The current situation of a nation state

A nation state may be defined as a population that purportedly has a right to a state of its own (Roeder Reference Roeder2007). The formation of modern nation states started in the 18th century. However, the factors that caused their origins are actively disputed. Marxist tradition links the formation of modern states to the early development of capitalism, or more specifically to the formation of a free-market economy (Polanyi Reference Polanyi1944). Different definitions characterize the nation as having the following features: self-identity; territory; its own state; and a common language, culture and heritage. However, each concept in this checklist, except for self-identity, is optional. In eastern Europe political nations generally correspond to ethnic units, with the exception of the Republic of Moldova and the Russian Federation (see below).

Unlike the early free-market economy, the modern global capitalist system is based on free transfers of capital and labour that require the abolition of state borders and the unification of local laws (McGuire Reference McGuire2008; cf. Harvey Reference Harvey2006). At the same time, local capital associated with a particular state or certain regions within it appeals to or influences the national law in an unequal struggle with supranational capital. The dialectical relationship between ‘global’ and ‘local’ forms the current political agenda. On the one hand, the decrease in participation in EU elections from 62 per cent in 1979 to 43 per cent in 2009 does not necessarily mean a decrease in support for the European project, and the formation process of supranational units is ongoing (e.g. Formuszewicz and Stormowska Reference Formuszewicz and Stormowska2013). Moreover, nowadays national identity and citizenship are not always the same thing. On the other hand, trends towards regionalization across Europe, corresponding to national movements or not, are also obvious. These trends are clearly seen in referenda discussing the independence of Catalonia and Scotland or military conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Different rules faced by or proposed for national and supranational capitals, hence, should be explicated to the relevant populations and, if the economic arguments are weak, the job of persuasion must be taken on by the sphere of ideology. This is when cultural heritage may be involved in political manipulations. Generally speaking, the nation shares a common heritage; hence one nation has one history, but common history does not necessarily mean common experience (McGuire Reference McGuire2002). Moreover, other issues arise from the structural conflict for heritage, as demonstrated by Zubrow (Reference Zubrow2012). The ownership of cultural heritage does not always correspond to symbolic value as understood by different groups of people – for instance, artefacts owned by individuals may have symbolic values for larger communities, while heritage owned by a nation may have symbolic value for local communities and for humanity in general (ibid.). At first glance, individual ownership of archaeological heritage is more common in the USA than in Europe. However, this is also possible in some eastern European countries (see below).

If the symbolic meaning of cultural heritage and the level of its inclusion in political manipulation are the result of dialectical relations between global and regional capitals, then does it make any difference how ‘nation states’ and ‘multinational states’ influence archaeology? This paper argues that it does. The aforementioned views of McGuire and Zubrow are focused on more or less stable political situations in democratic societies. As soon as a nation state starts the formation of a political agenda based on ‘common national heritage’ through its institutions and/or media, the risks of increasing nationalism aiming to become monopolistic both in the discipline and in society rise to a great extent (Ascherson Reference Ascherson2003; Halle and Schmidt Reference Halle and Schmidt2001; Hamilakis Reference Hamilakis2007; Kohl, Kozelsky and Ben-Yehuda Reference Kohl, Kozelsky and Ben-Yehuda2007; McGuire Reference McGuire2002; Milisauskas Reference Milisauskas1997–98). Let us review related issues in eastern Europe more specifically.

States and archaeologies in eastern Europe

According to the United Nations Statistics Division, 10 states are classified as eastern European. These are the Republic of Belarus, the Republic of Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, the Republic of Moldova, the Republic of Poland, Romania, the Russian Federation, the Slovak Republic and Ukraine (United Nations Population Division 2014). This list includes one multinational state, the Russian Federation; eight nation states; and one segment state, the Republic of Moldova, where the dispute regarding Moldavian or Romanian identity has continued over 20 years (Roeder Reference Roeder2007). The Republic of Belarus, the Republic of Moldova, the Russian Federation and Ukraine were parts of the USSR. The other six eastern European countries were members of the Warsaw Pact, dominated by the Soviet Union; all six are current members of the European Union.

The state influences archaeology at different levels, including academic focus and approach, funding and administration, cultural-heritage protection, and connection to society, as suggested at the EAA session out of which the papers in this section arise. This list may be supplemented by ‘education’ in the case of eastern Europe.

It should be noted that, despite the prevalence of Marxism as an official research framework in eastern Europe, archaeologies of this region were quite different before the people's revolutions in the late 1980s and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and remain different nowadays. Most archaeologists did not publish in the West, nor did they visit Western countries during the socialist era. However, this was not the case for archaeologists in Hungary and the Republic of Poland, who were allowed to travel to the West and left their impact on the development of so-called Anglo-Saxon archaeology (Milisauskas Reference Milisauskas1990; Reference Milisauskas1997; Reference Gershkovych2011). As a result, archaeologists in these two countries have relatively quickly integrated into global archaeology since the 1990s (Milisauskas Reference Milisauskas1997; Reference Milisauskas2011; Urbańczyk Reference Urbańczyk2002).

In the majority of eastern European countries, archaeology is organized around four groups of institutions: academic institutes at the Academies of Sciences, universities, museums, and archaeological rescue services that may be represented by private or, in most cases, state companies (e.g. Marciniak and Pawleta Reference Marciniak, Pawleta, Schlanger and Aitchison2010). For instance, all such enterprises are owned by the state in the Republic of Belarus, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine, whereas both private companies and state-owned organizations are engaged in commercial archaeology in the Republic of Poland. However, the state-funded organ-izations are directed by different ministries. For example, in the Republic of Poland and Ukraine, the Academies of Sciences and universities work under the Ministry of Science and High Schools and the Ministry of Education and Science respectively, while museums work under the Ministries of Culture in both countries. State-funded offices responsible for rescue excavations and cultural-heritage protection in the Republic of Poland work under the Ministry of Culture, while in Ukraine rescue archaeology is carried out under both the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Education and Science.

States influence archaeology in these four groups of institutions in different ways not least because the results of their work are focused on quite different audiences. Publications of initial data, typo-chronologies or radiocarbon data and, let us be honest, the greater part of interpretations and explanations are mostly interesting to other experts in the field. This thesis is well illustrated by Zubrow's (Reference Zubrow2012) study of the relationship between archaeology and society. The study is based upon 41,250 stories published in newspapers and magazines between 2008 and 2012 and divided approximately equally into three categories, ‘legacy’, ‘tradition’ and ‘heritage’. The general assumption treats the information in the press as a commodity sold by the media and purchased by readers. The results presented in figure 1 indicate quite a low level of interest in the distant past in eastern Europe compared to western Europe. At the same time, the overall trend clearly demonstrates that the press mostly publicized research dealing with the Bronze and Iron Ages (Zubrow Reference Zubrow2012). To some extent, the latter may reflect interest in origins and ethnic reconstructions. Moreover, eastern European archaeology during the socialist period includes numerous examples of the reduction of the Marxist paradigm to the superficial citation of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, while the research itself was based on completely different theoretical frameworks (Krekovič and Bača Reference Krekovič and Bača2013; Milisauskas Reference Milisauskas1997–98; Reference Milisauskas2011). As noted by Milisauskas (Reference Milisauskas1997–98), without knowing the author personally it was very difficult to understand who really shared Marxist views and who did not.

Figure 1

Distribution of heritage stories in newspapers and magazines by country (a) and by prehistoric time period (b) (after Zubrow Reference Zubrow2012).

However, this level of freedom in academic institutions did not mean that all academics employed by them produced high-quality research. Ideas of direct evolutionary descent between modern nations and the populations of the distant past, or even mythical peoples, are widespread across many parts of the world, including eastern Europe. Hence pseudoscientific narratives become a problem when employed by state authorities responsible for national cultural politics and the education of the general public.

Reassessed political agendas and the early years of newly formed states are often followed by appeals to the distant past that are believed to somehow promote the legitimacy of new countries or regimes (Kohl Reference Kohl1998; Kohl and Fawcett Reference Kohl and Fawcett1995; Kohl, Kozelsky and Ben-Yehuda Reference Kohl, Kozelsky and Ben-Yehuda2007). Such appeals are shaped in two ways in eastern Europe – as evidence of direct descent from well-known ‘ancestors’ or as a discussion of where (and specifically in what country) the oldest sites of a certain archaeological culture are located. For example, several theories regarding the earliest sites of the Slavs and Magyars in the Middle Danube region, and respectively the issue of ancestors populating the area in the past, are discussed by some historians and archaeologists in the Slovak Republic and Hungary (Krekovič Reference Krekovič2007).

The search for distant ancestors may be exemplified by the related impact on education and cultural history presented to the general public in the Republic of Moldova, Romania and Ukraine. Non-academic writers in Romania promote the idea of Romanian ethnogenesis according to the following equation: Geto-Dacians + Romans = Romanians (Niculescu Reference Niculescu, Kohl, Kozelsky and Ben-Yehuda2007; Popa Reference Popa, Ginn, Enlander and Crozier2013; Reference Popa2015). Ukrainian pseudoscientific narratives go even further, mainly to Chalcolithic/Eneolithic populations of the Cucuteni–Tripolye cultural complex, dated to 4900/4800–3000/2950 B.C. Such narratives are based on assumptions regarding the autochthonous development of Eneolithic populations and ignore even the obvious facts of the location of the earliest sites of this cultural complex in Romania and the Republic of Moldova (Gershkovych Reference Gershkovych2011; Tolochko Reference Tolochko, Diachenko, Menotti, Ryzhov, Bunyatyan and Kadrow2015; see also Shnirelman Reference Shnirelman, Kohl, Kozelsky and Ben-Yehuda2007 on the ‘Aryan’ myth in the Russian Federation and Ukraine). Lacking reviewing procedures, ideas of this kind actively infiltrate education, especially in secondary schools (e.g. Krekovič Reference Krekovič2007). In the case of Ukraine these processes are intensified by private keepers of archaeological collections of questionable origin. According to Ukrainian law, the state is the exclusive owner of cultural heritage, but, despite this, private collections are exhibited in Ukraine and abroad (Gershkovych Reference Gershkovych2005). Prescott (this issue) provides us with persuasive arguments for the responsibility of the state for cultural-heritage protection. Meanwhile, the case of Ukraine, where the corresponding law has been openly ignored for years, raises the issue of international control over archaeological heritage. It should be noted, however, that several countries in the region almost completely lack nationalistic influence on archaeology by the state. For instance, the Republic of Belarus generally follows the Soviet agenda where the state itself implements an anti-nationalistic policy, while the Republic of Poland is for the moment relatively untroubled by such pseudoscientific narratives and ‘the struggle for autochthonous development across centuries’ after going through similar trends in the post-war era (Milisauskas Reference Milisauskas1997–98; Urbańczyk Reference Urbańczyk2000).

Thus the influence of the state on archaeology varies across eastern Europe. Since nationalistic narratives in several countries are mainly implemented in education, and more specifically in the teaching programmes of secondary schools, their impact may be underestimated nowadays. However, the potential risks for increasing nationalism and segmentation of regional archaeologies in the near future are high.

50 shades of brown: the invisible hand of the nation state or the individual choice of the archaeologist?

The preceding sections present the influence of the nation state on archaeology in the form of an invisible hand. It goes without saying that the real situation is more complicated than any black-and-white image. Archaeologists are people who live in specific social, economic and cultural environments and who possess different political views. Hence the relationship between the nation state and the discipline should not be considered a one-way street (Althusser Reference Althusser1971; Hodder Reference Hodder1986; Kadrow Reference Kadrow, Kristiansen, Šmejda and Turek2015).

If the term ‘nationalism’ has negative connotations in English and Russian, the reverse is the case in Poland and Ukraine. However, other factors than different connotations have had a greater impact on the increase of nationalism. These are language barriers and fears caused by funding and access to recent literature.

The dominance of English in European archaeology today is perceived ambiguously in non-Anglo-Saxon countries. On the one hand, this means unequal opportunities for reading, and especially for writing, in English-speaking and other countries. On the other hand, thousands of archaeologists from all over the world have to communicate with each other in one or two languages (Harding Reference Harding2007; Milisauskas Reference Milisauskas2011; Neustupný Reference Neustupný1997–98). Since English is learned as the foreign language of first choice in the majority of European countries, this issue is less important to younger archaeologists, while numerous scholars of the older generation studied French, German, Spanish or Russian.

Another problem is access to recent literature. Online access even to the top journals and databases remains an issue for the small universities and museums of eastern Europe, while for financial reasons the majority of the archaeological institutions in the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine have no access to digital libraries or paper versions of the most-cited journals in the field. This leads to reopening of older discoveries, reinventing the bicycle, as it were, and ‘speaking’ different languages even when archaeologists from the West and the East communicate in English.

Certain groups of people in all countries share nationalistic ideas, but nationalism significantly increases only in particular socio-economic climates. Although rescue excavations may be related to state funding, ‘academic’ fieldwork in several countries in eastern Europe, such as the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine, is almost exclusively possible through international projects funded from abroad. Many archaeologists of older generations, who headed large-scale projects for dozens of years in socialist times, often feel psychologically uncomfortable being co-directors without control over funds. Sometimes this causes misunderstandings within international teams, especially considering different field methodologies and principles of team organization – rather vertical in eastern Europe and rather horizontal in western Europe. Hence the fear of some kind of international division of labour in the field, leaving interpretations and explanations to Western scholars and pushing archaeologists from non-Anglo-Saxon countries to carry out fieldwork and material-culture studies, is haunting eastern Europe. The subsequent focus on regional studies and the bias towards nationalistic narratives in archaeology are the obvious results of such fears.

Let us remember that ‘archaeologists are not saints’, but human beings competing for sites, publications, positions and so on (Milisauskas and Kruk Reference Milisauskas, Kruk, Sulgostowska and Tomaszewski2008). The scholars who look at issues of language barriers, funding and access to recent literature through the lens of national identity hold positions which influence both contemporary states and the future agenda of the field. When they are leaning towards nationalistic state politics reflecting the interests of the national capital, or even forming such politics, this may lead to unfortunate consequences.