Archaeologies of the Modern (original) (raw)
Related papers
Archaeology, Modernism, Modernity
Modernism/modernity, 2004
"Archaeologies of the Modern" invites a double explanation: first, of a title that associates the modern(ist) scene with the excavation of apparently fragmentary pasts; second, of the issue's unconventional format. The issue is dialogical in structure and provocative in intent. It conjoins essays authored by cultural historians and by archaeologists, and accompanies each contribution by an archaeologist with a brief response from a cultural historian, and vice versa. The aim of this device, as well as of the special issue as a whole, is to inaugurate a dialogue between reflections on archaeology as a modern discipline and inquiries into the archaeological imagination in nineteenth-and twentieth-century cultural forms. We believe that this dialogue transgresses the limits of conventional interdisciplinarity because it excavates forms in the cultural imaginary that find a home in no orthodox disciplinary field.
Archaeology's Place in Modernity 2004 Modernism/modernity 11, 17-34
It is widely acknowledged that the practice of archaeology emerged in the modern period. However, this article makes the more radical claim that modernity represents the ground of the possibility of archaeology. Archaeology is deeply connected with modes of thought, forms of organization, and social practices that are distinctively modern. So ironically, archaeology studies past worlds through an intellectual apparatus that is thoroughly embedded in the present. In this essay, the various strands of archaeology's debt to modernity are investigated, and it is suggested that the discipline can aspire to a 'countermodern' position by embracing considerations of meaning, ethics, politics, and rhetoric.
An Archaeology of the Contemporary Era
Routledge, 2019
An Archaeology of the Contemporary Era approaches the contemporary age, between the late nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, as an archaeological period defined by specific material processes. It reflects on the theory and practice of the archaeology of the contemporary past from epistemological, political, ethical and aesthetic viewpoints, and characterises the present based on archaeological traces from the spatial, temporal and material excesses that define it. The materiality of our era, the book argues, and particularly its ruins and rubbish, reveals something profound, original and disturbing about humanity. This is the first attempt at describing the contemporary era from an archaeological point of view. Global in scope, the book brings together case studies from every continent and considers sources from peripheral and rarely considered traditions, meanwhile engaging in an interdisciplinary dialogue with philosophy, anthropology, history and geography. The document includes the table of contents and Chapter 1.
Some years ago, postmodernist positions demonstrated the positivist and evolutionist bias of modern archeology. It was argued that the past is constructed from the present and for the present, as every human group needs to create a discourse on their origins in order to feel security and stability in that present as well as to legitimize and make sense of their present condition. Postprocessual perspectives already unveiled this “political” backstage of the archaeological reconstructions of the past, demonstrating the inconsistence of the processual pretended “objectivity” when studying the past. However, postprocessualists did not go further or deeper in their analysis. They did not question the links between the type of “pasts” that archeology recreates and the type of society we are constructing in the present. This issue will be the center of this text, which will try to analyze the ontological implications of constructing a discourse about human origins based on criteria as change (and not permanence), power (and not cooperation) and reason (and not emotion).
Contemporary archaeologies: excavating now
2009
Reviewed by Marina La Salle If the~e 's one word that could neatly sum up this book, it'd be: ' unconventional.' But this volume cannot be so easily summed-indeed, it would be a disservice to try-so to this, I will add, ' refreshing,' ' liberating,' ' unsettling,' ' innovative,' and 'unexpected. ' Throughout, its emphasis is on plurality: no one approach or collection of methods, aims, or interpretations is offered, for instead the core philosophy of this volume revolves around diversity and creativity. Like ' historical' archaeologists, those who study the ' recent past' face criticism both within the discipline and without. Objections are based on two points, the first being how the past is often valued-older is better. Why would we want to preserve all this 'modem stuff' anyway? We already know what it means ... don 't we? This ties into the second assumption, that archaeology is "what you do if you do not have books" (Piccinj I I). Yet books are themselves artifacts of particular contexts, agendas and perspectives, and so rather than making trungs easier, they usually further complicate matters.. Both critiques represent the strength of 'contemporary archaeologies,' for studying the material world of today makes it possible to compare a plethora of evidence from material culture, oral and written texts, and ethnography, allowing us to speak directly with people about the the things they use. For Holtorf, these evidences converge in the concept of ' materiality'-the dynamic relationship between people and !rungs-and indeed the chapters in this book actually "tell stories through material cul ture" (Piccini 12). A focus on the meaning highlights that archaeology is wholly a contemporary practice, undertaken today to serve the interests of today, and thus archaeologies of the contemporary demonstrate "the impossibili ty of speaking about the past in any other terms than the present" (Picciill l 0). The volume is organized into three parts: "On the character of archaeology/heritage," " Recording and preserving twentiethcentury heritage?," and "New dimensions of materiality." The myriad topics, methods, and presentation styles really resist such artificial organization, but for ease of discussion, l present the chapters here thematically, just one of the many ways this book could be understood.