My last statment on this subject - I swear!
I would like to endorse most, but not all, of Paul Courtney's comments.
The empirical question of the emergence and depth of the Modern World is
indeed problematical. This question is a priamry area where historical
archaeology can make a major contribution. When would Ottoman sites (AD
1400 to 1920), for example, show European influences - actual European
artifacts, or just the impact after 1600 of growing European political and
economic power, if, indeed, such patterns showed up before 1800 or 1900?
The reverse is also interesting. The Ottomans were participants in the
opening phase of the Modern World (e.g. use of gun technology) and I have
read that in the 16th century twice as many books were issued in Western
Europe on the Ottomans as were issued on the discovery of the New World.
Of course, in the New World the situation is quite different.
The so called modern world-system may indeed be a secondary phenomenon
and in any major collapse local units and traditions might well be more likely
to survive. How deeply the Modern World system has penetrated specific
cultures and civilizations is open to question even if every modern
political system, with the possible exception of Islamic Iran, is on the
surface an extention of or copy of the West. But all of these questions
are relative. How powerful, or even real, is the Modern World system --
compared to what? Traditional civilizations? World religions?
I agree with Courtney's major point on the complexity of the Modern World -
systems nested within systems within systems. As we move back in time over
the last 500 or 600 years these relationships are even more complex with
powerful continuities from the past.
However, I do not agree that Historical Archaeology is limited to local and
specific knowledge or expertise. We must rely on the secondary, scholarly
literature. There are experts on 17th century China and they have
produced much that is readily available. Most of us will never dig an
Ottoman site and if that archaeology develops we will not be doing it,
although historical archaeologists may initially get the field off the
ground. This reality does not mean that Ottoman archaeology, for example,
is not part of the total picture of the Modern World nor unimportant to
a full Historical Archaeology.
I also do not completely agree with his comments on building up the field.
The concept of "historic ethnography", or whatever term you want to use, is
not a call for an inductive building of our knowledge from local to regional
to national to world levels.
Such a sequence is logical and we can not, I believe, go from a local to
a regional level until there are such building blocks but these units can
only be built with some theoretical approach that is, from the start,
general. It is not just building up the facts and then synthesis, more
data and then a higher synthesis - there will be no analytical synthesis
without general theory.
Finally his, and his fellow Brit's, comments about Americans, including
scholars, are partially true. However, I would like to assure our SPMA
colleagues that we really do understand that America is simply a
secondary wave and extension of Western European (especailly English)
culture. There is little that is exceptional about American Exceptionalism
and, no, we are not, I believe, a pluralistic culture (*) but rather an
Anglo-European culture with many variations inside this general framework.
And, yes, we also realize that Western European civiliation itself was
not that impressive or differentiated from other Old World civilizations
in AD 1400 and that in 2000 its centrality may be already fading.
At the same time, as a cultural evolutionist, I would ask how many people
saw the recent and fascinating "light-map" recently issued by the National
Geographic. Its shows the world based on the presence and concentration of
lights seen from satellites at night. The pattern is quite clustered.
Part of this has to do with natural geography but much has to do with the
nature of cultural evolution. Western Europe (not Eastern), North America
and Japan stand out with secondary visibility in China and India. What
would such an "energy-map" look like in AD 1800, 1700, 1600 or 1400?
There is a Modern World and it is a lot more than just money flow and, yes,
its patterning is very complex.
RL Schuyler
[* Now you have gotten me into trouble on this side of the Atlantic. And
finally, yes, we need to help Third World countries like England, so join
the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology.]
|