The Discipline of Things: Matters of Care in Archaeology (original) (raw)
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.
Archaeology: The discipline of things
"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
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.
Archaeology, symmetry and the ontology of things. A response to critics
This article responds to recent critiques of ‘symmetrical archaeology’. It addresses three common claims: (1) that symmetrical archaeology fails to see a difference between living and non-living entities, (2) that symmetrical archaeology makes no room for humans and other living things, (3) that symmetrical archaeology lacks any sincere ethical concern for things. This article demonstrates how these claims are based on common misunderstandings or misreadings, and offers further clarifications as to its perspective on ontology, ethics and things.
Things Are Us! A commentary on what comes under the banner of a 'social' archaeology
What work does the adjective ‘social’ in social archaeology do? What is the character of human/things relations under the rubric of social archaeology? We raise these questions in relation to the recent Companion to Social Archaeology by Meskell and Preucel. While the corrective of the ‘social’ has been extremely productive, in broaching these questions we enter very murky waters. Our task in this article is to show where meanings of the ‘social’ have broken down; our charge is to demonstrate how frames of reference in understanding people/things relations have become muddled. By building on the strength of archaeology with regard to things, we seek to revisit the question: what is it to be human?
2007
Symmetry is an epistemological and ethical principle developed in the social study of scientific practice. This essay connects a symmetrical archaeology to major trends in the discipline since the 1960s and to key components of archaeological practice - relational ontologies, mixtures of past and present, people and things, biology and culture, individual and society. Symmetrical archaeology is a culmination of effort in archaeology to undercut these modernist dualities and to recognize the vitality of the present past. Symmetry adds new force to the claim that archaeologists have a unique perspective on human engagements with things, on social agency and constructions of contemporary identity. This paper was part of a collection in the journal World Archaeology involving Chris Witmore, Tim Webmoor and Bjørnar Olsen discussing this principle of symmetry as part of a broader post humanist and materialist agenda in what some have called a new ontological turn. A detailed introduction to this prospect of a materialist archaeology can be found in the book Archaeology: the Discipline of Things (University of California 2012) by the four of us - https://www.academia.edu/1234484/Archaeology\_The\_discipline\_of\_things
Archaeological Dialogues, 2018
The paper ponders on the object of archaeology, called here 'the archaeological.' It argues that the existence of such an object is a necessary premise of the field and that ultimately it is on this object that the validity of all claims and arguments must rest. The paper suggests that the archaeological be conceived as a cultural phenomenon that consists in being disengaged from the social, an understanding that positions archaeology as a counterpart to the social sciences and the humanities, rather than a member in the same milieu. The first part of the paper focuses on the position of the archaeological with reference to the concepts of 'Nature' and 'Culture' that eventually leads us to a confrontation of archaeological statics with the dynamics of the world. Efforts to justify and understand archaeological statics, consequently, leads to the recognition of a constitutive distinction between buried and non-buried conditions, upon which the differentiation of the archaeological from the social is established.