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Archaeological Theory syllabus 2016
Archaeological Theory syllabus 2016
Timothy PauketatAll archaeology—regardless of how it works, explains, or interprets—engages with theory at some level because all research is based on a set of premises and assumptions, in turn founded on epistemology. This course is the second of two required archaeology theory courses. It examines, in particular, the most recent and cutting‐edge theories of materiality, relationality, identity, sense, temporality, agency, ontology, corporeality, and memory work that today's archaeologists employ in understanding the past. Discussions should not focus on describing the theories but on theorizing, the continuous act of building theory—always reflexively related to that which we seek to explain or interpret.
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This course explores how archaeologists make sense of the world from artifacts of the past. Human practices and cultural processes resonate, live within the material traces that surround us in our everyday life. How do archaeologists re-imagine these traces as residues of real people in history rather than imaginary beings and ghosts? How do archaeologists place material objects and spaces in the context of human practices, cultural processes and long-term history? In short, we will read, think and write about archaeological ways of thinking about the world. Archaeology, as a modern discipline, investigates the past through the study of its material remains. This material record is documented and interpreted through various intellectual activities from fieldwork to publication. But archaeologists are usually torn between their work in the field (digging, surveying, drawing, travelling, taking notes) and in their academic environment (processing data, interpreting, publishing). Throughout the semester we will spend some thought on this divided life between the field and discourse, and explore some of the novel attempts have been made to bridge them. Archaeology frequently becomes entangled with our daily lives through its politicized engagement with the past and issues of identity. We will examine various theoretical approaches and historiographic models used in archaeology since its inception in the 19th century, while putting a particular emphasis on the recent developments in the theories and methodologies in archaeology in the last few decades. It is intended to provide a solid theoretical and historigraphic basis for the discipline of archaeology. The first few weeks of the course will be dedicated to discussing the central movements in the discipline such as culture-history, New Archaeology, and contextual archaeology, while the second half deals with more contemporary theoretical paradigms such as gender and sexuality, technology and agency, space, place and landscape, and issues of cultural heritage. Particular archaeological materials, sites, projects will be used in discussing the potentials and disadvantages of various approaches. Archaeological case studies will be drawn mostly from the ancient Western Asian and Mediterranean worlds.
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).
What is the nature and disciplinary status of archaeology? Is it a natural science, a social science, or one of the humanities? Or, is it a hybrid field with a complex and distinctive engagement with all three? What questions do archaeologists ask and what methods have they developed to answer them? Is there a unified theory of archaeology, or are there multiple theories appropriate for different research interests? If the latter is the case, how are these theories to be resolved when they come into conflict? How is archaeology practiced in the contemporary moment? And, how should it be? What does archaeology offer us as four-field anthropologists? This graduate seminar is an introduction to the method and theory of archaeological anthropology and to contemporary issues facing its practitioners. It emphasizes the varied ways inferences are made about past and present human behavior from material culture. It reviews the fundamental epistemologies of explanation and understanding, as well as the ways that archaeology is related to the other subdisciplines of anthropology and additional fields in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. It engages critically but sympathetically with the history of the discipline, investigates how archaeologists engage with contemporary anthropological debates and broader social issues, and discusses complex issues facing practicing archaeologists today. The four core seminars, of which this class is one, are the basis for comprehensive written exams taken at the end of the first year of graduate study in the Department of Anthropology. A list of study questions based on the topics covered in this course will be provided at the end of the seminar for use in exam preparation.
Do archaeologists recover the material record of past processes or the residues of the material conditions that made the presence of a kind of humanness possible? This paper attempts to emphasize the importance of distinguishing between these two options and argues the case for, and briefly contemplates the practical implications of, an archaeology of the human presence. Archaeology's propensity to range across a variety of theoretical approaches, from the positivism of the new archaeology, through structuralism, post-structuralism and phenomenology, and on to the current concerns with the extended mind, network theory and the new materialism, and all within a period of fifty or so years, has been taken as indicative of an intellectual posturing that detracts from the 'real' business of doing archaeology (Bintliff 2011 and 2015). This criticism seems, to me at least, to miss the point. All these theoretical approaches are no more than ways to think about the same fundamental question: why do we do archaeology? They allow us to evaluate what we are attempting to bring into view by our study of the material residues of the past. The means by which we establish the object of our studies are not the same means as those that we must employ to achieve such an objective. It has been the failure to distinguish between our definition of what we are studying from the question of how we intend to study it that has resulted in the various theoretical approaches appearing as if they were needless methodological distractions rather than the essential mechanisms that will open-up perspectives on the reality that is the objective of our studies. This confusion between objective and method, which is expressed by the assumption that the objective of archaeology is given by the current methodology, continues to have a detrimental effect upon wider perceptions of the discipline. Most outside observers, along with all too many practitioners, define archaeology in the banal terms of digging, discovery of old things, and the physical analysis of those things (cf. Thomas 2004, 67-9). It is from this perspective that the history of archaeology is written as the development of techniques of recovery and material analysis. This consigns archaeology to the role of antiquarianism, the relevance of which for many contemporary concerns seems marginal at best. Such a negative perception surely contrasts with the more challenging view that archaeology could offer of itself, namely as an enquiry into the full chronological and global extent of humanity's place in history.
Current Swedish Archaeology 20
After interpretation: Remembering archaeology2012 •
In the light of some significant anniversaries, this paper discusses the fate of archaeological theory after the heyday of postprocessualism. While once considered a radical and revolutionary alternative, post-processual or interpretative archaeology remarkably soon became normalized, mainstream and hegem-onic, leading to the theoretical lull that has characterized its aftermath. Recently, however, this consen-sual pause has been disrupted by new materialist perspectives that radically depart from the postproces-sual orthodoxy. Some outcomes of these perspectives are proposed and discussed, the most significant being a return to archaeology-an archaeology that sacri fices the imperatives of historical narratives, so-ciologies, and hermeneutics in favour of a trust in the soiled and ruined things themselves and the memories they afford.
"Archaeology has always been marked by its particular care, obligation, and loyalty to things. While archaeologists may not share similar perspectives or practices, they find common ground in their concern for objects monumental and mundane. This book considers the myriad ways that archaeologists engage with things in order to craft stories, both big and small, concerning our relations with materials and the nature of the past. Literally the “science of old things,” archaeology does not discover the past as it was but must work with what remains. Such work involves the tangible mediation of past and present, of people and their cultural fabric, for things cannot be separated from society. Things are us. This book does not set forth a sweeping new theory. It does not seek to transform the discipline of archaeology. Rather, it aims to understand precisely what archaeologists do and to urge practitioners toward a renewed focus on and care for things." REVIEWS: "It is engagingly concerned with the archaeology of the present. It has a rich and up-to-date bibliography, well versed in archaeological theory. It invites us, in an informed way, to reexamine the nature and substance of archaeology. So, despite its lapses, it stands on the side of angels." - Colin Renfrew, University of Cambridge "A broad, illuminating, and well-researched overview of theoretical problems pertaining to archaeology. The authors make a calm defense of the role of objects against tedious claims of 'fetishism.'" -Graham Harman, author of The Quadruple Object "This book exhorts the reader to embrace the materiality of archaeology by recognizing how every step in the discipline's scientific processes involves interaction with myriad physical artifacts, ranging from the camel-hair brush to profile drawings to virtual reality imaging. At the same time, the reader is taken on a phenomenological journey into various pasts, immersed in the lives of peoples from other times, compelled to engage their senses with the sights, smells, and noises of the publics and places whose remains they study. This is a refreshingly original and provocative look at the meaning of the material culture that lies at the foundation of the archaeological discipline." -Michael Brian Schiffer, author of The Material Life of Human Beings “This volume is a radical call to fundamentally rethink the ontology, profession, and practice of archaeology. The authors present a closely reasoned, epistemologically sound argument for why archaeology should be considered the discipline of things, rather than its more commonplace definition as the study of the human past through material traces. All scholars and students of archaeology will need to read and contemplate this thought-provoking book.” -Wendy Ashmore, Professor of Anthropology, UC Riverside
University of Toronto Archaeology Centre; Free Webinar: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_m6B1UkAeS3SYsyV_d3iLzQ
Webinar Oct. 2-3, 2020, Debates in Archaeology: Exploring Relational, Ontological, and Posthuman Turns in Archaeology (register here: Free Webinar: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_m6B1UkAeS3SYsyV_d3iLzQ)Register here: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_m6B1UkAeS3SYsyV_d3iLzQ Featuring plenary speakers Ben Alberti and Kisha Supernant with presentations from Oliver Harris, Sophie Moore, Rachel Crellin, Lindsay Montgomery, and Craig Cipolla
1992 •
All things archaeological - from archaeological method, the connections between archaeology and modernity, through a process-relational paradigm, to the heritage industry and archaeology as a mode of cultural production, with an outline of archaeology as craft. Overall it is an exploration of the archaeological imagination, as I called it when I was at University Wales Lampeter, with archaeology a relationship between the remains of the past and present interests. I wrote this book while still making my way into archaeology - it brought together what I had been saying with Chris Tilley in the 1980s with a personal vision of what the archaeogical past means to many people now. The book takes risks with experimental writing and imaging, including eidetics and collage. Twenty five years after publication it is pleasing to see that much of what I was writing about then has come to figure significantly in archaeological thinking: — the book is a kind of analysis of the discourse of archaeology and exemplifies an interest in how the past may be mediated - written and visualized - imagery, simulation, narrative — the book argues for an extension of archaeological interest to include the contemporary world - archaeologies of the contemporary past, with a particular focus upon the convergence of archaeology and contemporary art — in this the book deals with archaeology's cultural associations with modernity - horror fiction to gardening, forensics to fakery — the cultural politics of archaeology are revealed through an ethnography of archaeology, archaeologists and those with archaeological interests the book argues for a new conception of heritage - not academic disdain for popular interest in the remains of the past, but a celebration of certain kinds of actuality that embody creative relationships with the past — rather than have archaeology only engaged in explaining and interpreting the past, the book argues for a post-interpretive turn to take us beyond epistemology into work upon the materiality of the past - ontologies of relationship between past and present — this means thinking about the materiality of cultural experience and its embodiment - a focus on experiences past and present in a process-relational paradigm related to a reading of Nietzsche, Bergson, Adorno's negative dialectics, and Deleuze's nomadics.
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