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From Sacralising to Sacrilege? Possible Alternative Relationships of Religion, Nationalism, and Archaeology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Neil Asher Silberman
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In this elegant and wide-ranging essay, Hamilakis and Yalouri have offered us a sophisticated analysis of the utilisation of the ancient past in modern Greece. They have traced the powerful political connection between images of the past and contemporary political structures. They have described how different modalities of veneration have been conscripted for this task. Yet I want to offer a few conceptual clarifications and highlight some possible alternative social contexts that may – I hope – strengthen the central points that they make. These concern a tendency to reify ‘religion’ (specifically in this case specifically Greek Orthodoxy as a unitary phenomenon) and to privilege nationalism as the only socio-political behaviour that actively utilises the cultural capital of archaeology. The two points are closely related. For while the nationalistic use of archaeology may mimic the external forms and even literary topoi of religious veneration, State and Church are potentially competing power structures within a particular society. In many places, the cultural tensions between State and Church (or between rival States and Churches) are becoming increasingly intense. The recognition of those tensions may help us more effectively to problematise—to use Hamilakis and Yalouri's phrase—the socio-politics of archaeology.

Type
Discussion
Information
Archaeological Dialogues , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , December 1999 , pp. 139 - 141
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 1999

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