Being in the (past) world: Vermeer, neural networks and archaeologicaltheory.Bintliff, J.L.; Kienlin T.L.

CitationBintliff, J. L. (2005). Being in the (past) world: Vermeer, neural networks and archaeologicaltheory. In Die Dinge als Zeichen: Kulturelles Wissen und materielle Kultur (pp. 125-131).Bonn: Verlag Dr Rudolf Habelt. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/1887/8453 Version: Not Applicable (or Unknown)License: Leiden University Non-exclusive licenseDownloaded from: https://hdl.handle.net/1887/8453 Note: To cite this publication please use the final published version (if applicable).

Being in the (Past) World:

Vermeer, Neural Networks and Archaeological Theory

John Bintliff

Abstract: A recent concern in Archaeological Theory has been with questions of Human Agency and the creation of complexPasts. Attempts to bring together the earlier work of Modernists (New or Processual Archaeology) with their interest in thelarger structures of society, and Postmodernists (Post-Processual Archaeology) with their interest in active individuals in thePast, can be criticised for overemphasizing one half of the Structure-Agency interaction. Multiscale approaches in which the

Past is seen as underdetermined and unpredictable, yet prone to form post-dictable shapes, have benefitted from older andcurrent work in other disciplines with a strong time-perspective (the Annales School of French historians, Punctuated-Equi-hbrium Theory associated with the evolutionary scientist Stephen Jay Gould, and Chaos-Complexity Theory which is a pow-erful stimulus in many areas of scientific research at the moment). This paper will take the insights obtained from the lattergroup of ideas and introduce a novel element into our analysis of the past - Neural Network Theory, a body of research intohow the human mind works which has led to far-reaching hypotheses about how we see and react within the world.

Over the last two decades an exciting convergencehas taken place in several disciplines, with its focuson the human experience of materiality. Particularlyin Cultural Anthropology, Art History and Archaeol-ogy we find a new emphasis on the role of materialculture, notably everyday objects and buildings inour domestic or working environments, in reflect-ing, reaffirming, challenging, or constructing thestructures of social life. Exactly how this works, how-ever, has brought forth quite diverse models. At oneextreme is the point of view where material culturesimply reifies in more permanent form the roles,practices and beliefs of a given society, mirroring itand hence offering us a map of such a community.This was an approach often followed in pioneeringresearch in Social Archaeology during the New Ar-chaeology paradigm of the 1960s and 1970s. In con-trast to this passive role, at the other extreme, associ-ated with social constructivism, the potentially fluidactivities of the social world are anchored into regu-lated pattern through the recurrent exposure ofmembers of a community to an ordered local worldpopulated by built environments and artefacts,whose form, placing and design or symbolism pro-vide the meanings of social life to participants. Herematerial culture is highly active. In a more balanced,intermediate position, we might locate recent propo-nents of Structuration Theory, where individualpeople can both modify material culture patternsand be moulded by existing patterns. Criticism ofthe last viewpoint often focuses on its overreliance

on active agency and an underexplored structure, inarchaeological case-studies (Bintliff 2004).

I find numerous problems with these varied for-mulations, which requires us, I think, to broaden suchapproaches in order to take account of a series of sig-nificant areas of social life in the past, which they failto deal adequately with. Firstly, History teaches usthat events are as much the product of unintention-al consequences as of purposeful actions. Likewise,any given generation has but a limited knowledge oftransformational processes which impinge upon onit, so that its behaviour is poorly related to the hist-orical circumstances it engages with, includingprocesses due to its own specific social decisions andchoices. Whereas some factors are cognisant to con-temporaries, others represent evolutionary develop-ments with longer timespans than a human life oreven a specific historical culture or age. And yet,human thoughts, perceptions and actions patentlyact on the course of History, though not always, oreverywhere, and certainly unpredictably. One way tosimplify this complexity in the weaving of History isto adopt a longer-term approach, focussing on majortrends rather than the day to day detail. Steven Shen-nan's recent work, for example (Shennan 2002),adopts a Darwinian model, modified by Dawkins'theory of mêmes, in an illuminating way, to read pastmaterial culture as an adaptive transformational sys-tematics deployed by societies to enhance their sur-vival and prosperity. I find this a convincing view-point, but also feel that the human element and the

126 John Bintliff

Fig. 1: Vermeer's »View of Delft« (c. 1660-1).

world as experienced within human lifespans havenecessarily been subordinated to achieve a wider andlonger-term picture.

What I feel we still need is a theory or group ofmodels, which take seriously all the powerful ap-proaches and arguments just mentioned briefly,without losing the world of individuals and events, orthe larger evolving cultural structures of several cen-turies or millennia in duration, and somehow allowboth endless variation and persistent structure to co-exist. Additionally, this approach should allow bothfor the world as seen by past participant-observers,individually and as communities, and the past worldwe can observe with the benefit of hindsight into sig-nificant processes wholly or partially hidden fromcontemporaries. Moreover we should not expect de-terminism, but neither anarchic structureless humanactivity, in such an integrating theory. In previous ex-plorations in this theoretical sea, I have raised the po-tential of the Structural History of the Annales'School of French historians (Bintliff 1991), the Punc-tuated Equilibrium and Contingency theory ofSteven Jay Gould (Bintliff 1999), and Chaos-Com-plexity theory (Bintliff 1997; 2003). All of these canbe linked to offer a resilient intellectual frameworkfor our enterprise of analysing the way people madetheir world and their world also made them. One newelement, which I have already begun to add to thisanalytical compound, I would like to introduce in thefinal part of this paper, and this' is a major new fieldin research into human cognition, that of NeuralNetworks. Considerable and justifiable excitementhas been generated by this approach within the re-search community concerned with our mentalworld, and it has also spilled over into wider studiesconcerned with social organisation, educational psy-

chology and planning studies. For Archaeology andMaterial Culture Studies in general it offers a re-markable new dimension of sophistication for ouraim in comprehending human life experiences.

But I want to begin this exploration with an un-usual form of past artefacts, one which represents awhole world of material culture and indeed a wholepast society. I live a short bicycle ride from the Dutchcity of Delft, and we shall travel to its 17th centuryGolden Age, as seen through the images created of itby the painter Vermeer.

What we see in figure 1 is a town dominated by amercantile, wealthy, middle class, threatened notlong before and soon after (see the walls) by expan-sive, greedy and envious neighbours; it is a confidentcity-state. Can we do more, meet the insufficiency ofthese generalities of the medium-term timescalecontext (fig. 2) in order to confront the individualsof Delft, the human actors, and therefore, in thethree timescales of historic processes theorized bythe French Annales School, go for the short-term,the world of events or événements? This same masterallows us to in his painting in figure 3. We are insidea Delft house - of such a wealthy merchant or manu-facturer, or a professional household servicing thoseclasses. Just as the physical townscape before, wallsand buildings, the harbour, gave us insights into theeconomy and the social community, we now alsofind the painter drawing our attention to the materialculture of the scene at the domestic householdlevel - rich but not too numerous furnishings sug-gest a society that was both widely wealthy but alsostrongly religious - the tiles, woodwork, dresses,tapestries, etc. Clearly this is a town where the peo-ple who the artist mixed with socially, married into,sold pictures to, and who ran the city, valued sub-dued luxury.

But there should be more - not just an illustrationfor the Archaeology of Capitalism, the climax of amedium term economic and political cycle of theAnnales moyenne durée (fig. 2), peaking in theGolden Age of the South Netherlands in this verymid 17th century. What is going on in this scene,what are these individuals doing that is meant tocapture our undivided attention? The pose, occupa-tion and dress allow us to read this scene as a servantgiving a letter to her mistress. The look that passesbetween them suggests this is more than a shopping-list or a newsletter from a distant relative - no, as inother paintings by Vermeer, we are led to believe thisis a love-letter.

What strikes commentators about Vermeer's art(e.g. Netta 2001), is the striking way he places us inthe scene, close by, a voyeur, observing the intimate

Being in the (Past) World: Vermeer, Neural Networks and Archaeological Theory 127

History of EventsShort Term

ÉVÉNEMENTS

Narrative, Political HistoryEvents

Individuals

Structural Medium Term History CONJONCTURESSocial, Economic History

Economic, Agrarian, Demographic Cycles

History of eras, regions, societies

Worldviews, Ideologies (Mentalités)

Structural Long Term History STRUCTURES OF THE LONGUE DURÉE

Geohistory: 'enabling and constraining'

History of civilizations, peoples

Stable technologies

Worldviews (Mentalités)

Fig. 2: Annales' model of timescales.

movements of the bourgeoisie. Another feature char-acteristic for Vermeer is the powerful sense of silencein his work - a palpable absence of crowds, children,animals, lively communication - the focus thus isdrawn to fix our attention on something going onwithin a person or between two people. And yet howclose are we to these individuals' thoughts or words?A final characteristic noted for Vermeer is the delib-erate mystery created in each picture - the sense thatwe don't know what is in the letter, or what is themeaning of the shared laughter between a man anda woman in another indoor scene, or again whatportends here the shared glance between mistressand servant? Even if we were to know what one ofthese individuals was feeling, would it not be morethan likely that the other person in the room, or theabsent author of the letter, might see the situationquite differently?

I come away from my quest, to see how far we cango in a very well-recorded past society, with mixedimpressions as to what we can hope to do in older,and less completely-documented, societies. I feelconfirmed in my feeling that the big structures of thelongue durée (fig. 2), for example the run-up ofgrowth in this region from the Migration era portsof trade up to the climax mercantile 17th century citysociety, or the large structures of the middle term -several centuries - economic, social and politicalcycles, etc. - these can be recognized and reflected inthe analysis of its material culture. As for the rela-tionship between these and the world of real lives,

real individual people, real time, real beliefs andthoughts, that of the short term, — much it appearscan be done with reasonable confidence: the valuesof the day, the worldview of some groups in the com-munity, are reconstructable - the mentalities stressedby the Annales are just as potent forces as technologyor politics. Even the short-lived events - sieges andeconomic swings, stand a chance of detection - butstill, where does this lady's letter come in (fig. 3)?

Bob Layton's (2001) view of pre-Modern art helpsus some way forward - a generic interpretation ofthis scene, or let us say of this symbolic representa-tional artefact, is a more realistic goal than a seriesof specific meanings at the individual level. Here is asociety where gender relations, especially sex andmarriage, are not organized by autocratic parents,but normally involve romance, choice, individuality -indeed this could be an illicit affair beyond even theconstraints of courtship and marriage. We sense thatthere is a secret, a heart-throbbing disruption, in thelook between the women. But we don't know, andthat is one point of the picture - what that secretreally is - their look freezes us out, we are that closebut we can never share that secret.

So I also come away confirmed in my doubts thatwe should not hope to uncover, even in highly liter-ate and artistic societies, the thoughts, words anddeeds of each and every individual - except insofaras they either conform to a recognizable genre of theage - a repetitive behaviour where the clues to ashared mentality become unmistakeable - or, rarer to

128 John Bintliff

Fig. 3: »The Love Letter« (c. 1669-70).

demonstrate from material objects and easier onlywhere texts and art assist us - where the unusualthoughts, words and deeds of an individual were note-worthy enough to become embedded in an artefact, aspecial tomb, a structure or sculpture, an archive orwork of literature. Here indeed with Vermeer it is thefirst case, where a limited number of works of artsomehow encapsulate large aspects of an entire pastsociety.

For a second illustration of the insights intogeneric group mentalities in the past, which we candraw by juxtaposing different representations of thesame society, let us turn to another city - half a cen-tury later, 18th century Modena in N. Italy (fig. 4). Ina clever study combining archival history, parishrecords and a rich series of contemporary and well-peopled paintings of townscapes, Susan Nicassio(1991) gives us another example where the symbolicrepresentation of a certain class comes across veryclearly. This clever exercise in Microhistory focuseson a highly-detailed series of pictures of street scenesof 18th century Modena, in which historical individ-uals seem to be depicted. By a striking juxtapositionof the actual composition of the urban populationfrom parish and tax records (fig. 5) with the classes,professions and genders depicted as populating thetown, she shows how the street scenes present thecity to the viewer as one of bourgeois gentlemen,

Fig. 4: »The Sant' Agostino Gate« and its square in Modena.One of a series of late 18th century street scenes of Modenapainted by anonymous artists. Gentlemen and soldiers arethe dominant groups in this particular scene.

suppressing women, the poor and peasants and eventhe ruling nobility. A further analysis of social inter-actions in these scenes confirms that reading - thatthese pictures show us how the male bourgeoisie sawthe world and which social interactions matteredmost to them in the public arena.

And yet Vermeer's Delft is also a selective, person-alized view from within his middle class set - eventhe famous view of its gate is not an attempt torecord the town accurately (fig. 1). Other more doc-umentary images of the same scene and indeed whatstill survives of this view today show us that Vermeerchanged the position and orientation of the build-ings to make a more pleasing composition. This dis-cordance between the individual perception andrepresentation of a past world I find rather intrigu-ing as well as a challenge to History and Archaeology.It reminds of why Malinowski is so admired by An-thropologists - yes, he told them to make spread-sheets for the rules and structures of a society, but hewas equally fascinated by the way people bend, ma-nipulate, even flout these rules.

So far I have been exploring the potential and lim-itations of seeing a past society on the time levels ofprocesses suggested by the Annales School, whilsttying in also its emphasis on mentalities to the moretraditional preoccupations of political, social andeconomic history. Even if we cannot often see therole of events, or individual actors in their widerrepercussions until these diffuse to become the com-mon fate or property of large numbers of peopleover a longer period of time - and are only thenhighly likely to get registered in the material culturerecord of archaeology - the inclusion of the individ-ual and the short term is there to remind us that this

Being in the (Past) World: Vermeer, Neural Networks and Archaeological Theory 129

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I 20Û.

10

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KEY S Population · Paintings

Fig. 5: Comparison of the social structure of the 18th centuryModena population in official records and in contemporarystreet scenes (from Nicassio 1991: Fig. 11).

is still a major component of both historical stabilityand also of the motors for change.

My last and central topic is about a new way tounderstand how individual human actors can beparticipants, in both active and passive ways, in theirlifeworld. Why active and passive? My own readingof History suggests that the individual is indeed asoften likely to follow tradition, or the group behav-iour of their generation, as to make a novel act whichcould shift his or her surroundings into a new direc-tion. Moreover, the sources of human action, welearnt from Darwin and Freud (and some have sinceunlearnt), are not just conscious reason, but as oftenas not, biological drives, and subconscious desires,perhaps concealed beneath specious conscious argu-ments. And of course finally when we act, the resultsare often not what we intended. Given this complex-ity of human behaviour, it is rather suprising that formost societies studied by History and Anthropology,Malinowski's approach works rather well - mostlypeople follow certain norms of behaviour while ir-regularly bending or subverting them.

Two other approaches on view in current archae-ological theoretical discourse are relevant - JohnBarrett (1994) has argued for Structuration Theoryas giving us a way to comprehend how individualsand their daily behaviour can matter to the trajectoryof a culture or society. Steve Shennan's (2002) morerecent elaboration of the »même« idea of RichardDawkins stresses, perhaps in a complementary way,that in the longer term it is rather what persists andmultiplies that matters - whether or not the creatorsof a new behaviour or technology or social formplanned it this way or not.

Both have a valuable part to play in helping us tofeel our way into analyzing past social life and cul-tural change, but I want to introduce a third ap-

proach to our toolbox, one from an unexpected di-rection — cognitive neuroscience, the technical studyof brain functions, and this is the rapidly developingfield of applied theory called Neural Networks(Anonymous 1991; Carter 1998).

Now perhaps the dominant paradigm of how thehuman brain works, Neural Network theory runs likethis: the key cells in the brain are neurons - we havebillions of them - and each receives signals throughits several dendrites and can send out a signal fromits axon. Each is a memory unit. Information flow be-tween neuron cells is not an online permanent con-nection, since a gap or synapse exists between in andout connections, and an electrical and chemical fir-ing is required to pass the gap. But when we experi-ence something, the stimulus excites particular neu-rons or memory cells, and they then become fired upsufficiently to allow a signal to jump across the syn-apse and excite some neighbouring neurons. Yet thelinks depend on the existing ties between neurons.Neurons have built up of themselves strong andweak connections to other neurons, not from geneticor other hard wiring but merely on past experience.Experiences of objects and people in contexts, chaintogether fleetingly but become reflex memories withstrong influences on future behaviour when they areconstantly repeated or have left a deep impression inthe evolving neural network. The more the same ex-perience is reinforced over time, the more often sig-nals run across the same networks, and the thickerand more effective the dendritic connections. More-over associations of outside stimuli become im-printed in our internal network geometry. And yetwe have to allow for unimagineable traffic betweenour billions of memory cells - even a single thoughtor bodily movement seems to be accompanied bythe simultaneous firing of millions of neurons. Spe-cialists in this field suggest that at birth we have verylimited memory pathways, but then a tremendousgrowth of networks reaches a peak at age 6. Adultstend to reduce density unless they invest in or are ex-posed to continual new experiences. A widely-ac-cepted theory of human sleep is that its primary roleis to switch our conscious surface selves off so thebrain can sort out the experiences of the day andclassify them into these filing systems of memory.

Why should all this be so exciting for understand-ing people in society? Firstly, it seems that all our be-haviour, conscious or otherwise, is connected to adatabase within us of staggering complexity. What-ever we see or hear or do is continually linked up in ahighly interactive way with all similar sights, soundsand acts we have encountered throughout our lives,but what counts in this endless search procedure is

130 John Bintliff

Fig. 6: Early 19th century picture by Stackelberg of a peasanthouse in Eleusis, Greece.

what has been either repetitive, or so traumatic andimpressive that dense and thick dendritic connec-tions have built up, the physical reality behind strongmemories. We are to a very large extent what we haveeach individually experienced - no-one is the same.This is why I raised the question earlier about the sep-arate thoughts of the paired individuals in Vermeer'spainting. And yet this is restrictive more than sup-portive for theories of self-conscious human actorsruling their destinies, for we do not dominate thememory bank: awake or asleep, thinking or just ob-serving, the structures of life and the ordered or dis-ordered relations between human beings around usbecome imprinted whether we like it or not, into theevolving neural networks in our heads. Note that themost lively expansion of networks occurs by age six!

What stimulates me about Neural Network theo-ry is that we now see a very clear way in which soci-etal norms or deviance, stability or change becomeimprinted in the minds of individuals. The waythings are done or said, especially repetitively, be-come the memory motorways, whilst the rare andunusual will remain like overgrown, rarely-visitedwoodland paths or even not survive, unless it leavesa deep and broad imprint on the network which re-ceives regular memory stimulus. An illustration ofthe latter which I find very moving comes from thelife of the psychologist Carl Jung. He built a houseon Lake Zurich and would sometimes take disturbedpatients round the lake in his boat. Once out on thelake with a young female psychiatric case whosesource of mental illness had remained a mystery, andbecause he was a pioneer in the use of art as therapy,he began to sing quietly. As an extraordinary coinci-dence, the song was one familiar from the girl'schildhood, and its sudden reappearance broughtback such a flood of healing reminiscences that her

Fig. 7: »The Hospitality of Abraham« by Nikolaos Kallergis(mid-18th century), Zakynthos Museum, Greece.

psychic trauma began to retreat and her return tonormalcy commenced.

Many of you will probably see a link between thisempirically-based theory of the brain and Bourdieu'sconcept of social norms or habitus, but I hope youwill also see how remarkably flexible we can be if cir-cumstances change dramatically and indeed if we dosomething with lasting repercussions on ourselvesand our social or physical environment. Indeed thegrowth of the neural network follows no mathemat-ical rules, it is non-linear. For this reason many re-search programmes are using this model to designintelligent computers, analytical systems or modelthe evolution of language.

But where exactly is the archaeological application?I think first of Vermeer's Delft bourgeoisie, surround-ed from birth with certain modes of behaviour, butwith also freedoms of action, all visually and tactuallytied with a walled town, houses and furnishings, dresscodes, licit and illicit behaviours, distinctive for theirage and region and even in some respects to particu-lar towns. I then think more practically to my own re-search work on postmedieval deserted villages inGreece, where our careful study of broken cookware,or tableware, and house styles can be given a specificlifeway scenario. Whilst in our region of EasternGreece the postmedieval peasant around 1800 ADlives with his animals under one roof (fig. 6), with

Being in the (Past) World: Vermeer, Neural Networks and Archaeological Theory 131

limited possessions and sharing a low table and a singledish with an extended family, and speaking a form ofAlbanian from a colonization centuries earlier, inWestern Greece (fig. 7) at the same period, this icon ofa biblical scene actually shows us the lifestyle of the18th century Ionian Islands - a more cosmopolitansociety widely connected by trade and culture to cap-italist Italy, at ease with Greek and Italian, sitting up-right at a table with individual table settings, withwine glasses and imported majolica tableware, andneoclassical furnishings. The origin of this divergence

between these two cultural regions of Greece we candate archaeologically to the 17th century AD.

The way things are done, how we eat and talk,whom we mix with, the objects around us and in ourhands, our horizons, all these are etched into thearchitecture of the neural networks and deeply talkback to us at every new scene in our lives.

As archaeologists we have long been able to workwith the sherds and house foundations, now I be-lieve we can begin to enter the minds.

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