M.S.'s book, a revised version of her 2007 Cambridge University Ph.D. thesis, attempts to ‘put the study of community identity back on the archaeological agenda’ (p. 192). The work is structured around the Late Bronze and Iron Age phases of two mound sites in southern-western Turkey, Beycesultan and Aphrodisias.
The work is divided into two parts, a theoretical discussion, followed by the two case studies. The first five chapters run through theory of community and community identity in other disciplines, especially sociology, before discussing its use in archaeology. M.S., with a limited array of archaeological source material, reasonably confines herself to a geographical definition. The meat of the book is the last three chapters, covering an introduction to western Anatolia, her methodology (a focus on the object, its characteristics, setting and use), then a detailed discussion of the two sites.
Beycesultan, a double mound site which ‘extended over several hectares’ (p. 95) was excavated in 1954–1959 by Lloyd and Mellaart. M.S. uses the largest area of excavation, an irregularly shaped area c. 40 × 40 m on the east mound, which produced three definable phases of domestic housing, a fourth phase with a megaron and some patchy evidence for Phrygians. The collection of materials was highly selective and often lightly recorded, which forced M.S. to re-assemble an inventory of small finds beyond the published material (Appendix A). Aphrodisias is much better known as a Roman site. Here, the presence of later phases limited the opportunities for Joukowsky to investigate the LBA and Iron Age between 1966 and 1974 to the west side of the Acropolis. Two 10 x 8 m trenches produced far less material for M.S. to analyse. Four appendices catalogue the small finds and ceramics from the two sites.
For each phase and area discussed, M.S. works through the available ceramics and small finds, then discusses how they can be interpreted in terms of community identity, before putting them into historical context. M.S. suggests that each artefact type would have had regional echoes (local, south-eastern Anatolia, etc.), and that these patterns (which changed over time) can be used to reconstruct views of the Community and the Other. We know much about where the ceramics and small finds come from, but it would be useful to consider whether the residents of these sites knew as much as we do about the origins of these artefacts. Even if certain types of ceramics were once seen as ‘new’ imports with a regional origin, these associations seem likely to have blurred over time as these artefacts also acquired a local meaning, a concept well brought out in the discussion of libation arms.
The finds are analysed in terms of where they came from (local or imported) and what this might mean for a sense of community identity. Since both places are always referred to as sites, value-laden words like town or village are avoided. This is good in terms of creating a portable theory, but limiting in other ways. There is thus little sense of scale of these communities. Community identity in a community of 500 is likely to be very different from community identity in a community of 10,000. Were the differences between Beycesultan and Aphrodisias because of different access to trade goods, or did their relative size have anything to do with this? Sometimes the analysis seems not to go far enough, and in particular I was not entirely convinced by the interpretation of dining experiences. Group dining at Aphrodisias in Trench 8, level 4.III involved ‘the gathering of substantial numbers of people’ in a room 6 × 4 m (pp. 149–52). Here, the similarity of the assemblage is interpreted as promoting a sense of community, whereas in other phases and areas diversity in the assemblages is seen as evidence for social diversity. If ceramics are all that we have, then so be it. But I would have felt more comfortable with some brief consideration of some of the many other types of archaeological data that we do not have, for example textiles, furniture, evidence of diet, never mind ritual, that might also have helped define community identity. The interpretation of the architecture of the megaron of Beycesultan phase Ia as encouraging exclusivity is open to other architectural readings. The interpretation is heavily driven by the historical data, for example the discussion relating to fear and the Hittites. How appropriate this is to domestic architecture in villages is an interesting question. The comments about not treating south-western Anatolia as an in-between zone make sense, even if some of the political interpretations need to be tested in other ways. I found myself wondering what sorts of stories would be told from periods without similar historical data, or from contemporary cemeteries, but also how this technique might work in well-excavated Roman cities like Aphrodisias, Beirut, London or Carthage.
There were no typos, though contours or relief on the maps would have helped the argument about the relative isolation of Aphrodisias vis-à-vis the good connections of Beycesultan. Scales were missing on some of the few find illustrations (figs 9, 17). For Beycesultan, the limit-of-excavation was shown only fitfully on the four phase drawings (figs 5, 8, 10, 12), making it hard to understand just how big the ‘large open area’ of level 1B was (p. 121) which ‘accommodated a substantial number of people’ (p. 125). Tables in the text rather than at the back of the book would have been helpful.
Despite a few minor areas that could easily be developed further, this is a well-written and thought-provoking book. M.S. is highly successful in showing what this sort of analysis can do, even if the datasets used here are not well-suited for such an analysis.
