Classical Archaeology, Elistism, and the Weight of Structures

A number of colleagues (h/t to Grace Erny) have pointed me in the direction of a recent article by Artur Ribeiro and Christos Giamakis titled “On Class and Elitism in Archaeology” in Open Archaeology 9 (2023).

The article is painful to read for many reasons. On the one hand, some of the appeals to the continued viability of class based analysis are a bit clumsy, but evidently the authors (or well-meaning reviewers) thought that they needed to be made. This is fine, but painful because most of us who work as teachers in higher education likely encounter class divisions on a daily basis. Whether it is students who can’t complete an assignment because of their work schedule, who are poorly (or exceedingly) well prepared for some aspect of college level instruction, or simply struggle to engage in classroom activities because they feel out of place, the average college classroom (at least at the type of institution where I teach) is riven with class divisions.

It is also painful because I realize how often, as a professional, I glibly reinforce certain elitist and classist ways of thinking. I talk about “good jobs” as jobs at institutions that traditionally support research rather than jobs where faculty can make the greatest difference in student lives. Despite pledges to avoid for-profit publishers, whose exorbitant subscription fees contribute to the constant suck of funding from public institutions, I still review and even write for these behemoths. Even as I personally struggle with the social scene at conferences and recognize their exclusionary , I continue to attend and even participate in the perpetuation of these practices (in the name of “collegiality” and “conviviality”).

In short, articles like this are painful reminders as both a discipline and personally of how far we still have to go to create a more equitable, fair, and just discipline (and academy writ large). 

1. History of classist practices in “Classical” archaeology. Of course, classical archaeology has its own particularly problematic and elitist past. This is further exacerbated today by the soaring cost of even “affordable” state institutions and the eagerness of legislators, trustees, and administrators to cut programs such as Classics and Art History that are historically foundational to Classical archaeology. A student at my institution, for example, which purports to be “flagship” university in the state has almost no chance to get even the basic training needed to enter a top tier graduate program in Classical archaeology. In fact, no institutions in my state offer Greek consistently or Latin above the intermediate level. Few offer art history and we’re down to a single anthropologist at my institution who single-handedly keeps the archaeology program alive. This isn’t just a sad tale of the situation my institution, but the situation across the entire state of North Dakota (although NDSU does have an archaeology program still).

2. Field Work. Not only do students from my institution have little chance to get the basics necessary to pursue Classical archaeology (ancient history or Classics), they also struggle to find the resources to pursue fieldwork. As any number of recent studies have shown, fieldwork is fundamental both to giving students experience doing archaeology, but also giving them a chance to make the kind of professional and social connection necessary to advance in the field as graduate students.

As recent scholarship has shown, the social and professional networks that underpin the discipline of Classical archaeology are small and tend to cluster around faculty and students from elite institutions (as well as white and male). Individuals who benefit from these networks, of course, often work hard, do important research, and are inspiring teachers, but this doesn’t mean that their position in the discipline isn’t tied, in significant ways, to connections related to fieldwork, their graduate and undergraduate education, and disciplinary institutions (especially, but not exclusively the American School of Classical Studies at Athens).

To be clear, I have benefited from these institutions and connections. To be more blunt, my advisors, colleagues, and friends have made it possible for me to enjoy a tenured position despite my modest abilities and qualifications.  

3. Bandaids. There are, of course, bandaids to the current system and some are even simple. We could invest more of our time and energy in open access publications, for example, but if all this does is shift the expense of publishing from the consumer of knowledge to the producer, it does little to change the basic power relationships inherent in the publishing world. Similarly, we could push for more online or hybrid conferences that reduce the cost (and carbon impact) of traditional conferences. The downside to these kinds of meetings — at least at present — is that they eliminate opportunities for casual engagement that create the kinds of spaces where traditional academic hierarchies can break down. Of course, we also know that the realities on the ground often mitigate the potential for conferences breaking down traditional hierarchies, but few would argue that online or hybrid conferences offer the same possibilities. New forms of peer review, new grant programs for underrepresented students, and even new programs designed to produce new kinds of undergraduate and graduate students and research that critiques classism as well issues of race, gender, and ethnicity. New journals, new manifestos and agendas, new mini-grant programs, and new curricula seem inconsequential in the face of so much structural inertia. 

In short, there are plenty of bandaids to the current situation already circulating in the academic marketplace, but I’m deeply skeptical that any of these will actually change the fundamental character of Classical archaeology because these bandaids are so deeply embedded in both formal academic structures (see below) and the culture of elitism that made Classical archaeology an autonomous discipline from its origins. 

4. Structural Change. I love to imagine that structural change in academia is possible. Part of the reason for this is that in my last 20 years at my institution, I’ve seen it pivot to become a far more neoliberal institution. If that pivot can take place in a mere two decades surely a similarly radical change can take place in a similar stretch of time. Indeed, it seems like much of the political conversation around higher education today is calling for substantial changes — abandoning tenure, blurring the lines between research and teaching, creating new kinds of programs, and shifting the administrative landscape — while faculty often cringe at these changes (myself included!), it suggests that our institutions are not ossified and even when we perceive change as going in the wrong directions, it hints that structural change is possible.

In my more naive moments, I like to imagine that my little press offers a model for new, decentralized, and collaborative form of academic publishing. Would that count as structural change in academia? No, not really. 

Is more public outreach, more community engagement, and greater access to faculty and programs a key step toward imagining new forms of higher education? Maybe?

But it seems to me that so much of this can only exist within existing structure of prestige and, perhaps as importantly, resources provided by existing institutions. Part of the reason my press hasn’t become a model for publishing isn’t because it’s not a brilliant idea (well, ok, maybe it isn’t a brilliant idea), but because it doesn’t have access to the prestige economy that drives academic publishing (let’s say). 

Structural change is hard and in our current situation there may not be an “outside the box”.

5. The Potential of the Undercommons. One thing that does give me hope, though, is the potential of the undercommons. The notion of the undercommons comes from the work of Fred Moten and Stefano Harney (you can grab a copy of the book here and blogged about it here and here). Moten and Stefano note that universities, in particular, play a key role in reproducing capitalism, the modern state, and neoliberal society. At the same time, these institutions produce surplus energy and resources: libraries, classrooms, dormitories, even the internet and meeting spaces on college campuses. Because their mission is to tame more radical voices and condition them for the state and the market, they represent concentrations of radical potential. This radical potential has access to the surplus resources and energy present at universities. 

One wonders what disciplines like Classical archaeology could do to encourage the formation of meaningful undercommons. How can we do more to deploy the surplus potential of our institutions against the forces that Ribeiro and Giamakis identify as reinforcing classist structures in our discipline. 

In other words, is the goal of Classical archaeology no longer perpetuating the prestige economy or showing how it can support the neoliberal mission of the university, but encouraging subversive practices that may not bear fruit in the discipline or even at the level of our institution but can maybe nourish meaningful social movements.

Do I do this? Well, no. I mean, I try, but figuring out how to do this is hard because so much of who I am is invested in the existing system. 

(I do think a good bit about how I’m teaching a practicum in editing and publishing. Right now, most of the class revolves around helping me work through the challenges of publishing a traditional literary magazine and operating a “nano-press.”

Part of what I WANT to do is to tell the students to stop worrying about how to work within structures that I’ve created or that the publishing industry has created and, instead, create something on their own. Use the bevy of resources available to the undercommons and produce something that both subverts what we know as traditional publishing (or even bigger, knowledge making) by creating something new.)