Mixed Harvest: Stories from the Human Past by Rob Swigart (review)

In this impressive and ambitious collection of short stories, author Rob Swigart takes the reader on a journey from the distant human past (the meeting of Neanderthals with modern humans embodied in the character, Traveler) to the emergence of Mesopotamian civilization. The book was inspired by a series of seminars conducted at the site of Çatal Höyük, then being excavated by Ian Hodder (earlier, Swigart had been a visiting scholar at the Stanford Archaeology Center from which emerged his two earlier archaeology textbook novels).

The book is divided into three sections: (1) Shelter (twelve chapters); (2) House (eight chapters); (3) Home (nine chapters). As their titles indicate, Swigart’s main theme is the transition from a nomadic lifestyle (with people moving around resources) to sedentism (with resources having to move around people). The lengths of the individual chapters make them easily digestible in single sittings. Some stand alone, while others follow an individual or individuals. Each chapter is accompanied, at its beginning and end, by two small paragraphs that place it into the correct historical context. The book ends with an afterword that presents moral lessons from the past to help us guide our future.

Swigart is honest in admitting that he is concerned only with the development of European and Near Eastern culture. He omits Africa, Australia, and the Americas from his stories (x), even though two of those regions had their “[own] arc of history” bending towards farming. In choosing to concentrate on the European and Near Eastern regions, Swigart follows, perhaps unwittingly, Gordon Childe’s sustained concentration on Europe and the Near East. Some readers might take offense at this. However, this is entirely understandable in my opinion, for this book, as with any good historical fiction, is as much about entertainment as education and to include other cultural trajectories would surely have weighed the book down and made it much more complicated than necessary. Nevertheless, given his use of explanatory paragraphs, perhaps a comment in either the preface or afterword on the teleological and ontological foundations of the evolutionary model he applies might not have been out of place.

As noted, Swigart’s main theme is the transition to sedentism, but in taking the reader on a journey from humankind’s earliest origins to the rise of the ancient state, he pursues several subthemes, which together result in a pretty accurate encapsulation of the evolution of Western civilization. These subthemes are:

1. 1. Environmental change and human responses to it

2. 2. The evolution of technology

3. 3. The evolution of subsistence methods from hunting and gathering to pastoralism and farming

4. 4. The appearance of animism and ultimately state-controlled religions, as one of the responses to environmental change, all of which increased state control over individuals as religious and secular power became two sides of the same coin

5. 5. Social harmony versus conflict at both an individual and community level

6. 6. The evolution of different forms of human communication, culminating in writing and the appearance of “literature”

As a semi-retired archaeologist who has also published fiction,¹ I now examine the book from a more literary angle, as a work primarily of fiction. First, a major stumbling block in writing historical fiction is finding the correct balance between fact and fiction. In this regard, Swigart gets it spot on. The author allows the archaeo-logical and historical contexts of each chapter to provide the backdrops to the individual stories. So, the reader is more involved with the actual story line and its characters, although see my comments below.

Second, to follow this train of thought a little further, the writer of historical fiction must draw a balance between pedantry and entertainment. The master of properly striking this balance was Patrick O’Brian in his magisterial Aubrey/Maturin...