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Anduli
Revista Andaluza de Ciencias Sociales
ISSN: 1696-0270 • e-ISSN: 2340-4973
ARE POSTCOLONIAL NARRATIVES USEFUL IN
AL-ANDALUS ARCHAEOLOGY?
¿SON ÚTILES LAS NARRATIVAS POSCOLONIALES EN
LA ARQUEOLOGÍA DE AL-ANDALUS?
Guillermo García-Contreras
Universidad de Granada
garciacontreras@ugr.es
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0655-7067
Abstract
Archaeological investigations of al-Andalus has
become increasingly important in medieval
studies, but it has traditionally been left out of
the research agenda of European medieval
archaeology. This is due to its exoticism and not
tting in well with the construction of a European
identity and Spanish national history based
on Christian expansion and the “Reconquest”
process. At the same time, due to the
geographical location and geopolitical position
of the Iberian Peninsula within the “West”,
scholars working on Islamic archaeology have
dedicated less attention to al-Andalus than
to other territories. Several factors pose a
challenge for current research: the possibility
of confrontation with feudal societies; the
increasing importance given to technological
transfer all along al-Andalus; religious, economic
and institutional differences within Christian
territories; the importance given in recent years
to the identity construction of alterity; and the
strong impact that the Andalusi period had on
the creation of current landscapes, especially
due to irrigated agriculture. This paper tries
to reect on and analyze the historiographical
marginality of al-Andalus in both European
medieval archaeology and Islamic archaeology.
The aim is to understand how we have built
an international narrative of the marginality of
a territory that is theoretically outside Europe
and outside the environment in which classical
Islam developed, based mainly on literature
produced in English on this matter. In short,
this paper poses the question of whether post-
colonial theory is a valid category of analysis for
al-Andalus.
Keywords: Historiography, al-Andalus,
Medieval Archaeology, Islamic Archaeology,
Post-colonial theory
Resumen
El estudio arqueológico de al-Andalus se revela
con una importancia creciente en las investiga-
ciones medievales, pero ha sido tradicionalmen-
te dejado de lado en la agenda de investigación
de la arqueología medieval europea. Esto es
debido a su exotismo y a no casar bien con la
construcción de la identidad europea ni de la
nación española basadas en la expansión del
cristianismo y en el proceso de “Reconquista”.
Al mismo tiempo, debido a la posición geográ-
ca y geopolítica de la península ibérica dentro
del “Occidente”, los académicos trabajando con
la arqueología islámica han dedicado menos
atención a al-Andalus que a otros territorios. Va-
rios factores plantean un desafío para la inves-
tigación actual: la posibilidad de confrontación
con las sociedades feudales, la creciente im-
portancia dada a la transferencia tecnológica a
través de al-Andalus, las diferencias religiosas,
económicas e institucionales con los territorios
cristianos, la importancia dada en los últimos
años a la construcción identitaria de la alteridad
o el fuerte impacto que tuvo el periodo andalusí
en la creación de los paisajes actuales, espe-
cialmente debido a la agricultura de regadío.
Este trabajo trata de reejar y analizar la cierta
marginalidad historiográca de al-Andalus tanto
en la arqueología medieval europea como en
los estudios de arqueología islámica. El obje-
tivo es comprender cómo hemos construído la
narrativa de la marginalidad de un territorio que
está teóricamente fuera de Europa y fuera del
escenario en el que se desarrolló el Islam clási-
co, principalmente desde los estudios en Inglés
sobre esta materia. En denitiva, este artículo
se pregunta si la teoría poscolonial es una cate-
goría válida de análisis para al-Andalus.
Palabras clave: Historiografía, al-Andalus,
Arqueología Medieval, Arqueología Islámica,
teoría post-colonial
Cómo citar este artículo/citation: García-Contreras, Guillermo (2021). Are Postcolonial Narratives useful in Al-
Andalus Archaeology?. ANDULI (20), 2021 pp.179-199. http://10.12795/anduli.2021.i20.10
Recibido: 27-07-2020 Aceptado: 16-11-2020 DOI: http://10.12795/Anduli.2021.I20.10
Anduli • Revista Andaluza de Ciencias Sociales Nº 20 - 2021
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1. Introduction: Emerging postcolonial approaches to
al-Andalus
The term Middle Ages is present today in popular culture as a mixture of kings and
knights, castles, holy war, religious fanaticism, economic poverty and lthy peasants.
Also with a very specic and territorial idea: Europe and the European people in an
expansion process. It is an external expansion: territorial, cultural, religious and eco-
nomic; but also internal, the process of internal development of the societies (Barlett,
1994). It is also the story of how a model of society triumphed throughout expansion
and colonisation. The reason for all this is clear: ‘Middle Ages’ is an historiographical
and ‘romantic’ invention born at the same time as the period ended with the beginning
of modernity (Pernoud, 1998; Heers, 1999: Sergi, 2001).
These ideas are comfortable when it comes to Europe. But outside Europe there are
serious problems to reect historical reality with these parameters and chronology,
as demonstrated by postcolonial theory (Spivak, 1990). Postcolonial history and par-
ticularly postcolonial archaeology (Lydon & Rizvi, 2010), have made us think on how
we construct the narratives about the societies studied, and the importance that the
alleged economic and cultural hegemony of Europe has in the way we write history
(Patterson, 2008; González-Ruibal, 2010). Postcolonialism is, though, an ambiguous
term to dene, referring both to a contentious interpretation of the modern world (or
parts of it) and to a rather diverse set of concepts and research projects which have
sought to critique and challenge traditional Eurocentric history and other forms of
representation. Indeed, the work of postcolonial scholars mostly provides critical re-
sponses to the histories and literatures that have shaped European colonialism since
the fteenth century, but not very often studies for earlier times, with the exception of
works about Roman and Late Roman periods (Bowles, 2007; Gardner, 2013; Hingley,
2015). When postcolonial theory is applied to Medieval studies the result is a review
of the concept of ‘Middle Ages’ itself, or the inuence of these narratives in the image
the world has of the history of Europe (see the studies gathered in Cohen, 2000; Kabir
& Williams, 2005; Gaunt, 2009; and in David & Altschul, 2009). These approaches
have given us powerful theoretical tools. But, what happens when we study societies
inside Europe, and not outside? And what happens when we study historical socie-
ties that were not sub-alternate, even they were hegemonic at some point, but have
rather been ‘marginalized’ in the present? We should be able to deconstruct how we
do archaeology in Europe the same way in which colonial discourses have been de-
constructed. In an excellent Trouillot’s quote
Thus the presences and absences embodies in sources (artifacts and bodies that
turn as even into fact) or archives (facts collected, thematized, and processed as
documents and monuments) are neither neutral nor natural. They are created. As
such, they are not mere presences or absences, but mentions or silences of vari-
ous kinds and degrees. By silences, I mean an active and transitive process: one
“silences” a fact or an individual as a silencer silences a gun. One engages in the
practice of silencing. Mentions and silences are thus the active, dialectial counter-
parts of which history is the synthesis (Trouillot, 1995: 48).
In the Caribbean antropologist’s words, in any historiographic analysis it is not only
necessary to take into account what is explicitly shown, but what is eliminated, what
is not counted - these silences are conscious or unconscious - must also be investi-
gated. As it has been explained by a british medieval archaeologist, John Moreland:
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Any attempt to understand the Middle Ages must use the full range of evidence
which exists from the past. This evidence must be situated within a theoretical
framework which allows the humanity of the past to shine through and which does
not smother that past with a reied present. It is true that we choose what does or
does not count as evidence (Moreland, 2010: 57).
Without much difculty it can be recognize that the cultural construct of what is
commonly understood by the Middle Ages refers to the societies that occupied the
regions of Europe between the 5th and 16th centuries. More or less the area occu-
pied originally by the Carolingian Empire (800-888 AD) and the British Islands and
the area beyond to the north and the eastern as a result of the Feudal expansion
is the area where the Medieval scenarios are identied. However, the truth is that
other regions and historical groups on the fringes of that Europe have been added
to that “unique” medieval, such as the Vikings of the Scandinavian region. On the
contrary, the Finno-Ugrian tribes of north eastern Russia, the Pechenegs and the
Cumans of the steppe lands north of the Black Sea or the Tatars of the khanate of
Kazan are marginal in terms of the current research agenda of medieval archaeolo-
gists and for the common perception of what the Middle Ages was (Curta, 2010). I
must to recognize, however, that this is a very narrow perception informed by lms,
literature, videogames, national histories etc., but at the same time, to be even more
precise, the Greek or the Polish views of the ‘Middle Ages’ is very different to the
Scottish or Serbian views.
In a similar way, we can refer specically to al-Andalus. Islamic Middle Ages in the
Iberian Peninsula are seen as a break in comparison with other medieval Europe-
an histories. One of the most prestigious medievalists of our time, Chris Wickham,
pointed this out while saying the Arab period is a crucial focus of debate, for its le-
gitimate position in the seamless narrative of (Christian) Spanish historical memory
has always been contested (Wickham, 2005: 40-41) We should also be aware of the
fact that Chris Wickham’s Framing the Early Middle Ages, which point toward the
marginality of al-Andalus studies, notoriously neglected the Balkans and the entire
central and eastern parts of the European continent. In my opinion, the origin of this is
twofold: First of all, Christianization process at the roof of the Europe identity, which is
behind the common idea of the Middle Ages. According to Robert Bartlett (1994), the
Latinized establishment of Christendom between 1050 and 1500 has three signicant
dimension for the subsequent emergence of the European idea: The “ethnicization of
Christianity”; secondly there was a “racializing trend” where Christians were dened
against “alien peoples”; and thirdly, Christianity was territorialized, which represented
it as a spiritual geographic location: Christendom (Bartlett, 1993: 252-253). On the
other hand, the second origin of the margnialisation of some aspect of the Middle
Ages is that the Nationalism coincided with the birth of archaeology as a discipline,
during the 19th century, and still remains in many academic aspects (Kohl, 1998). All
those groups cited above, Pechenegs, Cumans, Tatars or Andalusies have in com-
mon that none of those “barbarians” could be effectively claimed by any modern na-
tional States. In the case of Spain, the narrative about the emergence of the Nation
is directly linked to the use of a key historical event, the so-called “Reconquest”.
The historical process of the feudal expansion was reinterpreted through romantic
historiography and became a key national narrative based on the loss of Spain to the
Muslims and its subsequent recovery. Spanish national identity has been built upon
this national narrative and the “Reconquest” is considered as the foundational event
of the nation (Ríos Saloma, 2011; Hertel, 2015; García-Sanjuán 2020).
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A third factor, directly attached to the last one, inuences the case of Iberian Peninsu-
la: the Orientalism, it means, the general patronizing Western attitude towards Middle
Eastern, Asian and North African societies. According with Edward Said’s analysis,
the “West” essentializes these societies as static and undeveloped, thereby fabricat-
ing a view of Oriental culture that can be studied, depicted, and reproduced in service
of imperial power when talking about British, French and North American scholars
(Said, 1978). Basically, Said criticised contemporary scholars who perpetuated the
tradition of outsider-interpretation of Arabo-Islamic cultures. Even acknowledging that
the relationship between Spain (understood as a result of the misnamed Reconquest
process) and Islam was not an imperialistic one, and the lack of connections with
colonial history -with the exception of the Sahara- has marked the absence of post-
colonial theory in Spanish scholars tradition (Omar, 2008: 19), we should recognize
that al-Andalus has all the ingredients to project post-colonial discourses both in its
(past) history and in its (present) historicity. As pointed out by Fernandez Parrilla
(2018), Spanish academia did not pay much attention to Orientalism or Postcolonial
studies until very recently. It seems that the postcolonial turn has arrived due to the
increasing relevance of Hispanophone literatures and criticism and the political en-
tanglements of colonization and its cultural legacies and interferences (Fernández
Parrilla 2018: 12). However, Spanish Orientalism has been a practice almost lim-
ited to Arabic studies (Monroe, 1970; Gil, 2009; Marín, 2009; González Ferrín, 2011;
López, 2016; Fernández Parrilla, 2018) but the subsequent post-colonial criticism has
hardly developed in other elds such as antropological reections (González Alcan-
tud, 2017; 2018; González & Rojo, 2014) medievalism (exceptions are Altschul, 2009
and García Fernández, 2016); or even Medieval Archeology which is the main focus
of this paper. But I agree with Nadia R. Altschul’s words:
Postcolonial studies are a timely and intellectual exciting path to trascend the limits
of the nationalist 19th-century discipline that still has a hold over medieval stud-
ies. As a theoretical eld it fosters a complex and layered understanding of the
intricacies of medieval Iberia while also offering Ibero-medievalism a means out
of insularization and the “critical closet.” While it presents us with the challenge of
introducing a new critical vocabulary, it also provides us with meaningful ways to
communicate with a broader audience and to inuence the eld by supplementing
and redening it with our insights and disciplinary concerns. Of ethical importance,
postcolonial approaches can also foster nuanced recognition of the live connection
that our scholarship and medieval Iberia have with the work at large, and prepare
us to better understand and challenge the inequalities of our postcolonial present
today (Altschul, 2009: 14)
Post-colonial theory is an excellent framework for studying the discourse of otherness,
whether of an ideological nature or not, while also providing a wealth of information
of how ‘Self’ or “We” is perceived and represented. In the case of Spanish oriental-
ism, the construction of such discourses is particularly complex due to the nature of
the topic under study: al-Andalus, the Arabic name given to those parts of the Iberian
Peninsula governed by Muslims at various times in the period between 711 and 1492.
Al-Andalus has always had two facets: the real and historical which ended in 1492,
the other gurative and symbolic which has survived until today (González Alcantud,
2017). Al-Andalus is yet an alien and peripheral society in the perception of what the
medieval societies were mainly because it was an Islamic society within (today’s)
Western Europe (Guichard, 1976). From 1492 onwards, at least until the nineteenth
century, that logic of equivalence between Christendom and Europe, was inher-
ited, elaborated and represented as self-identity in the modern/colonial distinctions
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instituted and imagined between Our and the otherness. In Spain, the Islamic past
was not incorporated into a nationalistic discourse at the time the archaeology was
developed as a scientic discipline ant the discussion about the essence of Spain
was originated (Díaz-Andreu, 1996). During the 19
th
century, the liberal tradition al-
ways incorporates the artistic and scientic achievements of the Iberian Muslims as
an integral part of the national heritage and this approach crystallized in the notion of
“Muslim Spain”, which allowed integrating the Islamic period into the national histori-
cal narrative (García-Sanjuán, 2020: 140). Different reasons like Christian accultura-
tion hegemony, Francoist censorship exile at this time and more interest in Visigoth or
Christian ‘Reconquest’ relegated al-Andalus to an exotic image, close to Orientalism,
as it has been explained before.
2. Materials and Methods: justifying a general overview of the
archaeological publications on al-Andalus in English
What I propose in the following pages is an analysis based on the general works on
al-Andalus archeology that have been written, preferably in English, to reect on the
way in which they are presented. And from there, discuss, as it is indicated in the title
of this work, if postcolonial narratives are useful in the archeology of al-Andalus or
if perhaps, other frameworks, as marginality, are better to be used. I try to deal with
the potentiality of the application of Post-colonial theory to understand the role played
by the archaeology of al-Andalus into the current situation of the Medieval Archaeol-
ogy as a discipline. Despite the fact that this framework has been used in different
medieval studies -many of which are cited in this work- we must recognize that there
is a notable absence of this type of approach in the main treatises on theory ap-
plied to Medieval Archeology. Roberta Gilchrist argued that Post-Colonial theory has
begun to inuence archaeological discussion of medieval migration (Gilchrist, 2009:
392). But this is an isolated reference on a topic that does not appear in other similar
works focuses on theory and Medieval Archaeology (i.e. Moreland, 2010; Johnson,
2010; Mcclain, 2013; O’Keeffe, 2018). On the other hand, al-Andalus does not appear
included in the main works on Postcolonial Archeology (i.e. Lydon & Rizvi, 2010).
Hence the interest aroused by the proposal that I am now making, which, however, is
only intended as an introduction to the subject.
Nowadays, the publication of scientic research results is the highest challenge for
researchers independently of the kind of science their works belongs. Be able to be in
touch with the academic world and its followers seems to be a fundamental requirement
to stand out into the academic environment and also to communicate research to the
broadest international audience. Undoubtedly, and without going into moral considera-
tions about whether this is right or not, English is the language that foster great op-
portunities to transmitter agents of a worldwide culture focused in a common goal. The
impact of research as a factor able to improve the different societies cannot be ignored,
and, at the same time, this language become to be essential for the development of any
scientic career even when it is framed in very local contexts, as is often the case with
the social sciences. Different scholars have been concerned with the sociolinguistic
consequences of the use of English as a language of scientic communication, includ-
ing the social sciences (Tapiador, 2004; Veiga, 2008). One of the main problems faced
by those of us who use English as a language internationally to communicate research
that has a very regional or local basis, as is often the case in History and Archeology, is
that we must often give up the small details in favour of more general explanations. This
is due to we are often aware that we are addressing audiences that do not have to know
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the particularities of historiography at the local level. This occurs, above all, in articles
published in high-impact journal. The enormous quantity and variety of works published
in English on the archeology of al-Andalus makes it impossible to handle here an ac-
curate statistic that could give a sample of all that has been said previously. Nor can we
stop now to sketch an explanation of why so much work on al-Andalus is in English, but
perhaps the role of Hispanic studies in the Anglophone world, which is evident particu-
larly in medieval history in the United States, has a large part of responsibility.
Different is what happens with manuals or synthesis works (even when they are pub-
lished in journals) that present themselves as general reections on the state of the
art of the discipline. They should be workd that mark a turning point bringing together
all the partial works elaborated to date and addressing a series of ideas that frame the
general evolution of the social science addressed, allow us to carry out a historiograph-
ic examination like the one here is proposed. And in this way it is possible to carry out
an analysis of the theoretical postulates that underlie the way of doing basic research,
such as applied research or the necessary transfer and dissemination.
What I propose in the following pages is a very preliminar and general analysis based
on the general works on al-Andalus archeology that have been written, preferably in
English, to reect on the way in which they are presented. As far as I know, it is the
rst attempt to do a similar approach. The idea is to make and introduction to the
theme analysing how al-Andalus archaeology has been introduced and explained
into the most general Medieval Archaeology. And from there, discuss, as we indi-
cated in the title of our work, if postcolonial narratives are useful in the archeology of
al-Andalus. Obviously, a work of these characteristics, in the space that I have here,
forces us to be highly synthetic and to select only some of the most general works
on archeology of al-Andalus, despite the effort I make so that my reection covers
everything published in English on the subject, at least in recent years.
3. Archeology of al-Andalus: on the fringes of medieval
archeology
As I try to argue on the next pages, ‘Marginality” seems to tbe the best concept to
describe the historiographical situation in regards with the Archaeology of al-Andalus.
Maybe it is a relative concept, because to be marginal depends of what we consider
as hegemonic, but it serves us to focus attention on those lands or topics that are
presented or ignored in the medieval archaeology studies we are going to discuss. I
see ‘marginality’ as a better term than ‘coloniality’ because it refers to territories not
only outside Europe, but also inside. In addition, marginality is a complex concept that
allows us to adopt a variety of different perspectives (Svensson & Gardiner, 2009).
Without being exhaustive, four possibilities are presented here:
• Historiographical marginality is due to a declining interest in this society and this
‘country’ (al-Andalus) because it is not considered a direct ancestor of our pre-
sent society. Or at least it is not from the perspective of the dominant cultural
(and even politically) point of view. Because the importance given to the cultural
and ideological history has marginalized al-Andalus by not considering this his-
tory into the idea of Europe and its past. It can be appreciated, by opposition,
when Moroccan migrants of those of Moroccan descent in Spain from the 1960s
onwards have identied strongly with al-Andalus (Luque, 2017; Rogozen-Soltar,
2017; Calderwood, 2018).
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• Marginality allow us to refer to those areas whose environmental conditions are
not considered optimal, or where production quotas are not high, or it lies at a
distance from the political, social or economic core. This notion adopts a variety
of different perspectives arising from the different ecosystem and countries in the
Middle Ages. This may mark the type of studies to be done, for example for the
study of the relationships between human communities and their environments
(Malpica, 2012).
• The concept of archaeological marginality also refers to the choice of research
topics that we, as archaeologists, do. The choice of themes has to be compared
with other archaeologies from other periods in the Iberian Peninsula itself, and
with the themes chosen and presented by other medieval archaeologies in the
rest of Europe.
• Finally, the investigation of al-Andalus also remains sidelined because we have
not incorporated all the critical conceptual and methodological baggage of the
last ten years theoretical proposal, including the postcolonial approaches them-
selves from which this notion of marginality is born. In part this is because we are
still building the data. The archaeology of al-Andalus can be considered partially
young not because the number of archaeological diggings or the studies of pot-
tery, faunal, metal remains or paleoenvironmental research but due to the impact
of this studies into the international audience, with the exception of its architectu-
re (Anderson & Rosser-Owen, 2007).
Why I say al-Andalus is in the periphery of Medieval European and Islamic studies?
I indicate a few pages before that the idealization of the general picture of what the
Middle Ages in Europe was has various elements that made difcult to consider any
Islamic society as part of it, if anything, as the otherness in confrontation. Al-Andalus
is most of the time depicted as an Oriental culture, clearly different to the historio-
graphically dominant idea of feudal Europe. Perhaps without taking into account that
the homogeneity with which it is intended to characterize the millennium from the 5th
to the 15th century was never in any way unique. There is no place for al-Andalus
in this idea, though when it comes to give an European perspective we are lucky
enough to have a chapter on Byzantium and Islam (with few words on the Iberian
Peninsula, but we will come to that later).
Until very recently, when someone was looking for al-Andalus in ‘historical archaeol-
ogy’ or ‘medieval archaeology’ handbooks it may appear as a difcult task (for ex-
ample Funari, Hall & Jones 1999; Gerrard, 2003; or Burnouf et al. 2009). I am not
referring to those books with misleading titles (proceedings of some congress about
historical archaeology where a theoretical paper may be found with some contents on
Africa or Pacic islands) but to actual Medieval Archaeology books from a supposedly
European perspective (Quirós, 2009). The famous One World Archaeology Series,
from the 1986 World Archaeology Congress edited by Peter J. Ucko, contains highly
interesting books with topics from all around the world with a remarkable absence of
any mention to the Iberian Peninsula (http://www.worldarchaeologicalcongress.org).
Timothy Champion in his concept, boundaries and cultural denition of Europe set it
out clearly:
After the collapse of the Roman Empire and the fragmentation of political power,
the prevailing perception of the world centred on the notion of Christendom, for it
was Christianity that provided the unifying ideology and the institutions for transmit-
ting it in the early medieval world (Champion, 1990: 80).
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For Champion and many others, Europe is a mixture of traditions that melt in Chris-
tianity. It was exposed thirty years ago, but it is a persistent topic that nds it difcult
to change, although somehow its updating in the 21
st
century is inevitable. We should
not forget, though, that the Visigoths converted to Christianity and that they happen
to be the very early medieval population in the Iberian Peninsula. In the same book,
David Austin came up with ‘the “proper study” of medieval archaeology’, an interest-
ing study of how medieval archaeology relates to the documentary sources. But he
states ‘I can speak only for medieval archaeology in north western Europe, and the
further I get from the shores of Britain the less sure of my understanding I become’
(Austin, 1990: 11). The same happens for Gerrard in his book Medieval archaeology.
Understanding traditions and contemporary approaches, claiming ‘a coherent map
of how and why later medieval archaeology developed, to tell the story of its origins,
how it matured and to explain how contemporary approaches have evolved’, but un-
like this ‘the book is concerned primarily with events in England, Scotland and Wales’
(Gerrard, 2003: XII).
Very recently, the current idea of Europe has made many countries appear in the
European map of the Middle Ages (for example Davis, Halsall and Reynolds, 2006),
but there is still a need for integration. Yet, the question is always unanswered: is al-
Andalus part of that idea of Europe in the Middle Ages? A great effort to trespass old
limits in the conceptualization of the Middle Ages, trying to include all territories of the
current idea of Europe (i.e. Europe Union) can be found in the recent two volumes
handbook The archaeology of Medieval Europe (Graham-Campbell & Valor, 2007;
Carver & Klápšte, 2011). Most topics are included in the book though not all in the
same way and actually with a lack of cohesion. There is a plenty of coverage of al-
Andalus un both volumes, including many vignettes on cities, agriculture and pottery.
The effort is commendable although we expect better results in the future because
there still being important absences. Of course, to be honest, it must to be into con-
sideration that these types of books are dependent on who is willing to write for them.
Many who could have written on topics from other European countries refused or did
not have time. In other words these books should not be seen as comprehensive
overviews, but rather as the possibilities and limitations dealt with by the editors. But
since this phenomenon repeats itself, and is not an exception, we must examine it
as a fact. Two examples can bees the second and third chapter. In the second one,
called ‘peoples and environments’ little is said about the south and not really bound
with the northern stories. In the third, ‘Rural settlement’, there is not a single line
about al-Andalus. Jan Klápšte and Anne Nissen Jaubert could have got into this area
in which rural archaeology studies have increased in importance over the last fteen
years or more (Klápšte & Nissen-Jaubert, 2007). The same scheme could have been
used: building trends, economic spaces, religious ones… questioning, for example,
why many areas went back to building in perishable materials while the Islamic re-
gions kept a different trend. If the topics are the same, why not include everything in
the debate?
European Medieval archaeology is now a subject which integrates (more or less) all
territories across Europe. This is evidence since the existence of MERC- the Medi-
eval European Research Community- and the fact that it represents a substantial
branded strand at EAA annual meetings -the bigger European Association of Archae-
ologists congress- (more information about both on this links: https://www.e-a-a.org/
and https://www.e-a-a.org/EAA/Navigation_Communities/MERC.aspx). But it seems
to be difcult to to make a tie and coherent discourse using data from all countries,
and manuals about Medieval Archaeology by each country are more common than
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Artículos • Guillermo García Contreras
any general overview about Europe in general or any specic topic at this time. As far
as I know there is a vast amount of information from many countries, divided by State
or Nation, despite the fact that they did not existed during the Middle Ages or their ter-
ritories can be recognized as unique with many difculties (examples can be provide
for Italy, Poland, Germany or Portugal and obviously Spain among others: Gelichi,
1997; Buko, 2008; Fehring, 2014; Tente, 2018; Valor & Gutiérrez, 2014). Al-Andalus,
in particular, has produced a wide array of literature on most topics being comparable
with the rest of the European studies: transitioning from Late Antiquity to the Middle
Ages, rural and urban settlements, landscape, housing techniques and so forth (the
bibliography is too large to be summarized here, but a good selection of studies is
available in Valor & Gutiérrez, 2014). If we look at the main problems discussed in
Europe, a way can be easily found to bind together all the information.
According to Anderson, Sholkmann and Kristiansen in Medieval Archaeology there
are three main elds:
• the formation of the medieval world, i.e. the transition from Late Antique or prehis-
toric structures and societies to those of the European Middle Ages
• the developments and changes to the conditions that existed during the Middle
Ages, related to structures, societies and material culture; and
• the transformation from the late medieval to the post-medieval world. (Anderson,
Sholkmann & Kristiansen, 2007: 23-24)
.
In all elds integration seems (and is actually) possible. It has been done by historians
like Chris Wickham for the Early Middle Ages (Wickham, 2005). In fact, the transition
debate has been a hard one in the last thirty years but involving mainly Italy (and sur-
roundings) and the ‘barbaric’ populations. The Mohammed and Charlemagne issue
that Henri Pirenne raised some 80 years ago (Pirenne, 1937) not to be forgotten since
changes in Europe can be understood from a wider perspective including archaeo-
logical perspectives (Hodges & Whitehouse, 1983; McCormick, 2001). In fact, trade
and exchanges are two of the elements changing historiography in the last decade,
and one in which archaeology has much to say: introduction of new technologies,
changes in the way of producing, knowledge transmission and so on. Something that
has worked very well for the transition period and it has been done for the early and
late Middle Ages (see for example García & Fábregas, 2010). Moreover, it must to
be mention that the transition is often connected with the ‘frontier’ and the Christian
conquests, which have begun to be studied more comprehensively from an archaeo-
logical perspective (see for example García-Contreras et al. 2020; for a postcolonial
theory applied to frontiers see: Naum, 2010).
4. The archaeology of al-Andalus, an Islamic Archaeology?
The issue with al-Andalus has been not only neglected and marginalized by European
medieval archaeology but also by, in our opinion, the so-called, ‘Islamic archaeology’
(Insoll, 1999; Milwright, 2010; Eiroa, 2011). The truth is that the Iberian Peninsula is
far cultural or geographically from both the European core of feudalism and from the
Islamic side of the Mediterranean Sea.
It is quite difcult to dene what Islamic archaeology is. For Millwright it is ‘histori-
cal labels indicating that the subjects in question deal with aspects of the past in
regions where the ruling elite has professed the faith of Islam’ (Millwright, 2010: 6).
Anduli • Revista Andaluza de Ciencias Sociales Nº 20 - 2021
• 188 •
In other words, it shouldn’t be archaeology of religion. Or, at least, the religion must
be understood through its embedding in daily routines rather than by the study of the
ritual aspects only (Insoll, 2004). In this way, and following Carvajal’s words, ‘Islami-
cization can be conceptualized as the change in social conditions brought about by
the inclusion in any acknowledged form of Islam of a signicant social segment of
the regional population’ (Carvajal, 2013: 111). Those denitions are very similar to
the one used in the recently launched Journal of Islamic Archaeology, publication in
which “Islamic archaeology” refers to the archaeological study of Islamic societies,
polities, and communities, wherever they are found. It may be considered a type of
“historical” archaeology, in which the study of historically (textually) known societies
can be studied through a combination of “texts and tell” (https://journals.equinoxpub.
com/index.php/JIA). Furthermore, there is also another concept, ‘Islamicate archaeol-
ogy’, popularised by Chloe Duckworth, David Govantes-Edwards and others in the
Anglophone world (Duckworth & Govantes-Edwards, in press), which has been one
of the main reactions to classic ‘Islamic archaeology’ consideration, defended by ar-
chaeologists as Corisande Fenwick (2020). The general argument is that religious
identity here maps onto social identity, which is also the case with ‘medieval Jewish
archaeology’. In short, how could it be otherwise, the use of the label with which we
decided to name the archaeological practice is loaded with meaning.
Although most archaeologists would answer positively to the question “is the archae-
ology of al-Andalus part of Islamic Archaeology?”, for the archaeologists of al-Anda-
lus the answer is less clear (Carvajal, 2014: 332). For example, Jorge Eiroa argues
that the tag of Islamic archaeology should simply be dropped, as it is reminiscent of
an obsolete and Eurocentric perspective (Eiroa, 2011: 188).
Islamic archaeology was born out of an art-historical approach to monumental build-
ings. Originally, for most of the history of Islamic archaeology, it has been conducted
overwhelmingly by non-Muslims, often from nations with a political and sometimes
an openly colonial interest in the region which contained the archaeological subject
matter of their choice (Hull, 2014).
It is arguable the Islamic archaeology has been particularly susceptible to the in-
uence of the colonial thought and practice, with Islam and its inuence regarded
as an exotic “other”, separate and distinct from the majority of those investigating
it, and depicted in opposition to an apparently superior “West” (Hull, 2014: 5615).
Islamic archaeology came relatively late to the attentions of European and American
archaeologists. Although a rise in Orientalist literature and study had begun during
the early eighteenth century, it was not until the end of the 19
th
century that signicant
research avenues and funding structures for Islamic art, architecture, and archaeol-
ogy developed (Vernoit 1997: 1-2). The development of Islamic archaeology in Spain
had a close relationship with art historians, arabists and restorer architects of the
monumental heritage. All this, together with the taste for the orientalist aesthetics of
the decorations, for example in ceramics, determined the type of archeology of al-An-
dalus that was carried out until the middle of the 20th century (Cressier, 2009; García,
2018). After the Francoist regime, during the last decades the discipline has rapidly
matured and it is being made key contribution to the study of medieval society. The
new way to understand the discipline was from the 1970s and 1980s heavily inu-
enced by French researchers like Pierre Guichard, André Bazzana, Patrice Cressier
or Philippe Sénac among others, at the time that internally the Medieval Archaeology
was growth very quickly. At this time, the debate, which had until then hinged upon
issues of national identity, shifted to a discussion of the role of feudal versus “tribal”
• 189 •
Artículos • Guillermo García Contreras
or segmentary structures in medieval history of Iberian Peninsula. This was primarily
the result of Pierre Guichard’s work, strongly inspired by the structuralist theories in
social antrhopology (Guichard, 1976), which had an immediate effect on the develop-
ment of medieval archaeology, given that the refocused research on rural settlement
patterns including the study of castles, rural sites, pottery production and productive
areas, mainly by irrigation (Glick & Kirchner, 2000; Carvajal & Jiménez, 2011; Eiroa,
2012; Carvajal, 2014; García, 2018).
It seems to be clear that archaeology of al-Andalus has nothing to envy other Euro-
pean medieval archaeologies, in terms of development, projects or results. However,
the accounts of Rogers in 1974, Vernoit in 1997, Insoll in 1999 and Milwright in 2010
to mention the main international treaties regarding the archaeology of Islam although
well informed in some areas (especially the Near East central area or the African
lands) lacks a wider insight on al-Andalus. Its has been attempted more recently with
general works written in English by Meulemeester, 2005; Anderson & Rosser-Owen,
2007; Carvajal, 2014; Valor & Gutiérrez, 2014; but not many more can be included,
leaving aside papers concerning very particular aspects. In this case, cultural dif-
ferences cannot be the matter of this absence, nor the data available. Is it then our
own peripheral approach? Does al-Andalus historiography try to ‘marginalize’ itself
to be more European? Or could it be a matter of language? Florin Curta argues that
the amazing development of Medieval Archaeology in Spain is poorly known outside
Spain because no survey has been published at the time we wrote his words (Curta,
2011: 377). Despite the efforts of Spanish academics to integrate into the internation-
al scientic domain mostly through English, there does not seem to be the same effort
towards Spanish or other languages, which affects the impact and integration of stud-
ies on al-Andalus, such as has been pointed out by Jorge Eiroa (2011). On the same
basis, it can be pointed out that there is limited engagement with North African me-
dieval archaeology from Spanish archaeologists, but much more with Italian, British
and French medieval archaeology. So we can argue that archaeology of al-Andalus
is not marginal but marginalized by the general Islamic Archaeology Historiography,
in the same way that has been considered exotic by the most general European Me-
dieval Archaeology. At least, this has been the case until well into the beginning of the
21
st
century, when this whole situation is beginning to change.
5. Final remarks: claiming post-colonial and post-marginal
narratives for al-Andalus
In 2004, José María Aznar, the former prime minister and member of the Conserva-
tive Popular Party (PP), gave a lecture at Washington’s Georgetown University. His
party’s defeat in the election in favour of the Socialist come three days after 191 Ma-
drid railway commuters were killed in the West’s worst Islamic terror attack since Sep-
tember 11. To understand the circumstances surrounding that defeat, Aznar told the
Georgetown students, they should wind the clock back to 711. This, Spanish school-
children are meant to know, was the moment when a Berber called Tarik Bin Ziyad
crossed the Mediterranean with a small army and began a swift “invasion” of Iberia.
So, according with Aznar, Spain’s problem with Al-Qaida starts in the eighth century,
when a Spain recently invaded by the Moors refused to become just another piece
in the Islamic world and began a long battle to reconquer its identity. As Alejandro
García Sanjuán explains, who alludes to and remembers exactly the same anecdote
reproducing Aznar’s verbatim words, this “Aznarian” vision of 711 as a proto-terrorist
act is a contemporary and updated version of one of the key concepts of the classical
Anduli • Revista Andaluza de Ciencias Sociales Nº 20 - 2021
• 190 •
paradigm of the Reconquista: the historical illegitimacy of al-Andalus since the begin-
ning (García Sanjuán, 2018: 133-134). Aznar’s words synthesize, to a great extent,
a traditional vision of the Middle Ages based on a cultural confrontation that is in part
a consequence of a colonial vision of the medieval history of the Iberian Peninsula.
This paper has sought to evaluate two strands of theoretical archaeology of al-Anda-
lus that have emerged over the last years, postcolonialism and marginality. Certainly,
there are other themes which have gradually become integrated into the mainstream
of general Islamic Archaeology, such as Identity, minorities, cultural changes, land-
scape perception… but these two perhaps most encapsulate shifting ideas about the
kind or archaeology we are dealing of. All theories have strengths and weaknesses,
and the wider literature on both postcolonialism and marginality is itself replete with
divergent views, critiques and counter-arguments. Thus, it should be no surprise that
certain problems of coherence, particularly to do with reconciling description, analysis
and judgement, and the handling of multiple scales of phenomena, become manifest
not so much in the work of individuals, but in the big picture of where al-Andalus ar-
chaeology is heading. Fragmentation of narratives about the western medieval Islam-
ic world is in some sense desirable, and indeed inevitable, as we increasingly unpick
the great complexity of that world. Critics of theoretical archaeology sometimes point
to the perception that new ideas or terminologies rarely seem to make much differ-
ence to the bread-and-butter descriptive categories of empirical data (Johnson, 2010:
224) but this is really only a symptom of the level of inertia that has accumulated in all
areas of archaeology over the last century or more. Really signicant change in the
practice and theory of archaeology takes patience and demands that sub-disciplines
with a broad range of evidential resources play their part in theory-building at every
level, from site formation studies to analyses of major phenomena like, for example,
the Islamicization or Islamicizations (Carvajal, 2013).
As I tried to show in the previous pages, «Marginality» in al-Andalus is in fact more his-
toriographical than real, exactly the same that has been argued for North Africa espe-
cially during early Islam period (Garcea 2005; Corisande, 2020: 1-6). It depends entirely
upon the perception of where the «centre» -or the main areas- is (Svensson & Gardiner,
2009: 23). In general, classic medievalism sees the expansion of feudalism and the
spread of Christianity as the heart of these studies. The categorization of medieval
times emerges, basically, from the ideology of the nineteenth century and until the end
of the twentieth century we have not changed many of these topics: feudalism, Chris-
tian expansion, origins of the nations or Orientalism and exotic Islamic arts. Something
similar happens for Islamic Archaeology which in many case still being written under the
similar precepts of those dened prior the mid 20th century: essentially art-historical,
set by western Orientalist, and continuing to dene Islam as a decisive break with the
past and a divisive inuence on the Mediterranean and wider region (i.e. Anderson &
Rosser-Owen, 2007). I can cite an example that shows this very clearly from the strict
archaeological point of view. After several years closed for renovation, in 2014 the Na-
tional Archaeological Museum located in Madrid reopened. In its permanent exhibition,
al-Andalus appears to be a break from the normal course of events in the history of
Spain, showing only exotic elements of its architecture or its decorative arts as it has
been analyzed in detail in detail (García-Contreras, 2015).
All these have marginalized the archaeology of al-Andalus from the outside, while from
the inside, researchers have marginalized some issues giving priority to others. In fact,
the archaeology of al-Andalus could very well be compared with other archaeologies.
For example, with the archaeology of Byzantium in many ways, from the exaggerated
preoccupation with cities to the fascination with beautiful objets d’art or the inuence
• 191 •
Artículos • Guillermo García Contreras
of western techniques productions (Lock & Sanders, 1996; Bintliff & Stöger, 2009).
The Orientalism that I argue for the current situation in al-Andalus studies denitely
exists in the case of Byzantine archaeology, although we must recognize that there is
a very rapid change in recent years (Bintliff, 2019). However, in the Greek case, that
is less the result of internal (in the case of Spain, nationalist or Francoist) factors, and
more the consequence of the imagining (mainly by English-speaking authors) of an
exotic space (al-Andalus or Byzantium) to be populated only with selected topics and
objects of study (Decker, 2018).
A few years ago, José Cristóbal Carvajal argued that:
The failure of the archaeology of al-Andalus to become a recognised eld of ac-
ademic research is related to the role that it has been forced to play since the
development of medieval archaeology in Spain. Instead of developing research
directions that take into account multiple lines of evidence, scholars chose to focus
on parts of the material record that they thought signicant for their narratives.
While there is no doubt that some research can be written in this way, it is not a
sustainable archaeological strategy in the long term. Hence the rst and most fun-
damental problem of medieval archaeology in Spain is the lack of an autonomous
research agenda. Here I wish to emphasise the word ‘autonomous’ as opposed
to ‘independent’. I am not contending that medieval archaeologists should be ab-
solutely independent of medieval historians; rather, I am arguing for the creation
of a pluridisciplinary research framework. In the eld of al-Andalus this has been
achieved by orientalists and historians, for example, but archaeologists have not
been able to develop the potential of their discipline because they have been sub-
ordinated to the research priorities of others. It is important to clarify that the prob-
lem here is not so much about establishing barriers between academic disciplines
as about bringing them down. In other words, the problem of medieval archaeology
is not that it has been practised by historians, but that it has been managed by
people who conceived archaeological research as less complex than it actually is
(Carvajal, 2014: 329).
In opinion of Antonio Malpica the solution is clear, there shouldn’t be an archaeology
of Islam in the Middle Ages, but an archaeology of the Middle Ages (Malpica, 2007).
In this sense, and forgetting the obvious differences between a feudal society and the
mercantile-tributary ones (if we use the marxist terminology initially applied to al-An-
dalus by Pierre Guichard inuenced by Samir Amin’s ideas), the historical problems
have to be solved by eliminating boundaries, not creating more of them, as Carvajal
pointed out. Al-Andalus was part of the Islamic countries in the Middle Ages, and like
the feudal ones they were not a single big empire. But they were also part of both the
European and North African communities, trading with them, ghting each other, etc.
It is our task now to continue the work in this direction and incorporate al-Andalus to
the European debate, but taking account that European Middle Ages does not mean
one single things and we should take into consideration the big differences between
societies before the alleged homogenization that Capitalism has imposed since the
16th century. Date that, not by chance, comes to coincide with the end of al-Andalus
in the Iberian Peninsula. In fact, when postcolonial theory had reviewed these ideas
about what the Middle Ages were, and had chosen to ‘destabilize hegemonic identi-
ties’ and to ‘decenter’ Europe (Cohen, 2000; Gaunt, 2009) al-Andalus archaeology
was not part of their studies, despite the fact it seems to be a perfect eld to develop
this kind of approaches. However, al-Andalus archaeologists are also guilty (and
here, I am as guilty as anyone) because they rarely have worried about transcending
borders and publish in English or participate in international events. This situation is
Anduli • Revista Andaluza de Ciencias Sociales Nº 20 - 2021
• 192 •
changing in the last decade (see for example Carvajal, 2014, 2016, Valor & Gutiérrez,
2014), so the situation could be different in a few years.
In a very provocative essay, Kathleen Biddick argued that “a postcolonial society
has a historical specicity and density that is not easily translated into premodern
worlds” (Biddick, 1998: 250), suggesting thereby that the use of postcolonial theory
to analyse medieval text verges on crude anachronism. According with this view, the
Middle Ages cannot be postcolonial since the term by denition refers to historical
circumstances and to cultures that emerged only after the disintegration of the global
empires that were formed after the medieval period. Notwithstanding the foregoing,
the Middle Ages are often treated by some modern theorists as
an undifferentiated, homogenous “Other,” sometimes simple, innocent, and toler-
ant, as opposed to complex, knowing, and intolerant; sometimes unremittingly bru-
tal and violent, as opposed to having the potential at least for enlightenment and
liberation. For these theorists the Middle Ages are implicitly the marker of a degree
zero of alterity (Gaunt, 2009: 161)
Al-Andalus, as an Islamic territory on the West, offers a perfect eld to study nation-
hood roots, hybridities identities, minorities resistances, borders cultural exchanges,
oriental essentialism characterizations, States formation processes, different waves
of colonization and acculturation, or the role of feudal conquests at the origins of the
Modern capitalist world characterization. In short, almost all the topics addressed by
postcolonial theory.
That is why I call for post-marginal studies in al-Andalus studies. We do not intend
to present all possible studies. It depends on each historian or archaeologist, his/her
questions and possibilities into the research programs. But I want to refer to some
aspects that must be taken into account in order to renew the historical narratives of
al-Andalus:
• We cannot consider the Arab and Berber conquest and colonizations (8
th
c.) very
different from the expansion of the Anglo-Saxons or the Vikings (even though
they are not equal societies). We should integrate them in medieval migration
studies like the ones done for other parts of Europe (Wickham, 2005). To do this
we need to compare historical processes. But compare is not enough without a
theoretical background which allows to focus the research.
• From the point of view of social and economic relations, we cannot consider
al-Andalus as a marginal area. At least, not all through the Middle Ages. In the
Earlier times (9
th
-11
th
centuries) or during the Almohad Empire (12
th
-13
th
c.), al-
Andalus was part of a hegemonic place in Europe and the occidental Mediter-
ranean. Historians that have been already mentioned in this paper, such as
McCormick (2001) or Wickham (2005) argued that the Umayyad Caliphate was
a sophisticated political and scal entity with a more developed economy than
any other contemporary European state. Even, when al-Andalus was reduced to
a small kingdom in south eastern Iberia (the Nasrid kingdom), its pottery arrived
in Italy and England (García, 2011) and not only to the North African Islamic ter-
ritories. Therefore, we cannot speak of a marginalization when talking about the
past itself, but when we refer to the current historical narratives created from the
different research agendas.
• Religion seems to be one of the main problematic issues to integrated al-Andalus
into the national historical discourses. But according with Tim Insoll (1999) and
José Cristobal Carvajal (2013; 2014), archaeology of Islam is not only archaeology
• 193 •
Artículos • Guillermo García Contreras
of a religion but the analysis of how the religious dimension of human existence
is manifested in the practices of daily life including lived experience of religion. So
archaeology of the land called al-Andalus -where were Christians and Jews as
minorities as well as Berbers and Arabs- should aspire to understand the connec-
tion of belief and practice in historical societies but developing in any case a solid
archaeological ground far from the narratives of Islam-Christian confrontation and
the victory of the last one as the root of the Spanish Nation and more focuses on
economic, social, environmental and heritage values to be comparable with the
rest of European and Mediterranean archaeologies.
In conclusion, al-Andalus archaeologists may have a tendency to marginalize their
own research not publishing in English or not attending international conferences,
but at the same time the look from the outside to the work that has been done in the
Iberian peninsula has been quite limited due to Spanish is not a common language of
exchange in international medieval archeology forums. Nevertheless, both seem to
be changing in recent years. We will need some lead time to re-examine the situation
in the light of the analysis we proposed in this paper. In any case, the current projects
about al-Andalus are being framed within a European context. We should not forget
that most topics can be compared between different societies: Housing structures,
productive activities, trade, and so forth.
Fortunately, these new ways of understanding the archaeology of al-Andalus have
already started. Thus, with the very same lack of integration for the whole al-Andalus
and more towards Europe and the Mediterranean including North Africa. However,
we need to understand marginality as a rst step to overcome this. From now on, it
is a must to start writing a post-marginal narratives when talking about archaeology
of al-Andalus.
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the three anonymus and external referees of this paper
for their useful and appreciated comments and suggestions that help me to improve
this work. Some of the ideas defended in this text were originally part of the oral com-
munication “Post-marginal narratives of al-Andalus archaeology” presented with my
colleagues Luis Martínez Vázquez and Sonia Villar Mañas in the “General session
on Historical Archaeology”, coordinated by Vesa-Pekka Hervaen at the 18
th
Annual
Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA Helsinki, Finland, 29
th
August to 1
st
September 2012). Since them the development of the discipline has
varied quite a bit -as is strongly evident in the bibliography that we quote from 2012
onward-, as well as my own knowledge and perspectives, however the background of
the debate remains more or less the same. It is not possible for me to detach my own
thinking from the collective ideas that were elaborated with my colleagues, so many
of the eventual successes of this work are largely their fault. In any case, the entire
responsibility for what has been written here is solely mine.
Anduli • Revista Andaluza de Ciencias Sociales Nº 20 - 2021
• 194 •
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