A Russian perspective on theoretical archaeology: the life and work of Leo S. Klejn

222 Pages·2016·1.752 MB·English

by  Kleĭn, Lev Samuilovich;Leach, Stephen D

A RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE
ON THEORETICAL ARCHAEOLOGY
To Leo
A RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE
ON THEORETICAL ARCHAEOLOGY
The Life and Work of Leo S. Klejn
Stephen Leach
Walnut Creek, California
LEFT COAST PRESS, INC.
1630 North Main Street, #400
Walnut Creek, CA 94596
www.LCoastPress.com
Copyright © 2015 by Left Coast Press, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo-
copying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN 978-1-62958-138-5 hardback
ISBN 978-1-62958-140-8 institutional eBook
ISBN 978-1-62958-141-5 consumer eBook
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Leach, Stephen D.
A Russian perspective on theoretical archaeology : the life and work of Leo S. Klejn /
Stephen Leach.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-62958-138-5 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-62958-140-8 (institutional
eBook) — ISBN 978-1-62958-141-5 (consumer eBook)
1. Klein, L. S. (Lev Samuilovich) 2. Klein, L. S. (Lev Samuilovich)—Philosophy.
3. Archaeologists—Soviet Union—Biography. 4. Jewish scholars—Soviet Union—
Biography. 5. Archaeology—Philosophy. 6. Archaeology—Study and teaching
(Higher)—Soviet Union—History. I. Title.
CC115.K58L43 2015
930.1—dc23
2015006235
Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992.
Contents
List of Illustrations 7
Foreword by Stephen Shennan 9
Preface 11
Part I Life Story
Chapter 1 Before Prison 17
Background 17
Ethnicity 18
War and Childhood 20
Grodno 23
Student Years in Leningrad 23
Early Career 30
Chapter 2 Prison 36
The Savage within and in Society 36
The World Turned Upside Down 40
Chapter 3 After Prison 42
Publications in the West 42
New Interests 43
Marxism 45
Travels and Retirement 47
Politics and Religion 49
Twilight Years 51
Part II Life’s Work
Chapter 4 Anthropology 55
Prison Life 55
Cybernetics 59
Homosexuality 59
Chapter 5 Homeric Studies 61
Incorporeal Heroes 61
The Anatomy of the Iliad 64
The Catalogue of Ships 66
6  Contents
Chapter 6 The Resurrection of Perun 70
Historical Background 70
A New Source? 75
Chapter 7 Ethnogenesis 81
Gustaf Kossinna: Archaeology in the Saddle 81
The Proto-Indo-European Homeland 87
1. The Catacomb-grave Culture 88
2. Proto-Hittites 91
The Varangian Controversy 92
Chapter 8 Histories of Archaeology 95
The New Archaeology 95
The Montelius Formula 96
The History of Archaeological Thought 99
A History of Anthropology 101
Soviet Archaeology 102
Chapter 9 Theoretical Archaeology in Relation to Practice 108
Theory in Relation to Practice 108
The Structure of Theoretical Archaeology 109
1. The Concerns of Archaeology 110
2. The Nature of Archaeological Methodology 116
3. Combatant Gods: The Fundamental Principles
of Archaeology 121
Chapter 10 What Is Theoretical Archaeology? 125
Antitheoretical Empiricism 125
The Concept of Theory in Oppositions 126
The Cognitive Structure of Theoretical Archaeology 128
The Functions of Theoretical Archaeology 128
Information Processing: The Fourteen Weirs 130
Research Design 134
Chapter 11 The Archaeologist and the Detective 135
Klejn and Collingwood 137
A Warning to the West? 142
Appendix A The Commandments 144
Appendix B Klejn’s Bibliography 146
Notes 205
References 213
Index 217
About the Author 221
Illustrations
Figure 1.1 Gogol Street, Vitebsk 18
Figure 1.2 Karl Marx Street, Yoshkar-Ola 21
Figure 1.3 Vladimir Y. Propp 24
Figure 1.4 Mikhail Artamonov 26
Figure 1.5 Klejn in 1950 on Artamonov’s expedition on
the site of the Don-Volga canal 26
Figure 1.6 Klejn on March 3, 1950, at the Marr Conference 29
Figure 1.7 Klejn in 1953. Portrait by Michail Devyatov 30
Figure 3.1 Klejn in his convict’s uniform 44
Figure 9.1 Archaeology in the scheme of disciplines 119
Figure 9.2 The combatant Gods: The fundamental principles
of archaeology 124
Figure 10.1 The concept of theory in oppositions 127

Foreword
Leo Klejn is an extraordinary individual: a polymath, an intellectual provo-
cateur, not least a survivor of the events of his own life. He is also almost
certainly the only theoretical archaeologist from the Soviet Union and Russia
that Anglophone audiences have ever heard of, although these days I wonder
how many even that is true of. Even if they know the name they probably know
next to nothing about the man and his ideas. I hope Stephen Leach’s excel-
lent book changes that. It certainly deserves to. The subject might be thought
rather forbidding, but I found the book compulsive. Part of the reason for this
is Klejn’s amazing life story, but what gives the book its special power and
attraction is that it is less a standard intellectual biography and much more a
dialogue between the author and Klejn himself. This approach gives a power-
ful sense of what the man is like—brilliant, argumentative, iron-willed, never
one to accept the conventional view or the easy path—and with the toughness
to take the consequences of these character traits for his life in the old Soviet
Union and after.
But in presenting Klejn’s ideas in their context the book is also a win-
dow on a very different intellectual world, an archaeological tradition that has
developed almost entirely independently of the Anglo-American one and is
largely unknown to most of us. It is not just about archaeology though. We are
told that Klejn has said that ‘in his life he had but one legal wife, archaeology,
but many mistresses—anthropology, history, philology, and folklore studies’.
His wide-ranging intellectual curiosity and remarkable productivity means he
has made book-length contributions to all of these, and Leach gives each of
them its due. In the end, though, like Klejn, it is the archaeology we return to
and in particular to his views about the relationship between archaeology and
history. Here and elsewhere I’m sure most readers from the Anglo-American
tradition will fi nd much that provokes them to debate and disagreement, but
before embarking on this debate they should certainly read and ponder this
book’s indispensable appendix of archaeological and academic ‘command-
ments’ that were on the walls for Klejn’s student seminars.
We should all be very grateful to Stephen Leach for writing this hugely
engaging introduction to an extraordinary man and his ideas.
Stephen Shennan
9