I am director of the Laboratory of Sensory Archaeology (LAS) and associate professor at the Federal University of Sergipe. I am also currently the General director of the First Brazilian Mission in Egypt. We are working in the Theban Tombs 123 and 368. I did my doctorate in egyptian archeology at the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, University of São Paulo (MAE/USP) in 2006. During the years 2008 and 2012, also performed in University of São Paulo my two post doctorates. In recent years I have dedicated myself to the study of Senses, Landscape Archaeology, Decolonial Aesthetics, Ontology, New Materialist Theories and Posthuman theories. Address: jrpellini@gmail.com
In archaeology, the methods of data collection, analysis and interpretation,
at least in the most... more In archaeology, the methods of data collection, analysis and interpretation, at least in the most traditional and hegemonic currents, are marked by the idea that the world is composed of individual entities, each one with specific and separated properties. In order to question this model, I will use the concept of Diffraction proposed by Haraway and Barad, to understand how different encounters over time actualized Theban Tomb 123, located in the plain of Sheikh Abdel Qurna, in Luxor, Egypt. The first encounter to be analysed is the encounter between Amenemhet with TT123 in the Pharaonic period (1479–1425 BC). The second involves encounters between TT123 with Qurnawis, a community that between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries used the pharaonic tombs on the West Bank of Luxor as housing. Finally, I will analyse the encounters between archaeologists with TT123. Thinking about these different encounters shows us that this space that archaeologists call TT 123, rather than being a fixed materiality, is a transitory materiality and meeting point of different ontologies.
Based on the identification of modern dung remains on the TT123 tomb wall, I propose to think of ... more Based on the identification of modern dung remains on the TT123 tomb wall, I propose to think of TT123 in new ways, looking for other possible realities besides those produced by the processes of recognition, identification and categorization that dominate the archaeological interpretive process. The idea is to seek to understand TT123 from new traditions and new knowledge to produce something new. The idea is not to ask what TT123 means, but to understand how it works within the different possible encounters in which it is inserted. More than offering just another point of view in relation to those with epistemic privilege, I will try to demonstrate that other realities are possible and that such alternative realities can have political and material consequences. An alternative reality is not reality, it is only a potential reality.
Resumo: talvez a maior violência epistêmica perpetrada pelo Ocidente contra o Egito não tenha sid... more Resumo: talvez a maior violência epistêmica perpetrada pelo Ocidente contra o Egito não tenha sido a apropriação de suas materialidades, mas a construção da ideia de um Egito exclusivamente faraônico. Como consequência deste processo de idealização, a paisagem egípcia passou a ser modelada por arqueólogos, egiptólogos e pelo governo egípcio para representar apenas o passado faraônico. A expulsão dos moradores da vila de Qurna foi o desfecho trágico deste processo. Mais de dez anos depois do processo de expropriação da comunidade qurnawi muito ainda precisa ser compreendido, principalmente como nossas abordagens científicas afetam as comunidades locais. Neste sentido proponho discutir o conceito de paisagem a partir das teorias locais, mostrando que antes de ser um elemento fixo, a paisagem é resultado de uma relação. Palavra-chave: Paisagem. Ontologia. Relacionalidade. Egito. Qurna.
Em contraposição aos modelos representacionistas, presentes na Arqueologia, proponho abordar as i... more Em contraposição aos modelos representacionistas, presentes na Arqueologia, proponho abordar as imagens presentes nos sítios Céu Estrelado e Família, localizados em Canindé do São Francisco, Sergipe, a partir de um entendimento relacional do mundo, em que as categorias de seres não são preestabelecidas e sim fluidas, como resultado de cortes agenciais em processos de intra-ação. Dentro desse contexto, tentemos realizar um exercício interpretativo e imaginar, por exemplo, que as imagens representam não figuras bidimensionais estáticas, ou representações simbólicas, mas seres não-humanos sencientes, algo que poderíamos chamar de gentes-rocha. Muito mais que verdades, este artigo propõe um exercício e uma provocação.
Pero hay que intentarlo pues un avance ontológico en la arqueología
sólo será posible si pensamos... more Pero hay que intentarlo pues un avance ontológico en la arqueología sólo será posible si pensamos en las teorías indígenas más seriamente como ontologías más que como epistemologías. Necesitamos tratar las teorías no occidentales de modo simétrico a las teorías occidentales. Pero antes de querer cambiar la arqueología que practicamos necesitamos cambiar nuestra postura frente al mundo. Tenemos que repensar nuestras vidas, nuestras emociones, nuestros afectos y nuestros sentidos. Creo que ya no se trata sólo de repensar la arqueología que practicamos o, incluso, de reeducar nuestros sentidos sino de aprender nuevamente a escuchar, a ver, a oler, a sentir. Sólo después de salir del coma profundo al que estamos sometidos en nuestro mundo moderno podremos repensar nuestra práctica disciplinaria y defnir si queremos o no continuar llamándola arqueología o si queremos pensar en algo alternativo para entender la relación de los diferentes seres y entidades con el mundo material.
The Routledge Handbook of Global Historical Archaeology, 2020
As Pellini and Zarankin (2017) show, after more than a century of a “professional” archaeology, t... more As Pellini and Zarankin (2017) show, after more than a century of a “professional” archaeology, the hegemonic currents within the discipline have built their power spaces from objective, exclusive, and mainly distanced discourses. With a promise of change, post-processual approaches have been introduced to try to correct the problem by opening up archaeology to multiple doings and alternative ontologies. However, what we have seen is just a rhetoric of change, for we allow and recognize differences while limiting their presence and performance. In this way, we not only keep alive the privileges of the archaeologist against the narratives of the past, but also perpetuate a specific form of archaeology. As a result, we continue to reproduce the epistemic violence and the modernist ontological basis of the discipline that holds the view, among others, of the body as a universal element and the senses as physiological tools that serve only to capture the stimuli of the world.
We are embodied beings and thus we come into contact with the materialities of the world through ... more We are embodied beings and thus we come into contact with the materialities of the world through our bodies and our senses. The senses represent the most fundamental domain of our engagement with the world, the means by which all values and practices are performed. Even our memories are created and activated through our sensorial relationship with the material world. Without our senses we would lose our ability to affect and be affected by the world and by other bodies, because the senses set in motion assemblages of bodies through lights, sounds, colors, textures, moods, temperatures, odors, emotions, tastes, and narratives, and without the senses the affective flows that move these set, which Deleuze (1984) calls the assemblage, would cease to exist
There is still no consensus as to what affect is, whether it is a noncognitive intensity, a cultu... more There is still no consensus as to what affect is, whether it is a noncognitive intensity, a culturally determined emotion, an evolutionary or a social and phenomenological force. Neither is there a unanimous position about whether it is intentional or not, whether it is social or asocial. However, there is no denying that discussions about affect have opened up avenues of research within the human sciences, especially those focused on understanding the body, agency, relationality, post-humanism, and post-phenomenology. While it remains unexplored in archaeology, affect has a great potential to change the discipline, especially when considered from the point of view of relationality
We purpose here to realize a reflection on “the South” in Pharaonic Egypt and how a joint project... more We purpose here to realize a reflection on “the South” in Pharaonic Egypt and how a joint project between UFMG (Brazil) and UNC (Argentina) based in in the Theban necropolis of Luxor, can contribute to the current debates about archaeology and coloniality. After a synthesis about colonial practices in Egypt from the 18th century to the present day, we aim to analyse a possible “line of flight” to colonial thought appealing to inquire about other relationships with nature.
ETCETERA. Revista del Área de Ciencias Sociales del Centro de Investigaciones, Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, 2018
Resumo: Somos seres encorpados, sendo assim, nossa experiência do dia a dia é uma experiência sen... more Resumo: Somos seres encorpados, sendo assim, nossa experiência do dia a dia é uma experiência sensorial. Captamos as informações do mundo através dos sentidos. Cores, texturas, aromas, paladares, a sensação de movimento, de calor, de peso, tudo nos é apresentado através dos sentidos, sendo assim, entender como concebemos historicamente os sentidos nos permite entender como concebemos o mundo à nossa volta. A Arqueologia Sensorial busca entender como através da experiência sensorial com a materialidade, construímos nossas histórias, identidades, políticas, cultura e memórias. Abstract: Summary: We are bodiedbeings, so, ourexperienceofeverydaylifeis a sensoryexperience. We capture theworld'sinformationthroughthesenses. Resumen: Somos seres concuerpo, así, nuestraexperiencia de la vida cotidiana es una experiencia sensorial. Capturamos lainformacióndel mundo a través de los sentidos. Colores, texturas, olores, sabores, lasensación de movimiento, el calor, el peso, todo se nos presenta a través de los sentidos, por lo tanto, comprendercómohistóricamenteconcebimoslos sentidos nos permite entender cómodiseñamosel mundo que nos rodea. Sensorial Arqueología busca entender cómo a través de laexperiencia sensorial de lamaterialidad, hemosconstruidonuestra historias, identidades, las políticas, la cultura y losrecuerdos.
Have you ever wonder what is the value of your little finger? Strange as it may seems the questio... more Have you ever wonder what is the value of your little finger? Strange as it may seems the question is not entirely misplaced, especially if we think that in recent years have grown the number of "celebrities" that put some part of their bodies in insurance. During the Middle Ages, damage caused by third parties to the body or parts of a person's body were compensated from cash payments. In the Islamic world, even today, the practice of Dyia determines the payment of monetary values to those who have suffered some kind of injury in the body or in the senses. The understanding of the principles that govern the monetization of the body and senses allows us to analyze how the body or parts of it are socially and culturally valued. With this goal in mind I intend to discuss the Lists of Compensation in medieval barbaric laws and the Western Modern Insurance Policies.
... Mas é justa-JOSE ROBERTO PELLINI* ... Será que somente as facilidades do meio é que respondem... more ... Mas é justa-JOSE ROBERTO PELLINI* ... Será que somente as facilidades do meio é que respondem pela ocupação do espaço? Bender (1998), Tilley (2006) e Ingold (2000) têm mostrado como esta concepção de espaço é limitada. ...
Childhood is really a magical moment, when we can dream, fantasize and play. We can talk to objec... more Childhood is really a magical moment, when we can dream, fantasize and play. We can talk to objects, animals and even to talk aloud to ourselves in the street: no one will think it strange. But everything changes when we grow up. We come to consider as inanimate objects, animals as beings without conscience, and dreams as something childish. The situation worsens when we become scientists because we search truths. Science, and especially archeology, is a cold, soulless and lifeless world. We need to dream again, to speak with the objects and I do not mean it metaphorically. We must learn the language of objects if we want an archeology that really seeks to understand the past. Thus, this paper intends to merge the scientific discourse with literary discourse, dialoguing with a classic of world literature that attracts readers of all ages. Therefore we propose a disruption of hegemonic discourses, which can be sensorial archeology. It has the potential to change not only the archaeological discourse, but also the archaeologist, by enabling different contacts with objects, by allowing them to speak their language again. Keywords: Sensorial Archaeology, Material Culture, Imagination, Scientific Colonialism
Abstract:before being just one, cartesian, measurable universal and neutral space, structured by ... more Abstract:before being just one, cartesian, measurable universal and neutral space, structured by the rules of newtonian physics as Believe archeology, landscape is a subjective appropriation that involves practices, memories and narratives. There is no experience that is not sensorial, as there is no experience that is not mediated by memory and that is not located in one place. When we experience the sensory world through practices and performances we are potentially creating memories and narratives, which in turn will influence the way we learn and mean landscapes. Our sensory experience in places does not represent a fleeting contact with the materiality of the world, because all perception is loaded from memory. Through sensory experiences mnemonic records are created and reproduced, since memories are generated in the body of the participants from the daily experience. Our experience of the landscape is completely unscientific, as measured by Western science.
We lost the innocence and found that our so-called "science" not only fulfills the task of produc... more We lost the innocence and found that our so-called "science" not only fulfills the task of producing knowledge, but serves the interests of a multitude of individuals and groups. Recent events in the Arab Spring in Egypt once again showed how archeology and the past can be used as an ideological tool of nationalist movements. While President Hosni Mubarak defended the existence of a secular Egyptian identity, dating back to Pharaonic past, the Cairo Museum, custodian of pharaonic heritage, was seen as a symbol of the decaying state by part of islamic community, has been transformed into the target attacks. On both sides the Egyptian past has been manipulated to serve nationalist interests during the revolution.
Poor flower in their beds of regular gardens, they seem afraid of the police.... but they are so ... more Poor flower in their beds of regular gardens, they seem afraid of the police.... but they are so good that flourish in the same way and have the same ancient smile they had at the first lookof the first man that saw them and touched them slightly to see if they spoke..... Alberto Caeiro speaks nostalgically of the gardens. Longing for the intensity and freedom of the gardens Longing for the inebriant odors, the magical colors, the pungent taste. If gardens were alive in the past, now they are dead, maybe not dead, but restrained, shy, caught in their own modernity. But this is not just the prison of the garden, it is the prison of modern man. A man who learned and was educated to restrain himself, to restrain his senses, to keep his hand in his pocket, and see the world in a distant way. A man who framed the landscape and turned it into a scenario. But landscapes are not static but dynamic aspects of our lives that are apprehended through sensory practices, memories and narratives.
A question often torments me due to its apparent obviousness: why cannot we touch ob... more A question often torments me due to its apparent obviousness: why cannot we touch objects in museums? We can see, we can look at, but we cannot interact with
institutionalized material culture. Why? Whilethe most obvious answer is that touching can result in destruction of objects, I believe there is something deeper involved in this
matter, which is the construction of the sense of touch as the sense of uneducated, wild men. To touch or not to touch establishes politics of authority that defines the Self and
the Other. At the same time, when the possibility of bodily interaction with the objects is excluded, public understanding is limited and a specific model of understanding the world is perpetuated.
In this text I tried to analyze the relationship of reality, ilusion and landscape through the p... more In this text I tried to analyze the relationship of reality, ilusion and landscape through the practice of Sensorial Archaeology.
In archaeology, the methods of data collection, analysis and interpretation,
at least in the most... more In archaeology, the methods of data collection, analysis and interpretation, at least in the most traditional and hegemonic currents, are marked by the idea that the world is composed of individual entities, each one with specific and separated properties. In order to question this model, I will use the concept of Diffraction proposed by Haraway and Barad, to understand how different encounters over time actualized Theban Tomb 123, located in the plain of Sheikh Abdel Qurna, in Luxor, Egypt. The first encounter to be analysed is the encounter between Amenemhet with TT123 in the Pharaonic period (1479–1425 BC). The second involves encounters between TT123 with Qurnawis, a community that between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries used the pharaonic tombs on the West Bank of Luxor as housing. Finally, I will analyse the encounters between archaeologists with TT123. Thinking about these different encounters shows us that this space that archaeologists call TT 123, rather than being a fixed materiality, is a transitory materiality and meeting point of different ontologies.
Based on the identification of modern dung remains on the TT123 tomb wall, I propose to think of ... more Based on the identification of modern dung remains on the TT123 tomb wall, I propose to think of TT123 in new ways, looking for other possible realities besides those produced by the processes of recognition, identification and categorization that dominate the archaeological interpretive process. The idea is to seek to understand TT123 from new traditions and new knowledge to produce something new. The idea is not to ask what TT123 means, but to understand how it works within the different possible encounters in which it is inserted. More than offering just another point of view in relation to those with epistemic privilege, I will try to demonstrate that other realities are possible and that such alternative realities can have political and material consequences. An alternative reality is not reality, it is only a potential reality.
Resumo: talvez a maior violência epistêmica perpetrada pelo Ocidente contra o Egito não tenha sid... more Resumo: talvez a maior violência epistêmica perpetrada pelo Ocidente contra o Egito não tenha sido a apropriação de suas materialidades, mas a construção da ideia de um Egito exclusivamente faraônico. Como consequência deste processo de idealização, a paisagem egípcia passou a ser modelada por arqueólogos, egiptólogos e pelo governo egípcio para representar apenas o passado faraônico. A expulsão dos moradores da vila de Qurna foi o desfecho trágico deste processo. Mais de dez anos depois do processo de expropriação da comunidade qurnawi muito ainda precisa ser compreendido, principalmente como nossas abordagens científicas afetam as comunidades locais. Neste sentido proponho discutir o conceito de paisagem a partir das teorias locais, mostrando que antes de ser um elemento fixo, a paisagem é resultado de uma relação. Palavra-chave: Paisagem. Ontologia. Relacionalidade. Egito. Qurna.
Em contraposição aos modelos representacionistas, presentes na Arqueologia, proponho abordar as i... more Em contraposição aos modelos representacionistas, presentes na Arqueologia, proponho abordar as imagens presentes nos sítios Céu Estrelado e Família, localizados em Canindé do São Francisco, Sergipe, a partir de um entendimento relacional do mundo, em que as categorias de seres não são preestabelecidas e sim fluidas, como resultado de cortes agenciais em processos de intra-ação. Dentro desse contexto, tentemos realizar um exercício interpretativo e imaginar, por exemplo, que as imagens representam não figuras bidimensionais estáticas, ou representações simbólicas, mas seres não-humanos sencientes, algo que poderíamos chamar de gentes-rocha. Muito mais que verdades, este artigo propõe um exercício e uma provocação.
Pero hay que intentarlo pues un avance ontológico en la arqueología
sólo será posible si pensamos... more Pero hay que intentarlo pues un avance ontológico en la arqueología sólo será posible si pensamos en las teorías indígenas más seriamente como ontologías más que como epistemologías. Necesitamos tratar las teorías no occidentales de modo simétrico a las teorías occidentales. Pero antes de querer cambiar la arqueología que practicamos necesitamos cambiar nuestra postura frente al mundo. Tenemos que repensar nuestras vidas, nuestras emociones, nuestros afectos y nuestros sentidos. Creo que ya no se trata sólo de repensar la arqueología que practicamos o, incluso, de reeducar nuestros sentidos sino de aprender nuevamente a escuchar, a ver, a oler, a sentir. Sólo después de salir del coma profundo al que estamos sometidos en nuestro mundo moderno podremos repensar nuestra práctica disciplinaria y defnir si queremos o no continuar llamándola arqueología o si queremos pensar en algo alternativo para entender la relación de los diferentes seres y entidades con el mundo material.
The Routledge Handbook of Global Historical Archaeology, 2020
As Pellini and Zarankin (2017) show, after more than a century of a “professional” archaeology, t... more As Pellini and Zarankin (2017) show, after more than a century of a “professional” archaeology, the hegemonic currents within the discipline have built their power spaces from objective, exclusive, and mainly distanced discourses. With a promise of change, post-processual approaches have been introduced to try to correct the problem by opening up archaeology to multiple doings and alternative ontologies. However, what we have seen is just a rhetoric of change, for we allow and recognize differences while limiting their presence and performance. In this way, we not only keep alive the privileges of the archaeologist against the narratives of the past, but also perpetuate a specific form of archaeology. As a result, we continue to reproduce the epistemic violence and the modernist ontological basis of the discipline that holds the view, among others, of the body as a universal element and the senses as physiological tools that serve only to capture the stimuli of the world.
We are embodied beings and thus we come into contact with the materialities of the world through ... more We are embodied beings and thus we come into contact with the materialities of the world through our bodies and our senses. The senses represent the most fundamental domain of our engagement with the world, the means by which all values and practices are performed. Even our memories are created and activated through our sensorial relationship with the material world. Without our senses we would lose our ability to affect and be affected by the world and by other bodies, because the senses set in motion assemblages of bodies through lights, sounds, colors, textures, moods, temperatures, odors, emotions, tastes, and narratives, and without the senses the affective flows that move these set, which Deleuze (1984) calls the assemblage, would cease to exist
There is still no consensus as to what affect is, whether it is a noncognitive intensity, a cultu... more There is still no consensus as to what affect is, whether it is a noncognitive intensity, a culturally determined emotion, an evolutionary or a social and phenomenological force. Neither is there a unanimous position about whether it is intentional or not, whether it is social or asocial. However, there is no denying that discussions about affect have opened up avenues of research within the human sciences, especially those focused on understanding the body, agency, relationality, post-humanism, and post-phenomenology. While it remains unexplored in archaeology, affect has a great potential to change the discipline, especially when considered from the point of view of relationality
We purpose here to realize a reflection on “the South” in Pharaonic Egypt and how a joint project... more We purpose here to realize a reflection on “the South” in Pharaonic Egypt and how a joint project between UFMG (Brazil) and UNC (Argentina) based in in the Theban necropolis of Luxor, can contribute to the current debates about archaeology and coloniality. After a synthesis about colonial practices in Egypt from the 18th century to the present day, we aim to analyse a possible “line of flight” to colonial thought appealing to inquire about other relationships with nature.
ETCETERA. Revista del Área de Ciencias Sociales del Centro de Investigaciones, Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, 2018
Resumo: Somos seres encorpados, sendo assim, nossa experiência do dia a dia é uma experiência sen... more Resumo: Somos seres encorpados, sendo assim, nossa experiência do dia a dia é uma experiência sensorial. Captamos as informações do mundo através dos sentidos. Cores, texturas, aromas, paladares, a sensação de movimento, de calor, de peso, tudo nos é apresentado através dos sentidos, sendo assim, entender como concebemos historicamente os sentidos nos permite entender como concebemos o mundo à nossa volta. A Arqueologia Sensorial busca entender como através da experiência sensorial com a materialidade, construímos nossas histórias, identidades, políticas, cultura e memórias. Abstract: Summary: We are bodiedbeings, so, ourexperienceofeverydaylifeis a sensoryexperience. We capture theworld'sinformationthroughthesenses. Resumen: Somos seres concuerpo, así, nuestraexperiencia de la vida cotidiana es una experiencia sensorial. Capturamos lainformacióndel mundo a través de los sentidos. Colores, texturas, olores, sabores, lasensación de movimiento, el calor, el peso, todo se nos presenta a través de los sentidos, por lo tanto, comprendercómohistóricamenteconcebimoslos sentidos nos permite entender cómodiseñamosel mundo que nos rodea. Sensorial Arqueología busca entender cómo a través de laexperiencia sensorial de lamaterialidad, hemosconstruidonuestra historias, identidades, las políticas, la cultura y losrecuerdos.
Have you ever wonder what is the value of your little finger? Strange as it may seems the questio... more Have you ever wonder what is the value of your little finger? Strange as it may seems the question is not entirely misplaced, especially if we think that in recent years have grown the number of "celebrities" that put some part of their bodies in insurance. During the Middle Ages, damage caused by third parties to the body or parts of a person's body were compensated from cash payments. In the Islamic world, even today, the practice of Dyia determines the payment of monetary values to those who have suffered some kind of injury in the body or in the senses. The understanding of the principles that govern the monetization of the body and senses allows us to analyze how the body or parts of it are socially and culturally valued. With this goal in mind I intend to discuss the Lists of Compensation in medieval barbaric laws and the Western Modern Insurance Policies.
... Mas é justa-JOSE ROBERTO PELLINI* ... Será que somente as facilidades do meio é que respondem... more ... Mas é justa-JOSE ROBERTO PELLINI* ... Será que somente as facilidades do meio é que respondem pela ocupação do espaço? Bender (1998), Tilley (2006) e Ingold (2000) têm mostrado como esta concepção de espaço é limitada. ...
Childhood is really a magical moment, when we can dream, fantasize and play. We can talk to objec... more Childhood is really a magical moment, when we can dream, fantasize and play. We can talk to objects, animals and even to talk aloud to ourselves in the street: no one will think it strange. But everything changes when we grow up. We come to consider as inanimate objects, animals as beings without conscience, and dreams as something childish. The situation worsens when we become scientists because we search truths. Science, and especially archeology, is a cold, soulless and lifeless world. We need to dream again, to speak with the objects and I do not mean it metaphorically. We must learn the language of objects if we want an archeology that really seeks to understand the past. Thus, this paper intends to merge the scientific discourse with literary discourse, dialoguing with a classic of world literature that attracts readers of all ages. Therefore we propose a disruption of hegemonic discourses, which can be sensorial archeology. It has the potential to change not only the archaeological discourse, but also the archaeologist, by enabling different contacts with objects, by allowing them to speak their language again. Keywords: Sensorial Archaeology, Material Culture, Imagination, Scientific Colonialism
Abstract:before being just one, cartesian, measurable universal and neutral space, structured by ... more Abstract:before being just one, cartesian, measurable universal and neutral space, structured by the rules of newtonian physics as Believe archeology, landscape is a subjective appropriation that involves practices, memories and narratives. There is no experience that is not sensorial, as there is no experience that is not mediated by memory and that is not located in one place. When we experience the sensory world through practices and performances we are potentially creating memories and narratives, which in turn will influence the way we learn and mean landscapes. Our sensory experience in places does not represent a fleeting contact with the materiality of the world, because all perception is loaded from memory. Through sensory experiences mnemonic records are created and reproduced, since memories are generated in the body of the participants from the daily experience. Our experience of the landscape is completely unscientific, as measured by Western science.
We lost the innocence and found that our so-called "science" not only fulfills the task of produc... more We lost the innocence and found that our so-called "science" not only fulfills the task of producing knowledge, but serves the interests of a multitude of individuals and groups. Recent events in the Arab Spring in Egypt once again showed how archeology and the past can be used as an ideological tool of nationalist movements. While President Hosni Mubarak defended the existence of a secular Egyptian identity, dating back to Pharaonic past, the Cairo Museum, custodian of pharaonic heritage, was seen as a symbol of the decaying state by part of islamic community, has been transformed into the target attacks. On both sides the Egyptian past has been manipulated to serve nationalist interests during the revolution.
Poor flower in their beds of regular gardens, they seem afraid of the police.... but they are so ... more Poor flower in their beds of regular gardens, they seem afraid of the police.... but they are so good that flourish in the same way and have the same ancient smile they had at the first lookof the first man that saw them and touched them slightly to see if they spoke..... Alberto Caeiro speaks nostalgically of the gardens. Longing for the intensity and freedom of the gardens Longing for the inebriant odors, the magical colors, the pungent taste. If gardens were alive in the past, now they are dead, maybe not dead, but restrained, shy, caught in their own modernity. But this is not just the prison of the garden, it is the prison of modern man. A man who learned and was educated to restrain himself, to restrain his senses, to keep his hand in his pocket, and see the world in a distant way. A man who framed the landscape and turned it into a scenario. But landscapes are not static but dynamic aspects of our lives that are apprehended through sensory practices, memories and narratives.
A question often torments me due to its apparent obviousness: why cannot we touch ob... more A question often torments me due to its apparent obviousness: why cannot we touch objects in museums? We can see, we can look at, but we cannot interact with
institutionalized material culture. Why? Whilethe most obvious answer is that touching can result in destruction of objects, I believe there is something deeper involved in this
matter, which is the construction of the sense of touch as the sense of uneducated, wild men. To touch or not to touch establishes politics of authority that defines the Self and
the Other. At the same time, when the possibility of bodily interaction with the objects is excluded, public understanding is limited and a specific model of understanding the world is perpetuated.
In this text I tried to analyze the relationship of reality, ilusion and landscape through the p... more In this text I tried to analyze the relationship of reality, ilusion and landscape through the practice of Sensorial Archaeology.
The senses and affects, despite what some modern science thinks, are not only physiological tool ... more The senses and affects, despite what some modern science thinks, are not only physiological tool that captures the stimuli present in the world, neither emotions or intensities, they are an apparatus that constantly updates our position in the world, they are material-discursive practices that we employ daily in the interpretation and evaluation of the world, a material-discursive practice that limits, delimitates, includes and excludes, arranges and rearranges the elements we grasp and interpret within the assemblies in which we are participating. That is why it is so important to understand how we are educated within these material-discursive practices, for this is the first step towards freeing our sense-affective processes and decolonizing our worldview. An archaeology of the senses and affects is aesthetically decolonized. It recognizes that we have been educated within an senso-affective aesthetic that normalizes and colonizes our behaviour. An archaeology of the senses and affects fights against epistemological violence. It is violence in every way to think that people in the past as well as the present thought and acted like us Westerners.
Foreword. Uncomfortable; Introduction. In the Hospital: Among Saints, Philosophers and Scientists; Chapter One Childhood Friend: Intra-acting with the World; Chapter Two. The Tutankhamun’s Mask: Affecting and Being Affected; Chapter Three. Between the Visible and the Invisible; Chapter Four. An Old Magazine; Chapter Five. It's Cold in Luxor’s Streets!; Chapter Six. The Garden; Chapter Seven. The Butterfly: A Manifesto.
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at least in the most traditional and hegemonic currents, are marked by the
idea that the world is composed of individual entities, each one with
specific and separated properties. In order to question this model, I will use the concept of Diffraction proposed by Haraway and Barad, to understand how different encounters over time actualized Theban Tomb 123, located in the plain of Sheikh Abdel Qurna, in Luxor, Egypt. The first encounter to be analysed is the encounter between Amenemhet with TT123 in the Pharaonic period (1479–1425 BC). The second involves encounters between TT123 with Qurnawis, a community that between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries used the pharaonic tombs on the West Bank of Luxor as housing. Finally, I will analyse the encounters between archaeologists with TT123. Thinking about these different encounters shows us that this space that archaeologists call TT 123, rather than being a fixed materiality, is a transitory materiality and meeting point of different ontologies.
sólo será posible si pensamos en las teorías indígenas más seriamente
como ontologías más que como epistemologías. Necesitamos tratar las
teorías no occidentales de modo simétrico a las teorías occidentales.
Pero antes de querer cambiar la arqueología que practicamos
necesitamos cambiar nuestra postura frente al mundo. Tenemos que
repensar nuestras vidas, nuestras emociones, nuestros afectos y nuestros
sentidos. Creo que ya no se trata sólo de repensar la arqueología que
practicamos o, incluso, de reeducar nuestros sentidos sino de aprender
nuevamente a escuchar, a ver, a oler, a sentir. Sólo después de salir del
coma profundo al que estamos sometidos en nuestro mundo moderno
podremos repensar nuestra práctica disciplinaria y defnir si queremos
o no continuar llamándola arqueología o si queremos pensar en algo
alternativo para entender la relación de los diferentes seres y entidades
con el mundo material.
approaches have been introduced to try to correct the problem by opening up archaeology to multiple doings and alternative ontologies. However, what we have seen is just a rhetoric of change, for we allow and recognize differences while limiting their presence and performance. In this way, we not only keep alive the privileges of the archaeologist against the narratives of the past, but also perpetuate a specific form of archaeology. As a result, we continue to reproduce the epistemic violence and the modernist ontological basis of the discipline that holds the view, among others, of the body as a universal element and the senses as physiological tools that serve only to capture the stimuli of the world.
with the world, the means by which all values and practices are performed. Even our memories are created and activated through our sensorial relationship with the material world. Without our senses we would lose our ability to affect and be affected by the world and by other bodies, because the senses set in motion assemblages of bodies
through lights, sounds, colors, textures, moods, temperatures, odors, emotions, tastes, and narratives, and without the senses the affective flows that move these set, which Deleuze (1984) calls the assemblage, would cease to exist
have opened up avenues of research within the human sciences, especially those focused on understanding the body, agency, relationality, post-humanism, and post-phenomenology.
While it remains unexplored in archaeology, affect has a great potential to change the discipline, especially when considered from the point
of view of relationality
colonial practices in Egypt from the 18th century to the present day, we aim to analyse a possible “line of flight” to colonial thought appealing to inquire about other relationships with nature.
Keywords: Sensorial Archaeology, Material Culture, Imagination, Scientific Colonialism
When we experience the sensory world through practices and performances we are potentially creating memories and narratives, which in turn will influence the way we learn and mean landscapes. Our sensory experience in places
does not represent a fleeting contact with the materiality of the world, because all perception is loaded from memory. Through sensory experiences mnemonic records are created and reproduced, since memories are generated in the body
of the participants from the daily experience. Our experience of the landscape is completely unscientific, as measured by Western science.
institutionalized material culture. Why? Whilethe most obvious answer is that touching can result in destruction of objects, I believe there is something deeper involved in this
matter, which is the construction of the sense of touch as the sense of uneducated, wild men. To touch or not to touch establishes politics of authority that defines the Self and
the Other. At the same time, when the possibility of bodily interaction with the objects is excluded, public understanding is limited and a specific model of understanding the world is perpetuated.
at least in the most traditional and hegemonic currents, are marked by the
idea that the world is composed of individual entities, each one with
specific and separated properties. In order to question this model, I will use the concept of Diffraction proposed by Haraway and Barad, to understand how different encounters over time actualized Theban Tomb 123, located in the plain of Sheikh Abdel Qurna, in Luxor, Egypt. The first encounter to be analysed is the encounter between Amenemhet with TT123 in the Pharaonic period (1479–1425 BC). The second involves encounters between TT123 with Qurnawis, a community that between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries used the pharaonic tombs on the West Bank of Luxor as housing. Finally, I will analyse the encounters between archaeologists with TT123. Thinking about these different encounters shows us that this space that archaeologists call TT 123, rather than being a fixed materiality, is a transitory materiality and meeting point of different ontologies.
sólo será posible si pensamos en las teorías indígenas más seriamente
como ontologías más que como epistemologías. Necesitamos tratar las
teorías no occidentales de modo simétrico a las teorías occidentales.
Pero antes de querer cambiar la arqueología que practicamos
necesitamos cambiar nuestra postura frente al mundo. Tenemos que
repensar nuestras vidas, nuestras emociones, nuestros afectos y nuestros
sentidos. Creo que ya no se trata sólo de repensar la arqueología que
practicamos o, incluso, de reeducar nuestros sentidos sino de aprender
nuevamente a escuchar, a ver, a oler, a sentir. Sólo después de salir del
coma profundo al que estamos sometidos en nuestro mundo moderno
podremos repensar nuestra práctica disciplinaria y defnir si queremos
o no continuar llamándola arqueología o si queremos pensar en algo
alternativo para entender la relación de los diferentes seres y entidades
con el mundo material.
approaches have been introduced to try to correct the problem by opening up archaeology to multiple doings and alternative ontologies. However, what we have seen is just a rhetoric of change, for we allow and recognize differences while limiting their presence and performance. In this way, we not only keep alive the privileges of the archaeologist against the narratives of the past, but also perpetuate a specific form of archaeology. As a result, we continue to reproduce the epistemic violence and the modernist ontological basis of the discipline that holds the view, among others, of the body as a universal element and the senses as physiological tools that serve only to capture the stimuli of the world.
with the world, the means by which all values and practices are performed. Even our memories are created and activated through our sensorial relationship with the material world. Without our senses we would lose our ability to affect and be affected by the world and by other bodies, because the senses set in motion assemblages of bodies
through lights, sounds, colors, textures, moods, temperatures, odors, emotions, tastes, and narratives, and without the senses the affective flows that move these set, which Deleuze (1984) calls the assemblage, would cease to exist
have opened up avenues of research within the human sciences, especially those focused on understanding the body, agency, relationality, post-humanism, and post-phenomenology.
While it remains unexplored in archaeology, affect has a great potential to change the discipline, especially when considered from the point
of view of relationality
colonial practices in Egypt from the 18th century to the present day, we aim to analyse a possible “line of flight” to colonial thought appealing to inquire about other relationships with nature.
Keywords: Sensorial Archaeology, Material Culture, Imagination, Scientific Colonialism
When we experience the sensory world through practices and performances we are potentially creating memories and narratives, which in turn will influence the way we learn and mean landscapes. Our sensory experience in places
does not represent a fleeting contact with the materiality of the world, because all perception is loaded from memory. Through sensory experiences mnemonic records are created and reproduced, since memories are generated in the body
of the participants from the daily experience. Our experience of the landscape is completely unscientific, as measured by Western science.
institutionalized material culture. Why? Whilethe most obvious answer is that touching can result in destruction of objects, I believe there is something deeper involved in this
matter, which is the construction of the sense of touch as the sense of uneducated, wild men. To touch or not to touch establishes politics of authority that defines the Self and
the Other. At the same time, when the possibility of bodily interaction with the objects is excluded, public understanding is limited and a specific model of understanding the world is perpetuated.
Foreword. Uncomfortable; Introduction. In the Hospital: Among Saints, Philosophers and Scientists; Chapter One Childhood Friend: Intra-acting with the World; Chapter Two. The Tutankhamun’s Mask: Affecting and Being Affected; Chapter Three. Between the Visible and the Invisible; Chapter Four. An Old Magazine; Chapter Five. It's Cold in Luxor’s Streets!; Chapter Six. The Garden; Chapter Seven. The Butterfly: A Manifesto.