[Ancient Cultures] As Historians do you often try to see through the perspective of the cultures that you study? And, do you think that our understanding of these cultures may be limited conceptual prisons of modern thought?

Attempting to "see through the perspective of the cultures that we study" is a very curious rabbit hole, and an extremely difficult task. How do we know how ancient peoples truly saw their society? We can rely on some textual evidence, but then we must consider, who is writing it? What is the purpose of it being written? Is it representative of the majority, the "common man" or the elite?

A fairly recent example of this is a relatively contrived debate surrounding whether a shift to agricultural societies was a "good" or "bad" development in human history. Jared Diamond attempts to suggest that domestication and agriculture cause more problems than the practices solve, however he achieves this by presupposing an "objective" stance that evaluates ancient societies, and the progression of human existence, on an eternal scale. In reality, ancient societies made decisions based on their survival, efficiency and prosperity. They did not examine thousands of years of prior function before evaluating sociocultural decisions.

It is therefore unfair to attempt to study an ancient culture as a component of all of human existence in an attempt to remain objective. It simply does not account for the deeply specific, interconnected series of events and decisions that occurred and influenced the development of a culture. It has been shown that it is equally difficult and unfair to attempt to don the perspective of the culture being studied, as it is not necessarily clear how that culture viewed themselves or the world around them, or that this view was uniform amongst the entire culture.

Instead, as historians, we attempt to account for every variable that may have influenced the course of the history that we are investigating. Continuing with the previously provided example, we must ask questions such as: Did the climate allow for sedentary society to be established? Were there other nearby cultures that required a standing army to defend against? Only once these questions are answered and accounted for, can we portray an accurate history.

Our understanding of the cultures that we study are limited by numerous things. We are limited by the evidence that is available to us, and we are limited by modern language and definitions for concepts that were not necessarily applied in the Ancient World. The concept of a "state", for example, is a modern term that doesn't apply to Ancient Israel, yet we continue to see "state formation" discussed in the context of bureaucratisation as it is difficult to comprehend a sociopolitical structure that is neither a modern "tribe" nor a modern "state". To say that we are understanding "limited conceptual prisons of modern thought" may be a strong statement, however it is definitely fair to say that we only have a portion of the physical evidence available to us, and next to no intangible evidence such as cultural thought and memory. We are absolutely limited in this way, however we can only produce a history based on what is in front of us. This is why no objective history, as a blanket concept, exists - as we do not know, and never will know, all of the facts.

Bibliography

Diamond, J. (1987), “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race”, Discover Magazine, 64-66.

Master, D. (2001), “State Formation Theory and the Kingdom of Ancient Israel”, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 60(2), 117-131.

Roberts, N. and Rosen, A. M. (2009), “Diversity and Complexity in Early Farming Communities of Southwest Asia: New Insights into the Economic and Environmental Basis of Neolithic Çatalhöyük”, Current Anthropology 50(3), 393-402.