“Naked presence and disciplinary wording,” in S.C. Humphreys and R.G. Wagner, eds, Modernity’s Classics. Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context. Springer-Verlag Berlin-Heidelberg, 2013, pp. 293-313 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Experiencing the Past: On the Character of Archaeology
Routledge, 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.
Isayev E. 2006. Archaeology ≠ Object as History ≠ Text. Debates in World Archaeology 38: 599-610.
While interdisciplinarity may be an admirable goal many still doubt its benefits. The paper seeks to articulate the methods used to work across disciplines and considers the obstacles that stand in the way of inter-rather than multi-disciplinarity. Sauer's volume is used as a starting point to highlight key concerns in integrating archaeology and ancient history: the assumption that disciplines are determined by evidence type; the encouragement of specialisms to be discipline specific; the lack of differentiation between Mode One and Mode Two collaborative projects. Briefly tracing the development of the two subjects, suggestions are made as to why history is associated with text and archaeology with object. This is followed by proposals for two key areas of integration beyond concerns of evidence type: the struggle of the two disciplines to deal with accessing the past while being products of the present, and explaining patterns of change.
and a few archaeologists trained in Classical and Near Eastern studies find employment in departments of anthropology. The humanistic and/or social science aspects of Classical archaeology are subjects of considerable interest and debate . In other parts of the world, archaeology is considered part of history (for example in India) or as a department on its own (for example in the United Kingdom and see below).
After interpretation: Remembering archaeology
Current Swedish Archaeology 20, 2012
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 in the making: the human face of pasts-in-the-present
2013
How archaeology works - from the point of view of its practitioners. This is an essay for Kristian Kristiansen. It appeared in his Festschrift edited by Sophie Bergerbrant and Serena Sabatini, Göteborg, University of Göteborg, 2013. It is a continuation of a conversation we started with Bill Rathje at Stanford that appeared in the collection Archaeology in the Making that I edited with Bill Rathje and Chris Witmore (Routledge 2013) and outlines the main findings presented there - how archaeology works as a discipline, its agendas and practices.
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.