Sofia Voutsaki has developed a very stimulating line of thought in her paper. In my view, one of the laudable traits of this paper is that it is characterized by the same tripartite structure which actually lies behind each scientific argument. Consciously or not, all of us start with a theory or a set of assumptions; we then proceed to methods in order to achieve our goal, i.e. to arrive at transparent interpretations of the past through empirical analysis. The analysis of empirical data is the end of the process, not its starting point, even if many people think it would be the beginning of our daily research work. The claim that the use of theory is unavoidable is often denied. Sofia Voutsaki's goal, as I understand it, is to make an attempt to narrow the gap between, on the one hand, mainly theory-driven research and, on the other, empirical analysis which is thought to be free from the unnecessary ‘burden’ of theory.
Voutsaki first devotes her attention to the debate about agency theory. She rightly points out that behind the clash between the advocates of agency theory and those who refer to individual action as dependent on its embedding in a framework of structures lurks the old philosophical question of determinism and free will. From this philosophical antagonism we may conclude that the quarrel between ‘modernists’ or advocates of processual archaeology and ‘historicists’ and/or ‘postprocessualists’ is more than just a debate about what is the most fitting tool to arrive at a proper interpretation of the past. In order to bypass this obvious philosophical impasse, Voutsaki introduces the concept of ‘personhood’. This term means that individuals (must) ‘define themselves and their position in the social and cosmological universe’ (p. 66). To be able to define oneself, one needs categories to refer to. Where do those categories come from? According to Voutsaki, moral philosophy can help us here.
Unfortunately, the paper does not offer a direct answer to the question what moral philosophy has on offer in this respect. Instead, the so-called Homeric society is presented as an explanatory example. The relationship between the individual and society in the exemplary Homeric world should make clear that all social agents are moral agents. This is an important point since the example of Homeric society leads us from the paper's first part on ‘theory’ to its second part on ‘methods’, and then, in the third and last part, to a better understanding of Mycenaean mortuary practices. Still, I do not want to rest on the multifaceted topic of the ‘Homeric world’ that has caused long and heavy debate (cf. recently Van Wees 1992; Crielaard 1995; Morris and Powell 1997; Cairns 2001; R. Fowler 2004; Graziosi and Haubold 2005; Ulf 2009b). To name just a few of the discussed subjects: when were the poems written down? From which sources did they come – only from oral tradition or also from written sources, only from Greek or from ‘Oriental’ sources too? How far back in time do the sources reach? Was there a ‘historical’ Homeric society at any time? Do the ‘heroes’ of the epics reflect (‘real’) aristocrats forced to meet the needs of their individual honour, or do they have to respect the needs of the (entire) people and the city as a whole and are they responsible for them? What are the intentions of the poems? The list of such questions is endless and could fill pages. Since we would have to discuss a good deal of these questions first before we could judge whether Homeric society is a suitable example to explain what a moral agent is or is not, we are better off skipping this part of Voutsaki's argument and having a closer look at the term ‘moral agent’ itself.
Moral philosophy in a broader sense, as represented by the work of Michael Walzer, recognizes that the social actor is always a member of various ‘networks of sociability’, adopts different roles, and adapts, or can adapt, to different moral positions. To make the point clear: there is no single moral authority that transcends, or hovers above, the human sphere. The categories against which every individual human being is forced to measure their thoughts and behaviour emerge from this mixture of rules; they create the different social groups, of which the individual is a member. It therefore depends on the characteristics of these groups whether or not the respective categories of thinking and behaviour contradict each other. We can describe this problem in philosophical terms, or – which, for archaeologists and (ancient) historians such as myself, may be more productive – we rather might take advantage of theories and methods developed in social psychology and sociology. For it is one of the main tasks of these disciplines to deal with the basic question of how to conceptualize the relationship between individual and society.
I do not enter new ground with this statement, but I want to widen the current perspective in archaeology and ancient history. Pierre Bourdieu's concept of the ‘social field’ (champ social), developed for the analysis of modern society, has widely been accepted as a (methodological) tool for also analysing and describing historical phenomena. I will come back to this point later. To answer the question how to analyse the relationship between individual and society, I would like to touch first upon basic insights into how human cognition works. For how human beings perceive each other is decisive for every analysis of the individual's place within a society of whatever kind we may think of; this is the field of social psychology (cf. Ulf 2009a, 101–5).
Research in the cognitive sciences has shown that we order new pieces of information according to pre-existing categories of a socially produced mental system. The available categories allow a person ‘to deal with incoming information quickly and automatically. Categorisation is a natural product of how the human mind operates’ (Brewer 2003, 4; 1999). If we accept that categorization is of central importance to all forms of social perception, then we must ask how these categories come about.
It seems beyond doubt that our cognitive categories are designed to help us function within a group: they give us confidence, and enable us to negotiate our social position. Cognitive categories thus carry in themselves a clear in-group bias: in order to fulfil their purpose they must to a certain extent be ethnocentric, accentuating what binds the group together and marking as strange what does not – or does so to a lesser extent. Cognitive categorization thus belongs to the broader realm of social comparison, and one may call the underlying standards moral values generated by the group or the society in question.
When a group or society acquires an ethnic identity – that is, a specialized form of social identity – specifically ethnic categories come into play. An ethnic self-definition emphasizes the in-group bias and at the same time tends to exaggerate the differences between groups or societies. Stereotypes and various forms of prejudice arise as a consequence. Under such circumstances, members of the group may stop making use of available cognitive resources and may rely increasingly on stereotypes and a sense of the group's moral superiority.
The linkage between the group's, or society's, cognitive categories and the individual who processes information can be interpreted as the place where moral standards emerge and virtues are defined. Therefore a moral agent is by necessity a social agent insofar as his perception must match the group's perceptions. As a result, we can also state that moral standards are always bound up with the society as a whole and differ between societies according to each society's respective layout. This guiding role of moral standards does not prevent the individual making their own choices. This becomes clear when we make a closer inspection of how social groups work internally.
A basic assumption of the so-called network theory is that every person is part of at least a few groups whose members are more or less ‘tied’ to each other; it is in this way that these groups are shaped into networks. Looking at modern social groups, the sociologist Mark Granovetter (1973; cf. Burt 1992; Lin, Cook and Burt 2001) has shown that networks in which individuals are bound together through ‘strong ties’ tend to detach themselves from the outside world. Moreover, they resist being subsumed into higher-level networks. By contrast, networks in which individuals are bound together through ‘weak ties’ show a greater willingness to assimilate new – that is, external – information. They represent so-called ‘structural holes’. This becomes important when the existing strong relationships do not produce all the information that is needed in a given situation, such as when a deep social and/or political change takes place. Under such circumstances, weak relationships function as bridges to other networks. ‘Outsiders’ without strong bonds to a given society or social stratum are often more than usually open to innovation. They command information that is not shared by (all) other members of the group. On the other hand, the individuals who ‘are’ such structural holes are able to provide the additional information which is necessary for the entire group to deal with the new situation.
If we add the above-mentioned results of social psychology and network theory to the components of Pierre Bourdieu's concept of social field, we can better imagine when and how the different forms of capital might lead to the different positions within the social field. The ‘habitus’ of a person no longer means the more or less stable mental and material ‘outfit’ of a social agent. The information that is available for the social agent and the relationship to the respective kind of network he/she is member of make his/her ‘habitus’ flexible and thus adaptable to changing historical situations. It is impossible to think of a social agent otherwise than relational to, and embedded in, a broader social group.
So far, I have tried to extend the underdeveloped middle part of Voutsaki's paper: from theory to method. Now the moral agent has lost its almost evasive philosophical background and has been furnished instead with general – not just example-based (the contested Homeric warrior society) – and ‘real’ relations. This new theory-based definition of the moral–social agent provides the methods for the empirical research which every theoretically oriented study should entail.
Every archaeological record mirrors the positions individuals hold within the social field. But to determine this position, we must know what that society was like. To avoid arguing in a vicious circle, archaeologists and historians draw on general assumptions about human behaviour. These assumptions must completely be separated from the above-mentioned theories. The archaeological record of the MH III and LH I phases is interpreted as a transformation of a ‘relatively egalitarian and kin-based’ society to a ‘ranked and competitive’ society (p. 75). Obviously, this framework is taken from anthropology; now widely accepted, it has replaced older interpretive frameworks based on notions such as primitivism, the state and the people. Even if such frameworks are based on general assumptions on how human societies evolve, we cannot avoid relying on them as long as there are no written sources available. However, within a given societal framework, the tools of social cognition and network allow for a closer examination of how the social field might have functioned, or at least allow for alternative readings of the archaeological remains, as I will finally show by the example of the gift as discussed in Voutsaki's paper.
It is by no means clear what a valuable gift is in a given society, nor is it self-evident that the recipient must accept an offered gift. Both depend on the ‘normal’ moral standards of the society in question and the position giver and recipient hold within that society. Maybe the man buried in Grave Circle B, Grave I, was an outsider representing a structural hole in the network of Mycenae's rich people. Yet he might have been able to achieve information from outside, especially when the standards of society were in motion; at this point he might have employed his contacts to set new rules for daily life within the society and be able to become more successful than others beside him. Strictly speaking, we can only detect changes in mortuary practices, but there is every appearance that there also existed some resistance to the new standards, as is indicated by the younger Grave Λ 1. Its setting, as Voutsaki puts it, ‘retains in most respects the traditional practices’ (p. 89).
It is these different grave settings which might reflect that there was no coherent discourse among the social elite about virtues and moral standards but rather discord and disagreement. To assume such an internal debate would much better fit Voutsaki's assumption of a change in the Peloponnese from a kin-based and relatively egalitarian society to a ranked and competitive one than the proposed picture of a warrior society led by moral agents. This is because, to all anthropological and psychological knowledge, such deep social and cultural changes cause insecurity and the need for new orientations among the people. In addition we escape the tricky ground of arguing with the Homeric poems. Instead, the suggested reading of the archaeological record is based on transparent methods which are the outcome of well-described theories. In this way we get around the methodological trap of furnishing the archaeological record with meanings which are derived only from a biased interpretation of much younger written sources. We should be aware that in such cases ancient historians and archaeologists face the same problems, for written sources do not provide more reliable information than the archaeological record. To attach to our sources any meaning, we need new theory-derived methods – as up to date as the methods which are nowadays applied to analysing the archaeological record.
