Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Preface and acknowledgements
- Abbreviations used in the text and bibliography
- 1 Phrasing the problem
- 2 The nature and expression of ethnicity: an anthropological view
- 3 The discursive dimension of ethnic identity
- 4 Ethnography and genealogy: an Argolic case-study
- 5 Ethnicity and archaeology
- 6 Ethnicity and linguistics
- 7 Conclusion
- Chronological table
- Chronological table of authors cited in the text
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - Conclusion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Preface and acknowledgements
- Abbreviations used in the text and bibliography
- 1 Phrasing the problem
- 2 The nature and expression of ethnicity: an anthropological view
- 3 The discursive dimension of ethnic identity
- 4 Ethnography and genealogy: an Argolic case-study
- 5 Ethnicity and archaeology
- 6 Ethnicity and linguistics
- 7 Conclusion
- Chronological table
- Chronological table of authors cited in the text
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
I have insisted throughout on the constructive nature of ethnicity. Like all ethnic groups, collectivities such as the Dorians, the Ionians, the Akhaians, the Pelasgians or the Dryopes should not be viewed as ‘essential’ categories. There is no evidence to suggest that any one of these groups can be traced by a direct and exclusive association with a certain type of pottery, a particular class of dress ornament, a distinctive form of burial ritual or a specific dialect. Nor is there any reason to suppose that they will ever be identified by running DNA tests on their skeletal remains. Ethnic identity is not a ‘natural’ fact of life; it is something that needs to be actively proclaimed, reclaimed and disclaimed through discursive channels. For this reason, it is the literary evidence which must constitute the first and final frame of analysis in the study of ancient ethnicity. In saying this, I am certainly not advocating a general principle of granting to literary evidence a primacy in all approaches to antiquity; it is simply that the very nature of ethnic identity demands this.
It is, of course, easy to see why the practitioners of a more objectivist view to the past should have turned their back on the literary references to ancient ethnicity. Accounts which purport to be ethnographic records of historical populations are interspersed with tales which belong more to the realm of fantasy.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity , pp. 182 - 185Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997