The Formation of the Greek Polis

Aristotle and Archaeology

Bibliographic Data

ID20051339
AuthorsJohn Nicolas Coldstream
Year1984
Pages7-22
Publication date1984-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeCHAPTER
VenueFormation of the Greek Polis : Aristotle and Archeology (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherVS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1007/978-3-322-85341-7_1
OpenAlexW58747799
ISBN9783322853417
LanguageEN
Citations received3

When an archaeologist of pre-Classical Greece is invited by your distinguished Academy to speak on an historical subject, the result will be an attempt at protohistory: that is, an attempt to gain an historical insight into a period without contemporary written records by confronting its archaeological evidence with the memories preserved in later literary sources. To my mind, protohistory is a useful word, already accepted in several European languages, though hardly at all in English. To be sure, its aim may still be regarded with deep suspicion in two different quarters. Thus among the ancient historians of the English-speaking world we hear very much more of your word Quellenkritik; the written sources, when based on oral tradition from a much more remote antiquity, are sometimes subjected to such a ferocious internal criticism, that virtually nothing then remains to be compared with the archaeological record. Meanwhile the prehistoric archaeologist, with no written sources at all to guide or mislead him, may sometimes regard as unscientific any form of enquiry which crosses the frontier between two different disciplines. But I hope it can be assumed that you do not shares such an extreme distrust of protohistory; otherwise you would not have invited an archaeologist to present a paper on an historical theme

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Distrust · Epistemology · Frontier · Literature · Nothing · Period (music) · Prehistory · Subject (documents) · Theme (computing) · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classics · History · Philosophy · Psychology