Archaeology: The Discipline of Things
- ️https://ttu.academia.edu/ChristopherWitmore
Related papers
Archaeology: The Discipline of Things: Chapter One - Caring about things
2012
"Michael Shanks expands the perception of archaeology to include its penetrating role in modern society. In doing so he also proposes to expand its theoretical repretoire to deal with this new “imagined territory” by taking us back to the historical origins of archaeological thinking. It is a fascinating intellectual journey that will not leave you untouched." - Kristian Kristiansen, Professor, University of Gothenburg. "Michael Shanks, with all his wit, charm and smarts, shows us how the world of contemporary object studies – art history, archaeology and anthropology – is the living heir to the long thought dead antiquarian tradition. With this Copernican Revolution many old warhorse categories fall away and new ways of thinking materiality come into clear focus." Peter N. Miller, Dean, Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture. "This important book provides a much-needed critical perspective revealing the intellectual, historical and practical depths of archaeology’s embedded role within cultural production. Presenting archaeology as creative practice, Shanks frees the archaeological sensibility from its dependence on positivistic science to enjoy the riches of transdisciplinary creativity which it never should be denied. The Archaeological Imagination is a long overdue and potent source of inspiration for practitioners across the humanities, sciences and visual and material arts, reminding us that the past as narrative and image is a precious resource, but one that is renewable through well-intentioned, reflexive acts of creative mediation." - Ian Alden Russell, Curator, David Winton Bell Gallery | List Art Center, Brown University.
In recent times, archaeology has seen continuously growing interest from neighboring disciplines desiring to capitalize on archaeology’s experience with the evaluation of material culture. In order to be able to answer the questions now posed to our field of research, we have to be conscious of our methods and their epistemological potential. On the basis of a characterization of archaeological sources, this article focuses on four relevant fields of inquiry with regard to the archaeological analysis of an object, that is, its materiality, archaeological context, spatial distribution, meanings, and power. Moreover, I suggest that an integration of aspects of Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory will enable archaeologists to gain further insights into the complex entanglement of humans and objects in the past.
Beyond the ‘thingification’ of worlds: Archaeology and the New Materialisms
Journal of Material Culture, 2021
This paper considers the application of the New Materialisms within archaeology, primarily in response to Witmore’s influential discussion paper: Archaeology and the New Materialisms (2014), specifically his emphasis on things. This we demonstrate is peripheral to the main thrust of the New Materialisms discourse. We unravel complexities in the terminology and consider the etymological and epistemological framework of concepts such as matter and thing. This leads us to consider some important issues that arise applying Deleuzian assemblages to the archaeological record and the potential of employing Barad’s agential realist theory instead. Barad’s concept of phenomena moves beyond the notion of things as separate, bounded entities, emphasizing entanglements of matter, and illustrates how matter (including humans) co-create the material world. Our aim is to demonstrate how engaging with matter rather than things, enables us to better make sense of the material world and our place within it.
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2013
bs_bs_banner '[m]eaning is always being mapped onto things and landscapes' (my emphasis).The essential point, however, is that meaning actually derives from action and transaction; it is, as Merleau-Ponty says, a matter not of 'I think' but of 'I can'. Chapter 6, on time and memory, addresses some crucial issues, particularly for those of us interested in the contemporary world. It is a commonplace that the past exists in the present, but, drawing on the work of Olivier, Olsen emphasizes the sense in which the past is integral to the present. Habitually, archaeologists treat the monuments of the past as static relics, ignoring the fact that what the past has produced is constitutive of the present and, in Bergson's words, it 'gnaws into the future'. This is underlined in Olsen's repeated emphasis on 'ordinary things as matters of concern'. Whilst impressive monuments tend to be a focus of interest, it is through everyday objects that the past is built into the present without us even noticing. But (and isn't there always a but?), I do have some reservations about this book. Its argument is that things are not taken seriously, but this observation dates backs at least to Bernward Joerges's 'Technology in everyday life: conceptual queries' (Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 18, 1988, 219-37), or indeed to Peter Ucko's Curl Lecture Penis sheaths: a comparative study (1969), which critiques the neglect of material culture by British social anthropologists. The material 'turn' has turned, does it actually need defending? Secondly, whilst I can concur that material culture is not text, Olsen does not consider the fact that text is Reviews 183
Experiencing the past: interpretive archaeology and a turn to ontology
This is an edited version of a discussion with Jos Bazelmans, Peter van Dommelen, and Jan Kolen that took place in Leiden in the National Museum of Antiquities on Friday 12th 1993, following a three-day seminar I presented at Leiden University on technology, innovation and design, under the title Archaeological Realities. Another version appeared in Archaeological Dialogues 1: 56-76 (1994). While I sketch the main elements of an interpretive archaeology (a term preferable to “post-processual”), this is the first introduction to archaeology of a materialist position, what some have called an ontological turn, associated with a focus upon embodied experience and engagement with materials, sources, remains of the past in creative production — how people relate to materialities. Since this discussion various archaeological standpoints, theories, frames, have been fleshed out — Symmetry, Entanglement, Object Oriented Ontology, and derivatives of Actor Network Theory. See Bjornar Olsen, Shanks, Tim Webmoor, Chris Witmore 2012 Archaeology: the Discipline of Things (University of California 2012), Ian Hodder Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things (Wiley Blackwell 2012) and, for a brief overview of these topics in 2015 — Julian Thomas “The Future of Archaeological Theory” Antiquity 89: 1277-86 (2015).
Archaeology and the New Materialisms
The Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, 2014
This article revisits the object of archaeology in light of the New Materialisms. Orienting recent work around three propositions with respect to the reality and definition of things – that is, things are assemblages, things are participants, and things are things – it lays out the core features of the New Materialisms and goes on to addresses some compelling methodological issues. Ultimately, this article raises a challenge that New Materialist perspectives reveal a self-definition for archaeology, not as the study of the human past through its material remains, but as the discipline of things, as an “ecology of practices” that approaches the world with care and in wonder.
Thinking from Things: Essays in the Philosophy of Archaeology
University of California Press, 2002
Despite its labor-intensive preoccupation with the physical remains of past cultures, archaeology is a deeply philosophical discipline. In this compendium of new and newly revised essays, Wylie explores the question of how archaeologists know what they know. Examining the history and methodology of Anglo-American archaeology, she puts the tumultuous debates of the last thirty years in historical and philosophical perspective. She unearths the assumptions that underlie the positivist, processualist program of the New Archaeologists and their antithesis, the premises behind the post-processual archaeology of the 1980s and 1990s. This leads her to suggest ways in which a partial reconciliation can be reached between these distinct camps. In the process, she offers a new, constructive answer to the question of whether archaeology can claim be an objective science exploring ways in which, although archaeological data are fragmentary and ephemeral, they offer a record of human history that can challenge our most deeply held convictions about the cultural past. The essays included in Thinking from Things also address ethical issues and examine the epistemic implications of the emerging " gender archaeology " research program.