Am I asking an historical question?

[FemmeFatale]

I created an account just to ask this question.  I should give a bit of background.  I have a BA in Ancient Studies (mix of history, philosophy, archaeology, languages, etc... little bit of everything).  I am in my first semester in a MA History program.  

I'm working on my thesis proposal right now.  Generally, I'm looking at how the presence or absence of literacy in a society influences historians.  Specifically, I'm looking at the so-called "dark age" of ancient Greece (roughly 1200-700 BC) and asking whether a lack of writing can really indicate a decline or collapse in this case.  Part of my research is looking at the writing samples we have found from the period before, where they were located, what condition they were in, etc.  

I tried to articulate my topic in class today, and I think I did a poor job of it (I've always been better at expressing myself through writing).  The professor said that she wasn't sure if what I'm asking is an historical question, I'm guessing because my research involves some archaeology.  

So... AM I asking an historical question?  If not, what could I do to make it historical? 

[Bactrian]

It's not clear to me what it is you hope to do and this may be what prompted your professor's statement as well.

 

1) Are you hoping to explore the continuity or rupture of literacy in "dark-age" of ancient Greece and see what it says about the period? This is a historical project. 

 

2) Are you hoping to explore how historians have treated literacy and illiteracy in their judgments of whether the period was a "dark-age" or not? This is also a historical project though quite different in that you'll be using secondary literature as your primary sources (a history of the writing of ancient Greek history). It doesn't sound like this is what you hope to do but I'm not quite sure.

 

3) Do you hope to explore whether, in general, the decline of literacy in a society indicates collapse using ancient Greece as a case study? This is not, I think, a historical question. This would be...sociology, maybe?

 

4) Something else?
 

If the issue really is the archaeological aspect, while I don't do ancient history I know from friends and colleagues who do (having asked them), that the line between ancient history and archaeology can be very, very blurred. Is your professor familiar with what doing ancient history entails? Perhaps you need to sit down and have a discussion in office hours.

 

I'm outside my depth here so I'm going to stop but I think, in all cases, what you first need to do is figure out exactly what it is that's giving your professor pause.

[FemmeFatale]

Maybe 4, although 2 sounds very close. The general points I want to make are:

 

1) the writing we've found from the period before (Bronze Age/Mycenaean/whatever you want to call it) are tablets found in the context of a destruction or burn layer, with no indication that they were purposefully fired and meant to last as long as they have.  

2) the tablets are all administrative records.  Nothing of a literary nature has been found.    

3) the consensus is that early in Greek history, most cultural information was passed down orally (see: Homer)

 

Essentially, what I want to say is that if there is no indication that the Bronze Age Greeks sought to preserve their writings, then what we have found is by pure chance.  It's just as likely that writing continued into the so-called dark age, but left no trace because (to my knowledge... gotta do some more research) there are no destruction or burn layers in that period. And considering the oral tradition, all a lack of writing can tell us is that the society no longer needed to keep records of things like inventories, internal trade, etc.   

This professor's area of interest is 1960's immigration policy, so I'm almost positive that she isn't very familiar with ancient history.  I did e-mail her roughly what I posted here, so hopefully that helps. 

[dr. t]

This is not the same time frame at all, but I would check out: Brown, Warren, Marios Costambeys, Matthew Innes, and Adam J. Kosto, eds. Documentary Culture and the Laity in the Early Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Brown et al. are treating a similar sort of problem, whether or not there was conservation bias in the records we have preserved from late antiquity and the early middle ages, so it may help with your thinking and provide a perspective on a historical approach to the situation.