Choosing the Right Weapons and Arenas - Comments to Elliott and Warren

Benjamin Elliott and Graeme Warren have bravely taken on the project to write a debate article for Norwegian Archaeological Review about colonialism and the European Mesolithic. The dialog-oriented shape they have given the text makes it valuable and thought provoking and the authors certainly deserves credit for this, as most decolonising debates resembles the trench warfare of the First World War, not very attuned to dialog. Their arguments are many and complex and the format of the debate makes it difficult to address all the issues that they raise. I therefore limit my comments to just a few themes. These are the European or Western peccatum originale; the benefits of universality; the relation between structure and history; and finally, the significance of the archaeological record itself. I find it fascinating that the text de facto presents the core of the decolonisation debate as a theological problem of the peccatum originale or original sin in western culture. Few people in European societies and even fewer researchers in archaeology have taken a direct or active part in oppressing indigenous populations across the world. Still, their thinking, their language and their way of life are oppressing. This is, as far as I can see the classical dilemma of the original sin. I must admit that I am very sceptical to this doctrine, and I find it paradoxical that this very western and Christian problem, defines the debate about decolonisation – a debate aimed at criticising the very same phenomenon. This does not make the debate or problems per se (the very uneven distribution of capital, influence and power in the world today) irrelevant or silly, it raises however the question of how we are best served to investigate, discuss and debate injustice in the world today. In this respect, I doubt that colonialism and post-colonialism are the best tools for making intellectual or political progress. The reason for this is first that I think the problems are much more complicated than the fact that some nations and people in the modern era colonised other people’s land. Second, the terms themselves – colonialism, post-colonialism – come to act as a metaphor of everything wrong and thus preclude any attempt to make a precise analysis of the problems at stake. Just like the terms processual and post-processual mobilised generations of archaeologists in the 70s, 80s and 90s, (post)-colonialism also effectively mobilises current archaeological thinking – but does the term describe something of substance? To me it seems much more like a repetition of a classical Christian and western paradox, introduced to control through penance – not to liberate or enlighten. In this perspective, it is interesting that Elliot and Warren emphasise that the archaeologists that have been inspired by the ‘ontological turn’ in their interpretations of Mesolithic societies abstained from letting


HÅKON GLØRSTAD
Benjamin Elliott and Graeme Warren have bravely taken on the project to write a debate article for Norwegian Archaeological Review about colonialism and the European Mesolithic. The dialog-oriented shape they have given the text makes it valuable and thought provoking and the authors certainly deserves credit for this, as most decolonising debates resembles the trench warfare of the First World War, not very attuned to dialog.
Their arguments are many and complex and the format of the debate makes it difficult to address all the issues that they raise. I therefore limit my comments to just a few themes. These are the European or Western peccatum originale; the benefits of universality; the relation between structure and history; and finally, the significance of the archaeological record itself.
I find it fascinating that the text de facto presents the core of the decolonisation debate as a theological problem of the peccatum originale or original sin in western culture. Few people in European societies and even fewer researchers in archaeology have taken a direct or active part in oppressing indigenous populations across the world. Still, their thinking, their language and their way of life are oppressing. This is, as far as I can see the classical dilemma of the original sin. I must admit that I am very sceptical to this doctrine, and I find it paradoxical that this very western and Christian problem, defines the debate about decolonisation -a debate aimed at criticising the very same phenomenon. This does not make the debate or problems per se (the very uneven distribution of capital, influence and power in the world today) irrelevant or silly, it raises however the question of how we are best served to investigate, discuss and debate injustice in the world today. In this respect, I doubt that colonialism and post-colonialism are the best tools for making intellectual or political progress. The reason for this is first that I think the problems are much more complicated than the fact that some nations and people in the modern era colonised other people's land. Second, the terms themselves -colonialism, post-colonialism -come to act as a metaphor of everything wrong and thus preclude any attempt to make a precise analysis of the problems at stake. Just like the terms processual and post-processual mobilised generations of archaeologists in the 70s, 80s and 90s, (post)-colonialism also effectively mobilises current archaeological thinking -but does the term describe something of substance? To me it seems much more like a repetition of a classical Christian and western paradox, introduced to control through penance -not to liberate or enlighten.
In this perspective, it is interesting that Elliot and Warren emphasise that the archaeologists that have been inspired by the 'ontological turn' in their interpretations of Mesolithic societies abstained from letting this thinking transform or challenges the way they were doing science (in the general sense of the word, like German Wissenschaft). I think this abstention is wise. The strength of science is precisely the social acceptance of a strict set of rules for argumentation, analysis and critique for how to develop knowledge. Dialogues within the community of peers shall and have secured a social acceptance of knowledge based on a common agreement on the framework of the dialog. Of course, this system can be challenged and changed, as famously analysed by Thomas Kuhn (1962). However, this is a very different situation from allowing different versions of science and scientific practice to operate simultaneously. The latter option does, as far as I can see, run science as a social-intellectual system irrelevant, because the demarcation lines from other types of knowledge disappear. It is of course legitimate to question the legitimacy of science in general, it is however not very scientific.
The ideal of western science has traditionally been that of universality, that methods, practice arguments and results should be generally acknowledged in the scientific community in accordance with the logic of the scientific field in question. To me, there are strong reasons why we should continue to adhere to this system and standard. One such reason is the democratisation of knowledge. A second reason is that the system is based on critics and a third is that it insists on the importance of academic freedom. I am fully aware that adherence to a specific system of thought is violent to alternative worldviews and cosmologies and may be experienced as offensive as the system is introduced and learned. Every pedagogic action is however an action of violence (Bourdieu and Passeron 1970); and the reason for why to tolerate the violence of science is that within this system the logic is based on critical openness and equal access to the intellectual means of the system. In principle, everyone can take part in the activities of the field in so far as they are educated or socialised into the system. Of course, there are power struggles, uneven distribution of resources and even intellectual corruption and sloppiness in the system. These social structures and faults can however be examined and questioned by the very same tools as constitute the field of science. This is the great advantage of the systemcritics and critical (self)reflection. This does not mean than we should not seek, learn and understand other knowledge systems -and the repeated examination and interaction with different and indigenous knowledge systems are as far as I know, one of the main tasks of social anthropology. They should certainly carry on with such studies. What we should abstain from though, is to let others decide how and what to examine. To ask for permission to think with analogies is to privatise and fragmentise thought and knowledge. The anthropologist asks for permission to do her/his fieldwork within a community and the archaeologist applies for a digging permission when excavating, but the results from these activities should be freely available for critics, (re)examination and for inspiration.
In this connection, I will credit the Brits for their effort to make science and a common standard and language available throughout Europe and the rest of the world. It is not difficult to see the uneven distribution of economic, academic, lingual and political power between the British (and US) sector of education and research, and other similar sectors in other countries and continents (here ignoring the hierarchical structure of the British system itself). Still, the British system, fuelled by the commercial organisation of the elite schools, did for instance significantly invite and include Eastern Europe in the European scientific universe in the post-Soviet period. In so far as communication and sharing of knowledge are virtues of scientific practice, this effort and inclusion should be acknowledged. That this inclusion also has created hierarchical and exploitable social situations in favour of the stronger (British) part goes without saying. My point here is to highlight the nuances in this situation.
Elliot and Warren argue strongly against the mechanic application of evolutionary schemes and the direct use of ethnographic analogies in Mesolithic research. I think they have many strong points here. First, it is an extremely strange yet common idea that hunter-gatherers in the present and the past are not historically constituted but passive subjects to the iron grip of evolution. Consequently, ethnographic analogies of the present are used directly on the past as if neither present nor past hunter gatherers had their own unique history. Elements of this critique is far from new (e.g. Hodder 1982) and should be well known. I think there are several reasons for the continuation of this practice, and colonialism or imperialism is certainly part of this picture. Besides the imagined western cultural superiority, the lack of a clear historical focus in much anthropology and palaeontology, with the creation of an ethnographic present or timelessness and strict evolutionary stages, is also part of the explanation. Archaeology operates in the intersection between history and social research, relying heavily on a theoretical framework taken from the social sciences. This tends to favour synchronicity or the absence of time. It is still possible to construct the past as a historical trajectory also for Mesolithic societies (e.g. Glørstad 2010Glørstad , 2013. This brings me to the significance of the archaeological record, because doing Mesolithic research is not just to apply generalised knowledge about social life in general, and about hunters and gatherers in particular, onto the past. Archaeology is also an empirical science where we actually can learn something genuine from the source material itself. This was one of the principal points made in the celebrated book of David Wengrow and David Graeber from 2021, The Dawn of Everything, even if they apparently felt they had to invest considerable effort in making this argument convincing (Graber and Wengrow 2021). The Mesolithic or huntergatherer societies are very different in the different parts of Europe and Elliot and Warren are right to question whether the term Mesolithic has any universal relevance. Accepting the archaeological record as a genuine historical and contingent record must be a prerequisite for any in depth analysis of past or prehistoric societies.
So, to conclude, I think Elliot and Warren have raised several important and pertinent questions concerning our understanding of the Mesolithic. I am however not sure that terms such as colonialism and decolonisation offer the most suitable mindsets to deal with those issues. This does not run the fight against social injustice irrelevant. The choice of arena and the weapons chosen should be, I think, others than Mesolithic archaeology.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.