Archaeolog

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!).

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Posted by Christopher Witmore at 6:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

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.

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

The disjuncture between ‘what we do’ and ‘what we say we do’ has contributed not only to a great deal of conversation and debate it has also lead to a fair amount of angst and misunderstanding in archaeology (i.e. theory/practice split or the homebase/field bifurcation). Many (myself included) firmly believe that this disjuncture can only be addressed by following up close what ‘we’ (understood to encompass people, institutions, media, materials, things, etc. which comprise an archaeologist) actually do in practice.

Anthropologists and sociologists have long enrolled ethnography and ethnomethodology as set of practices for engaging with what scientific practitioners do (this has been especially successful when they have been bold enough to free themselves from the weight of epistemology!). Hitherto, archaeology, sadly, has been in large part ignored by these practitioners (refer to my entry from October 23, 2005 and Tim Webmoor’s from November 6, 2006), though there are notable exceptions in the related field of the philosophy of science with the important work of Alison Wylie. Thankfully, the tides are changing and this is in large part due to a few archaeologists who have taken the initiative themselves.

A recent book edited by Matt Edgeworth, Ethnographies of Archaeological Practice: Cultural Encounters, Material Transformations is an example of this initiative and will help us along the path to knowing who we are! The volume pulls together a diverse and welcome body of ethnographic work with archaeology (beyond the well-known reflexive strategies operating at Çatalhöyük, Turkey) from projects throughout Europe and the Americas

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Posted by Christopher Witmore at 7:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A panel of eminent scholars came together to discuss Alfred Whitehead's relevance to current issues in science studies, technoscience and pragmatism. Beginning with Isabelle Stengers' recent work on "Penser avec Whitehead", the panel discussed the role of Whithead's 'propositions' for facilitating non-reductive modes of understanding 'common matters of concern' in the sciences. Stengers and Haraway generally agreed that a 'pragmatic and situated philosophy' was necessary in order to avoid abstractions and highlight corporeal/felt understanding irreducible to and incommunicable via language. While this seems to steer the sciences toward fragmentation along 'individual' lines, the two scholars emphasized that 'common concerns' or 'obligations' within an ecology of practice function to join specialists without being subsumed under denaturing, 'unwise' concepts. Rorty agreed that fragmentation of specialties was ocurring but was more optimistic about the result of democratic and adjudicating inquiry. Further, he contested that while Whitehead attempted to 'disclose what was formerly undisclosed' via propositions and attention to complex relationships, he fell short in his project to show the 'failure of language'. For Rorty, this was more ably acheived by Wittgenstein and his demonstration of the use/practical value of language in tandem with its inability to fully disclose (with reliance upon abstraction) any 'essential reality' in science or life generally. Nevertheless, Haraway used examples of dog-human non-verbal communication to argue that, contrary to Rorty's insistence upon utility being found primarily in language, there are a host of non-discursive relationships which have utility and highlight coordination in Stengers' 'matters of concern'. In what Stengers called an emerging awareness of an 'ecology of practice', these non-verbal connections are what need to be attended to in science and technology. Such a move away from linguistic practices (contra Rorty) is to de-center humanism in order to take seriously relationships between humans and nonhumans. With this insight, the discussion hooked-up with recent work in symmetrical archaeology and its move to de-center the archaeologist-as-interpreting-a-past-as-text. As well, with collective utility being forwarded as the panel's measure of success in investigation, the notion of working-with the past, rather than disclosing the past, highlights media as a vital, non-verbal manner of effecting active engagement with the past in the present.

Posted by Timothy Webmoor at 8:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)