Oliver Harris

Archaeological Theory in Dialogue presents an innovative conversation between five scholars from different backgrounds on a range of central issues facing archaeology today. Interspersing detailed investigations of critical theoretical issues with dialogues between the authors, the book interrogates the importance of four themes at the heart of much contemporary theoretical debate: relations, ontology, posthumanism, and Indigenous paradigms. The authors, who work in Europe and North America, explore how these themes are shaping the ways that archaeologists conduct fieldwork, conceptualize the past, and engage with the political and ethical challenges that our discipline faces in the twenty-first century. The unique style of Archaeological Theory in Dialogue , switching between detailed arguments and dialogical exchange, makes it essential reading for both scholars and students of archaeological theory and those with an interest in the politics and ethics of the past.

About the Book: Archaeological Theory in the New Millennium provides an accessible account of the changing world of archaeological theory. It charts the emergence of the new emphasis on relations as well as engaging with current theoretical trends and the thinkers archaeologist regularly employ. This book will be an essential guide to cutting-edge theory for students and for professional wishing to reacquaint themselves with this field.

Polished stone axes have long been recognised as one of the most important forms of material culture in the Neolithic. Research over the last 40 years has done much to understand their origins, patterns of exchange across Europe, deposition, and social importance. Despite this long-recognised importance, little work in Britain has focused on the actual use of these objects. This article presents the first use-wear analysis of 20 Early Neolithic polished stone axes from Britain. This research shows that whilst many were used for woodworking, no doubt associated with forest clearance as agriculture spread, this masks the detailed and variable roles polished stone axes played in the emergence of Neolithic worlds in Britain, which use-wear has the capacity to reveal.

The appearance of Beaker pottery in Britain and Ireland during the twenty-fifth century BC marks a significant archaeological horizon, being synchronous with the first metal artefacts. The adoption of arsenical copper, mostly from Ireland, was followed by that of tin-bronze around 2200 BC. However, whilst the copper mine of Ross Island in Ireland is securely dated to the Early Bronze Age, and further such mines in the UK have been dated to the Early and Middle Bronze Age, the evidence for the exploitation of tin ores, the other key ingredient to make bronze, has remained circumstantial. This article contains the detailed analyses of seven stone artefacts from securely dated contexts, using a combination of surface pXRF and microwear analysis. The results provide strong evidence that the tools were used in cassiterite processing. The combined analysis of these artefacts documents in detail the exploitation of Cornish tin during this early phase of metal use in Britain and Ireland.

This paper maps and builds relations between posthumanism and the field of archaeology, arguing for vital and promising connections between the two. Posthuman insights on post-anthropocentrism, non-human multiplicities, and the minoritarian in the now intersect powerfully with archaeology’s multi-temporal and long-term interests in heterogenous and vibrant assemblages of people, places, and things, particularly the last few decades of ‘decolonial’ re- imaginings of the field. For these reasons, we frame archaeology as the historical science of posthumanism. We demonstrate the discipline’s breadth through three vignettes concerning archaeology’s unique engagements with multiplicities of objects, multiplicities of scales, and multiplicities of people. These examples, we argue, speak to the benefits of becoming posthuman archaeologists and archaeological posthumanists.

In this paper we explore how positioning microwear analysis within new materialism and assemblage theory allows us to develop new ways of thinking about meaning in the past. By mapping the detailed histories of an object's making and use, we suggest that we can open up an understanding of marks as forms of material meanings. These material meanings operate as intensive events that fold together present and absent materials, as well as a range of ongoing processes. By studying marks on an archaeological object made of stone from one of the most famous Bronze Age barrows in Britain, within what we term a microwear assemblage, we will explore how a relational, more-thanrepresentational, version of material meanings emerges.

It is notable how little gender archaeology has been written for the European Neolithic, in contrast to the following Bronze Age. We cannot blame this absence on a lack of empirical data or on archaeologists' theoretical naïveté. Instead, we argue that this absence reflects the fact that gender in this period was qualitatively different in form from the types of gender that emerged in Europe from about 3000 cal BC onwards; the latter still form the norm in European and American contexts today, and our standard theories and methodologies are designed to uncover this specific form of gender. In Bronze Age gender systems, gender was mostly binary, associated with stable, lifelong identities expressed in recurrent complexes of gendered symbolism. In contrast, Neolithic gender appears to have been less firmly associated with personal identity and more contextually relevant; it slips easily through our methodological nets. In proposing this " contextual gender " model for Neolithic gender, we both open up new understandings of gender in the past and present and pose significant questions for our models of gender more widely. Es llamativo lo poco que se ha escrito sobre arqueología de género en el Neolítico europeo en comparación con el período posterior, la Edad del Bronce. Esta escasez no puede atribuirse a la falta de datos empíricos o a la ingenuidad de los arqueólogos. Más bien, como proponemos aquí, esta ausencia refleja el hecho de que hay una diferencia cualitativa entre las manifestaciones de género en este período y los tipos de género que emergieron en Europa a partir de 3000 aC. Estos últimos siguen constituyendo la norma en contextos europeos y americanos actuales, y nuestras teorías y métodos están diseñados para analizar estas formas específicas de género. En los sistemas de género de la Edad del Bronce, el género consistió mayoritariamente en una identidad binaria asociada a identidades estables que persistían durante toda una vida y que fueron expresadas en complejos recurrentes de símbolos de género. En contraste, el género en el Neolítico parece haber tenido una asociación más tenue con la identidad personal; en cambio, parece haber sido más relevante a nivel contextual. Por lo tanto, las manifestaciones de género del Neolítico se nos escapan a través de nuestras redes metodológicas. Al proponer un modelo de 'género contextual' para el Neolítico mediante la identificación del cómo y del porqué de esta diferencia, ofrecemos nuevas formas de comprender el género en el pasado y presente del Neolítico, planteando al mismo tiempo cuestiones de relevancia más general para nuestros modelos de género.

The ontological turn in anthropology and archaeology has opened up new ways of thinking about, engaging with, and understanding difference in both the past and the present. Fundamentally, the commitment to ontological engagement has, when informed by ethnographic study, allowed new worlds in both the past and present to emerge. However, the challenge of how to do this in contexts that lack ethnographic information, or clear historical connections to modern non-western groups, remains in place. How can materials and material things themselves create and drive an awareness of multiple past ontologies without ethnography? How can we develop relational approaches that allow past ontologies to become perceptible from only material remains? In this paper we suggest that an approach rooted in new materialism and the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze can allow us to attend to precisely these questions. As a philosopher of difference and becoming Deleuze offers us the potential to develop concepts that reveal the ontological multiplicity of materials in the past, and thus the multiplicity of the past itself. We explore these issues through a study of one of the world’s most famous prehistoric monuments: Stonehenge.

In this paper we examine the recent popularity of notions of fragmentation and enchainment in archaeology and aim to further the debate of these important approaches. Although we applaud the aims, and recognize the seductive power of these concepts, we suggest that there are a number of problems with the terms as they are currently used. By unpacking these expressions, we suggest these issues can be addressed and the vocabulary can continue to develop as a powerful tool for understanding materiality, exchange and personhood in the past.