Elissa Z. Faro (Dartmouth College)
I was lucky enough to read this book for the first time sitting on the beach outside Rethymnon on Crete. At first, I felt as though I were cheating – “working” while enjoying myself at the seaside on a beautiful Greek summer day. On the contrary, only a few pages into the book, I realized that my venue – my workspace – could not have been more appropriate, given the proposed main argument of Duke’s recent book. This is “that public archaeology on Crete, manifested in sites and museums and the vast array of tourist information media, produces a virtually monolithic message about a particular past and thereby a particular present; namely, that social inequality is the essential metanarrative of the Minoan past and thus abets the legitimization and naturalization of this same social inequality as the primary organizational structure of the modern West” (14). Of course, reading that, it’s difficult to see how sitting on a beach relates to the primary organizational structure of the modern West, but Duke’s ambitious enterprise (especially for such a slim volume) is to explore the nexus of relations between the past, the present, tourism, class, and archaeology. All of these were embodied for me at the moment, myself a tourist at the beach in between visits to archaeological fieldwork projects.

The first half of the apt title of the book, explained in the Introduction, is drawn from the phrase of Nikos Kazantsakis “Cretan Glance”, which he used to describe “the Cretans’ ability to deal with the present and look to the future – to death even – with acceptance, fortitude, a near insouciance” (19). The second half is from the title of John Urry’s 1990 book Tourists Gaze, in which Urry explores the way in which tourists gaze – often open-mouthed – at the culture of the Other to which they are briefly exposed. “Gaze” in particular, a word that has had an important role in postmodern art history, feminism, social theory, and critical theory, implies the idea that there are asymmetric power (class?) relations between the gazer and the gazed-at subject. As such, the gazer is superior to the object of the gaze, thus tourists in Crete are superior to the pasts created by modern Cretans’ ancestors. This sets the stage for the discussion that follows.

Duke’s project is both thought-provoking and timely, not just for myself, but for archaeology and archaeologists in general. Not only, would I wager, has every archaeologist working anywhere in the world had their share of interactions with tourists who have very definite opinions of the material culture past they are visiting – based on television, popular books and novels, tourism literature and tour guides. Beyond that, the questions of appropriate stewardship of the past and the often conflicting assumptions and expectations of different stakeholders in it are both current and poorly resolved in many areas of the world (e.g., Daehnke 2007).
The Tourists Gaze, as mentioned above, is as ambitious as it is concise; running to just 154 pages, this comprises six main chapters, along with references cited, an appendix containing a site gazetteer and the index. The chapters themselves too attempt multum in parvo: for example, chapter three “Tourists and the Constructed Past”, which includes discussions of the history of tourism, the “dissolution of authenticity,” and the “commodified past,” is a mere ten pages long. The other chapters cover “Touring the Past” (Chapter One), “The Minoan Past” (Chapter Two), “Modern Crete, Ancient Minoans, and the Tourist Experience” (Chapter Four), “Constructing a Prehistory” (Chapter Five), and “The Nexus of the Past” (Chapter Six). Duke’s assertion that the Minoan past and Cretan present afford a richly rewarding place to examine these issues is especially resonant. Indeed, this status has resulted in a number of discussions in recent years, most notably in the recent scholarship of Yannis Hamilakis (2002; 2006; 2007). Duke draws fruitfully on his work throughout The Tourists Gaze.
The first chapter provides a brief general introduction to the idea of “touring the past”, in which Duke presents the past as destination, and presents some of the main juxtapositions he will explore in this book: present and past, academic elitism and public tourism, the modern Cretan and the foreign tourist, etc. The second chapter presents an overview of the current state of Minoan archaeology for the non-specialist reader that is effectively organized with an overview of Minoan cultural history, types of sites, the economy, social and political structure, art and technology, writing systems, and religion. While none of these sections go into great detail, the chapter does succeed in providing an appropriate background for the archaeological situation that Duke will be discussing in the following chapters. His focus on certain aspects of Minoan archaeology that have received more emphasis reflect both the history of the field, but to a certain extent are also chosen to support his argument about the issues of class as normativized by archaeological practice. For example, his presentation of the role of the “palace” sites (41-3) seems to favor their economic, perhaps redistributive economic role, which nevertheless may again be a function of limited space in a short chapter.
“Tourists and the Constructed Past”, Chapter Three, offers a somewhat cursory discussion of the issues that revolve around the relationship between tourism and archaeology, about which quite a lot has been written (e.g. Meskell 1998; Meskell and Pels 2005). Duke touches briefly on some of these problems, such as questions of authenticity and inauthenticity, and the commodification of the past. However, given that this chapter presents the main theoretical frameworks of the discussion that follows, I would have liked Duke to delve more deeply into both the issues he does raise, and others raised by the ethics of archaeology and tourism (e.g., cultural patrimony, colonialism and post-colonialism, stewardship, etc.).
Chapter Four “Modern Crete, Ancient Minoans, and the Tourist Experience” presents the strongest and most in-depth discussion of the work. It is here that Duke’s viewpoint and main argument come together most powerfully. The chapter is divided into sections on archaeological sites as a “theater” of the past, in which two major palatial sites – Knossos and Mallia – are discussed; the accessibility of, and information available for, 18 individual sites across Crete; the main museum on Crete at Heraklion and the smaller regional archaeological museums; and other sources of information about Minoan archaeology, including brochures and guidebooks. The concept of archaeology as a “theater of the past”, first introduced by Tilley (1989), is used here to frame a contrast between the sites of Knossos and Gournia; the first is the most frequently visited Minoan site, whereas the second is barely accessible to all but the most diligent archaeological tourist. For Duke, this represents one of the fundamental problems in the presentation of the Minoan past – the big, exciting, “elite” sites are given all of the attention. This chapter offers the real strength of Duke’s work, as a more-than-above-average informed visitor assessing the experience of tourists and tourism at different points of contact on Crete. He concludes that issues of social organization, links between economic and social practices, gender relationships, power dynamics, and the routines of everyday life are absent in public discourses on Minoan culture. For Duke, this absence is the result of the academic reticence to allow the public into considerations of alternative arrangements of the Cretan past (89).
In light of Duke’s main argument about Minoan archaeology and issues of class, it would seem as though he is subtly accusing Minoan archaeologists of consciously or unconsciously (89) preventing the public from a view of lower classes, or more “unsavory” aspects of the Minoan past, such as the alleged evidence for human sacrifice at sites like Anemospilia. As someone who has worked as an archaeologist on Crete for many years, it is my experience that the public is much more attracted by the cleaned-up, metabolized view of the Minoan past that they have encountered from tour guides, brochures, and even the somewhat sensationalized television shows. Few want to hear “Well, we don’t actually know what that is… archaeologists have been debating that issue for almost 100 years.” This may even support Duke’s argument. More important, I think, is the environment on Crete that frames the tourist experience. Cretan holidays are often advertised as sun-drenched, party getaways, with a little bit of culture thrown to alleviate the guilt. Most visitors to Crete only stop by Knossos if their pre-packaged tour includes it. Otherwise, most never leave their beach resorts. A telling recent article in the New York Times illustrates that although thousands of tourists every summer stay only a few kilometers from one of the most exciting palatial sites on the island, Mallia, few ever leave the pub long enough to notice that there is archaeology to be seen nearby (Lyall 2008).
In his fifth chapter, “Constructing a Prehistory”, Duke presents the five main factors, or hegemonies in his words, that “together have created the past that is on show to the public: colonialism and the rise of modernity; academic elitism; archaeological paradigms; state politics; economics” (94). His conclusion at the end of this chapter is that these “hegemonies” are still so strong that they prevent any attempt at meaningful local control of the past. Again, while each of these sections is relatively brief, their main strength is to alert readers to the major issues that have influenced archaeology on Crete over the past hundred years, up to the present. His sixth and final chapter offers a succinct solution to the problems he has outlined in the previous chapters: present tourists with a fuller range of Minoan archaeological remains, with respect to both sites and objects on display in museums. For example, make the “working class” town of Gournia as important a site as Knossos, and display in museums more than just the “pretty” objects. On this point, I don’t think that anyone would disagree with Duke.
More than exhaustively proving that modern class issues have been, and still are being, normativized by the discourse of Minoan archaeology, Duke’s concise work effectively situates the construction of the Minoan past within wider debates of archaeological practice. For me, this is the real strength of his book. One is the explicit connection in this book of Minoan archaeology and Crete to wider discussions of European modernity, in which the making of nationalist narratives about the past for tourist consumption plays an important role (Thomas 2004). Duke’s angle of class issues is only one small part of the recent discussions of the role of Minoan archaeology in the creation of modern European identities (Papadopoulos 2005; Hamilakis and Momigliano 2006). Finally, perhaps this work will draw readers into such debates and this will provide more reflexive and thoughtful discourses about archaeology, tourism, and the archaeological past.
References
Deahnke, J.D. 2007. “A ‘strange multiplicity’ of voices: heritage stewardship, contested sites and colonial legacies on the Columbia River.” Journal of Social Archaeology 7(2): 250-75.
Hamilakis, Y. 2002. “What Future for the ‘Minoan’ Past? Rethinking Minoan Archaeology”. In Labyrinth Revisited: Rethinking Minoan Archaeology, pp. 2-28. Oxbow Books, Oxford.
Hamilakis, Y. 2006. “The Colonial, the National and the Local: Legacies of the ‘Minoan’ Past”. In Archaeology and European Modernity: Producing and Consuming the ‘Minoans’, pp. 145-162. Edited by Y. Hamilakis and N. Momigliano. Creta Antica 7. Bottega d’Erasmo, Aldo Ausilio, Padua.
Hamilakis, Y. 2007. The Nation and its Ruins: Antiquity, Archaeology, and National Imagination in Greece. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lyall, S. 2008. “Some Britons Too Unruly for Resorts in Europe.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/world/europe/24crete.html?ref=travel
Meskell, L. ed. 1998. Archaeology Under Fire: Nationalism, Politics and Heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. New York: Routledge.
Meskell, L. and P. Pels. eds. 2005. Embedding Ethics: Shifting Boundaries of the Anthropological Profession. Wenner-Gren International Symposium Series. Oxford: Berg.
Papadopoulos, J. 2005. “Inventing the Minoans: Archaeology, Modernity and the Quest for European Identity,” Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 18: 87-149.
Thomas, J. 2004. Archaeology and Modernity. London: Routledge.
Tilley, C. 1989. “Archaeology as theatre.” Antiquity 63: 275-80.
Urry, J. 1990. The Tourists Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies. London: Sage Publications.