Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c4f8m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T08:42:49.077Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Finding symmetry? Archaeology, Objects, and Posthumanism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 May 2021

Christopher Witmore
Christopher Witmore*
Affiliation:
Classical & Modern Languages & Literatures Texas Tech University CMLL Building 2906 18th St Lubbock, TX79409USA Email: christopher.witmore@ttu.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Well before the turn of the century, it had become clear that archaeology's aspiration to study the past was, true to the modern project, a pretext for a deeper desire to fabricate its objects. Material culture, materiality, the material past, material residues, heritage—the objects of interpretive (post-processual) archaeology could only be characterized as a continuation of this modern project. While finding symmetry was tied to an upheaval from this mode of disciplinary production, it may now be characterized as one cue among others in more agile archaeological theory. After briefly contrasting archaeological thought before and after the turn of the century, this article sketches out some of the core features of an object-oriented approach to things, including symmetry, irreduction, emergent causality, and strangeness, among others. It then outlines how, by finding our way alongside things, we might aspire to ever more creative work with archaeological objects and their pasts. Finally, it closes with a few words on Posthumanism.

Type
Special Section: Debating Posthumanism in Archaeology
Information
Cambridge Archaeological Journal , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , August 2021 , pp. 477 - 485
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Andrews, J., Barrett, J.C. & Lewis, J.S.C., 2000. Interpretation not record. The practice of archaeology. Antiquity 74, 525–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barrett, J.C., 1994. Fragments from Antiquity. An archaeology of social life in Britain, 2900–1200 BC. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bintliff, J., 2006. Experiencing archaeological fieldwork, in A Companion to Archaeology, ed. Bintliff, J.. Oxford: Blackwell, 397–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braidotti, R., 2019. The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Bryant, L., 2012. Thoughts on Posthumanism. Larval Subjects. https://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2012/11/10/thoughts-on-posthumanism/Google Scholar
Callon, M., 1984. Some elements of a sociology of translation: domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieuc Bay. The Sociological Review 32(1_suppl), 196–233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chouquer, G., 2007. Les centuriations: topographie et morphologie, reconstitution et mémoire des formes [Centuriations: topography and morphology, reconstruction and memory of forms], in Archeologia Aerea. Studi di aerotopografia archeologia II. Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 65–82.Google Scholar
Crellin, R.J. 2020. Change and Archaeology. Abingdon: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeLanda, M., 2006. A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage theory and social complexity. New York (NY): Continuum.Google Scholar
Farstadvoll, S., 2019. A Speculative Archaeology of Excess: Exploring the Afterlife of a Derelict Landscape Garden. Doctoral dissertation, Arctic University of Norway.Google Scholar
Gillings, M., Hacıgüzeller, P. & Lock, G. (eds), 2018. Re-Mapping Archaeology: Critical perspectives, alternative mappings. Abingdon: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glovier, E. & Steel, L., in press. Beyond the ‘thingification’ of worlds: archaeology and the New Materialisms. Journal of Material Culture.Google Scholar
Harman, G. 2018. Object-Oriented Ontology. A new theory of everything. New York (NY): Penguin.Google Scholar
Harris, O.J.T. & Cipolla, C.N., 2017. Archaeological Theory in the New Millennium. Introducing current perspectives. New York (NY): Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harrison, R. 2011. Surface Assemblages. Towards an archaeology in and of the present. Archaeological Dialogues 18(2), 141–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodder, I., 1999. The Archaeological Process. An introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Khatchadourian, L., 2016. Imperial Matter: Ancient Persia and the archaeology of empires. Berkeley (CA): University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latour, B., 2003. Is re-modernization occurring? Theory, Culture and Society 20(2), 35–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latour, B., 2005. Reassembling the Social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lucas, G. & Witmore, C., forthcoming. What is a commitment to theory in the wake of its fall? Norwegian Archaeology Review.Google Scholar
Olivier, L., 2011. The Dark Abyss of Time: Archaeology and memory (trans. Greenspan, A.). Lanham (MD): AltaMira.Google Scholar
Olsen, B., 2003. Material culture after text. Re-membering things. Norwegian Archaeological Review 36, 87–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olsen, B., 2010. In Defense of Things: Archaeology and the ontology of objects. Lanham (MD): AltaMira.Google Scholar
Olsen, B., Shanks, M., Webmoor, T. & Witmore, C., 2012. Archaeology: The discipline of things. Berkeley (CA): University of California Press.Google Scholar
Olsen, B. & Witmore, C., 2015. Archaeology, symmetry and the ontology of things. A response to critics. Archaeological Dialogues 22(2), 187–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pétursdóttir, Þ. 2014. Things out-of-hand: the aesthetics of abandonment, in Ruin Memories: Materialities, aesthetics and the archaeology of the recent past, eds Olsen, B. & Péturdóttir, Þ.. London: Routledge, 335–64.Google Scholar
Pétursdóttir, Þ. & Olsen, B., 2018. Theory adrift: the matter of archaeological thinking. Journal of Social Archaeology 18(1), 97–117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shanks, M., 1992. Experiencing the Past: On the character of archaeology. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Thomas, J. 2004. The Great Dark Book. Archaeology, experience, and interpretation, in A Companion to Archaeology, ed. Bintliff, J.. Oxford: Blackwell, 21–36.Google Scholar
Webmoor, T., 2013. STS, symmetry, archaeology, in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Contemporary World, eds Graves-Brown, P., Harrison, R. & Piccini, A.. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 105–20.Google Scholar
Witmore, C., 2006. Vision, media, noise and the percolation of time: symmetrical approaches to the mediation of the material world. Journal of Material Culture 11(3), 267–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Witmore, C., 2012. The realities of the past: archaeology, object-orientations, pragmatology, in Modern Materials, eds Fortenberry, B.R. & McAtackney, L.. Oxford: Archaeopress, 25–36.Google Scholar
Witmore, C., 2015. No past but within things: a cave and archaeology in the form of a dialogue, in Allegory of the Cave Painting, eds Mircan, M. & van Gerven Oei, V.W.J.. Milan: Mousse Publishing, 375–94.Google Scholar
Witmore, C., 2017a. Things are the grounds of all archaeology: notes on the Arvanitia Xenia, in Clashes of Times: The contemporary past as a challenge for archaeology, eds Blaising, J.M., Driessen, J., Legendre, J.P. & Olivier, L.. Louvain: Louvain University Press, 231–46.Google Scholar
Witmore, C., 2017b. Complexities and emergence: the case of Argos, in Regional Approaches to Society and Complexity. Studies in honor of John F. Cherry, eds Knodell, A.R. & Leppard, T.P.. London: Equinox, 268–87.Google Scholar
Witmore, C., 2018. For the objects, archaeology, and the archaeological. Archaeological Dialogues 25(1), 28–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Witmore, C., 2020a. Old Lands. A Chorography of the Eastern Peloponnese, Greece. New York (NY): Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Witmore, C., 2020b. Symmetrical archaeology, in The Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, ed. Smith, C.. New York (NY): Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30018-0_2708.Google Scholar