Archaeolog

Things are in the limelight. Fresh in the wake of TAG US where the plenary session was focused on the Future of Things, two announcements came through the CHAT (Contemporary and Historical Archaeology in Theory) listserv this past week for thing-oriented conferences/sessions. CHAT 2009 and What's the 'Matter' in Anthropology, both set in Oxford, are taking up the call for things. This is a refreshing state of affairs.

The call to take things seriously has been an important agenda at the heart of what has been called a symmetrical archaeology (González-Ruibal 2007; Olsen 2007; Shanks 2007; Webmoor 2007; Witmore 2007).

Symmetry is an awkward term. It is part of an admittedly poor, but necessary, vocabulary meant to help us move from a very problematic rendering of reality to a hopefully more refreshing and interesting one. The "symmetrical" is simply meant to remind us not to assume the nature of relations between, for example, boundary cairns, arbitration inscriptions, and the governance of Greek poleis by imposing an asymmetric scheme based upon a discord between intentional social players and objective matter.

This is not to say asymmetries don’t exist. There are after all winners and losers throughout history. It is simply to say the asymmetries are not to be oriented along any preformed opposition between humans and nonhumans. This move requires hard work, much of which is yet to be accomplished. Here, it is important to note that significant work is already occurring in many areas across archaeology (see, for example, the contributions to Edgeworth 2006; Jorge and Thomas 2007; Knappett and Malafouris 2008).

As to be expected, many quibbles have been raised with the “symmetrical” agenda. I would like us to address two of these here: 1) the question of disciplinary commitment with respect to theory and; 2) reactions to the rhetorical subtext “the discipline of things”. These cavils were raised at TAG US and in one of the many interesting abstracts from the upcoming Centenary Conference of the Oxford University Anthropological Society, What's the 'Matter' in Anthropology; both criticisms rest upon some basic misunderstandings.

Continue reading "Symmetrical archaeology: Two clarifications" »

Posted by Christopher Witmore at 5:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

By Ian Russell

Photographs by Conor McCarthy

Caption: Banksy’s portable toilet monument with the Glastonbury ‘sacred circle’ behind

I would like to commend Prof. John F. Cherry for his recent contribution to Archaeolog titled ‘Has anyone seen Banksy?’. I am a firm supporter of the growing synergies between archaeology and contemporary art. As many archaeologists are collaborating on developing new paradigms for perception of archaeological research and conceptions of what archaeology is, I, however, am moved to make an urgent critique of Cherry’s article.

Although the article provides a well articulated timeline of some of Banksy’s work, notably after an expositional review of some archaeological theory and the intriguing work of Cassidy Curtis’ Graffiti Archaeology Project, I am concerned that in Cherry’s attempt to address the significance of Banksy’s art work for archaeology, he has not succeeded in critically engaging Bansky’s work, leaving us with some misconceptions.

Continue reading "I’ve seen Banksy. Have you?" »

Posted by Ian Russell at 6:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

On June 3 Cornelius Holtorf initiated an interesting discussion around the question “What comes after Post-processualism???” The discussion is extremely worthwhile and I wish add to a few comments in hopes of keeping it going.

Processualism and post-processualism: the powers of the paradigm, manifold as they are, add to the persistence of these terms. What are our beacons? How does one map the constantly fluctuating terrain of archaeology?

It is hard to ignore the deeply dug trenches which form the limes of the hypercritical period of 30 years ago, a period when these very terms were in the midst of acquiring definition. At that time the energies were fresh, the battles were raging, and the factions were given names. Historical though they may be, processualism and post-processualism have become terms of ease and convenience for our understanding of such a variegated terrain, a terrain largely oriented around a schism (with ‘historical’ insert ‘abandoned,’ as who exclusively ascribes to their core tenants (cf. Hegmon 2003)? Well let’s not be surprised if some, perhaps, still do!).

Continue reading "A comment on “What comes after Post-processualism???” " »

Posted by Christopher Witmore at 6:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)

I recently attended the Nordic-TAG conference in Århus in Denmark. It was a gathering of some 200 Scandinavian archaeologists and archaeology students interested in theory. After one paper I made a comment that I did not find very original at the time, but I received so many reactions even after returning home that I am now thinking it may be worth considering this question again on this blog.

My point was simple. The speaker had framed his talk by the dualism of ‘processualism’ and ‘post-processualism’, suggesting a way of finally overcoming this long-standing division. I commented that this division was current some 25 years ago, that nobody except a surprising number of Scandinavian graduate students and post-docs nowadays seriously thought in terms of these polar categories, and that maybe it was time to realise that it is futile now to suggest (or wait for) the next big theory to replace ‘post-processualism’ as the key point of reference, whether positive or negative, for the entire discipline.

Continue reading ""What comes after Post-processualism???"" »

Posted by Cornelius Holtorf at 9:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Over the last few weeks I have been causally reading through the various chapters in a recent book edited by Elizabeth DeMarrais, Chris Gosden and Colin Renfrew entitled Rethinking materiality: The engagement of mind with the material world (2004). The book, the material product of a symposium with the same title held in March 2003 at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at Cambridge, is a rich collection of 23 essays and one introduction which attends to what the editors describe as ‘current thinking about materiality in world archaeology’ (2004, 1). While there is a diversity of issues raised in the book, my concern here is with the nature of human and material relations specifically characterized in terms of a ‘dialectic,’ which was put forth and promoted by a number of the contributing authors.

Here is a list of select quotes:

• “I believe agency must be conceptualized in terms of a dialectic relationship with structure, or, in simpler terms, with reference to the ‘rules of the game’” (DeMarrais 12).

• “The affordances of the wheel-throwing technique need to be discovered each time, in real time and space within the totality of the interactive parameters. The cognitive dialectic is in a constant state of becoming through the process of ‘accommodation and resistance’” (Malafouris 59).

• “Once culture is externalized as material things which exist objectively in inter-subjective zones and which channel future actions, the result is a dialectic played out between kinds of agency” (Robb 137).

• “Studies of materiality cannot simply focus upon the characteristics of objects but must engage in the dialectic of people and things” (Meskell 249).

While each of these authors has a different agenda, all evoke the term ‘dialectic’ as a means of understanding the relationship between two poles of a bifurcation (DeMarrais and Robb), a duality (Meskell), or a separation within a set of relations (Malafouris) which they wish to ‘overcome.’ All of these archaeologists, along with others in the volume, are weary of what we might characterize as modernist dichotomies (subject / object, mind / body) in understanding how human beings relate to the material world (though they use the sufficiently all encompassing and ambiguous term of materiality; refer to my entry from February 24, 2006).

Continue reading "Deprivation through ‘dialectics’: Why some archaeologist’s are hamstrung by things and why things are hamstrung by some archaeologists" »

Posted by Christopher Witmore at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)