Archaeolog

Can we rely on materialities, objects or humans in archaeological analyses? What should our basic categories of analysis be? What do the humans and non-humans share that make them create a network? Symmetrical archaeology suggests that we should not give primacy to the human while we study archaeological remains. To this I agree (Normark 2004a, 2004b, 2004c, 2006a, 2006b). However, there is still the problem of defining entities; human or non-human alike. When we define entities, we take them out of their own becoming and we make them static. Humanocentric archaeologists believe that the events of the past are gone and that the materialities persist (see for example Olivier 2004). This is true to some extent, but is a broken vessel the same object as when it was a complete vessel? What is it that lasts? Clearly not the physical and chemical characteristics of materiality. The crucial but simple question for polyagentive archaeology is: what existed in relation to the past vessel before it broke into sherds, which also exist in the present sherds? In short; what can differentiate from within and still be a unity without adding an external transcendental quasi-object such as culture or practice or an essential form? We need to raise the level of abstraction and elaborate upon the idea of an ontology of virtuality (Bergson 1998, 2001, 2004; Deleuze 1991, 1994; Deleuze and Guattari 1988; Grosz 1999, 2004, 2005; Pearson 1999, 2002).

Ontology concerns the entities that is believed to exist and that populate reality. DeLanda classifies the ontologies into three main groups. Some believe that there is no reality beyond the human mind (“idealism”). Others believe that the objects we observe do exist beyond us but they are sceptical to the idea that theories are independent from social constructions. A third group believes that there is a world completely independent from the human mind. The two first perspectives deal with phenomena (the way things appear in our mind), and the latter also discuss nuomena (the things in themselves). This latter ontology is a realist ontology to which Deleuze belongs (DeLanda 2000a, 2000b). However, Deleuze does not believe in essences or transcendental entities like the “naïve realists” do (DeLanda 2000b:1).

Deleuze/DeLanda creates a flat ontology in which the ontological differences are reduced to an ontology concerning emergent property. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts which makes it impossible to reduce the whole to the parts. By this is meant that the human being cannot be reduced to biology, biology cannot be reduced to chemistry, chemistry cannot be reduced to physics and physics cannot be reduced to mathematics. Deleuze flattens all the distinctions above into a virtual plane of consistency/immanence in which there is no opposition. The plane of immanence is pure immanence. Therefore, it has no substantial division, it is immanent only to itself. Immanence is substance itself. This also means that the mind is not separated from the bodily substance. The plane of immanence is a formless self-organizing process that diverges from itself and, on top of this plane, a rhizomatic network is formed (Deleuze and Guattari 1988:266).

A concept used in research should not be an empty form that needs to be filled with some transcendent content, such as a predefined quasi-object like the “Classic period Maya culture” that is filled with Long Count calendars, ballcourts, pyramids, stelae, etc. The lack of these entities would become an anomaly in humanocentric archaeology. The concepts should rather be affected by other concepts, bodies, etc. There is no need for transcendent concepts that explains what is beyond the immediate. This is because immanence is not just within, but also upon and of. A building is not just within a larger polyagentive network, it is formed from the network. A building functions and operates upon and through the network (DeLanda 2000b).

A World Heritage site always attracts a lot of attention. Such archaeological sites are viewed to materially represent irreplaceable ‘heritage’ on a global scale and are defined and protected through the United Nations’ UNESCO declarations (eg. UNESCO 1988). Teotihuacan, Mexico is no exception. Replete with two monumental pyramids (the Pyramid of the Sun being the 3rd largest Pyramidal structure in the world) set amidst the ruins of a once densely populated, urbanized city (the first of its kind in Mesoamerica), “Teotihuacan”, or the “city of the gods” as the Aztec later identified it in Nahuatl, has attracted, both historically and contemporaneously, a broad range of interests. As most of us may personally attest to in visiting these world monuments, such interests run the gamut from the archaeological
to new age spiritualism.

Working at Teotihuacan, I often heard the phrase ‘yahoos’ being used to refer to the unsanctioned, occult practitioners who regularly gather at the site for their rituals.

Enter , the billion dollar, international internet company based in the Silicon Valley of California. To celebrate the media giant’s 15th anniversary, Yahoo! announced that it would create a ‘time capsule’ to gather together a snap shot of contemporary human life. Beginning this past October 10th, the search firm began collecting text, audio-visual and video contributions from any and all interested parties worldwide – estimated in analog terms to represent about 5 million books worth of data (OCRegister 2006). These would be uploaded via the internet.

This media-bundling was then digitized and beamed into space via laser a few months ago on October 25th. Following in the original steps of the affable ‘yahoo’ Carl Sagan, this digital ‘time capsule’ was made in hopes of communicating to digitally attuned extraterrestrials the diversity of life and culture on Earth. As a spokesperson for Yahoo! stated: the purpose was to join the "past and present with the universe's potential future by sharing today's culture on Earth with other life that may exist light years away" (Subzeroblue 2006).

A ‘hard copy’ of the time capsule will be buried on the Sunnyvale grounds of the corporate offices. But, in keeping with the ethos of ‘digital democracy’ inherent in the conception and content of the Time Capsule Project, the company wanted to laser the digitized information in real-time at a prominent locale. You guessed it. This Yahoo! chose the top of the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan.

Estimates of the blogosphere are that it now expands exponentially, with a new blog born every half second. This watershed media move to digital capture, storage, retrieval and distribution makes information increasingly easy to share and re-mix, but correspondingly difficult to keep track of. The boon and bane of digital fungibility. But if once the domain of fringe political pundits (Dean's supporters/detractors in the 2004 US presidential campaign spring to mind) and silicon techies, blogs are increasingly being recognized as a legitimate medium of sharing academic information. This is particularly true as academics, always striving for the collegial ideal of collaboration, have realized the form-fit tool in social software.

A new endeavour has recently been launched by students and staff of the Material and Visual Culture Studies group of University College London.

MaterialWorldblog is a most welcome addition to the academic venues of e-publication. Ranging broadly from conference proceedings to student papers to theses on photography and mapping techniques in anthropology, the blog centripetally draws these interests around the core question of the role of materiality in society.

A recent interesting piece by Patrick Laviolette discusses map usage and identity construction in his piece "Anthropography: identity and the material mapping of movement". More on this piece may be read below: