The Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples - RePub - Erasmus Universiteit ...

Jonathan Hall in his Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity of
1997, we might – apart from ethnonyms – suitably adopt
the following indicia for the distinction of ethnic groups: 1.
kinship or “race”, 2. language or dialect, 3. religion, and 4.
material culture (= the materialisation of shared cultural
traits). 5 As we will see in the next section, these indicia for
ethnic groups are very close to the categories of evidence
distinguished by the ancients themselves to this aim.
Of the given indicia for the distinction of ethnic
groups, the first one, kinship or “race” is a tricky one, as
one has to steer carefully between the Scylla of “Blut und
Boden” theory of indigenous development and the
Charybdis of an invading “Herrenvolk”. In effect, however,
although Egyptian artists do distinguish phenotypal
features in their reliefs, the eastern Mediterranean in the
Late Bronze Age appears to be not particularly preoccupied
with the “race” issue. 6 To all probability, this results
from the fact that the eastern Mediterranean population is
thoroughly mixed: even the Ionians, who were so proud of
their pure blood, had killed the male Carians and taken the
female ones as their wives at the time of their colonization
of western Asia Minor, as Herodotos slily remarks (Histories
I, 146). In the course of our investigations, we will experience
that in all cases of a migration some measure of
mixing between the invaders and the indigenous population
took place, so that the category of “race” will not figure
prominently in our treatment – not in the least also
because we lack the sources whether the population groups
under discussion considered themselves of pure descent (=
emic point of view).
A complicating factor in our work with the remaining
three indicia for the distinction of ethnic groups is the fact
that, as duly stressed by Hall, the boundaries of speech
communities, religious entities, and material cultures are
not always coterminous. Thus, to stipulate the extremities
of the entire spectrum of possibilities, a language can be
shared by two or more ethnic groups, like in the case of the
English and the Americans or the formerly west- and east-
Germans, or a single ethnic group can be characterized by
also holds good for Europe during the Bronze Age.
5 Hall 1997: 19 ff. I consulted Jones 1997, but did not grasp her
coming up with a protohistorical method. For a definition of
culture as “everything one acquires as a member of society”, see
van Binsbergen, forthc. 11.
6 Cf. Snowden’s (1997: 121) characterization of the Graeco-
Roman world as a “society which (…) never made color the basis
for judging a man.” But see now Isaac 2004.
16
two or more languages, like the Franks on the east (Germanic)
and the west (Romance) side of the Rhine or the
Swiss (German, French, and Italian). Similarly, a religion
can be shared by two or more ethnic groups, like in the
case of the Orthodox religion adhered to by the Greeks and
numerous Slavic population groups, or a single ethnic
group can be characterized by two or more religions, like
the Dutch by Protestantism and Catholicism. In certain
cases, the differences of religion may cause a once united
people to break up into different ethnic groups, like in the
case of the former Yugoslavia, now being split up into
Serbia (Orthodox), Croatia (Catholic), and Bosnia (partly
Muslim). And finally, a material culture can be shared by
two or more ethnic groups, like in the case of the Flemings
and the Walloons in Belgium, or a single ethnic group can
be characterized by two or more material cultures, like in
the case of the Phrygians using grey ware in the west and
so-called mattpainted ware in the east (see Fig. 1a). 7
language 1
religion 1
culture 1
language 1
religion 1
culture 1
ethnos 1 ethnos 2 ethnos 1
language 2
religion 2
culture 2
Fig. 1a. Diagram of the extremities in the spectrum of possibilities
of the relation between ethnic groups and the indicia language, religion,
and material culture. 8
Given this complicating factor, it cannot be denied,
however, that the different indicia for the distinction of
ethnic groups often overlap and that precisely here we may
find a nucleus of an ethnic group (see Fig. 1b, below): if
we would assume otherwise we would throw away the
child with the bathwater (for an elaboration of this point of
view, see section 2)! The latter observation should not be
mixed up with Gustav Kosinna’s adagium that “cultural
provinces clearly outlined archaeologically coincide in all
periods with precise peoples or tribes”, 9 which simplifies
the actual state of affairs in an irresponsible manner. In
7 Haas 1966: 17.
8 I am indebted to Wim van Binsbergen for drawing this diagram.
9 Demoule 1999: 194.