Let's talk about theory in archaeology, and the extent to which archaeologists can construct cultural histories.

I was listening to the In Our Time podcast on the "Dawn of the Iron Age" last night, and one of the panelists (cannot recall who), described the way that a bronze-age or iron-age "warrior elite" was distinguishable from burials. He made a point to note that not only was this a warrior elite in a practical sense, but in a kind of representational sense as well: that these people were doing things specifically to represent themselves as warriors in symbolic ways. Another suggested that an interesting avenue for research was studying iron workers themselves through ethnography, although this was toward the end a long drive, and I didn't quite catch what she meant here.

This podcast got me thinking about the theories that archaeologists use to construct social and cultural histories of their subjects. From this podcast, it seems like they're drawing a lot on sociological and anthropological ideas--which makes sense, since archaeology is often linked disciplinarily with anthropology. Is this the case? What theories do archaeologists deploy on to interrogate and explain their data?

What do cultural and social histories of the bronze and iron age look like, from a theoretical and conceptual point of view?

Edit: I just found that IOT maintains not only a terrific archive of the podcasts themselves--and they've been doing them for ten years--but there's also an excellent page for each one, which includes the identities of the guests, but also a bibliography. Here are the guests:

Sir Barry Cunliffe Emeritus Professor of European Archaeology at the University of Oxford

Sue Hamilton Professor of Prehistory at University College London

Timothy Champion Professor of Archaeology at the University of Southampton

And here's the bibliography:

• Rowley-Conwy, P, ‘From Genesis to Prehistory: The Archaeological Three Age System and its Contested Reception in Denmark, Britain and Ireland’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)

• Harding, A F, ‘European Societies in the Bronze Age’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)

• Kristiansen, K and Larsson, T B, ‘The Rise of Bronze Age Society: Travels, Transmissions and Transformations’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)

• Sørensen, M L and Thomas, R (eds), ‘The Bronze Age-Iron Age Transition in Europe’ (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1989)

• Pleiner, R, ‘Iron in Archaeology: The European Bloomery Smelters’ (Prague: Archeologicky ústav AV CR, 2000)

• Collis, J, ‘The European Iron Age’ (London: Batsford, 1984)

• Cunliffe, B W, ‘Europe Between the Oceans: Themes and Variations 9000 BC - AD 1000’ (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008)

• Hamilton, S, “Cultural choices in the ‘British Eastern Channel Area’ in the Late Pre-Roman Iron Age” in Haselgrove, C and Moore, T, (eds.), ‘The Later Iron Age in Britain and Beyond’ (81 - 106) (Oxford: Oxbow, 2007)

• Herbert, Eugenia W, ‘Iron, Gender, and Power: Rituals of Transformation in African Societies’ (Bloomington, IN, 1993)

Any comments on the panelists they chose for this, and any thoughts on the quality of the bibliography?

So I'm currently working with this reference book which has in the front a note pasted in saying errata and addenda will be periodically deposited at the Vatican Library. Is this some old thing that used to happen? Because I've never seen it before in my LIFE. Also this book is from 1993!

Today I spent some time wool-gathering about Marxist theories of social class, and how they are applied in the context of pre-colonial African history.

I have often seen the concept of Tribe criticized as being a European imposition to very simply and pretty inaccurately describe unfamiliar societies in Africa, the Americas and Asia.

• Should we likewise be wary of using terminology like bourgeois and class when applied to African societies before contact with Europeans, and even during the period of contact before the institution of widespread colonies in the late 19th century?

• Is it anachronistic to talk of a class consciousness among the Yoruba in the 17th century?

• Or is it ok to talk of elites, bourgeois, proletariat so long as it is explicitly stated what the terms are specifically meant to signify, accounting for local usages?

If anyone could recommend books or articles that try and interrogate class in pre-colonial African societies, it would be much appreciated.

I'd like to lay out some issues I've been thinking about for a while now and get the opinions of others. For the last two years (and likely what I'll be working on for the next four) is the American encounter with international terrorism from the 1980s to the early 2000s. Historians of the recent United States still haven't really dug too deeply into the subject even after 9/11, and a lot of what's come out thus far isn't exactly sterling. Above all, there is an overriding emphasis on the role of states as opposed to non-state actors for historians of recent international terrorism. This is not so with earlier eras of terrorism. Within the last decade some historians have begun to give greater voice to terrorist organizations themselves. Paul Thomas Chamberlin's The Global Offensive and Matthew Connelly's A Diplomatic Revolution are two excellent examples of this. But these histories are from an earlier era than what I study--from the 1950s to the mid 1970s--and, furthermore, these two works analyze two organizations that eventually gained political legitimacy and thus have some form of archival records. Historians of even earlier eras of terrorism have also been able to incorporate the voices of terrorist groups. We know much, for example, about the mindset of anarchist terrorist groups of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

But, as states began to formulate much more comprehensive counter-terrorist responses beginning in the late 1970s, the ability for historians to give due agency to terrorist groups themselves seems to have slipped away. It goes without saying that it isn't exactly practical for contemporary terrorist groups to maintain large archival collections for future historians. Nor is it too easy (or safe) for historians to conduct interviews. What about terrorists captured by the state? This doesn't really seem to be an option either. Ramzi Yousef, the planner of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, has been effectively banned from any communication with any one other than his immediate family and his lawyers. The same can be equally applied to most other captured terrorists within the past several decades. It should be noted, however, that this is really only a factor for international terrorism. Historians, sociologists, and political scientists have been able to conduct numerous interviews with the American right-wing militia movement and anti-abortion militants.

How, then, do you think historians of recent international terrorism can offer histories that don't rely on the state's framing narrative while also giving due credence to the role of terrorist organizations themselves in world affairs? Should historians begin taking a page from journalists these days, many of whom have been able to conduct interviews with terrorists? Is the profession even set up to do something like that? That it is so preposterous to even suggest to go out in search of terrorists to interview shows the degree to which historians are limited in their source base. What do you think would be some other ways in which historians could deconstruct the state's overriding ability to control how historians view terrorism?