178 Jennifer Gates-Foster
individuals of local extraction who were engaging with Persian power as well as for
Persian officials in place as representatives of imperial interests. To what degree this
represents a historical dialogue about ethnicity in the Achaemenid provinces remains
an open question, but the importance of these issues for modern scholarship on the
Achaemenid Empire is indisputable.
To the degree that it is possible to define ethnicity, scholars working with the concept
agree that ethnicity is a social construct, distinguished from other vectors of identity by its
reliance on notions of shared descent or kinship, whether real or constructed (Shennan
1989; Jones 1997, 2008; Hall 2002; Lucy 2005). Recent work has also emphasized
the subjective and discursive nature of ethnic identifications, as well as the emic and
etic perspectives involved in their maintenance (Emberling 1997; Meskell 2001; Lucy
2005). Many scholars emphasize that ethnicity, as a distinct axis of identity, is activated
in particular contexts, especially at times of contact resulting in awareness, opposition,
or assimilation, when contact between different groups stimulates the formulation of
a group identity on the basis of a shared, if fictional, kinship (Lucy 2005; Antonaccio
2010). This is not a simple process. As Meskell (2001: 189) observes:
Ethnic identity is only one social determinate that can be cut across by status, occupation,
gender, etc., that allows contact between groups. But it involves the negotiation of differ-
ence and sameness, and it often entails larger tensions between individuals, the group and
the state.The role of material culture in this dialogue is highly controversial, as some historians have
concluded that an ethnic discourse can only be read through an explicit engagement with
aspects of ethnic identity (descent, kinship) as defined via the written record (e.g., Hall
1997, 2002). In this view, material culture traits are ambiguous and cannot clearly signal
ethnicity, as opposed to other kinds of cultural or social identity. Some archaeologists
reject this privileging of the historical record and point out the importance of material
culture as a critical “symbolic resource” in the articulation of ethnic identity—whether
or not it exists alongside an explicit ethnic discourse—while acknowledging the chal-
lenges of understanding what is articulated by material patterns (Jones 1997, 2008; see
also Chapter 3 in this volume, by Bernard Knapp, for a critical discussion; Lucy 2005).
Gunter has recently argued that “the construction of ethnic identity may also involve the
active and self-conscious deployment of particular cultural features, which could include
cultural forms and artifacts. In this way, distinctive forms of material culture may serve
as indicia of ethnicity” (2009: 92). Others have emphasized the active role that mate-
rial culture plays inshapingethnic identity through its involvement in social interactions
(Antonaccio 2010).
While ethnic strategies in the context of empire are an acknowledged, sometimes
explicit, aspect in the modern world (Gosden 2004; Stein 2005), the direct relevance
of ethnicity, per se, as a meaningful category in ancient imperial contexts is not always
clear (see Emberling, Tyson Smith in this volume). Racial categories that underpinned
many modern imperial projects were not present in antiquity, for example. Empires are,