated, then Horden and Purcell's notion of state as epiphenomenal would seem to be more valid for this context; conversely, if radical restructuring of micropractice is co-extensive with the emergence or decline of the state, then the dismissal of state as irrelevant to deeper understandings of Mediterranean existence will be challenged. In particular, I will address micropractice and state in the Eastern Mediterranean in the Late Bronze Age, paying special attention to changing patterns of redistribution and resource extraction.

Provisional bibliography (more to follow):

Artzy, M. 2006. The Jatt Metal Hoard in Northern Canaanite/Phoenician and Cypriote Context (Cuadernos de Arqueología Mediterránea 14). Barcelona: Publicaciones del Laboratorio de Arqueología

Bourdieu, P. 1999. Rethinking the State: genesis and structure of the bureaucratic field. In Steinmetz, G. (ed.) State/culture: state-formation after the cultural turn. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 53-75.

Foucault, M. 2006 (1973-74). Psychiatric Power: Lectures given at the Collège de France, 1973-1974 (edited by J. Lagrange, translated by G. Burchell). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Horden, P. and Purcell, N. 2000. The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History. Oxford: Blackwell

Sherratt, S. 1994. Commerce, iron and ideology: Metallurgical innovation in 12th-11th century Cyprus. In Karageorghis, V. 1994 (ed.). Cyprus in the 11th century BC. Nicosia: A G Leventis Foundation, 59-106

Sherratt, S. 2003. The Mediterranean Economy – “Globalization” at the end of the Second Millennium BCE. In Dever, W.G. and Gitin, S. (eds.). Symbiosis, Symbolism, and the Power of the Past: Canaan, Ancient Israel and their Neighbours from the Late Bronze Age through Roman Palestina. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 37-62