Global Antiquity: Making Progress?

Our conference asks what ancient historians stand to gain and/or lose by placing Greece and Rome in a planetary context. As a working hypothesis, we propose on the one hand that taking a global perspective will undermine many of the claims about Greco-Roman uniqueness that have been central to the modern vision of Classical studies since it took shape in the eighteenth century; but on the other hand, we also expect that incorporating Greece and Rome more fully into theories about worldwide cultural evolution will show that these classical civilizations played disproportionate roles.

To explore these questions, the conference brings together scholars applying varied methods to different kinds of evidence drawn from all over the ancient planet. We are asking experts on different times and places to share their expertise and debate insights, but also to focus on a more concrete question: seen from a global perspective, does it make sense to revive older ideas about progress as a central theme in ancient history – and if so, what does progress even mean?

We hope that all involved will leave our conference with new ideas and a deeper understanding of the opportunities and challenges facing ancient history in the twenty-first century. We also hope that the event will serve as a stepping-stone toward continuing conversations and connections.

Morning: Making connections

9.15 - 10.15

Introductory session: objectives - experiences - expectations

·       the organizers

10.15 - 10.45

Break

10.45 - 12.15

Contacts - connectivities - exchanges: Cultural and intellectual developments in West Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean (coordinator: Reviel Netz)

·       Karine Chemla (U Edinburgh)

·       Reviel Netz (Stanford) - statement

·       Kathryn Stevens (Oxford) - statement

·       Marc van de Mieroop (Columbia) - statement

12.15 - 1.30

Lunch

Afternoon: Units of engagement

1.30 - 3.00

Comparison as a globalizing approach (coordinator: Walter Scheidel)

·       Anthony Barbieri (UC Santa Barbara) - statement

·       Gary Feinman (Field Museum) - statement

 ·      Carlos Norena (UC Berkeley) - statement

·       Walter Scheidel (Stanford) - statement

3.00 - 3.30

Break

3.30-5.00

The problem of scale (coordinator: Ian Morris)

·       Karine Chemla (U Edinburgh) - statement

·       Gary Feinman (Field Museum) - statement

·       Kyle Harper (U Oklahoma) - statement

·       Dan Hoyer (Seshat Project) - statement

Morning: Progress in ancient history

9.00 - 10.30

What is/was there progress? (Coordinator: Reviel Netz - statement)

·       Karine Chemla (U Edinburgh) - statement

·       Kyle Harper (U Oklahoma) - statement

·       Ian Morris (Stanford) - statement

·       Julia Adeney Thomas (Notre Dame) - statement

10.30 - 11.00

Break

11.00 - 12.30

Cities as progress? (Coordinator: Ian Morris)

·       Justin Jennings (U Toronto) - statement

·       Roderick McIntosh (Yale) - statement

·       Monica Smith (UCLA) - statement

·       Marc van de Mieroop (Columbia) - statement

12.30 - 1.45

Lunch

Afternoon: Progress among ancient historians

1.45 - 3.15

Fostering cooperation (Coordinator: Walter Scheidel)

·       Dan Hoyer (Seshat Project) - statement

·       Josephine Quinn (Oxford/Cambridge) - statement

·       Sören Stark (ISAW NYU) - statement

·       Greg Woolf (UCLA/ISAW NYU) - statement

3.15 - 3.45

Break 

3.45 - 4.45

Concluding session: the future of research & teaching

·       everyone

On November 15-16, 2024, Stanford’s Classics department hosted a workshop on “Global Antiquity: Making Progress?” We asked the question “making progress?” in two senses — first, of whether scholars are making progress in understanding the ancient world as a whole; and second, of whether traditional theories about progress remain useful with the evidence now available.

To make progress on these fronts, we organized the workshop in an unusual way. Instead of the conventional individual-lecture-followed-by-questions-and-answers model, we held six sessions (flanked by introductory and concluding sessions), each featuring four panelists who pre-circulated one-page statements and then took five minutes to summarize their main points, leaving an hour for back-and-forth discussion involving everyone in the room.

The six sessions were, in order:

1.     Contacts – Connectivities – Exchanges (panelists Karine Chemla, Reviel Netz, Kathryn Stevens, Marc van de Mieroop), addressing “cross-cultural” history as the history of contacts. The panel concentrated on the contact between the east Mediterranean, with Chemla commenting on the distinct case of contact South Asia between and China.

2.     Units of Engagement (panelists Anthony Barbieri, Gary Feinman, Carlos Noreña, Walter Scheidel), addressing methods of cross-cultural comparison: what do we seek to gain from such comparisons, and what should be their scope?

3.     The Problem of Scale (panelists Karine Chemla, Gary Feinman, Kyle Harper, Dan Hoyer), addressing the practice of cross-cultural comparison, focusing on appropriate levels of comparison, from micro-history to the planetary.

4.     What is/Was there Progress? (panelists Karine Chemla, Kyle Harper, Ian Morris, Julia Adeney Thomas), asking whether global antiquity did see progress and what “progress” means.

5.      Cities as Progress? (panelists Justin Jennings, Roderick McIntosh, Monica Smith, Marc van de Mieroop), asking whether urbanism (however defined) drove progress (again, however defined) — or the opposite.

6.      Fostering Cooperation (panelists Dan Hoyer, Josephine Quinn, Sören Stark, Greg Woolf), asking what kinds of modes of engagement, projects and research centers will best facilitate progress in global ancient history.  

As might be expected in a gathering involving more than thirty faculty, postdocs, and graduate students, very varied views were expressed. Much of the discussion revolved around clarifying terms and concepts, which are often used in different ways depending on which part of the world, which period of the past, and which specialized discipline are being addressed. Three words in the workshop’s title drew particular attention:

“Antiquity.” It was repeatedly noted that this concept requires clarification. A recurrent concern was whether “antiquity” is in fact a universal theme across cultures or whether it is a concept that was smuggled in, unawares, with a Greco-Roman-centric view of world history. Did everywhere experience “antiquity”? Perhaps, perhaps not; at any rate, everyone agreed that absolute chronological frameworks were unhelpful: synchronicity as such was not required for historical comparison.

“Global.” This, once again, raised eyebrows. Is comparison useful enough even when it is pursued pairwise, as it is so often (the by now traditional “Rome and Han empires”), or should we aim for the biggest comparison set possible? Do we really assume that there are themes of history that hold across the globe? Does “global” differ from “universal” which differs from “planetary”? How big is big enough, in both space as well as time?

“Progress.” As expected, this proved to be the most contentious concept (it will be noted that both panels with the words “progress” in their title also had a question mark). Two themes emerged: that “progress” involves an is/ought problem (it is not obvious that “progress” can be defined apart from judgements of value) and that “progress” involves a past/future problem (it is not obvious that it is possible to state progress as a fact without implying a prediction about the future). And yet, there was some agreement that the questions of directionality, and of inevitability, are both closely related to the question of “progress”—and are both essential to history on a large scale.

On the fourth word in the workshop’s title, “making,” there was by contrast general agreement: global ancient history is indeed making progress. This meant that the tone of our workshop differed sharply from that of most academic meetings in the humanities today. While humanists typically bemoan shrinking interest in their work among the general public, students, and administrations alike — a sense of diminishment that is often echoed by intellectual malaise within the research field itself —, most participants in this workshop celebrated global antiquity’s increasing prominence over the last thirty years. Several reported on success in institution-building in the forms of research centers established, grants won, and audiences attracted; and, most important of all, the workshop was marked by a sense of intellectual accomplishment and excitement. If anything, our task now is to broadcast the good news to more of our colleagues, in the hope that if they follow our example, their meetings, too, might become less gloomy.