Michael L. Galaty

Archaeology under dictatorship

The Practice of Archaeology Under Dictatorship.- Fascism in the Desert A Microcosmic View of Archaeological Politics.- The Trojans in Epirus: Archaeology, Myth and Identity in Inter-War Albania.- Italian Colonial Archaeology in Libya 1912-1942.- Italian Archaeology in Libya From Colonial Romanita to Decolonization of the Past.- Archaeological Resource Management Under Francos Spain The Comisaria General de Excavaciones Arqueologicas.- Whose Hittites, and Why? Language, Archaeology and the Quest for the Original Turks.- On the Stage and Behind the Scenes Greek Archaeology in Times of Dictatorship.- Dealing with the Devil The Faustian Bargain of Archaeology Under Dictatorship.

Blood of Our Ancestors: Cultural Heritage Management in the Balkans

The Balkan Peninsula is known for its messy mix of culture, language, and religion. It is, and always has been, a crossroads and, for most of its history, contested territory. The region’s jumbled past makes studying its landscape and built environment, and managing its cultural heritage resources, a difficult, politically charged process. Both in ancient times and recently, central powers have used heritage in creative ways to contest and undercut rival claims to land and move boundaries.

World-Systems Analysis and Anthropology: A New Détente?

In this review, I describe world-systems analysis and, to a lesser extent, sustainability science and political ecology, and argue that they suffer from a shared inability—or unwillingness—to address seriously the impact of individual agents as explained by agency theory. I explore several critical insights recently generated by world-systems analysis—the importance of frontiers, violence, market exchange, and ideology to world-system change and cycling—and demonstrate their relevance to earth-system models. Finally, I invite anthropologists to provide the data needed to test these models in our modern, globalized world.

Southeastern European Bronze Age

The Southeastern European region encompassed by this tradition is mountainous. Only about half of the available land is arable; much of the rest is rocky. The area is geologically active, with frequent earthquakes and occasional volcanic eruptions, as on Thera (modern Santorini). Catastrophic geological events transformed the landscape, both locally and regionally, during parts of the Southeastern European Bronze Age, and their impact on the people living in affected areas was certainly dramatic. For example, the eruption of Thera, the exact date of which is still open to debate (probably sometime in the late 17th or early 16th century b.c.), is often used to mark and explain regional culture change, especially on Crete, where the disaster is thought to have contributed to the collapse of the Minoan palatial civilization. It has also been suggested that certain regions suffered problems with soil erosion, especially during the E.B.A., as more land was brought into agricultural use, and that such problems may have put pressure on developing socioeconomic systems, particularly on the mainland.