Archaeolog

The first installment of A Symmetrical Archaeology was organized as a full session at the TAG gathering in Sheffield, UK (December 19-21). Organized by Bjornar Olsen, Michael Shanks, Timothy Webmoor and Christopher Witmore - spearheaded by Chris - the session brought together an international and trans-disciplinary group of thinkers to present a Manifesto for Symmetry in archaeology and the human sciences.

The abstract for the session ran as follows:

Archaeology has long struggled with or even straddled divides as those between the material and the social, the present and the past, and the sciences and humanities. Caught in what can be broadly construed as a cyclical fluctuation between concerns with realism and constructivism, epistemology and ontology, objectivity and subjectivity our history of disciplinary “turns” associated with the negotiation of such divides is familiar to many. In this session we suggest a series of paths that do not lead to the continuation of such cycles of "dialectical war,” which faithfully and persistently repeat the gesture of the Kantian (Copernican) revolution.

In accentuating links and crossovers with science studies, pragmatism, semiotics and empirical philosophy, this session reconfigures our understandings of human relationships with the material world in ways that are not necessarily subject to modernist thought. This session gathers together practitioners who wish to demonstrate how archaeology can set alternative agendas in the humanities and sciences by articulating a new “ecology” packed with things, mixed with humans, and which prioritizes the multitemporal and multisensorial presence of the material world.

Joining the organizers were archaeologists:
•Ashish Chadha (in absentia)
•Dan Hicks
•Maartje Hoogsteyns
And philosopher of technology
•Don Ihde

Unlike most sessions at TAG espousing collaboration and drawing upon thinkers outside of the confines of the discipline, Symmetrical Archaeology pulled together in a tight program interests ranging from historical archaeology to classical landscape to cultural politics, and involved in the session some of the very thinkers whose work has pushed informing fields of Hermeneutics and Science Studies away from asymmetry.

See - Symmetrical Archaeology TAG Session - for comments and a Podcast of the entire session coming soon.

A Symmetrical Archaeology will be at the upcoming Society for American Archaeology (SAA) (April 26-30).

Fig 1a Calc-Schist from Fenetre-de-Ferret, 2700 m elevation (left), Petrographic Photo (400 x) Both Temple and Quarry Stone, Calcite (gray-green) and Mica (yellow-green) grains; Fig. 1b Quartzite from Gran San Bernardo Valley, 2300 m elevation (right) Petrographic Photo (400 x) fused quartz grains [both in cross-polarized light]

Field provenance of stone sources - matching archaeological and geological materials - can be successfully researched, especially when aided by a portable field petrography lab, excellent geological maps and a trained reconnaissance team using reliable field tests even in challenging topography and high altitude terrain. These requisites have been refined over several decades by this author in global montane contexts of stone provenance research, including the European Alps, Pentelic and other mountains in Greece and the Aegean Islands, Apennine Mountains of Italy, the Near East, Andes Mountains of Peru, and Tuxtlas and Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico, among others.

Some thoughts and feedback on the Symmetrical Archaeology Session at TAG

This was a great session. The room was packed, with all seats taken and people sitting on the stairs – testifying to the topicality and importance of the topics discussed. The papers were stimulating and thought provoking, and it was only a pity that the time for questions and comments from the audience was so short (though the existence of this website, encouraging feedback, makes up for that). I agree with the general arguments for a more symmetrical archaeology, and accordingly haven’t commented on them here. However, three specific issues raised by various speakers seemed to me to be of particular interest, and I comment on these in some detail below.

Fig. 1 Soil Range of typical pH values with local Alpine juniper and mountain azalea
preferences in local geosols (plant habitat can be a good indicator of soil pH)

Fig. 2 Juniperus communis alpina Fig. 3 Rhododendron ferrugineum ssp.

Fig. 4 Patrick Hunt at Grand-St-Bernard Pass in alpine Roman road
excavation during 1997, initial phase (8000 ft elevation, 2400 meters.
Note soil color contrasts from topsoil with dark vegetative root staining
to more ochrous colored soil at 5 cm depth. )

Introduction

For the last ten years our Stanford Alpine Archaeology Project has been conducting soil chemistry research as another method of characterizing archaeology microcontexts horizontally and microstratigraphy vertically. As director of the project, my premise is that most of the existing methodologies for distinguishing microfeatures in archaeology are visually dependent on physical characteristics. Some of these distinguishing factors include soil color (Munsell Charts), soil granularity (Wentworth-Udden grain size indices), and other somewhat quantifiable parameters such as soil texture as a function of particle symmetry or asymmetry along with homogeneity of grain size or lack thereof, soil compression as a function of density in cubic centimeters and soil moisture as measurable water content. Pedology or soil science as a separate discipline is well-researched with many directions in agriculture, forestry management and similar fields of study, and pH analyses is one of many such pedological evaluative instruments. This brief report explores this field application of pH field testing in experimental archaeology, especially in the Alps.