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Posted by John M. Chenoweth
John M. Chenoweth (UC Berkeley)
From October 16 to 18, participants met at Keble College, Oxford, for the 2009 CHAT conference. Over 30 papers engaged with the theme “Modern Materials: the archaeology of things from the early modern, modern, and contemporary world.” Both participants and subjects of discussion were wide ranging. While many came from all over the UK and Ireland, others contributed points of view from the US, Continental Europe, Africa, and even Taiwan. These papers engaged with “modern materials” from treadmills and theatres to workshops and the bricks they may have been built from, and even extended analysis to the “modern materials” produced in archaeological recording, such as photographs.
Of particular interest were several papers which came from outside the disciple of archaeology or anthropology altogether, such as Pearson’s consideration of the role of the theatre building itself in a performance event, and Fisher’s of the “flow” of modern packaging through homes from a design standpoint. Coupled with Harrison’s inside-the-discipline discussion of amusement parks and the social shifts towards an “experience economy” these papers suggest how direct consideration of material culture produces insights even into the contemporary. This point is reinforced by Ouzman’s consideration of graffiti through an archaeological lens, considering its role in “politically-engaged place-ma(r)king.”
Continue reading "Contemporary and Historical Archaeology in Theory Conference 2009" »
Posted by Robert Collins
Robert Collins, University of Newcastle
An Archaeology of Identity: Soldiers & Society in Late Roman Britain by Andrew Gardner (2007) is a work that strives to push forward the current understanding of the Roman Empire, accepting the challenge of incorporating social theory into Roman army studies (James 2002) and contextualizing the milites (soldiers) as social agents, continuing the trend over the past decade of perceiving the Roman army as a social group and not faceless cogs of an imperial military machine (eg Goldsworthy and Haynes 1998; James 2001).
The origins of the book are in AG’s (2001) PhD thesis in Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College of London, but incorporates further developments post-dating the submission of the PhD. The book is separated into six chapters. Chapter 1 (Introduction: the Roman Empire in the 21st century) sets the agenda for the volume, indicating that the soldiers of late Roman Britain serve as a case study for an exploration of much broader issues in archaeology, namely the exploration of the concept of identity and advancing its study in a more theoretically informed fashion. Chapter 2 (The practice of identity) explores the theory behind identity and argues that Gidden’s (1979; 1984; 1993) theory of structuration transcends the duality of (individual) agency and the larger structure(s of society). From this theory, AG distills three themes by which to assess changing identity in late Roman Britain: materiality, temporality, and sociality. The following three chapters explore each of these themes in turn (Chapter 3: The material dimensions of 4th century life: objects and spaces; Chapter 4: The temporal dimensions of 4th century life: traditions and change; and Chapter 5: The social dimensions of 4th century life: interactions and identities). The final chapter, Chapter 6 (Conclusion: Roman Britain in the 4th century) brings the thematic case studies of the previous chapters together to provide an interpretive overview of change through 4th century Britain, drawing on the detailed assessments of military sites and assemblages discussed throughout the work.
Continue reading "Gardner, A. 2007. An Archaeology of Identity: Soldiers & Society in Late Roman Britain, Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press. " »
Posted by Bradley Sekedat
By Bradley M. Sekedat, Brown University
This edited volume is about a lot of things; so many things, in fact, that creating a summary of its component parts proves somewhat difficult for a brief review. Based on the introductory chapter, however, this difficulty seems intentional or, at the very least, acknowledged by the editors, who develop the structure of the book around the recognition that the methodologies employed in ‘landscape archaeology’ are both diverse and situated. The result is a book with case studies from all over the world: Northern Ireland, the East African coast, Manhattan, Botswana, Central Europe, Atlantic Africa, Greece, Annapolis and the Caribbean. These case studies emphasize culturally specific perspectives and cover a range of important issues from power, perspective, imagined landscapes and time to political economy, vision, creation, interpretation, heritage, utility and more. This book succeeds in pulling together a diverse array of archaeological work pertaining to landscape in a single, manageable volume. The global scope of the book sets it apart from the majority of studies in landscape archaeology, which tend to be region specific. While notable exceptions include Bender (1993) and Ashmore and Knapp (1999), more typical of recent scholarship is a region-specific emphasis, such as the five POPULUS volumes on landscape archaeology in the Mediterranean, the publication of the Side-By-Side conference on the comparability of Mediterranean survey projects (Alcock and Cherry 2004), the Broadening Horizons (Ooghe and Verhoeven 2007) volume on multidisciplinary landscape practices in the Mediterranean and the Near East, or the Damaged Landscapes symposium at the 2008 meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America. Hicks et al., then, usefully force the reader to engage with the comparability of landscape studies on a global scale appropriate for a World Archaeology Congress (WAC) volume. On the other hand, the book suffers from a lack of specificity, struggling at times to justify its breadth. It almost completely misses an opportunity to push the discussion of ‘landscape’ and ‘landscape archaeology’ into new territory.
Continue reading "Hicks, D., McAtackney, L. and Fairclough, G. 2007. Envisioning Landscape: Situations and Standpoints in Archaeology and Heritage. Walnut Creek: Left Coast " »
Posted by Elissa Z. Faro
by Elissa Z. Faro (Dartmouth College)
January 20, 2009. On this historic day, when Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States of America, the issues that Hamilakis considers in this book – the relationship between the modern nation-state and its historical and material past – resonate anew.
Hamilakis’ book aims to address a number of themes that, although discussed in terms of Greece and Greek antiquities, are current issues that concern the larger archaeological and anthropological world. He aims to explore, problematize, and re-examine the concept of archaeology as the practice of producing meanings out of material traces of the past; the concept of national imagination and its relationship with the concept of modernity. For me, as an archaeologist who primarily works in Greece, this book struck a special chord for my own research and fieldwork. At the same time, it triggered many thoughts, responses, and reflections about my own and other’s work in different periods, different regions, and in different developing nations of the world. Below, I will discuss how Hamilakis approaches the complex network of relationships between archaeologists, citizens, politicians, and the larger global world.
Hamilakis’ over-arching framework is based on his view of nationalism, which he sees as a cultural system, an ideology, an ontology, and even the social dreams of a people. In the introductory chapter, he states explicitly that “the book explores the key position of the ancient Greek (mostly Classical) heritage and its material manifestations in the lives, imagination, experiences, anxieties, and hopes of people in Greece” (7). Employing a primarily anthropological methodology – a “multi-sited historical and archaeological ethnography” (cf. Marcus 1995, 1998) – this book tackles issues such as stakeholdership in the past, colonialism, consumerism, and national identity.
Continue reading "A Response to The Nation and its Ruins: Antiquity, Archaeology, and National Imagination in Greece (2007) by Yannis Hamilakis. Oxford: Oxford University Press." »
Posted by Matt Edgeworth
A review of 'The Earth after us: what legacy will humans leave in the rocks?' by Jan Zalasiewicz. Oxford, Oxford University Press. 2008.
The view of the Earth from the Moon on the front of the book seems both familiar and strange at the same time. The blue jewel of a planet is recognisably ‘home’, only a few decades since space travel first made such a perspective possible. But look again and an important difference is noticed. The continents are the wrong shape, and in the wrong configuration. Is this a view of our planet in the distant past? No, this is the Earth as it is imagined to be 100 million years into the future.
Geologist Jan Zalasiewicz invites the reader to take a step in the scientific imagination far greater than that involved in looking at the Earth from the Moon. For the challenge taken up by the book is to look back at human civilization from a vantage point in time long after the human species itself has disappeared, through observations made by alien beings visiting the planet for the first time. Seeking to understand the geological strata encountered, the alien scientists soon realise that something significant happened 100 million years ago, comparable to the meteorite strike that wiped out the dinosaurs even further back in the Earth’s past. Even before they discover it, they deduce the existence of an event horizon, separating two major geological epochs – an event that triggered massive climate change and extinctions of species evident in strata from later periods. Following a trail of clues, they discover the Human Event Stratum.
The Human Event Stratum may vary from a thin sliver to several metres in thickness, sandwiched between layers of sandstone and shale. Parts of it will have been destroyed by erosion or other geological processes. It is mostly buried, hundreds of metres under the ground, but in places it has been pushed up or exposed by geological forces to outbreak on the surface. Ever wondered what will survive, millions of years hence, of our railway networks, skyscrapers, motorways and rubbish dumps? What about trains and cars, or smaller artefacts like mobile phones and ballpoint pens? Such are the questions which the book poses. In this review I consider briefly some of the implications this book has for contemporary archaeology.
Continue reading "The Earth After Us" »
Posted by Alfredo Gonzalez Ruibal
A review of Laurent Olivier: Le sombre abîme du temps. Mémoire et archéologie.
Seuil, Paris, 2008.
French theory has had an enormous impact across the social and human sciences during the last forty years. We may hardly understand global trends in archaeology, history or anthropology without structuralism, post-structuralism or the Annales school. One may, thus, wonder why French archaeology has remained mainly untouched by the theoretical paradigms developed in the same country. The truth is that although archaeology in France has not been characterized in general for its theoretical contributions, there is a small but important group of archaeologists whose commitment to theory is out of the question. This group includes, among others, André Leroi-Gourhan, Alain Schnapp, Anick Coudart and Jean-Pierre Demoule. Although not an archaeologist, we should include here Pierre Lemonnier, whose work on the anthropology of technology has been highly influential in archaeology. Laurent Olivier is a member of this select community and the book that is reviewed here will grant him a privileged position not only within the national community of archaeological theorists, but certainly within the world of archaeological thinkers in general.
Olivier’s book is ambitious: he basically proposes to no less than rethink archaeology – a task, until now, mostly reserved to Anglo-Saxon scholars – through a reflection on time. His critical analysis, however, goes well beyond the discipline and cuts to the heart of history. Actually, the main enemy of Olivier is historicism. With its sequential, homogeneous and unilinear rendering of time, historicism has prevailed in the historical sciences. Historicism is what truly kills archaeology and makes it “despairingly superficial” (p. 53): if archaeology wants to be a relevant science, it has to stop resorting to the flawed temporalities of traditional historiography. His critical undertaking leads him to revisit inherited concepts of archaeological practice (including typology and excavation), heritage, and the history of archaeology. In his journey, he finds unexpected allies in people as desperate as Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, Aby Warburg and Georges Perec.
Continue reading "The Dark Abyss of Time." »
Posted by Parker VanValkenburgh
Reviewed by Parker VanValkenburgh, Harvard University
In 1991, social anthropologist Orin Starn accused Andeanist anthropologists of “missing the revolution” – essentially, of failing to consider that a movement like the Sendero Luminoso Maoist insurgency (The Shining Path) could emerge in a rural, primarily indigenous area of Peru. Starn was particularly critical of the work of Billie Jean Isbell, whose book To Defend Ourselves (1978) chronicled life in the same village (Chuschi, Ayacucho department) where Sendero announced itself to the world by burning ballot boxes during an election in 1980. By focusing on “traditional” culture rather than contemporary socio-economic conditions, anthropologists in general, and Isbell in particular, had “portray[ed] contemporary highland peasants as outside the flow of modern history” (1991: 64). Starn saw this tendency to romanticize and essentialize the Otherness of Andean peoples as a regional manifestation of Orientalism (Said 1978), and so he called it “Andeanism.” Today, most Andeanists know it as the problem of lo Andino (THE Andean).
Continue reading "Review: "Heads of State: Icons, Power and Politics in the Ancient and Modern Andes", by Denise Y. Arnold and Christine A. Hastorf. Left Coast Press, 2008." »
Posted by Timothy Webmoor
by Barbara Bender, Sue Hamilton and Christopher Tilley, 2007 Left Coast Press, 437 pages + notes, bibliography
This is an innovative and creative book. These are its best qualities. The book is also ambitious, the authors setting themselves the task of both complying with the “archaeological morality” (269) of publishing the results of field investigations, and conveying the experience of working at Leskernick on Bodmin Moor, Cornwall. To do this, the authors have experimented with form and content. And while their citational circle does not extend to media studies (where, I would suggest, they would find inspiration and edification), the book exemplifies Marshall McLuhan’s famous adage: the medium is the message. Reviewing experimental work, criticism rather than accolade comes easier, partly because the novelty excludes easy comparative evaluation. So I think it important to underscore that being innovative and taking risks, even though you may be safely tenured scholars, should be commended. It creates discussion, fosters debate, stirs emotion, and motivates colleagues to work harder. It disrupts our insulated routines of scholarly production. It is, unfortunately, all too rare.
The collaborative effort of the Leskernick project, steered by Barbara Bender, Sue Hamilton and Christopher Tilley, bends the parameters of analogue publication to transcend traditional site reports. The reader will not find neat topical divisions, no ‘introduction’, ‘background’ (limited to environmental characteristics and a few weather stats), ‘results’, ‘discussion’ or ‘significance’, followed by add on (and on and on) appendices. And with few exceptions, it does not resemble any other field project’s publication in archaeology - a most welcome intervention in academic publication.
There is a structure, however, with the book divided into four parts. Part One somewhat approximates a conventional ‘introducing the site’. Goals for the project are laid out, the setting and unique “awe and mystery” of the rocky hill where Leskernick is situated are conveyed, and the authors quickly dispel any notion that this will be a conventional report focused upon an archaeological site. By the time they conclude Chapter 1 stating that “we stand with the Leskernick people at the centre of their world” (35), the reader can expect to share an intimacy that will bring her to the edge of being an ‘insider’ of the project (cf. 266). We then receive an orienting tour of the site, followed by Chapter 3’s methodology. Part Two encompasses the ‘real’ archaeological information. If one were after conventional details, Chapters 4-7 are where we glean the details about Bronze Age Leskernick gathered through the excavation of 400 square meters of area, and the survey of every house and field enclosure on Leskernick Hill. A rough chronology, pegged to the radiocarbon dates in Table 4.1 (88-89), develops. Initially there were the earliest stone rows and circles, with the most spectacular "Propped Stone” and its summer solstice alignment dating to as early as the Neolithic. Then, in the hill’s clitter of stones, a growing population of 100-200 people, or eight to sixteen families, built their houses and field enclosures during the Middle Bronze Age and supported a pastoral economy (138). There is disagreement about whether these people inhabited Leskernick year round or only seasonally, though the directors favor the former scenario. Then there is a decrease in the number of families, leaving the hill with perhaps only 60 inhabitants. Then a gradual abandonment of the dwellings and the hill until much later medieval visitation and re-use. It is the narrative of part of the life-cycle of a landscape.
The book could have ended here with the conclusion of Chapter 7. But this book is not really about archaeology . . .
Continue reading "Review of Stone Worlds: narrative and reflexivity in landscape archaeology" »
Posted by James Dixon
Jim Dixon
UWE, Faculty of Creative Arts
I had a bad time in the first half of WAC in Dublin. A combination of bad organisation, questionable quality control in the presentation department and my own unrealistic expectations had led to a quasi-depression. Lacking the funds to abscond to Bruges, I had, by the Wednesday evening of a week long conference, been holed up at home exclaiming disbelief and weeping over the huge hole where my bank account used to be for nearly 36 hours.
This, I thought, had to change. I decided to approach the second half of the week differently. To not expect much of any consequence to occur in the sessions but instead to enjoy the experience, meet new people and try to get into some good discussions. In short, I cheered up. And, luckily it worked. The second half of WAC was great.
Beaghmore Complex (K. Williams)
Continue reading "WAC 6, Dublin, 2008. Part II." »
Posted by Elissa Z. Faro
Elissa Z. Faro (Dartmouth College)
I was lucky enough to read this book for the first time sitting on the beach outside Rethymnon on Crete. At first, I felt as though I were cheating – “working” while enjoying myself at the seaside on a beautiful Greek summer day. On the contrary, only a few pages into the book, I realized that my venue – my workspace – could not have been more appropriate, given the proposed main argument of Duke’s recent book. This is “that public archaeology on Crete, manifested in sites and museums and the vast array of tourist information media, produces a virtually monolithic message about a particular past and thereby a particular present; namely, that social inequality is the essential metanarrative of the Minoan past and thus abets the legitimization and naturalization of this same social inequality as the primary organizational structure of the modern West” (14). Of course, reading that, it’s difficult to see how sitting on a beach relates to the primary organizational structure of the modern West, but Duke’s ambitious enterprise (especially for such a slim volume) is to explore the nexus of relations between the past, the present, tourism, class, and archaeology. All of these were embodied for me at the moment, myself a tourist at the beach in between visits to archaeological fieldwork projects.
The first half of the apt title of the book, explained in the Introduction, is drawn from the phrase of Nikos Kazantsakis “Cretan Glance”, which he used to describe “the Cretans’ ability to deal with the present and look to the future – to death even – with acceptance, fortitude, a near insouciance” (19). The second half is from the title of John Urry’s 1990 book Tourists Gaze, in which Urry explores the way in which tourists gaze – often open-mouthed – at the culture of the Other to which they are briefly exposed. “Gaze” in particular, a word that has had an important role in postmodern art history, feminism, social theory, and critical theory, implies the idea that there are asymmetric power (class?) relations between the gazer and the gazed-at subject. As such, the gazer is superior to the object of the gaze, thus tourists in Crete are superior to the pasts created by modern Cretans’ ancestors. This sets the stage for the discussion that follows.
Continue reading "A response to Philip Duke’s The Tourists Gaze, the Cretans Glance: Archaeology and Tourism on a Greek Island (2007)." »
Posted by Christopher Witmore
When presented with the question of “why I became an archaeologist” I tend to cycle between 3 different responses; responses all rooted in childhood experiences. Indeed, which of these I dispense varies with whom I am speaking. My answers are:
1) I enjoyed both digging up and collecting bits and pieces of glass and metal on the family farm as a kid.
2) From age 10, when my mother purchased the subscription, I regularly read about archaeology in National Geographic (this routine was tempered by my love of fantasy world literatures).
3) Indiana Jones was one of my childhood heroes.
Now it should go without saying that none of these responses, when taken on their own, even comes near to accounting for why I was drawn down the long path (the length of which, of course, varies) to becoming an archaeologist. Far beyond what may have been my other, and diverse, childhood influences — films from Spartacus and Clash of the Titans to Excalibur and Conan, a passing obsession with Dungeons and Dragons, authors of fiction like J.R.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis (Michael Shanks once told me that almost half of the undergraduates at the University of Wales Lampeter were drawn to archaeology because of the allure of the fantastical realms created by Tolkien and Lewis), and, of course, the associated backyard battles with my brothers clad in armor fashioned from scraps of plywood, tin roofing and duck tape — one has to account for the wider web of other influences, no matter how standout or subtle, that impacted their formation along the circuitous course to an advanced academic degree in archaeology and beyond. The distance between now and then is tremendous. Still, childhood fascinations count for a great deal — the past was a place of wonderment and imagination.
In retrospect, and given my rural roots in the North American Southeast, the portrayal of the past (whether fact or fiction) and archaeology on television, in magazines and novels had a profound impact. And yet, surprisingly few have chosen to take these fields of cultural production seriously (Finn 2004; Holtorf 2004 and 2007; Lucas 2004; Pearson and Shanks 2001; Shanks 1992; also refer to Michael Shanks on the archaeological imagination).
In his latest book, Archaeology is a Brand!, Cornelius Holtorf asks his readers to hold the almost obligatory negative responses so often tempered with ridicule and scorn by academic archaeologists and to consider the topic of “archaeology in popular culture” with an ‘open mind’ (also see Holtorf 2008). In this, he is neither concerned with past-as-play videogames like Praetorians, the fascination with the fantasy worlds of Avalon and Middle Earth, movies such as Alexander (Cherry 2009(in press)), nor the jousting competition at King Richard’s 16th-century faire. Quite specifically, the book addresses the “meaning” of archaeology as generated in television, movies, literature (both fictional and nonfictional), newspapers, or even National Geographic; all mass media which Holtorf takes to be “popular culture” (though he prefers the term Alltagskultur or “everyday culture” as enrolled by German folklorists (2004, 7-12)). The argument, echoing the sentiments of Gavin Lucas, is that the major allure of archaeology lies more in popular culture than in “any noble vision of improving self –awareness through “historical perspectives”” (Holtorf 2004, 3 after Lucas 2004, 119). Moreover, this fascination, for Holtorf is “rooted in a few key stereotypes and clichés” (2004, 130): 1) the archaeologist as adventurer (also refer to Holtorf's recent Archaeolog entry: Hero! Real archaeology and ”Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”); 2) the archaeologist as detective; 3) the archaeologist as infallible producer of “profound revelations;” and 4) the archaeologist as heritage steward.
Continue reading "‘Popular culture’ and the archaeological imagination: A commentary on Cornelius Holtorf’s Archaeology is a Brand! (2007)" »
Posted by Bradley Sekedat
Bradley M. Sekedat
Brown University
A growing number of recent studies seek new ways to engage with landscapes (see references). The Carrlands Project (www.carrlands.org.uk) fits aptly into this category as it explores the complexity of the Carrs in southeastern England through the combination of music, dialogue, and composed sound recordings. The format of this presentation is a website that hosts a series of 12 recordings divided among three specific portions of the Carrlands: Snitterby Carrs, Hibaldstow Carrs and Horkstow Carrs. Each recording is approximately 15 minutes long, treating the ‘historical,’ ‘cultural’ and ‘physical’ variations that make up this diverse region. The creators (Mike P. Pearson, John Hardy and Hugh Fowler) encourage users either to bring the recordings with them to the Carrs to enhance the interactivity of their engagement, or to listen to the audio clips at a distance, embracing the message of complexity inherent within them. This reviewer listened from his office in Providence, Rhode Island. I paid particular attention to the dominant themes that arise out of the scripted narrations and musical compositions that accompany the journey through the flat, marshy, industrial and agricultural terrain.
Continue reading "Landscape Complexity and New Media: a review of the Carrlands Project Website (Mike Pearson)." »
Posted by Brent Fortenberry
Brent Fortenberry, Boston University
Travis Parno, Boston University
This year’s meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology in Albuquerque, New Mexico examined the interface between the archaeological community and the various publics with whom we interact. Papers explored the logistics, methodologies, and theories behind public archaeologies, a subject which has recently gained much attention.
While a majority of the authors broached these issues, some particularly evoked discussion and meditation regarding creative approaches understanding the nature of public archaeology.
E. Thomson Shields, Charles Ewen, and Donna Kain tackled the challenges resulting from perceptions of archaeology that are generated by popular media outlets such as television and film. While shows such as ‘Digging for the Truth’ bring some form of archaeology into the public sphere, the over-sensationalized nature of these programs misconstrues archaeological ethics and methodologies. Using a video podcast of excavations at the Saint Thomas Church in North Carolina as a case study, Shields, Ewen, and Kain argued that professional archaeology needs to take steps to integrate its data into new multimedia paradigms, thus resulting in a wider engagement with archaeologically-generated knowledge.
Echoing these concerns over accessibility and archaeological data, Mark Freeman and Barbara Heath presented the Poplar Forest: Retreat Home of Thomas Jefferson website as an illustration of the unique ways that archaeological datasets and narratives can be experienced in cyberspace. Its non-linear format allows the user to navigate the intersections between “Place,” “Period,” and “Perspective.” Within this negotiation, the user has control over the order and types of information that they can explore, and in many ways this methodology allows the visitor to be actively involved in the processes of discovery and mediation.
Flordeliz Bugarin and Margaret Wood’s presentation of their work at the Nicodemus National Historic Site highlighted some of the logistical challenges associated with public outreach efforts. During the excavation of this former black community, project coordinators were faced with issues of public apathy, even among the descendent community. To combat these concerns, they moved beyond the tradition archaeologist/public divide and initiated a plan to train interested individuals in the methods of archaeology, thus actively involving the community in the creation and interpretation of their history. The Kansas Archaeology Training Program (KATP) will promote a departure from connoisseurship and give birth to future networks of experienced local archaeologists.
Continue reading "Reflections on the 2008 SHA Conference" »
Posted by Krysta Ryzewski
We welcome submissions for the WAC session “Experience, modes of engagement, archaeology”. This session is co-organized by Matt Ratto (Sweden/Canada), Krysta Ryzewski (US), and Michelle Charest (US/Ireland), and will be part of the Theme: Archaeological Theory? Legacies, Burdens, Futures, organized by Andrew Cochrane, Ian Russell, Timothy Webmoor, and Christopher Witmore. We invite presentations that critically examine archaeological experience and modes of engagement; we aim to include a broad range of perspectives and approaches.
Session Abstract:
Are multimedia, information technologies, digital visualizations and web 2.0 forums indispensable (or quickly becoming so) to the 21st century archaeologist's toolkit? Are they as instrumental as "older" analog or paper-based technologies, such as 35mm film, 16mm tape, and printed maps? This session embraces emergent, analog and paper-based media and moves beyond the observation that they can be important tools of practice by demonstrating how they affect practice and theory. Participants will employ multimedia approaches to ask, how are archaeology and heritage experienced by archaeologists and/or non-archaeologists? And, how do these archaeologies of experience impact our practices, interpretations, and theoretical agendas?
Clockwise from bottom left: WWII graffiti by RAF and USAF in Eagle Pub, Cambridge (UK); Megan Goetsch participates in a peripatetic video (click here); Excavating the African Meeting House, Boston; Historical Postcard from Mexico; the Archive.
The session places emphasis on experience documented through media. This emphasis raises questions about: archaeology and digital representation, the creation and destruction of archaeological information, authenticity in reconstructions/interpretations, how archaeologists create their own identities, how archaeology affects non-archaeologists, the non-linearity of archaeological practice, the documenting of individual histories, and how the three dimensionality of multimedia recording affects contextual relationships of materials. By approaching archaeology through the lens of experience it is possible to blend the traditionally divided realms of theory and practice. This session works with the interrelated agendas of the present, and the changing pace and character of archaeology in the future. Participants are strongly encouraged to offer creative, non-traditional, or multimedia conference presentations.
Continue reading "Experience, modes of engagement, archaeology. (WAC-6 session: Participants Welcome!)" »
Posted by Krysta Ryzewski
By: Lisa Anderson, Cassandra Mesick, Christine Reiser, Krysta Ryzewski & Bradley Sekedat
In April 2007, Brown University fielded a team composed of graduate students from the Department of Anthropology and the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World in the 4th annual Ethics Bowl at the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) general meeting held in Austin, Texas. This year’s competition also included student teams from Indiana University, Michigan State University, Northwestern State University, the University of California-Berkeley, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and the University of New Mexico.
The SAA Ethics Bowl is a debate-style intercollegiate competition, the content of which is based on a series of ten case studies pertaining to relevant issues in archaeology today. These hypothetical scenarios are designed both to stimulate discussion during the Bowl and to provide teaching resources across the wider discipline. The scenarios incorporate a broad range of archaeological issues. The cases we addressed, for example, concerned themes of Open Access, ARPA, cultural representation and diversity, archaeology in times of war, museum stewardship, and multiple publics.
More detailed information about the Ethics Bowl in general can be found HERE. The case studies for 2007 can be viewed HERE.
We were of course delighted to be adjudged the winners of this year's Ethics Bowl, but for us it was the lessons and benefits from the collaborative experience of preparing for it and participating in it that provided the richest rewards. We share part of our experience in this short commentary.
Continue reading "Lessons from the Ethics Bowl | Lessons from a Collaborative Experience" »
Posted by Ian Russell
10th – 13th April 2007, in Daniel Libeskind’s ORION building, London Metropolitan University, the annual conference for the Association of Social Anthropologists entitled ‘Thinking through Tourism’ was held.
At one level the Libeskind building operates through the three intersecting structural elements that form the building, emphasising sets of relations between the existing environment, the general public and academia. Certainly, within archaeology it is increasingly discussed whether these divides really exist or are indeed appropriate. From this perspective, Andrew Cochrane and Ian Russell convened a panel that sought to tease out the potentialities and problems of modern archaeological tourism, image conflict and moves towards or with archaeological expressionism.
Continue reading "Association of Social Anthropologists 2007 – A Highlight" »
Posted by Krysta Ryzewski
This year a record number of archaeologists descended upon “the live music capital of the world” for the 72nd annual meetings of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA). In true Texas style, the conference offered a huge array of opportunities for archaeologists to present, discuss and interact with recent disciplinary contributions. With the sessions running between 8am and 9pm over four days, even the most diligent attendees could merely sample from the hundreds of offerings. This review serves to highlight just a few of the many excellent contributions this year, and some of the sessions that we are still talking about post-conference.
Continue reading "Some Highlights of the Society for American Archaeology meetings, Austin, Texas – April 25-29, 2007." »
Posted by Ian Russell
On 17 December 2006, an amalgamation archaeologists, anthropologists, social theorists and artists descended on the University of Exeter for a full day of debates and deliberations in the spirit of the 28th meeting of the Theoretical Archaeology Group. Taking part in a session organised by Vitor Oliveira Jorge and Julian Thomas, a dynamic and accomplished panel of speakers regaled a room filled to capacity for most of the day with presentations engaging with the important topic: ‘Overcoming the Modern Invention of Material Culture’.
The full-day session began with the presentation of Julian Thomas’ (University of Manchester) paper ‘The Trouble with Material Culture’. In true Thomas fashion, he contextualised his presentation with the depth of intellectual history regarding the construction of ‘material culture’ as a concept. Exploring the dichotomies nature:culture and mind:body, Thomas advanced his contention that ‘material culture’ is the projecting or stamping of ‘culture’ onto a perceived inert matter. Thomas proposed rather that archaeology could approach this material positivism through the metaphor of ‘cultivation’ as opposed to culture. Proposing a tending of the landscapes of relationships, with assemblages of beings, while navigating existence through material ontologisations, Thomas’ presentation lit the first logs of what would become a raging debate throughout the day. The most pertinent question raised against Thomas related to his use of the term ‘cultivation’ in relation to ‘pre-Neolithic’ (that is people who lived before the adoption of settled lifestyles and agricultural cultivation).
Continue reading "TAG 2006: A Highlight" »
Posted by Timothy Webmoor
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:
Continue reading "A blog born every 1/2 second - a new beneficial addition to ecademy" »
Posted by Ian Russell
Andrew Cochrane and Ian Russell
The 2006 Contemporary and Historical Archaeology in Theory (CHAT) conference provided an instalment of discussions, dialogues and debates, which did not disappoint those searching for a healthy argument over the relevance of possibilities of performing archaeology in a contemporary world.
On the Saturday night (11 November 2006), a host of collaborators and creators convened on the darkly lit and off-the-beaten track venue known to Bristolians, artists and Bohos as the Cube Microplex. The anarchic venue became the stage for a panel of ‘archaeologists’ and ‘archaeo-artists’ combined together to form what the CHAT termed ‘Hybrid Archaeologies’. In true CHAT fashion, the chairing of Dan Hicks weaved a thread of intellectual significance with archaeological weight.
The evening began with the personal and provocative work of Christine Finn (University of Bristol). Reflecting on her encounters, explorations and excavations during her return to her family and childhood home after her parents’ deaths, Finn led us on a wonderfully non-linear, audio and visual vignette. Finn’s images and words demonstrated with bravery and conviction how archaeological expression of the contemporary is intrinsic to how we often cope with and negotiate our relation to significant and traumatic events in our lives.
Continue reading "CHAT 2006: Some Highlights" »
Posted by Christopher Witmore
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
Continue reading "Id quod facimus sumus! (We are what we do!) A commentary on Ethnographies of Archaeological Practice: Cultural Encounters, Material Transformations" »
Posted by Timothy Webmoor
The enchantment of the 'social' has, as it has in the other social sciences, achieved orthodoxy in archaeology. To play on the revered title of Alfred Gell's piece, 'the enchantment of the social, the social of enchantment' envelops itself so that 'the social' seems to both enchant archaeologists and archaeologists 'enchant' the 'social'. That is, 'the social' seems to become both the explanandum and the explanan for archaeological inquiry. This indeed appears to be a puzzling spell. How can we explain the phenomena of the archaeological past (or present) by attributing a Durkheimian 'force' behind the scenes which directs and compels events but which nonetheless is not itself explained? In stating that social processes, or social meanings, or (social) discourse accounts for the events of the past, we seem to be stating very little. Indeed, there is a tautology at work here. Or more precisely, there is simply tautology as 'the social' is not doing any work. It comes as a stand-in, a modifier or catch-all prefix; and it attaches itself first to domains of study: 'social lives', 'social meaning', 'social body', 'social structure', 'social environment'; then it goes on to define the very fields undertaking research into these domains: 'social archaeology'. What does that mean? Much like Ian Hacking's edification through tongue-in-cheek (or getting to laugh at our pretensions once in a while), do we need to attach 'social..." to everything. Does it clarify? Does it do anything other than assert the hard-fought battle of academic underdogs (sociology and its closest allies) to partition 'reality' into nature versus society, so that in this partitive scheme there was incontrovertible ownership of the 'social territory' and the blitzkrieging advances of the natural sciences could be contained? Is it simply entrepreneurial brandnaming in the academic free market?
As individuals in the science wars have told the story, such as Latour in his Reassembling the Social (2005), this is part of the story. But there is more, both internal to archaeology and in the wider arena of academia. No, the rise of 'social explanation' is not simply due to the 'social context' of disciplinary wrangling. Without the above qualifier, the issue goes to the heart of explanation in archaeology.
Continue reading "What's gathered under the banner of the 'social'? 'The enchantment of the social, the social of enchantment' " »
Posted by Christopher Witmore
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 Timothy Webmoor
The second installment of A Symmetrical Archaeology was organized as a full session at the Society for American Archaeology at San Juan, Puerto Rico (April 26-30th). Organized by Timothy Webmoor with Bjørnar Olsen, Michael Shanks, and Christopher Witmore, the session brought together an international and trans-disciplinary group of thinkers to present a Manifesto for Symmetry in archaeology and the human sciences.
With few exceptions archaeology under-theorized its relationship to the material past prior to Clarke's 'loss of innocence'. Subsequently, a burgeoning 'theory literature' has attempted to systematize the relations between human behaviour and material culture. We argue that the resultant 'turns'/diatribe characterizing recent archaeological thinking derives from the shared, humanist presupposition of a radical division between people and things. In accentuating links and crossovers with technoscience studies and empirical philosophy, this session seeks to re-characterize archaeology's unique role in studying mixtures of humans (behaviour) and material things. Such a 'symmetry' of people-things forefronts archaeology in an inclusive 'ecology' of 'naturecultures'.
Joining the organizers were:
Dan Hicks, Dept. of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Bristol, UK
Alfredo Ruibal, Archaeology Center and MetaMedia Labs, Stanford University
John Schofield, English Heritage, UK
More information on the Symmetrical platform of a discipline of things may be found at 'Events and Articles' @ http://traumwerk.stanford.edu:3455/Symmetry/814.
Posted by Timothy Webmoor
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
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.
Symmetrical archaeology gathers approaches that share the conviction that the world is far better represented and understood if conceived of in terms of mixtures and entanglements rather than dualisms and oppositions. It poses a radical levelling of the way we treat humans and things, both in our articulations of the material past and in our reflexive analyses of our own archaeological practices. However, this is not a claim to an undifferentiated world. We acknowledge the differences between entities but conceive of them as non-oppositional or relative facilitating collaboration, delegation and exchange. Through the application of the principle of symmetry we attend, not to how people get on in the world, but rather to how a collective, the entanglement of humans and nonhumans, negotiates a complex web of interactions with a diversity of other entities.
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).
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