This past Monday, the Collegeís archaeology department hosted a visit and presentation by archeologist Michael L. Galaty of Millsaps College, Jackson, Miss., who described to students his research with the Shala tribe in Albania, entitled the Shala Valley Project.
Galaty spent field sessions with the Shala tribe from 2005-2008. The tribe is located north of Greece and south of the former Yugoslavia. This culture originated about five hundred years ago from people fleeing the Ottoman empire and may be one of most remote places left in Europe.
ìI became fascinated by the people who live up there. These are people who live in a tribal existence, and it’s the one of the only places where people still do that,” said Galaty. ìThey have chiefs, they meet in tribal counsels, and so on and so forth. It was interesting to me as both an archaeologist and an anthropologist.”
Much of Galatyís work had to do with studying the progress of their settlements through excavated pottery. By noting what kind of pottery came from which period of time, Galatyís team formulated a map of where the tribe started and where they branched during different time periods. For example, one wall discovered was thought to be the remains of a hideout from the 1500s, but pottery and stone tools left there revealed it was more likely to be from around 800 B.C.E. Galaty explained that this implies people have been fleeing to this area for about 3,000 years.
The culture practices planned marriages and exogamy, which refers to marriage outside of the group. Typically, larger families are the more powerful ones, making this a culture that encourages as many children as possible, preferably male. Galaty noted this contrast to other tribal cultures in the past that found social structures easier to manage by restricting marriage or children in some way; the Shala tribe usually experiences population loss in other ways, such as feuding families and emigration.
These big patriarchal families have† broken up in recent years, said Galaty, from the integration of Communism into their culture from Emperor Enver Hoxha. By taking away their land, the power of having a big family became a diminished part of their culture, causing families to split. During the 50 years Hoxha reigned, they also could not practice Catholocism, which Galaty stated was Shala’s predominant religion.
ìThey’re pretty unique,” said Galaty. ìThere’s no culture like this anywhere left in Europe. This is the last place to study these cultures and why they existed.”† As a result of his work, Galaty recently published a piece called ìAfghanistan Is Not Vietnam,” which compares the† Albanian tribe to Afghanistan.
ìThis will hopefully show why studying Albania is important,”said Galaty. ìIf you’re trying to defeat the Taliban, but you don’t understand the rules under which the Taliban operates, how are you going to defeat them or integrate them into the modern world?”