[Book review] Perspectives on Albania

Abstract

The study of Albanian society and history, at least in the West since World War II, has been vitiated by three interrelated factors: one, little has actually been known about Albanian history and the Albanians; second, this history has often been treated as an extension of other peoples’ histories; and third, its extremely nationalistic/ socialist regime until very recently discouraged foreign scholarship and research, and sponsored its own brand of history which was often diametrically opposed to current dominant western views. This volume, which groups together a wide variety of essays ranging from prehistory to the last years of the Hoxha regime, will go some way towards highlighting these difficulties but not towards resolving them. It provides, as the title aptly suggests, perspectives on Albania, but begs the question of whose perspectives are being explored. There is no doubt that from the available evidence, sparse in many cases, the history of Albanian society is indeed subject to conflicting interpretations. Harding, a Durham archaeologist, points out that Albanian archaeologists have had to study their monuments under the shadow of the Greek world, but delicately sidesteps engaging with their interpretations. He also raises subtle doubts about the suitablity of Renfrew’s model of a hypothetical ‘proto-IndoEuropean language’ (*PIE). According to the available evidence he emphasises that Bronze and Iron age society in what is present-day Albania developed indigenously, even if objects were imported from the south. Bronze industries were a mixture of different elements, local and external. More speculatively, but courageously, he offers a scenario for the processes that led to the emergence of urban centres, although he wisely counsels caution.