Debating Archaeological Empiricism: The Ambiguity of Material Evidence 0415744083, 9780415744089

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Debating Archaeological Empiricism

Debating Archaeological Empiricism examines the current intellectual turn in archaeology, primarily in its prehistoric and classical branches, characterized by a return to the archaeological evidence. Each chapter in the book approaches the empirical from a different angle, illuminating contemporary views and uses of the archaeological material in interpretations and theory building. The inclusion of differing perspectives in this collection mirrors the conceptual landscape that characterizes the discipline, contributing to the theoretical debate in archaeology and classical studies. As well as giving an important snapshot of the practical as well as theoretical uses of materiality in archaeologies today, this volume looks to the future of archaeology as an empirical discipline. Charlotta Hillerdal is Lecturer in Archaeology, University of Aberdeen, Scotland. Hillerdal’s research focuses on theoretical archaeology, social identities and ethnic constructions. Her main research areas are Indigenous archaeology (esp. Yupik Alaska) and Viking Age Scandinavia and diaspora. Previous publications include People in Between: Ethnicity and Material Culture—a New Approach to Deconstructed Concepts. Johannes Siapkas is Associate Professor in Classical Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University, Sweden. Siapkas’s research focuses on the epistemological foundations of Classical Studies and on modern appropriations of classical antiquity. Previous publications include Heterological Ethnicity and Displaying the Ideals of Antiquity (co-authored).

Routledge Studies in Archaeology

1 An Archaeology of Materials Substantial Transformations in Early Prehistoric Europe Chantal Conneller

7 Materiality and Consumption in the Bronze Age Mediterranean Louise Steel

2 Roman Urban Street Networks Streets and the Organization of Space in Four Cities Alan Kaiser

8 Archaeology in Environment and Technology Intersections and Transformations Edited by David Frankel, Jennifer M. Webb and Susan Lawrence

3 Tracing Prehistoric Social Networks through Technology A Diachronic Perspective on the Aegean Edited by Ann Brysbaert 4 Hadrian’s Wall and the End of Empire The Roman Frontier in the 4th and 5th Centuries Rob Collins

9 An Archaeology of Land Ownership Edited by Maria Relaki and Despina Catapoti 10 From Prehistoric Villages to Cities Settlement Aggregation and Community Transformation Edited by Jennifer Birch

5 U.S. Cultural Diplomacy and Archaeology Soft Power, Hard Heritage Christina Luke and Morag M. Kersel

11 Space and Time in Mediterranean Prehistory Edited by Stella Souvatzi and Athena Hadji

6 The Prehistory of Iberia Debating Early Social Stratification and the State Edited by Maria Cruz Berrocal, Leonardo García Sanjuán, and Antonio Gilman

12 Open-Air Rock-Art Conservation and Management State of the Art and Future Perspectives Edited by Timothy Darvill and António Pedro Batarda Fernandes

13 Knowledge Networks and Craft Traditions in the Ancient World Material Crossovers Edited by Katharina RebaySalisbury, Ann Brysbaert and Lin Foxhall

17 The Archaeology of Bronze Age Iberia Argaric Societies Edited by Gonzalo Aranda Jiménez, Sandra Montón-Subías and Margarita Sánchez Romero

14 Sharing Archaeology Academe, Practice, and the Public Edited by Peter G Stone and Zhao Hui

18 Debating Archaeological Empiricism The Ambiguity of Material Evidence Edited by Charlotta Hillerdal and Johannes Siapkas

15 The Archaeology of Roman Britain Biography and Identity Adam Rogers 16 The Maritime Archaeology of a Modern Conflict Comparing the Archaeology of German Submarine Wrecks to the Historical Text Innes McCartney

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Debating Archaeological Empiricism The Ambiguity of Material Evidence Edited by Charlotta Hillerdal and Johannes Siapkas

First published 2015 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2015 Taylor & Francis The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data CIP data has been applied for. ISBN: 978-0-415-74408-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-81317-2 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

Introduction: Debating Archaeological Empiricism

1

JOHANNES SIAPKAS AND CHARLOTTA HILLERDAL

1 Why ‘The Death of Archaeological Theory’?

11

JULIAN THOMAS

Comment by Johannes Siapkas Comment by Christopher Witmore

2 Archaeology and the Second Empiricism

32 34

37

CHRISTOPHER WITMORE

Comment by Frands Herschend Comment by Michael Fotiadis

3 Public Archaeological Challenges in the 2010s: Learning from Participatory Action in Practice

62 65

68

KATHERINE HAUPTMAN

Comment by Charlotta Hillerdal Comment by Julian Thomas

4 Students First, Please!

99 101

104

MICHAEL FOTIADIS

Comment by Frands Herschend Comment by Katherine Hauptman

5 Archaeology Is History or It’s History

117 120

125

FRANDS HERSCHEND

Comment by Katherine Hauptman Comment by Johannes Siapkas

6 Empirical Tensions in the Materialities of Time

138 142

144

CHARLOTTA HILLERDAL

Comment by Julian Thomas Comment by Michael Fotiadis

160 164

viii Contents 7 Neo-empirical Mixtures

166

JOHANNES SIAPKAS

Comment by Christopher Witmore Comment by Charlotta Hillerdal

Debating Archaeological Empiricism: Some Closing Comments

181 185

188

GAVIN LUCAS

Contributors Index

193 197

Introduction Debating Archaeological Empiricism Johannes Siapkas and Charlotta Hillerdal

Reflections on what it is that we do as archaeologists are an integral part of archaeology. Archaeology is a discipline which has material traces from the past at its core, and our reflections have accordingly been focused on the pertinent issues of how we excavate, analyse and interpret archaeological finds. In other words, a central feature of archaeology is its empiricism: we dwell on empirical evidence. Consequently, archaeological theory has, to a great extent, revolved around analytical models that concern the archaeological record. However, we can also argue that archaeology until the late twentieth century was methodologically advanced but theoretically underdeveloped. During the last decades of the twentieth century, archaeological theory developed into a sophisticated discourse which also encompassed reflection on the social, political and ideological facets of archaeology, and archaeological theory crystallized into another core part of the discipline. In the twenty-first century the debates about archaeological theory are moving in two opposing directions. Going in one direction, archaeological theory has developed further into what could be described as an archaeological sub-field, and going in the other direction, a contingent of scholars maintain that archaeological theory has come to a standstill. These scholars claim that contemporary archaeology has reached a post-theoretical era— we beg to differ. The animated debates on archaeological theory that we witnessed in the early 1990s may have passed, but theory continues to be a pertinent issue for archaeologists. However, the focus of the theoretical debates has shifted, and nowadays there are no clear-cut factions in archaeological theory. This publication is the result of a workshop that was organized in 2010 at Uppsala University, Sweden. Our aim was to rejuvenate the discussions about archaeological theory, and in order to do so, we invited scholars with different views to reflect, using their own personal experience and perspective, on the state of archaeology today. The contributions collected in this volume illustrate that we are now at a junction.

2 Johannes Siapkas and Charlotta Hillerdal FRAGMENTS The fragment is a crucial conceptual notion in archaeology. Archaeological evidence consists of fragments: Single finds are found broken, and clusters of evidence are viewed as pieces of larger wholes. We sort and piece these together into heuristic constructs such as archaeological cultures or the archaeological record (see Childe 1956). The fragmented archaeological record has long been perceived as a problem which we strive to solve through increasingly sophisticated practices. However, during the last decade, archaeologists have begun to endorse fragmentation. Fragmentation is no longer viewed as a problem to solve but rather as a state of being that requires elaboration. In addition to the empirical material, we have also begun to conceptualize archaeological understanding as fragmentary (González-Ruibal 2013b). Thus, the fragmentary material evidence is in a sense mirrored by a fragmentary conceptual landscape. Our present understanding of archaeology as fragmentary stands in sharp contrast to the archaeological paradigms identified by Bruce Trigger (1989) in his classic work A History of Archaeological Thought. The interpretative emphasis on the fragment intrinsically incorporates a critique of normative categories and black boxes, and thus this perspective obviates the notion of the paradigm. One consequence of the fragmentation of archaeology is the introduction of the notion of the death of archaeology theory (see Bintliff and Pearce 2011). The argument is that we have now reached a post-theoretical stage in archaeology, a stage where theory is no longer at the forefront of the discipline. Furthermore, we do not need to dwell on theory but should return to the core of archaeology: the archaeological evidence and what archaeologists do. This claim is scrutinized by Julian Thomas in his contribution. Thomas shows that this death sentence is unwarranted; we are witnessing not the death of theory but rather the realignment of theory. Archaeological theory has moved from articulating concerns about the ideological implications of archaeology to examining issues about what archaeology is and does—in short, present-day archaeological theory has an ontological focus. There are no easy explanations for the theoretical trends in archaeology, and this is not the place for a comprehensive analysis. Nevertheless, two possible explanations may be suggested. First, the diversification of archaeology is due to increasing specialization, which has led to more clearly defined, but also limited, areas of expertise. In addition, the sub-disciplinary field of archaeological theory is diversified. Archaeological theory is no longer one coherent field but encompasses a variety of different specializations. However, regardless of the internal diversity, archaeological theory of today seems to have emerged as an archaeological specialization in its own right. Second, in the acclaimed post-theoretical era, the discursive fragmentation has not only been commonly accepted, but we have also reconciled ourselves to the idea of multiple archaeologies, which have replaced Archaeology with

Introduction 3 a capital A. Most of us accept and endorse the notion there is some value in having different kinds of archaeologies—archaeologies which do not need to be reconciled (a similar conclusion is drawn by Munslow 2010 regarding history). ONTOLOGY Archaeology has moved from a conceptualization of the fragmentary as a problem to an affirmation of diversity. This move can be associated with the notion of multi-vocality, which was introduced into archaeology as an integral part of post-processual thinking. In terms of multi-vocality, the analytical aim is not to identify one comprehensive interpretation of the archaeological record but, in contrast, to endorse and elaborate the diverse and multiple meanings of archaeological materials. Furthermore, things are approached not as isolated entities but as entities with social ties, and these social ties between entities are placed at the heart of the interpretation. Meaning is constructed by connections. Such contextual conceptualizations stand in sharp contrast to normative ideas, where the focus is on typological categorizations and heuristic constructions of archaeological cultures. Meaning then is relational: It is constructed through associations and contexts. Multi-vocality emerges through the diverse associations formed by the different agents. Thus, innate meaning has been replaced by contextual meaning. The emphasis on context for the construction of meaning is also a fundamental feature of ontologies. The return to things—which is an ontological catchphrase—should not be understood as a return to things viewed in majestic isolation. Things in ontologies are interconnected—they too have social ties. Ontologically informed archaeologies emphasize the ephemeral character of social ties. In this sense there is a clear resemblance between ontology and network theories—in particular, network theories that build on Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network-Theory (Latour 2005). Furthermore, it should be emphasized that things in the ontological sense are connected across conceptual divides. Archaeological ontologies seek connectivity across chronological periods, places and realms. A foundational matter of concern for ontology is alterity. A central question is this: How should realities in the plural (Witmore 2009) be accounted for? Ontological otherness is not disconnected from us—rather, alterity is always connected with us. Ontological reflections in effect revolve around issues of representation of alterity: How can we do justice to ontologically different worlds in our elaborations? In reply, ontologically informed interpretations strive to account for the impact of the material world to a greater degree than previous epistemological perspectives. In his contribution to this volume, Christopher Witmore discusses ontological concerns about how archaeology relates to, and understands, things.

4 Johannes Siapkas and Charlotta Hillerdal Witmore articulates the discourse of the second empiricism and underlines that things are always connected with each other. Furthermore, he emphasizes that social ties transgress ontological divides. EPISTEMOLOGY Another notion that has framed theoretical debates in archaeology is epistemology. Epistemological discourses focus on how we compose knowledge through our practices. This conception has some important consequences: First, it shows that epistemology is governed by the assumption that we need to explain and understand everything. Thus, epistemology is permeated by anthropocentrism. Second, it shows that otherness is viewed as a feature that we need to bridge. Accordingly, there are some legitimate reasons for distinguishing between epistemology and ontology. In archaeology, epistemology and theory emerged as topical issues in connection with the widespread adoption of interpretative frameworks that emphasized multiple understandings of reality. That is, epistemology emerged when the normative theories that aspired to universal explanations were questioned. Epistemological debates revolved around the issue of representation: How do we interpret and accommodate different understandings of the world? How should we make sure that other interpretations of the past, by agents outside academia and other institutions, are accepted and heard, while simultaneously ensuring that they are reasonably accurate? In epistemological discourses, the authoritative voice of archaeology is challenged in several ways; gender, class, and post-colonial theory were central in the post-processual discourse. For example, in post-colonial theories the Western hegemonic voice of archaeology is criticized; the aim of this is to make the voices of other agents, in the past as well as the present, heard. With this as its agenda, Indigenous archaeology has developed as a subdiscipline, with its own set of theoretical and practical approaches. These post-colonial theories were sensitive to other explanatory frameworks, and the sensitivity has also spread to other parts of archaeology. Inspired by anthropological and ethnographic methods, archaeologists began to participate in projects and studies that aimed to incorporate the wider community in archaeological practices. Community archaeology, as these kinds of projects are denominated, has, together with Indigenous archaeology, contributed to an important remodelling of archaeology in recent years, not least in relation to archaeological practice (e.g. Hamilakis and Anagnostopoulos 2009; Hollowell and Nicholas 2009; Moser et al. 2002; Simpson and Williams 2008; Stroulia and Sutton 2010; Tully 2007). Lately, methods and theories have been developed, with varying levels of success, in order to involve local communities also on a more structural level. The contribution by Katherine Hauptman presents a set of projects with a community archaeological perspective that were initiated by The Swedish

Introduction 5 History Museum. With a general aim of bridging the divide between institution and visitor, the projects had different goals and targeted different groups of the public. The projects served to shed light on, and question, traditionally exclusive archaeological and museological practices and also on the expectations that the community has of archaeology. Michael Fotiadis discusses the state of archaeological theory in academic education. He identifies a fatigue in archaeological theory among students. Nevertheless, we need to persist and pass on the lessons of archaeological theory, Fotiadis maintains. We need to continue intervening and questioning attempts to present overarching models. A RUPTURE? On a theoretical level, we can now observe the presence of various simultaneous tendencies. These tendencies are in some ways contradictory, but epistemologies and ontologies do nevertheless coexist. Lately, scholars in various academic disciplines such as archaeology, anthropology, history, and religious studies have articulated a growing concern with materiality (see Alberti et al. 2011; Domanska 2006; Henare, Holbraad, and Wastell 2007; González-Ruibal 2013a). The scholarly attention paid to materiality in the humanities is mirrored in archaeology. Things are conceptualized in similar ways, with similar concepts, notions and assumptions being applied across disciplinary divides. The emphasis on the social ties of things in ontology is illustrative of the constructivism that ontology builds on; that is, ontologically informed scholarship acknowledges that our practices contribute to construct meaning. However, the turn from epistemology to ontology includes a facet where the constructivist pondering of how we contribute to shape reality has faded away. Ontology is often portrayed as a return to things and the practices of archaeology, leaving various philosophical schools behind. In addition to the emergence of ontology, the disinterest in philosophy has also resulted in contrasting claims that archaeological theory is dead (Bintliff and Pearce 2011). However, proclaiming the death of theoretical models, issues and perspectives is often a mistake in the humanities, since we tend to legitimize new perspective by evoking previously neglected philosophers. ANTHROPOLOGY Archaeology has a complicated relation with anthropology. Leaving aside the simplistic view that archaeology is a subgenre of anthropology and nothing more than a kind of anthropology of past times, we can now turn to the theoretical aspects of this relation. In modernist thinking, archaeology, which is concerned with material traces of the past, is regarded as

6 Johannes Siapkas and Charlotta Hillerdal subordinate to anthropology, which may deal with material traces but also has the ability to establish emic conceptualizations of material culture. This divide led Edmund Leach (1977), for instance, to conclude that anthropology and archaeology are incomprehensible discourses. Leach’s functionalist approach was, in a sense, disproved by the epistemological developments in archaeology during the 1980s and 1990s, when archaeologists in various ways strove to interpret cognitive aspects of the past. Material culture was viewed as articulations of the mind, and archaeology became increasingly conceptualized as a practice that should read and interpret the symbolic dimensions of the archaeological record. In other words, the cultural turn in archaeology, as well as in history, turned to anthropology for theoretical and methodological guidance. Both disciplines viewed the ethnographic method—participatory observation—as an inspiration for the interpretation of the past. However, earlier attempts at incorporating anthropological data into archaeological projects managed only to affirm that anthropology elaborated the present; ethnographic studies embedded in regional archaeological projects during the 1970s and 1980s simply projected present conditions on the past (Fotiadis 1995). For their part, anthropologists in the cultural turn realized that their negligence of the past was a shortcoming that needed to be addressed. In his contribution, Frands Herschend elaborates on the bridge between archaeology and anthropology. He argues that archaeology is an interpretative practice which produces history—that is, archaeology is history. This is illustrated via an anthropological account of a reading of Shakespeare’s Hamlet: Prince of Denmark to the elders of a Tiv community in Nigeria. The two seemingly incompatible narrative traditions of the Tiv and Elizabethan England connect; after the story has been deconstructed and reconstructed in different ontologies, it still holds relevance. Herschend’s article also highlights that epistemologies and ontologies do not necessarily exclude each other. His account serves to complicate our view of the past, archaeology, history and anthropological practices. The ontological turn has begun to take the shape of an intricate network. The intellectual crossover is evident particularly among anthropologists and archaeologists. Advocates of the ontological turn from both disciplines have recently collaborated in various settings (e.g. Alberti et al. 2011). However, the ontological turn is diverse and encompasses many differences— ontologists may emphasize things/materiality, but we argue that there are considerable differences with regard to how things are interpreted. While one would expect that the anthropological turn to things—a turn equated with ontology (see e.g. Holbraad 2009, 432)—would bridge the divide between the two disciplines, as in Tim Ingold’s (2012) vision of the future, in practice, connectivity between the two is few and far between. In relation to archaeology, an explanation of this failure to bridge the divide can be explained by the ontological focus on the material. Ontological archaeology does not need to turn to anthropology for guidance since the

Introduction 7 empirical material that archaeology produces is in itself sufficient to answer the questions which ontology raises. This theoretical trend is even explicitly conceptualized against the interpretative, and thus implicitly the anthropological, as a return to archaeology (Olsen 2012), and a plea for archaeology to accept its strength as a discipline lies in what archaeologists do (Witmore 2007). Concurrently, anthropological conceptualizations of things are contrasted with archaeology (e.g. Holbraad 2009). Furthermore, archaeological and anthropological ontologies are conceived in different ways. Archaeological ontologies return to things by way of network theories and an analytical emphasis on the relational entangled nature of Self and Other. In contrast, in anthropological ontologies, or at least in one strand of it, the analytical focus on things has re-established the divide between Self and Other: ‘The ontological turn . . . protects our “science” and our “common sense” as much as it protects the native’ (Holbraad, cited in Alberti et al. 2011, 903). In a sense this is a return to essentialism (Vigh and Sausdal 2014). The absolute divide between Us and the Other reconfirms a definite ontological otherness that archaeology has striven to overcome through post-colonial theories (e.g. Atalay 2006; Colwell-Chanthaphonh 2009). Thus, in practice, archaeology and anthropology converge in the return to things but differ in their view of what things and materiality mean. A second problem with ontologies is identifying material relations to past time and history. In the cultural turn, history was regarded as relationally and contextually constructed. Ontologies, in contrast, situate the past in the material and focus on the coexistence of different times in material remains. In other words, features of the past continue to be present in material remains today, and things may encompass features from several periods. In her contribution, Charlotta Hillerdal discusses whether an important functional aspect of history is lost when the material is the subject of a narrow focus. Johannes Siapkas provides an assessment of the neo-empirical development and discusses the conceptual similarities between the cultural turn and ontology. He questions, furthermore, whether the ontological turn can be considered an intellectual ‘turn’. Whether or not we are witnessing a theoretical revolution within the humanities and social sciences, it is clear that ontological and neo-empirical theories have taken an influential hold over contemporary archaeological discourses, and the reconfiguration or renegotiation of archaeology that we are witnessing is being channelled through a new set of concepts. CONNECTIVITY It might be perceived as discouraging when a discipline that has its empirical origins in the fragmentary cannot find its way through theoretical fragmentations. The fragmentation that we perceive as characteristic of both the

8 Johannes Siapkas and Charlotta Hillerdal ontological view of reality and the epistemological view of archaeology is potentially provocative. The provocativeness is caused by the fact that fragmentation runs against the intellectual thrust of scholarship. As scholars, we are expected to construct models and provide explanations of reality. To argue that everything is shattered into pieces may seem like an explanatory model without content—fragmentation is not regarded as a comprehensive notion that would help us to better understand reality. However, as discouraging as fragmentation may sound, it is nevertheless an analytical notion that accounts for the gradual emphasis placed on multiple understandings of things in archaeological discourses. In contrast to the discouraging aspects, encouraging consequences of the conceptual fragmentation also exist. The notion of fragmentation contributes to emphasize the plurality of reality. As such, the fragment is a notion that functions effectively as a foundation for the current debates in archaeological theory. Furthermore, the notion of fragmentation mirrors the gradual shift in emphasis in archaeological discourses, from narrative to practice. Conceptual divides have marred archaeological thinking. There are several foundational divides that have recently received a lot of attention: on a philosophical level, the divides between nature and culture, mind and body, the subject and the object; and on a discursive level, the divides between the archaeologists and the past, historic and prehistoric periods, modernity and pre-modernity. The articulation of the problem in a binary fashion stands in contrast to ontological modes of conceptualization, which seldom focus on the divides between two entities but rather focus on the connectivity and mutual influences between a multitude of entities. Although archaeology seems to move towards fragmentation on a multitude of levels, we can also identify a partly opposing move towards unification, cooperation and coexistence. The turn away from binary analytical models, as well as the new focus on the connectivity of fragments—not least through network theories—brought different sub-disciplinary genres in archaeology closer to each other. The conceptual divides were also played out in how archaeologists organized themselves; the divisions between cultural and scientific archaeologists are more clear cut in epistemologies than in ontologies, and the binary oppositions of nature and culture, for example, are presently being criticized within social as well as scientific archaeological discourses. Archaeological divides and camps have been blurred and transgressed in ontologies to a higher extent than previously. Thus, in a way, the fragmentation has contributed to level out the divides between scholarly groups. This volume explicates the state of archaeological theory at the crossroads between epistemology and ontology. The lack of a coherent archaeological paradigm is mirrored in this publication. The contributions elaborate on various topics and contribute to shed light on the current state of archaeological theory from various angles. We converge in one critical point of

Introduction 9 view—we scrutinize and reassess current archaeological theory—but differ in our views on the merits and faults of different discourses. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND SOME BACKGROUND INFORMATION This volume is the proceedings of a workshop that was organized at the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History at Uppsala University, Sweden, in November 2010. The workshop was initially planned as the final and concluding activity of a PhD course, which Johannes Siapkas was responsible for during the spring term of 2010. However, due to the unexpected eruption of an Icelandic volcano, air traffic in parts of the northern hemisphere came to a sudden standstill at the exact time as the workshop was meant to be happening in Uppsala. This meant that some participants found themselves taking involuntary vacations in the United Kingdom, while others made it only to their airports. The workshop was therefore moved to November 2010. The aim of the workshop was to elaborate on the current theoretical state of archaeologies, as defined in a broad sense. We the organizers (Charlotta Hillerdal, Johannes Siapkas and Frands Herschend) perceive the conceptual landscape of archaeology as fragmented, and we therefore invited scholars with different and contrasting perspectives. Our aim was to sketch the contours of the intellectual crossroads at which archaeology presently stands. We are thankful for the financial support that we have received from the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation, the Lars Hiertas Foundation and the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History at Uppsala University. Catherine Parnell has revised the language in some of the contributions. Last, but not least, we wish to express our gratitude to the editors at Routledge; we have put their patience to the test on several occasions. Aberdeen and Solna, June 2014.

REFERENCES Alberti, B., S. Fowles, M. Holbraad, Y. Marshall, and C. Witmore. 2011. “ ‘Worlds Otherwise’: Archaeology, Anthropology, and Ontological Difference.” Current Anthropology 52 (6): 896–912. Atalay, S. 2006. “Indigenous Archaeology as Decolonizing Practice.” American Indian Quarterly 30 (3&4): 280–310. Bintliff, J., and M. Pearce, eds. 2011. The Death of Archaeological Theory? Oxford: Oxbow Books. Childe, V. G. 1956. Piecing Together the Past: The Interpretation of Archaeological Data. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Colwell-Chanthaphonh, C. 2009. “Reconciling American Archaeology and Native America.” Dædalus (Spring): 94–104. Domanska, E. 2006. “The Material Presence of the Past.” History and Theory (45): 337–48.

10 Johannes Siapkas and Charlotta Hillerdal Fotiadis, M. 1995. “Modernity and the Past-Still-Present: Politics of Time in the Birth of Regional Archaeological Projects in Greece.” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1): 59–78. González-Ruibal, A., ed. 2013a. Reclaiming Archaeology: Beyond the Tropes of Modernity. Milton Park, Abingdon: Routledge. ———. 2013b. “Reclaiming Archaeology.” In Reclaiming Archaeology: Beyond the Tropes of Modernity, edited by A. González-Ruibal, 1–29. Milton Park, Abingdon: Routledge. Hamilakis, Y., and A. Anagnostopoulos, eds. 2009. Archaeological Ethnographies. Leeds: Maney Publishing. Henare, A.J.M., M. Holbraad, and S. Wastell, eds. 2007. Thinking through Things: Theorising Artefacts Ethnographically. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Holbraad, M. 2009. “Ontology, Ethnography, Archaeology: An Afterword on the Ontography of Things.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 19 (3): 431–41. Hollowell, J., and G. Nicholas. 2009. “Using Ethnographic Methods to Articulate Community-Based Conceptions of Cultural Heritage Management.” Public Archaeology: Archaeological Ethnographies 8 (2–3): 141–60. Ingold, T. 2012. “No More Ancient; No More Human: The Future Past of Archaeology and Anthropology.” In Archaeology and Anthropology: Past, Present, Future, edited by D. Shankland, 77–90. London: Bloomsbury. Latour, B. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-NetworkTheory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Leach, E. 1977. “A View from the Bridge.” In Archaeology and Anthropology: Areas of Mutual Interest, edited by M. Spriggs, 161–76. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports. Moser, S., D. Glazier, J. E. Phillips, L. Nasser el Nemr, M. Saleh Mousa, R. Nasr Aiesh, S. Richardson, A. Conner, and M. Seymour. 2002. “Transforming Archaeology through Practice: Strategies for Collaborative Archaeology and the Community Archaeology Project at Quseir, Egypt.” World Archaeology 34 (2): 220–48. Munslow, A. 2010. The Future of History. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave MacMillan. Olsen, B. 2012. “After Interpretation: Remembering Archaeology.” Current Swedish Archaeology 20: 11–34. Simpson, F., and H. Williams. 2008. “Evaluating Community Archaeology in the UK.” Public Archaeology 7 (2): 69–90. Stroulia, A., and S. B. Sutton, eds. 2010. Archaeology in Situ: Sites, Archaeology, and Communities in Greece. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Trigger, B. G. 1989. A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tully, G. 2007. “Community Archaeology: General Methods and Standards of Practice.” Public Archaeology 6 (3): 155–87. Vigh, H. E., and D. B. Sausdal. 2014. “From Essence Back to Existence: Anthropology beyond the Ontological Turn.” Anthropological Theory 14 (1): 49–73. Witmore, C. L. 2007. “Symmetrical Archaeology: Excerpts of a Manifesto.” World Archaeology 39 (4): 546–64. ———. 2009. “Prolegomena to Open Pasts: On Archaeological Memory Practices.” Archaeologies: Journal of the World Archaeological Congress 5 (3): 511–45.

1

Why ‘The Death of Archaeological Theory’? Julian Thomas

INTRODUCTION: CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD In the first decade of the twenty-first century, a number of archaeologists began to postulate that a ‘death of theory’ was taking place within their discipline. These speculations eventually gave rise to a pair of conference sessions hosted by the European Association of Archaeologists and the Theoretical Archaeology Group (Bintliff and Pearce 2011; Chapman 2009). Although, for reasons that we will discuss below, these discussions have now subsided to some extent, it may be illuminating to consider why they should have emerged at this particular moment. What I hope to demonstrate in this contribution is that the notion of a ‘death of archaeological theory’ has something important to tell us about the recent history of the discipline and the way in which it has been interpreted. The first point to make is that with the benefit of hindsight and in the light of the publication of some of the relevant conference papers, it is now evident that the phrase was actually being used to mean a number of different things and that there was no unanimity amongst the protagonists in these debates. At least three distinct perspectives on the fate of archaeological thinking can now be identified. A first understanding of what a ‘death of theory’ might mean lies in the belief that technological advances within the discipline have now moved on so far as to render theory redundant. In other words, it proposes a return to naïve empiricism. Just as Stephen Hawking has recently claimed that new developments in quantum physics have made philosophy unnecessary (Hawking and Mlodinow 2010, 1), so stable isotopes, DNA analysis, more precise forms of dating and more rigorous versions of taphonomy are now able to answer archaeological questions that were hitherto metaphysical. So techniques alone can now tell us all we need to know about the past, and interpretation is superfluous. In an odd way this recalls the early days of the New Archaeology, in which the enthusiasm for the hypothetico-deductive method was such that it was imagined that archaeological evidence alone could answer any legitimate question concerning the past, without recourse to ethnographic models, so long as a rigorous system of hypothesis construction and testing was employed (Binford 1977, 3). This was anything but an atheoretical position,

12 Julian Thomas although it relied on a rather mechanistic understanding of what theory was and what it could do. Yet it came to be seen as overoptimistic, and the notion of a purely evidential archaeology is equally flawed, for it overlooks the fundamentally inferential character of the discipline. At the very least, archaeological techniques always face the problem of equifinality: The results that they generate can be identified as the potential outcomes of a number of different processes, and their significance is often altered according to the scale at which they are addressed. New analytical methods are to be welcomed, for they provide us with more strands of evidence to work with. But their results will always require evaluation and contextualisation in ways that transcend mere technique. Further, Kristian Kristiansen (2011, 78) has argued that technical developments may stimulate new strands of theoretical reflection. As he says, theory may change course as a result, but it is not extinguished (see below). A second perspective on the ‘death of archaeological theory’ is offered in one of the founding statements in the debate, and in retrospect it seems very distinct from other contributions. John Bintliff (2011, 16) argues that theory in archaeology is already dead, for the subject has moved away from a mode of archaeological procedure that was originally proposed by David Clarke (1968, 34). In this way of working, theory is used as a means of constructing a series of parallel models, which are then tested against a continually growing body of archaeological evidence. Theory is therefore conceived as a ‘toolkit’ of concepts and approaches, each of which might potentially prove valid in explaining the complex structure of the data (Bintliff 2011, 18). Yet Bintliff holds that while this vision of archaeology had been introduced by the first generation of processual archaeologists, even they had been guilty of the principal failing that he identifies in archaeological thinking: the incorporation of personal beliefs or a priori understandings about the way that the world is into one’s arguments. Thus, Clarke had accepted as an article of faith that the complexities of human existence could be adequately represented in the form of mathematical models, while Lewis Binford had presumed that universal laws of culture could ultimately be identified (Bintliff 2011, 12). As soon as structures that are simply attractive to the researcher are used to organize archaeological data, argues Bintliff, the researcher has ceased to be a theorist and has become an ideopraxist. That is, the researcher has chosen to impose a single ideological package on the archaeological record rather than observe an open-minded eclecticism. It follows from Bintliff’s argument that anyone who was to identify oneself as a Marxist, a feminist or a structuralist archaeologist would be not a theorist but an ideopraxist. This definition of theory is perfectly coherent but contrasts with the normal state of affairs in other disciplines, where the commitment of practitioners to one of a multiplicity of rival interpretive programmes is generally the norm (see, for example, Barry 2009; Bertens 2014; Dillon 2014; Layton 1997). Bintliff argues that the shift from theory to ideopraxis has been accompanied by the emergence of a New Scholasticism in which leading figures

Why ‘The Death of Archaeological Theory’ 13 in the discipline exercise control of what it is acceptable to think. As intellectual fashion moves from one philosopher to the next and new ‘sacred texts’ are identified, students struggle to keep up with a changing disciplinary landscape (Bintliff 2011, 8). However, Bintliff’s approval of a synchronic eclecticism of parallel models is at variance with the more usual process in which scholars ‘try out’ a series of theoretical frameworks in the course of their careers, in repeated attempts to make sense of a given body of evidence. While they may often choose to employ ideas that are currently in vogue, it would probably be inaccurate to suggest that archaeological thought has been dominated by a single dogmatic ‘ideological package’ at any point over the past thirty years, and it is currently distinguished above all by its diversity (Pearce 2011, 80). There certainly are examples in the literature of multiple approaches being applied simultaneously by a single author to a single set of evidence. The classic case is found in David Clarke’s work, in his study of the Iron Age Glastonbury lake village, where the author constructs a postdepositional model, a structural model, a social model and an economic model (Clarke 1972a). This was represented as a means of juxtaposing the insights that might be generated by the competing paradigms that Clarke had noted emerging in contemporary archaeology, most notably in his immediate environment in Cambridge (Clarke 1972b, 43–49; see further discussion below). Similarly, Christopher Tilley’s work on the Swedish rock art site of Nämforsen involved a series of separate analyses from structuralist, hermeneutic and Marxist perspectives (Tilley 1991). What is notable is that although both Clarke and Tilley employed multiple sets of interpretive resources, and arguably constructed multiple ‘models’, neither author really used the evidence to refute one model or confirm another. In both cases, the parallel approaches actually provided complementary insights. The principal difference is that while Clarke presented his models as mutually enriching steps toward a comprehensive understanding of the Glastonbury site, Tilley explicitly resists any attempt to synthesize his findings and arrive at a final answer to the meaning of the Nämforsen art. Arguably, Bintliff’s conception of archaeological theory is based on a slightly selective reading of David Clarke. For although the latter did advocate the testing of multiple models against data, this was not the full extent of his view of what theory should represent. Clarke also drew attention to the importance of what he called ‘archaeological metaphysics’, which involved the critical appraisal of the concepts, categories and methodologies that we employ (Clarke 1973, 14). Equally, much of Lewis Binford’s contribution to archaeological thinking lay in the recognition that archaeological evidence was not a self-evident body of information that could be set against propositions about the past (Binford 1977, 4; 2001, 676). Although we might take issue with his proposal to establish middle range theory as an entirely separate corpus of theory concerning the structuring of the archaeological record through dynamic impacts (see below), his efforts demonstrate that archaeological theory cannot be limited to the construction

14 Julian Thomas and testing of hypotheses about past dynamics using static evidence. Both within archaeology and in other disciplines, theory involves the way that we render our evidence intelligible, construct our research questions, evaluate our own interpretations and those of others, question the appropriateness of our methodologies and assess the socio-political and ethical dimensions of our practice in the present (Pluciennik 2011, 32). Bintliff’s argument is entirely consistent in its own terms, but, in order to accept his claim that archaeological theory is dead, one must first agree with his account of what theory represents. And if one does, it is equally pertinent to ask whether theory in this sense ever really saw widespread acceptance within the discipline as a whole. A third possible account of the ‘death of archaeological theory’ is perhaps the most troubling: the charge that the theoretical approaches introduced between the 1960s and the 1980s have failed to deliver on their initial promise, or that the whole enterprise of archaeological theory has somehow ground to a halt. There are certainly arguments to the effect that theory has arrived at a consensual point of closure, perhaps with ‘processualism-plus’, cognitive processualism or some similar formula (Hegmon 2003, 216; Renfrew and Bahn 2004, 496). Equally, it could be conjectured that since the passionate theoretical debates of the 1980s have cooled, a new generation have come to accept ‘authorized’ versions of the history of archaeological thought, rather than delving into the richer and more diverse published heritage of past decades (Pearce 2011, 82). In consequence, a cannon of standardized citations has emerged, and a new orthodoxy has come into being by default. These alternative narratives of resolution and hollowing-out converge on a prognosis that theory in archaeology has ceased developing and will henceforth simply be taken down from the shelf and operationalized, or that it has reached such an ossified state as to be increasingly rejected by practicing archaeologists. Given the terminology of death, destruction and apocalypse being employed, it appears that our present predicament is being identified as the local manifestation of a more global crisis of theory, as we enter the post-ideological twenty-first century. The problem here lies with the relationship between archaeological thought in particular and intellectual history in general, and with an unrealistic set of expectations that were generated by the explosive development of archaeological thinking between 1960 and 1990 and the way that this was understood at the time. LITERARY THEORIES This term, ‘the death of theory’, originated in the context of literary studies, and it is important to realize the very particular significance that Theory took on in relation to literary criticism during the later twentieth century (Jameson 2008, 564; Culler 1983, 20). While the ideas that challenged the New Criticism of F. R. Leavis and William Empson had developed in philosophy,

Why ‘The Death of Archaeological Theory’ 15 political economy, psychology, anthropology and linguistics over a period of many decades, their introduction into English departments was an accelerated one, which coincided with the political unrest of the 1960s (Lentriccia 1980, 104; Eagleton 1983, 30). As such, it also coincided with the ‘Return of Grand Theory’ in the humanities in general and the social sciences in particular. Sociologists in the immediate post-war period had largely edged back from the attempt to forge a systematic and global theory of society (of the kinds pioneered in their different ways by Marx, Durkheim and Weber) and had instead adopted a form of positivism that focused on piecemeal empirical research, modelled on the framework of the natural sciences (Skinner 1985, 5; Giddens 1971, vii). The rejection of this approach was connected with growing scepticism over the purported value-neutrality of the sciences, the increasing politicisation of academics in the context of the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War and second-wave feminism, and the re-evaluation of Marxism and psychoanalysis (Gouldner 1970, 354). Social and cultural theory began to move away from a model of explanation, based upon regularities between variables, and to rediscover two modes of interpretation: the hermeneutic concern with relations of significance between cultural fragments and cultural wholes, and the ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’—that is to say, the belief that appearances are deceptive, and that beneath the surface of things lies a more sinister reality, whether of subconscious drives and desires, deep cultural codes and grammars, or brutal material conditions masked by ideological shells. In this respect if no other, psychoanalysis, structuralism and Marxism were allied in their criticism of the assumptions of positivist social science. So the theory that was introduced to literary studies at that particular moment was Big Theory: frameworks that attempted to address a wide range of cultural phenomena and that did not shrink from political engagement. As Terry Eagleton has pointed out, the mushrooming of cultural theory in the 1960s and 1970s was partly attributable to a proliferation of new phenomena that seemed to demand deeper investigation: consumer capitalism, youth culture, popular music, advertising and marketing, film and television, fashion and design (Eagleton 2003, 25). Although many of these intellectual developments had been anticipated by the cultural critique of the Frankfurt School, the accelerated cultural change of the post-war period provided a context in which dominant modes of investigation were manifestly inadequate, and the need for alternative frameworks became acute. Moreover, a series of early analyses that employed new approaches to address the hidden forces behind emerging cultural trends proved spectacularly successful (e.g. Barthes 1973; Hebdige 1979; Williamson 1978). The growing recognition that cultural production and its critique formed part of a cultural politics that articulated with the other political struggles of the period enhanced the sense that the universities of the Western world represented a cockpit of social unrest, manifested in student radicalism in general and the events of Paris in 1968 in particular. Consequentially, Big Theory in the humanities brought with it

16 Julian Thomas the conviction that it was important not only to interpret the world (in various ways) but to change it too. Conversely, it introduced the idea that both personal life and intellectual activity were arenas of political struggle. By the 1980s, this imperative was also to have an impact in archaeology, which could no longer be sheltered from addressing its position within contemporary cultural politics. Theoretical reflection and real-world events conspired to demand that archaeologists adopt explicit positions on political matters (e.g. Ucko 1987; Zimmerman 1989). All of this meant that the study of works of art and literature had lost its innocence and that cultural phenomena were likely to be indicted for their role in maintaining capitalism, colonialism or the patriarchy. But as archaeologists, from the perspective of a very different discipline, what is most important for us to recognize about these developments in literary studies is that they marked a pronounced shift from a belletristic to a social scientific mode of investigation, one that was deeply resented by many professional academics in the arts subjects (Williams 1996, 27). This was most starkly the case with structuralism. In archaeology, structuralist analyses were eventually introduced as part of the whole bundle of ideas that characterized the post-processual era. Our assimilation of twentieth-century intellectual history was even more abbreviated than that in English studies. To many archaeologists, structuralism was initially understood as part of a turningaway from the rigorous foundations of science and toward the metaphysical speculations of the humanities (Yoffee and Sherratt 1993, 4). In English studies the precise opposite was the case: structuralism’s claim to provide a ‘universal science of signs’ was perceived at worst as a kind of technocratic imperialism, which sought to supplant close reading and sensitivity to the text with the search for universal structural grammars. This was both de-humanising and scientistic, and this threatened the end of the established structure of literary criticism (e.g. Easthope 1988, 133). FROM DECONSTRUCTION TO CULTURE WARS However, the form of theory that had the greatest impact within literary studies was post-structuralism, to the extent that for a while ‘deconstruction’ and ‘Theory’ became almost synonymous. The death of the author, the assault on truth and the ultimate undecidability of meaning that this tradition promoted were variously perceived as liberating or scandalous according to preference (Boyd 2006, 291). Post-structuralists generally sought to resist totalising histories, essentialisms and universal laws, even to the point of continually questioning the terminology that we employ in academic discourse, while Derrida himself insisted that deconstruction was a practice rather than a school of thought (Norris 1982, 21). Despite this, deconstruction became the biggest of big theories in American criticism, relentlessly undermining the metaphysical foundations of all cultural

Why ‘The Death of Archaeological Theory’ 17 phenomena. Much fascinating work was produced, but the consolidation of the approach into an orthodox position was not always attractive. As the 1970s gave way to the 1980s, in the United States and to a lesser extent in Britain, theory in the universities had become a last redoubt of radicalism against the rising tide of neo-liberalism (and later neo-conservatism) in society at large. In a sense, America’s cycle of ‘culture wars’, ‘science wars’ and ‘God wars’ can be seen as rearguard actions following the more palpable victories of unreconstructed capitalism in the Reagan era (see Butler 1997 for some of the flavour of the period). In a curious way, they seem to represent the shadows or mirror images of the Contra wars, oil wars, wars on terror and wars on drugs being fought by the dominant power. The political centre of balance was shifting to the right, and this was marked by conflicts pursued at numerous levels. Hence, when Frederick Jameson claims that attacks on theory in the academy were politically motivated, he has something of a point (Jameson 2008, 563). The notorious Sokal hoax (Sokal and Bricmont 1998) may have demonstrated the excesses to which deconstructive criticism was capable of extending itself, but many of those who cheered it on did not do so from a position of disinterested scholarly objectivity. If critical theory in the universities kept radicalism alive after the defeat of the New Left in Europe and America, the purported decline of theory might be construed as a reflection of the more general depoliticisation of Western society. It makes a neat story to have the death of the author followed by the death of theory, but, as in the case of Samuel Clements, the rumours of mortality are exaggerated.1 For while the late 1980s and early 1990s might have seen a ‘death of deconstruction’ or an ‘end of theory’ in literary criticism, this properly refers to Theory with a capital T—that is, Grand Theory. And while many commentators on the right have attempted to portray this as the end of philosophical reflection in the humanities altogether, the genie is out of the bottle, and there is no return to an innocent past of connoisseurship to be had. Theory is dead, but long live theory: The all-encompassing conceptual frameworks of the 1960s to 1980s were simply replaced by more localized and contingent approaches, including the new historicism, postcolonialism, cultural studies, science studies and queer theory (Pluciennik 2011, 34). ‘The terms and tenor of Grand Theory have very much influenced and in fact formed the theoretical matrices of present practices’, suggests Williams (1996, 24). While the focus on identity politics that this reveals may be a sign of retrenchment, it certainly provides no comfort for those who would like to herald a post-theoretical dawn. Moreover, if the change in literary criticism has been from globalising ‘theories of everything’ to more strategic and targeted theoretical practices, we should be very wary of seeking a ‘read across’ between English studies and archaeology. In our discipline the conditions attending the introduction of novel philosophical ideas were entirely different, and the uncritical pilfering of a resonant phrase may not be entirely helpful.

18 Julian Thomas ARCHAEOLOGICAL REASONING AND PARADIGM CHANGE It is arguable that both literary criticism and archaeology are hermeneutic exercises concerned with the relationship between cultural phenomena and their contexts. Yet archaeologists have sometimes been interested to understand the significance of the artefacts that are available to them and sometimes to infer the dynamic interactions with living organisms in which they were implicated in the past. While both of these pursuits generally involve the implicit or explicit use of theoretical reflection, it is in the latter case that the practical impossibility of an atheoretical archaeology is most starkly revealed. It was of course David Clarke who clearly outlined the extent to which archaeologists are at the mercy of their own ‘controlling models’, with the result that they could choose to work with theory implicitly and subconsciously or explicitly and critically, but they could not do away with theory altogether (Clarke 1972b, 5). Clarke held that during the 1960s and 1970s archaeology was undergoing a transition toward a phase of critical self-consciousness, in which technological developments were driving philosophical reflection. New methods such as radiometric dating, extensive field survey and computing were producing new kinds of observations, which could not be accommodated by existing conceptual schemes. A critical evaluation of archaeological practice was leading to the eclipse of regional traditions of particularistic research and to a growing concern with general theory. What Clarke called ‘theory of archaeological reasoning’ was therefore becoming central to the discipline’s identity (Clarke 1973, 16). However, it is revealing that Clarke divided general archaeological theory into a series of sub-fields: predepositional and depositional theory; postdepositional theory; retrieval theory; analytical theory; and interpretive theory (Clarke 1973, 17). In other words, Clarke held that the bulk of archaeological thinking was concerned with relationships amongst archaeological data, and their formation, while interpretation was understood as something that was introduced at the end of the process, once the data had been assembled and sorted. Clarke acknowledged a place for social theory, but he clearly considered it as subsidiary to the consideration of purely archaeological entities. In a significant way, these arguments parallel those of Lewis Binford, who, although he drew the important distinction between dynamics and statics, nonetheless used middle range theory as a means of presenting the archaeological record as a hermetically sealed realm of artefact physics (Binford 1972, 89; 1977, 6; 1983, 119). Binford and Clarke, then, both saw archaeology as primarily concerned with the structure of the material evidence and saw questions of both interpretation and the relationship between past and present as secondary issues. For Binford in particular this was a virtuous position to hold, for archaeologists had too often rushed to provide accounts of past social, ecological and economic processes without having first understood the character and structure of their evidence. However, we should perhaps remember that archaeologists of the first processual

Why ‘The Death of Archaeological Theory’ 19 generation were building on the work of forerunners like Walter Taylor, who had explicitly presented archaeology as a methodology (see also Flannery and Marcus 2011, 24). As soon as one progressed from description and classification to explanation, one was actually engaged in anthropology. ‘Archaeology per se is no more than a method and a set of specialized techniques for the gathering of cultural information. The archaeologist, as archaeologist, is really nothing but a technician’ (Taylor 1948, 43). So for Clarke and Binford to claim that archaeologists must develop instruments for the explanation of their evidence was, in some ways, a radical step. Clarke drew on Thomas Kuhn’s work in the philosophy of science to provide an account of the archaeology’s very rapid development from disciplinary innocence to critical self-consciousness. He characterized the early 1970s as a time of professional insecurity and uncertainty, in which archaeologists were oscillating between a series of rival paradigms (Clarke 1972b, 28). Kuhn’s term ‘paradigm’ refers to models of procedure exemplified by particular investigations, which serve to enshrine specific modes of enquiry. Paradigms effectively delineate what are and are not legitimate data and how they can profitably be addressed (Kuhn 1970, 45). Clarke argued that the new environment of 1970s archaeology had given rise to four competing paradigms: morphological, anthropological, ecological and geographical. It is significant, though, that when he talks of an ‘anthropological paradigm’ he does not mean the application of analogies or insights drawn from social anthropology to archaeological evidence but means the use of archaeological materials to generate hypotheses concerning social organisation, as in the case of the so-called ‘ceramic sociology’ of Deetz, Hill and Longacre (Clarke 1972b, 7; Deetz 1968; Hill 1970). This was ‘archaeology as anthropology’, archaeology standing in for anthropology, rather than archaeology as one element of a four-field anthropology in which an active conversation takes place between archaeologists and anthropologists. Broadly speaking, then, Clarke’s argument was that rapid paradigm change was something that had been generated within archaeology, out of the internal social and technological transformation of the discipline (Clarke 1968, 25). However, it is at least implicit within his argument that these endogenous processes were complemented by developments outwith archaeology and paralleled by the emergence of a new geography, a new history, a new economics and a new sociology (see, for instance, Chorley and Haggett 1967; Lloyd 1986, 59). Computing, statistical techniques, hypothesis-testing, spatial models, systems theory and neo-evolutionary ideas had been introduced into a range of disciplines, with similar effects, and archaeology was distinguished by adopting the package just as other academic communities were beginning to appreciate its failings. Indeed, it is arguable that Clarke’s appeal to Kuhn had a role in sowing the seeds of dissatisfaction with positivism and functionalism, since the burden of the latter’s argument is that scientific progress is rarely if ever achieved by the testing of hypotheses, so much as by the shifting of academic consensus. Kuhn sees facts always

20 Julian Thomas being addressed through the conceptual apparatus of a particular paradigm, rather than having an absolute value, or being able to arbitrate between rival theories. Such arguments could be seen as a first step in the directions of hermeneutics, Marxism or Latourian science studies. Now, it is certainly the case that when what we now refer to as ‘postprocessual archaeology’ emerged in the early 1980s, it was widely understood as a further paradigm change, in Kuhnian terms. But it is worth remembering that the examples of paradigm shift that Kuhn himself supplies are epochal transformations in the way that the world is understood: from Ptolemaic to Copernican astronomy; from Aristotelian to Newtonian dynamics; from corpuscular to wave optics; and so on (Kuhn 1970, 10). Kuhn does admittedly argue that scientific revolutions can be of varying degrees of magnitude. And he suggests that what distinguishes a new paradigm is that it provides a new way of doing things while leaving space for converts to find something new to investigate. Nonetheless, it may be too grandiose a claim to make that archaeology went in the space of a quarter of a century through two separate internally generated spasms of conceptual revision. A more modest view of archaeology’s development of critical self-consciousness might be that a discipline within which theory had hitherto been underdeveloped (although not absent) opened itself up to the influences of first the natural and then the human sciences, tailoring what it borrowed from each according to its own preoccupations and objects of study. Indeed, the corollary of Clarke’s ‘critical self-consciousness’ argument is that although archaeologists have always been motivated by some set of ideas about the past and humanity, ‘archaeological theory’ as a recognisable entity has been explicitly discussed since only the 1960s (Johnson 2006, 119). I am indebted to Bjørnar Olsen for the observation that in comparison with other disciplines, archaeology therefore had more ‘white space’ to fill once it began to develop its theoretical framework. The impact of both sets of conceptual apparatus upon practitioners was undoubtedly a profound one, whether positive or negative, and I do not wish to underplay the transformative effect on the discipline of the introduction of concepts such as agency, gender, identity, ideology, power and personhood. However, the drawback in conceiving the New Archaeology and Post-Processual Archaeology as two successive paradigm changes has been the perception that periodic fundamental change should be the norm—a ‘twenty-year cycle’ (Pearce 2011, 82). In other words, we have come to expect a kind of Maoist continual revolution, just as the modern West in general has come to accept the state of crisis as normality (Benjamin 1970, 245). It is this view that gives rise to a vague feeling of disappointment that ‘nothing new’ has come along since the post-processual revolt. For my generation of graduate students it is mildly surprising (if something of a relief) that the ‘next big thing’ has not already swept in, rendering our own ideas redundant. Claims have been made for new forms of evolutionary theory as such a fundamental revolution (Shennan 2002, 10), but these approaches have so far proved convincing and useful only to an enthusiastic

Why ‘The Death of Archaeological Theory’ 21 minority of archaeologists (Pearce 2011, 82). Successive conferences of the Theoretical Archaeology Group come and go, apparently offering only ‘more of the same’. Where are the new radicals and the new iconoclasts? I would like to suggest that this is an unnecessarily pessimistic view. THE ASSIMILATION AND RECONTEXTUALISATION OF IDEAS Perhaps because archaeology is a study to which the ideas and methods of the hard sciences, the social sciences and the aesthetic humanities all have something to contribute, its post-1960 assimilation of outside ideas at a frantic rate threw up some curious anomalies. Thus, both structuralism and its post-structuralist and practice theory critiques were being explored by archaeologists at much the same time. In this respect, Ian Hodder’s Symbolic and Structural Archaeology (1982a) is in hindsight revealed as a slightly curious volume, offering both new approaches and their refutation at one and the same time. This was not in itself a bad thing, giving rise to theoretical incoherence, but it did create a sense of tumult and of ideas being worked through and evaluated by raising them against each other. More importantly, although post-processual archaeology is far from being characterized by a coherent and uniform set of views, it has for the most part been concerned with historical and cultural specificity, the rejection of cross-cultural laws, and an emphasis on methodological pluralism. Yet of course, this is exactly what had characterized the reaction against Big Theory in literary criticism. So it is arguable that we in archaeology had our theoretical and post-theoretical turns all in one go. Ian Hodder originally argued that it was the rejection of functionalism that characterized the decisive break between processual and post-processual archaeologies, and the subject’s achievement of maturity (Hodder 1982b, 3). But it may equally be that the most fundamental change that has overtaken the discipline over the past half-century has been the gradual recognition that archaeology is primarily concerned with mediating the relationship between past and present, that this relationship is an irreducibly inferential one and that consequentially all archaeology is theoretical archaeology. If we argue that what distinguished the archaeology of the 1960s to 1990s was the assimilation of a plethora of ideas drawn from other fields of inquiry, it is easy to understand why there might presently be something of a feeling of anti-climax. The New Archaeology drew on Leslie White and Carl Hempel, Ludwig von Bertalanffy and Peter Haggett. The first wave to post-processual archaeology had Anthony Giddens and Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault and Louis Althusser. To these were later added Hans-Georg Gadamer and Judith Butler, Gayatri Spivak and Gilles Deleuze. At the same time, a progressive broadening of the discipline’s focus of investigation took place to include new objects such as modern material culture and engagements with other communities, including artists and performers (Johnson

22 Julian Thomas 2006, 119). Throughout the later part of the twentieth century there was an undeniable sense of excitement about the way that new theories could produce new insights into existing archaeological problems and sets of evidence as well as open up new views of what the discipline could achieve. This restless search for new cultural theorists to assimilate has been decried as a ‘use and discard’ approach to theory (Bintliff 2011, 8). However, what this complaint neglects is that this strategy actually worked rather well: a series of classic papers from the 1960s onwards achieved what Richard Rorty (1989, 16) would call a redescription of established archaeological materials simply by bringing novel frames of reference to bear on them. A very good example would be Mary Braithwaite’s ‘Ritual and Prestige in the Prehistory of Wessex c. 2200–1400 BC’, a paper originally given at the 1981 Theoretical Archaeology Conference at the University of Reading (Braithwaite 1984). Braithwaite drew on the ideas of Pierre Bourdieu and Talal Asad in order to address the roles of ritual and symbolism in Late Neolithic and Bronze Age Wessex, concentrating on the change from collective activities in henge monuments to the establishment of a new system of individualized prestige in the Beaker phase (Braithwaite 1984, 102). Although she was at that point a postgraduate student, Braithwaite’s article was deservedly influential and has had an enduring impact on the subsequent development of British prehistoric studies (e.g. Clarke, Cowie, and Foxon 1985, 36). The drawback to the strategy of redescription is not that it was superficial or morally questionable but that it was easier to achieve during a particular moment in the discipline’s development toward some kind of maturity. Undoubtedly, there will always be new philosophers and cultural theorists to discover, but the era in which whole regions of the human sciences remained to be explored for the first time by archaeologists has now passed. This, I think, is why another conceptual revolution of the same magnitude as the emergence of processual and post-processual archaeology is unlikely to take place in the immediate future. I have argued that archaeology’s coming of age over the past fifty years has involved it entering into a freer exchange of ideas and concepts with other disciplines. The familiar complaint that we are only ever consumers of theory and that we need to develop a theory of our own is something of a red herring: Traditions of theory are generally interdisciplinary and nomadic, rather than being the prerogative of a single subject. Anyone who has worked closely with colleagues in human geography, history, literature, drama, social anthropology, religious studies or art history will know that they too periodically face the charge of ‘importing’ theory from ‘outside’. But as a result of this there has been a tendency to try to understand the development of archaeological thinking in primarily autochthonous terms rather than in relation to the wider intellectual world. I would suggest that it does not particularly matter if some of our theoretical inspiration comes from beyond our own disciplinary confines. What does matter, though, is the intellectual labour necessary to make those ideas compatible with our

Why ‘The Death of Archaeological Theory’ 23 focus on the material worlds that human beings inhabit and how these change through time. There may be few exclusively archaeological theoretical approaches, but there are certainly archaeological ways of making use of theory. THE NEW NORMAL? If archaeology has now established for itself a more dialogical relationship with both the natural and the human sciences, how are we to envisage the future development of archaeological theory? In practice, during the period in which the debate on the ‘death of theory’ took place, archaeological theory was in the throes of renewing itself regardless, and the details of this process are instructive. Since the turn of the millennium, a series of related developments in philosophy and cultural theory have drawn on the work of thinkers as diverse as Latour, Deleuze, Whitehead, Serres, Heidegger, Adorno and Spinoza in order to develop a suite of distinct but overlapping conceptual frameworks that have variously been described as ‘speculative realism’, ‘assemblage theory’, ‘new materialisms’ and ‘object oriented philosophy’ (Bennett 2010; Bryant, Srnicek, and Harman 2011; DeLanda 2006; Harman 2010; Meillassoux 2008). These approaches are potentially of the greatest possible interest for archaeology because above all else they react against the neglect of material things in contemporary thought. What has been distinctive about the archaeological reception of these ideas is that rather than exploring them after much delay, just as everyone else is losing interest, archaeologists have been engaging with them as they have emerged. This is partly because several of the themes that they address have already been adopted within archaeology: a concern with networks and relationships (Watts 2013), an emphasis on the active role of artefacts (Hodder 1982b) and a critical, ‘posthumanist’ attitude toward the notion of human beings as freestanding agents (Fowler 2004). As new positions on these issues have started to emerge in the wider academic world, their implications have been worked through by various archaeologists, including (but not limited to) those associated with a ‘symmetrical archaeology’ (Olsen et al. 2012). Many of these approaches are grounded in a critique of anthropocentrism, the belief that human beings have a uniquely privileged position in creation as a consequence of their ability to apprehend the world mentally and render it meaningful. Anthropocentrism holds that humans are qualitatively different from other beings by virtue of their reason and that, as the sole interpreters of reality, they are also its masters (Heidegger 1977, 1993). In this view, the really important aspects of human functioning take place in the secluded space of the mind, while the external world of things is composed of arrangements of inert matter. Consequentially, societies are conceived as being composed of intersubjective relationships between rational intelligences, and things are only of tangential importance (Webmoor

24 Julian Thomas 2007, 567). As a result, material things have generally been neglected in social analysis, and it has recently been argued that even ‘material culture studies’ have primarily focused on the social construction of objects and artefacts, so that their symbolic and conceptual dimensions are valorized over their mundane and tangible attributes (Olsen 2003, 87). In place of anthropocentrism, Bruno Latour and others have proposed a conceptual levelling in which it is recognized that humans and objects alike are participants in any action that takes place in the world (Latour 2005, 70; Sørenson 2013, 2). This move is related to the notion of a ‘flat ontology’ introduced by Manuel DeLanda (2002, 58), which denies the causal role of transcendental or privileged entities or organising principles in generating the structure of reality, seeing change instead as immanent in systems of connections between entities. In the archaeological context, the marginalisation of things is identified as manifesting itself in the imperative to study ‘the Indian behind the artefact’ (Flannery 1967, 120). That is, material culture is considered of interest not in itself but only as a means of getting at something else, whether meanings or societies (Olsen 2003, 98). A ‘symmetrical’ approach seeks to place humans and things on an equal footing, as co-constitutors of society and as actants in networks of action. At the same time, in adopting a post-humanist agenda it rejects a concern with things as repositories of thoughts and symbolism, or as surrogate human beings, focusing instead on qualities that are independent of their involvement with human beings (Olsen 2012, 21). Rejecting the Cartesian distinction between mind and matter enables us to think of objects and substances as vibrant, constantly in motion and capable of doing things, having a power of their own rather than amounting to so much dead stuff (Bennett 2010, 6). On this basis it is possible to conclude that the interactions between people and things are not categorically different from those between things and other things: Rushing water washing against concrete pillars will ‘interpret’ or ‘feel’ the concrete surface as well as any hermeneut or phenomenologist. (Olsen et al. 2012, 10) Ultimately, this position is close to Alfred North Whitehead’s view that human perception and understanding are little different from the ways in which other entities ‘prehend’ each other (Shaviro 2011, 281). Undoubtedly, archaeologists have to be more aware of the way that animals, plants, artefacts and substances ‘get on with each other’ in the absence of people, and need to consider humans as just one element of an overall worldly ecology. However, there is a growing tension between the view that archaeology should be a ‘discipline of things’—to which humans, history and interpretation are incidental (Olsen 2012, 25)—and a concern that without adopting ‘human exceptionalism’, archaeologists should not apologize for being interested in people (Fowles 2010, 23). Symmetrical archaeology is

Why ‘The Death of Archaeological Theory’ 25 concerned with mixtures and hybrids (Webmoor and Witmore 2008, 60), but these mixtures are heterogeneous, and only those that involve human beings have given rise to cities, states and motor cars. It is, perhaps, possible to have a post-humanist perspective on the ‘human career’, which recognizes that whatever is distinctive about human beings (or more broadly, animate beings) is not contained within any individual phenotype but concerns the way that they are in the world. That is, being an animate being involves a particular mode of relationality. One way of achieving this is suggested by Tim Ingold’s account of humans and animals as being enmeshed in an animate lifeworld that is continually in flux and in which all materials and substances as well as living creatures are forever in motion (Ingold 2011, 71). Ingold, however, appears to admit a distinction between materials that are simply captivated by their own motion and animate beings that are capable of directing their movements and channelling the development of others through skill and craft. Crucially, though, he does not see action in the world as the external outcome of thoughts generated in an internalized mental sphere. Instead, he argues that thought is a worldly event: It is the flow of materials as a whole that thinks (Ingold 2012, 438). Here he is pushing the notion of the ‘extended mind’ much further than has been the case in cognitive evolutionism to argue that the organism and its brain are only one (essential) component in the activity of thinking. This is comparable with the position developed by Heidegger, who argues that worldly entities are disclosed to human beings not because of their internal mental functioning but as a result of their place within the world itself (Rae 2013, 6). Further potential quandaries raised by the ‘new materialisms’ also lie in store for archaeologists. In proposing a speculative realism, Quentin Meillassoux (2008, 5) argues that since Kant modern thought has been fixated with the notion of correlation, the relationship between things as they are in themselves and as they are apprehended by the human mind. In this scheme of things, thinking and being cannot be isolated from each other but can be only addressed as a unity, and it is impossible to approach any object in isolation from the subject that thinks it. Consequentially, epistemology is always privileged over ontology. Meillassoux advocates an ontological turn, a return to metaphysics, in which we regain the confidence to speculate about the way that things actually are rather than how they are represented in thought. An immediate problem here is that Meillassoux’s objects are very much things-in-themselves, isolated entities rather than materials in motion, engaged in a world-process (in the sense of Ingold 2012, 436). The same problem emerges in Graham Harman’s object-oriented philosophy, which brings together themes from Heidegger and Whitehead. Like Heidegger, Harman argues that material things oscillate between a state of ‘invisibility’ in which they are simply submerged in everyday activity and moments in which they announce themselves and become conspicuous (Harman 2010, 46). Thus, when we use a hammer to pound nails into

26 Julian Thomas wood, it withdraws from notice, hidden within the project of hammering, but when it breaks and fails it becomes visible as a thing of a certain kind: a broken hammer. Harman places a Whitehead-ian spin on this analysis, arguing that interactions between people and things should be seen as merely a subset of interactions between things in general. Therefore, every encounter between two entities is characterized by the revelation of some of the qualities or energies of each, while the ‘subterranean reality’ of each object is withheld. When a falling leaf encounters a wall, it does so in a particular way, eliciting a particular ‘phenomenal surface’ from it (Harman 2010, 58). This means that while putting all entities (human, animal and material) on an equal ontological footing, Harman envisages them as always fundamentally separate and remote from each other (Shaviro 2011, 282). Although things disclose something of themselves in interaction, their intimate reality is closed in upon itself. So although Harman’s perspective is one that takes objects seriously, it is one that is far removed from the vision of things as gatherings, or openings into the seamless relationality of the world (Webmoor and Witmore 2008, 64). Indeed, Harman explicitly advocates a focus on individual, actual things, rather than giving priority to relationships. For him, objects are first of all isolated entities and only subsequently enter into relationships with each other (Harman 2011, 295). This means that rather than attempting to transcend the object-subject dichotomy, speculative realists imagine subjectless, autonomous objects (Bryant 2011, 14). As Fowles (2010, 25) observes, there is a potential for the reaction against social construction to lead us towards a new objectification of things as freestanding entities. Ironically, archaeologists have often been attracted to this broad area of thought by an interest in networks and relationships, only perhaps to find that some of its elements are profoundly anti-relational. It has been claimed that the encounter between archaeology and the new materialisms is gradually giving rise to a new ‘revolution’ as fundamental as those of the 1960s and 1980s (Olsen 2012, 15). This is arguable, on the grounds that the new positions involved are emerging incrementally, as an extension of post-processualism. But in another way, these developments are more significant than ‘another revolution’. This is because the arguments surrounding speculative realism, flat ontologies and the rejection of anthropocentrism are still unresolved and in flux. They have not been introduced to archaeology after the event, as a fully formulated body of theory. Instead, archaeologists have engaged with these ideas as they have developed, in ‘real time’ rather than in abbreviated form. As a consequence, archaeology itself becomes the terrain over which these debates are conducted rather than simply a set of materials to which already existing conceptual apparatuses are applied. These are potentially the conditions under which archaeology can properly begin to contribute to interdisciplinary debate. Moreover, it is to be anticipated that the more measured process by which ideas are evaluated and worked with as they develop in the interdisciplinary arena, and revised

Why ‘The Death of Archaeological Theory’ 27 in the light of their confrontation with archaeological problems and materials, is likely to be characteristic of the progress of archaeological theory in the foreseeable future. CONCLUSION: FROM DECONSTRUCTION TO CONDITIONS OF POSSIBILITY The emergence of new arguments within archaeology over the past decade demonstrates that archaeological theory has not come to a halt or run out of steam. These may have been stimulated by developments in philosophy and cultural theory, but they represent more than a slavish accommodation of fashionable ideas to archaeological concerns. As I have attempted to demonstrate, these ideas bring within them unanswered questions that archaeologists will have to address for themselves. Furthermore, if archaeological thinking is now moving forward in concert with other disciplines, rather than in the accelerated spurts of the 1960s and 1980s, the way that theory is employed within the discipline may be expected to change subtly. We have noted that where new conceptual resources are readily available, they can be drawn upon to provide fruitful redescriptions of existing archaeological problems. But as Bruno Latour (2004, 246) has observed, critical approaches fuelled by novel conceptual approaches sometimes restrict themselves to the deconstruction of existing analyses. This is why Latour calls for a renewal of empiricism, using critical approaches to assemble the connections that render things significant, rather than dismantling their conditions of possibility. But just as the notion of a ‘death of theory’ becomes problematic when it is translated from literary studies to archaeology, so too this ‘new empiricism’ raises in acute form the difficulty of recontextualising concepts drawn from other disciplines. As we have seen, philosophers and cultural theorists have advocated a ‘return to the empirical’ as a renewal of Husserl’s injunction to go ‘back to the things themselves’. In the process it seeks to erase the distinction that we often set up between the world that we inhabit and the realm in which our knowledge of that world resides, and to shift our focus from epistemology to ontology (Henare, Holbraad, and Wastell 2007, 8). This is obviously something very different from the antitheoretical scientism described at the beginning of this paper, and it would be very harmful to try to elide the two. Nonetheless, we can anticipate with despairing resignation a future conference session in which a rejection of theory is linked to the rise of a new empiricism. I have argued that the recent history of archaeological thought has given rise to inflated expectations of how theory should develop and how it should animate the discipline. We have come to believe that theoretical debate should be in constant flux, continually creating scandalous revisions and endless novelty. Because this tumult has apparently quietened since the 1990s, we are left with a sense of disappointment, leading to the pessimistic

28 Julian Thomas diagnosis that archaeological theory is dead, or at least on its last legs. Along with the Berlin Wall and student radicalism, it represents a manifestation of a vanished era of ideological polarization. But in practice, we have been privileged to experience the unrepeatable process in which archaeology has integrated itself into the mainstream conversations of the natural and human sciences. The intellectual pyrotechnics that accompanied this development were a once-only show, and we may now be entering a more sober phase of disciplinary history. Archaeological theory is not dead, but it may need to become more modest and less excitable as it settles down to middle age, embedded in a more patient and meticulous engagement with the traces of the past. What follows may be less spectacular, but no less rewarding.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Charlotta Hillerdal, Frands Herschend and Johannes Siapkas for the opportunity to attend the workshop on ‘Archaeologies into the 2010s—Yet Another Turn?’ at Uppsala University and for a most enjoyable meeting. Thanks to Chris Witmore and Michael Fotiadis for helpful comments. NOTE 1. ‘James Ross Clemens, a cousin of mine, was seriously ill two or three weeks ago in London, but is well now. The report of my illness grew out of his illness; the report of my death was an exaggeration’. From a note Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) wrote in London on May 31, 1897, to reporter Frank Marshall White.

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32 Johannes Siapkas

Comment Johannes Siapkas

The contribution by Julian Thomas addresses the debate surrounding the death of archaeological theory, which has emerged in archaeology during the twenty-first century. There are several strands in the notion of the death of theory, as Thomas points out, but they all emphasize that archaeology entered a state of post-theory after post-processualism. The proponents of the death of archaeological theory argue that archaeological theory, as a relevant issue, is dead. According to their view, archaeological theory is no longer an issue that is deserving of the amount of attention it received during the late twentieth century. Thomas sketches the background to the rise of archaeological theory. Theory, which is sometimes conflated or overlapping with method, has always constituted a foundational part of archaeology. Foundational figures such as Oscar Montelius, Gordon Childe, Lewis Binford and Colin Renfrew have all contributed to further archaeological theory. However, as Thomas points out, theory in archaeology was used in a mechanistic fashion in order to explain the archaeological record—theory was a methodological toolkit. Archaeological theory was underdeveloped. This changed during the last decades of the twentieth century with the advent of post-processual archaeology—although David Clarke is mentioned as a precedent. The initial underdevelopment of archaeological theory also provides us with an explanation as to why archaeological theory was debated so intensely for a decade or two. However, it was not only the quantity of theoretical reflection that changed with post-processualism—the quality of this discourse also underwent radical reformulation. Theory expanded from issues such as the meaning of the distribution of ceramics or settlement patterns, to also addressing issues about the relevance of various philosophies for archaeology, or the nationalist and colonialist dimensions of archaeology. Archaeological theory became a realm that also explicated the situatedness of archaeology: It paid attention to both internal and external dimensions of archaeology. Thomas employs the notion of ‘Big Theory’ to denote the wide-reaching aim of post-processual archaeology. In this, Thomas comes close to the notion of ‘grand theory’ that Quentin Skinner (1985) famously introduced in The Return of Grand Theory in the Human Sciences. A grand theory is a systematic and overarching theory which aims to explain everything. Accordingly, when Thomas associates post-processual theory with Big Theory, he emphasizes the widening of archaeological theoretical discourse to encompass discussions about the relation of archaeology with other realms in society—that is, theory was associated with cultural politics. Big Theory, in other words, does not denote holistic systems-theory, which produces overarching models that will explain everything in the past, but rather it denotes theory that is concerned with associating internal archaeological discourses with external discourses.

Why ‘The Death of Archaeological Theory’ 33 Today, in the post-theoretical aftermath, theory remains a vibrant field in archaeology. Archaeological theory is emerging as a specialization for archaeologists. Furthermore, in the twenty-first century, archaeologists have begun to actively participate in the formulation of theoretical perspectives which have a reach that goes beyond archaeology, as Thomas rightly notes. This stands in contrast to the state of archaeological theory in the late twentieth century, when archaeologists employed a heuristic strategy where they imported ready-made theories and philosophies and used them to interpret the archaeological record. There was a chronological lag in archaeological theory. The difference between archaeological theory today and during the late twentieth century has some consequences, which Thomas identifies. First, archaeological theory today opposes the requiem of archaeological theory; theory is not dead—it is different. Second, several aspects of big theory are obsolete now—for instance, the ready-made adoption of yet another philosopher. Third, there are features of big theory that actually continue to persist. That is, a characteristic feature of Big Theory is that it bridges the divide between internal and external factors—archaeological studies employ methods, internal aspects, in part because of influences from contemporary social and cultural concerns (i.e. external factors). Today, theories bridge this divide, but in a more confined sense than during the heyday of Big Theory. We have not abandoned big theory, but rather we have delimited our scope. We are still addressing ‘big theory’ issues. I find many merits in Thomas’s analysis, and I am sympathetic to his agenda. I think that his association of post-processual archaeological theory with Big Theory provides us with a succinct background to the rise of archaeological theory. I also subscribe to the view that archaeological theory may no longer be a topical issue—but it is far from dead. However, the chronological lag of archaeological theory emerges in relation to literature studies in Thomas’s contribution. This is the only context to which archaeological theory is related. Literature studies and archaeology walk at different paces. In literature studies, big theory was introduced in the 1960s as a turn away from positivism and new criticism. When archaeology incorporated Big Theory, literature studies were abandoning or at least questioning Big Theory. Needless to say, other academic settings were also influenced by Big Theory. It is unfortunate that Thomas does not include other disciplines in his discussion; the theoretical lag he identifies in postprocessual theory is perhaps no lag at all from another angle. This lies beyond Thomas’s analytical scope, but it would be interesting to compare the rise of theory in archaeology with the rise of theory in history, anthropology and art history. REFERENCE Skinner, Q. 1985. “Introduction: The Return of Grand Theory.” In The Return of Grand Theory in the Human Sciences, edited by Quentin Skinner, 1–20. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

34 Christopher Witmore

Comment Christopher Witmore

This essay thoughtfully questions and richly contextualizes recent discussion pertaining to the death of theory in archaeology. It is these morbid musings which provide Julian Thomas with an occasion to raise a series of larger concerns about the general state of archaeological theory today. Identifying three distinct perspectives behind the death of theory, Thomas argues that the problem with any requiem to theory ‘lies with the relationship between archaeological thought in particular and intellectual history in general, and with an unrealistic set of expectations that were generated by the explosive development of archaeological thinking between 1960 and 1990 and the way that it was understood at the time’. An abatement of theoretical engagement within archaeology is far from the case (Hodder, Karlsson, and Olsen 2008), and, if anything, as Thomas suggests, theory has further matured to the point where archaeology is becoming a major player in wider theoretical trends. I fully agree. And thus, with my short comment I will underscore, augment and amplify some of the points made in this essay. It is certainly no less the case today than it was in the time of David Clarke that philosophical reflection often follows on technological developments; consider the impact of geophysics, DNA analysis or emergent media. Still, even these catalysts are too narrow. The changes signalled by the litany of overlapping conceptual frameworks mentioned by Thomas are also following on crises of ecology, economy, demography and politics (see Solli et al. 2011). In the face of our looming threats one might expect a furthering of the theoretical diversity indicative of post-processualism. And yet, the litany of concerns—language, meanings, values, identity, culture and power—spawned through a centring on humanity has not tooled us to adequately confront the crisis turned catastrophe in which we now find ourselves globally. To the fore rises the inanity of the many divides of our own making, many of them oriented along that coddled twofold of humans and nonhumans. It is here that Thomas raises a number of points that I would like to address in what remains of this brief comment. There is, as Thomas notes, ‘a growing tension between the view that archaeology should be a “discipline of things”—to which humans, history and interpretation are incidental (Olsen 2012, 25)—and a concern that without adopting “human exceptionalism”, archaeologists should not apologize for being interested in people (Fowles 2010, 23)’. Thomas is correct about this growing tension, and it is one that is based on a patent misconception where readers conflate the rejection of the rift between humans and the world as a move where humans, life (Barrett 2014) and interpretation become merely incidental. If we eliminate the opposed realms of culture and

Why ‘The Death of Archaeological Theory’ 35 nature or subject and object, then why appeal to that familiar valorisation of one side above the other? This would directly violate the principle of symmetry. Such a misconception is partially connected with the definition of things. With symmetrical archaeology, everything in the world is equally a thing; that is, farmers, centaurs, ruined temples, the goddess Athena, ploughed furrows, earthworms and cisterns are equally individual entities or units that cannot be broken into their parts (Witmore 2014; compare Harman 2013, 6–7). Things do not gain their reality from elsewhere. Things are irreducible to anything else. The relationship between farmer and furrow is no more and no less important than that between earthworms and soil, microbes and leather. Thomas is correct about the notion of gathering with respect to its early formulation within symmetrical archaeology and the challenge of objectoriented philosophy. These are two options for dealing with the same problem: again, the privileged twofold of people and objects. Taking inspiration from Leibniz and Serres, Whitehead and Latour, the former aimed at an understanding of things as mixtures of heterogeneous elements, whereby relations come to be part of the composite character of things. Graham Harman, by contrast, maintains a gap between objects and relations without giving privilege to any particular entities. To do so he gives all objects a fourfold structure–time, space, essence and eidos (Harman 2011). One option is deeply relational; the other, deeply nonrelational. Both approaches have their practical utility. Both place emphasis on things or objects as the starting point. A key issue is that both relationality and nonrelationality need to be held in symmetry (Olsen et al. 2012). There is a difference between saying that things are made of diverse elements and saying that they are reducible to them. Harman would have no problem with the former but would take issue with the latter. The biggest problem with gatherings or mixtures is to insist that we begin with them when we never encounter things as bundles of other things from the start. Rather, we encounter things as specific entities: trowels, sandy surfaces, hewn limestone blocks, bits of pottery or burnt bone. Indeed, the insistence on things as mixtures a priori succumbs to the very point for which the article, cited by Thomas (Webmoor and Witmore 2008), interrogated social archaeology—a presumption concerning the nature of the real (this is basically a species of Clarke’s ‘archaeological metaphysics’). Succinctly, that essay overemphasized the entanglement of things at the expense of their autonomy. Still, the notion of gathering does not lose its practical utility. It becomes a proposition to be solved, an outcome of the labours of archaeology. This is, in many ways, less of a crux issue between the second empiricism and object-oriented philosophy than the question of the bifurcation of the world into primary and secondary qualities. Whereas the second empiricism rejects this divide, object-oriented philosophy endorses a strict separation of real and sensual objects (Harman 2011). With reference to the longstanding disciplinary aspiration to a brand of homegrown theory, I wholly agree with Thomas that any criterion for

36 Christopher Witmore judgment based upon territorial delineations of inside versus outside is of little consequence (Witmore 2012). Expedient and flimsy conceptual tools, boundaries are the most futile of classificatory devices for a scientific and/or humanistic profession; as soon as a line is drawn, someone will inevitably stray over it and lay claim to new territory. This act of capturing the ‘outside’ is often tied to the denouncement of others. Matters are complicated by an old and deeply rooted inferiority complex in archaeology of being a second-string social science that adds the products of forerunner disciplines and sciences to its accounts of the past. In all of this, it is the refrain (inside and outside) that often is evoked as the criterion for judgment rather than, as Isabelle Stengers (2008, 39–40) puts it, a trust in the art of ‘immanent discrimination’. What should matter most is one’s commitment to one’s objects of concern. Immanent discrimination demands that we look to our objects of concern with care and in wonder, and this obligation requires a theory that refuses to take flight from things, from the ontological conditions of production, and is bold enough to go wherever these matters should lead. Such theory, as Thomas suggests, is anything but dead. REFERENCES Barrett, J. 2014. “The Material Constitution of Humanness.” Archaeological Dialogues 21 (1): 65–74. Fowles, S. 2010. “People without Things.” In An Anthropology of Absence: Materializations of Transcendence and Loss, edited by M. Bille, F. Hastrup, and T. F. Sørenson, 23–41. New York: Springer. Harman, G. 2011. The Quadruple Object. Winchester, UK: Zero Books. ———. 2013. Bells and Whistles: More Speculative Realism. Winchester, UK: Zero Books. Hodder, I., H. Karlsson, and B. Olsen. 2008. “40 Years of Theoretical Engagement: A Conversation with Ian Hodder.” Norwegian Archaeological Review 41 (1): 26–42. Olsen, B. 2012. “After Interpretation: Remembering Archaeology.” Current Swedish Archaeology 20: 11–34. Olsen, B., M. Shanks, T. Webmoor, and C. L. Witmore. 2012. Archaeology: The Discipline of Things. Berkeley: University of California Press. Solli, B., M. Burström, E. Domanska, M. Edgeworth, A. González-Ruibal, C. Holtorf, G. Lucas, T. Oestigaard, L. Smith, and C. Witmore. 2011. “Some Reflections on Archaeology and Heritage in the Anthropocene.” Norwegian Archaeological Review 44 (1): 40–81. Stengers, I. 2008. “Experimenting with Refrains: Subjectivity and the Challenge of Escaping Modern Dualism.” Subjectivity 22: 38–59. Webmoor, T., and C. Witmore. 2008. “Things Are Us! A Commentary on Human/ Thing Relations under a Banner of ‘Social’ Archaeology.” Norwegian Archaeological Review 41 (1): 53–70. Witmore, C. 2012. “The Adventure of Ideas.” Norwegian Archaeology Review 45 (1): 103–6. ———. 2014. “Confronting Things: A Reply to Edgeworth, Hodder, Ingold and Lazzari.” Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 2 (2).

2

Archaeology and the Second Empiricism Christopher Witmore

INTRODUCTION The challenge posed by the editors of this volume, Debating Archaeological Empiricism: The Ambiguity of Material Evidence, centres on whether the ongoing renegotiation of key features and concerns at the heart of archaeology, classical archaeology and ancient history is connected with a revitalization of empiricism, and whether it is possible to speculate as to which ‘turn’ these past-oriented disciplines will take, more broadly. From here the editors push matters further with this question: “. . . if we are resurrecting empiricism, what is the difference between Empiricism 2.0 and the familiar Empiricism 1.0 that has shaped the humanities during modernity?” This essay is a response to that question. Indeed, what follows are several propositions as to the shape and character of what might be called the ‘second empiricism’ (Latour 2008 and 2010; after James 1912). The old empiricism, generally speaking, was caught up with a common scenario that archaeologists are seen to hold—as Isabelle Stengers puts it, ‘the power of voicing an (objective) truth, a truth that transcends the practices that produced it’ (2010, 64). This scenario plays out on post-Kantian grounds marred by those fatigued rifts between discovery and invention, objectivity and subjectivity, fact and manufacture. Rather than beginning with two separate domains, with the second empiricism we may now ask, Why do we have to acquiesce to making a choice? Could the world not be simultaneously concrete and constructed? Are there other ways to strike upon experience, ways that do not presuppose a bifurcated nature? It is with respect to these questions that I set out three propositions related to the second empiricism. One—what is given in experience should not be oversimplified (Latour 2008). Two—avoid the bifurcation of nature. Three—data are at once real and artificial. With the first proposition we will work through an example of a site documented by an archaeological survey in an attempt to understand what we might be attentive to in experience. The point—following Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers and Alfred North Whitehead—is not to move away from material experience but to draw it even closer (cf. Thomas 2004). With the second, we shall discuss why what Whitehead (2006 [1920]) called the bifurcation of nature posed such

38 Christopher Witmore a problem for the first empiricism and how it is avoided with the second. With the final proposition we take a closer look at archaeological notions of data and the question of translation. This essay will then be drawn to a close by underlining three points of difference between the ordinary and second empiricism. However, before setting out on this journey it is worth taking a brief pause to address whether it is adequate to think of this move as a ‘turn’ in the humanities. To witness how academic culture is saturated with ‘new’ directions, ‘new’ turns, one need but consider a brief litany of familiar examples: the cognitive turn (Fuller et al. 1989), the linguistic turn (Rorty 1967), the interpretive turn (Hiley, Bohman, and Shusterman 1992; in archaeology see Thomas 2004), the semiotic turn (Lenoir 1994), the ontological turn (Woolgar et al. 2008; Holbraad and Pedersen 2014), the postmodern turn (Best and Kellner 1997), the speculative turn (Bryant, Srnicek, and Harman 2011), the turn after the social turn (Latour 1992; also see Webmoor 2007). Grasping for the novel, probing for an unstated, unobserved angle on our matters of concern has been a modus operandi for scholarly production for over two hundred years; one need but contemplate the shifts in paradigms for Thomas Kuhn (1962) or the emergence of epistemes for Michel Foucault (1973). It is Peter Sloterdijk (2006, 37) who stated it as a ‘trivial fact that kinetics is the ethics of modernity’. At best, this peculiar kinetics of modernism results in genuine gains—gains marked by advancing toward collective goals and a greater freedom of movement within the specified state of affairs. At worst, a turn is quickly undermined by the low-hanging accusations of fashion and the self-satisfaction of claiming the new. At that point, cynical reason casts suspicion on that latest turn as the bovine tactics of an academic herd clamouring for recognition among an avant-garde. The conflation of morals and kinetics often results in a false mobility and its associated amnesia. If the movement signalled by the notion of a ‘turn’ falls into that logical scheme of contradiction which consigns previous scholarship, ideas and theory to the waste bin of outmoded labour, then the body of work associated with it runs the risk of forgetting and, therefore, repetition. With any turn, genuine gains should provide motivation, but, to put a spin on an old adage, those ignorant of previous arguments tend to repeat them. Deep intellectual memory provides the countermeasures necessary for producing truly novel work, but turns do not necessarily lack this—if they do, such turns sooner or later are undermined by returns. PROPOSITION ONE: WHAT IS GIVEN IN EXPERIENCE SHOULD NOT BE OVERSIMPLIFIED In order to better understand how there are more ways to strike upon experience, let us consider an example from archaeological landscape survey in Greece: August 8, 1980, a humid Friday morning. Six members of a survey team (the “Red Team”) associated with the Argolid Exploration Project

Archaeology and the Second Empiricism 39 (AEP) sweep along the northern edge of the Porto Kheli–Kosta road adjacent to the Metokhi Coast (Figure 2.1). After three passes through a field of ‘matted down grasses’ and ‘low pistachio bushes’, they come upon a site ‘highlighted by a foundation partially hidden by these pistachio bushes’. They labour briefly to map what amounts to four intersecting lines of nineteen worked limestone blocks and the associated scatter. The team collects eight sample bags of ceramic sherds, tiles and other material before they move on.1 August 15, 2003, a hot Friday afternoon. Video camera in hand, I walk east, uphill across the area covered a week plus twenty-three years earlier by the ‘Red Team’. Following a zigzagging pattern, I attempt to avoid patches of thistles, which now cover large portions of a once fallow cereal field—I note no pistachio bushes. My goal in this undertaking is to relocate what the AEP has catalogued as ‘A51. Metokhi tower’. As I proceed toward a long stonewall marking out the boundary of a new estate, I happen upon a series of limestone blocks. Traces suggest that recent bulldozer activity has covered the northern wall of the former structure and potentially dislodged a block from the southeast corner. The unpaved road, which provides access to this fenced estate, cuts across the western portion of the tower. A small wash rill

Figure 2.1 1:5000 sketch map of the section of the Metokhi coast—indicated by the area crossed in parallel lines—surveyed by the Red Team of the Argolid Exploration Project on August 8, 1980.

40 Christopher Witmore in the road indicates that water, when present, is slicing through the western line of stones (Figure 2.2). This ‘site’ sits in a plot that is now clearly marked ΠΛΕΙΤΑΙ—‘for sale’ (Figure 2.3).

Figure 2.2 Road surface with wash rill cutting through the western corner of the former stone structure. Photo: C. Witmore.

Archaeology and the Second Empiricism 41

Figure 2.3 Estate containing ‘A51’ marked for sale in August 2003. The site is located behind the tree in the centre of the photograph, with the dirt road to the left. Photo: C. Witmore.

A Greek Countryside, page 431 (Jameson, Runnels, and van Andel 1994). One of 328 sites generated out of the Argolid Exploration Project,2 ‘A51’ is interpreted as a potential ‘farmstead’ dating to the Classical-Hellenistic period. For the AEP, the term ‘farmstead’ refers to the following: Dwellings assumed to be inhabited for some part of the year by some members of a household. Consistently smaller than other categories of presumed settlements (often less than 2.0 ha in size), sometimes with evidence of a rectangular structure or a tower, roof tiles, a full range of ‘domestic’ artifacts (including, in the Classical period, lamps, oil press beds or weights, coins, other metal objects), and other habitational features such as storage pits or cisterns. (Jameson, Runnels, and van Andel 1994, 249) The designation of Classical-Hellenistic rests on thirty-seven fragments of diagnostic ceramics including ‘a variety of black-glazed fine wares, domestic coarse wares, pithoi, and many amphoras’ (431). Ceramics also suggest subsequent activity in the Late Roman period. Choose any of these three topoi, and one encounters a slightly different ‘site’. August 8, 1980, a group of archaeologists work on this location just as they would have with any other—except that day the narrator claimed to be more lethargic than normal—following a number of redundant protocols

42 Christopher Witmore in order to further clarify what for them was a remnant foundation of limestone in the midst of stubble field, thinly covered in sherds and pistachio bushes. Page 431 of Jameson, Runnels, and van Andel (1994) stands out as the end of the long series of transformations across which a few lines of intersecting limestone and an associated scatter of ceramics (a relationship which is largely assumed in lieu of excavation) in the Greek countryside gain competency as the former walls of a tower associated with what is possibly a Classical-Hellenistic farm. From here, August 15, 2003, represents an even more unlikely situation with a graduate student who revisits A51 as part of a project to retroactively verify work which took place more than two decades earlier. Because of this return, we now know that at some point in the intervening decades a fallow cereal field is sold, a new estate is built, the line of unpaved access road covers some of the stones and a bulldozer enrolled in levelling the encompassing plot of land leaves its marks upon the area. Since the publication of the Argolid Exploration Project this remnant structure has also gained in strength as part of a wider network of heterogeneous entities. Though not protected by archaeological zoning as of 2010, a few lines of former walls now have a greater potential to be connected with Greek notions of heritage, construction permit regulations3 and personnel in the 4th Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities in Nafplion. Indeed, it is this motley ensemble of relations that (has the potential to) strengthen what were formerly a few lines of stone in a fallow field against the work of a developer-with-bulldozer. Rather than regard this as the same site that acquires further definition, we witness an ongoing series of transformations. One encounters something in perpetual formation rather than fully formed; one comes upon something constantly in the making rather than ready-made (James 1978 [1907]). Still, this does not press matters far enough with the second empiricism. How ‘A51’ emerges is part of what it is. And this process is caught up within an idiosyncratic web of relations, archaeological and otherwise. The second empiricism recognizes how there are numerous separate spheres of relation and events running both simultaneously and successively; each is equally real as far as they go. Residents and visitors associated with the adjacent estate experience the worked limestone remains as no more than a jolt of their vehicle as they move over a bump in the surface of a private road. Here we encounter a very different outcome from that co-produced by the AEP whereby the western lines of stone are further polished by tires, and both tires and suspension are further worn as a result. Equally, one cannot deny other nonhuman relations—a rill of water interprets the site as much as a survey archaeologist does—a matter of importance that we will pick up below. For now, it is to be underlined how it is not the lot of the second empiricism to discriminate against relations that do not involve human actors. Many more things come into play. Equally, it may be a fact that the single-course, remnants of a limestone foundation, is a former feature of a Classical to Hellenistic farmstead, but

Archaeology and the Second Empiricism 43 it is also many other things, many other locales, in addition. For archaeologists, this foundation, after a long process of study, comes to be defined as the remains of a Classical-Hellenistic farmstead. For potential landowners, a pile of stones, strengthened within a system of legislation for archaeological sites in Greece, becomes an obstacle to the further development of land for a potential estate and its sale. For car suspensions, the stones become a bump in an unpaved road surface. A site adjacent to the Metokhi Coast is many: because the reality of a series of limestone blocks is not always indifferent to relations with survey archaeologists, bags of collected ceramics, draft paper, a tome published in 1994, graduate students, personnel employed by the Greek Ministry of Culture, or rainstorms; but neither is this site reducible to such relations. For many archaeologists, such minutiae might appear to bear very little relevance to questions of archaeological concern. Yet if what is given in experience should not be oversimplified, then we can no longer be indifferent to all these realities—realities constituted at the nexus of different webs of relation—in how we document a site such as ‘A51’. Beyond questions of empirical adequacy, being attentive to other realities leaves room for unanticipated questions of the information worlds generated through archaeological practice (Witmore 2009). Moreover, could deploying what was formerly rendered as a single site in the plural not generate a more realist perspective? To assert otherwise would seem to lead us right back to a situation where one maintains a more privileged position in claiming what the real world is really like. In order to understand the things archaeologists deem to be of the past as uncertain, convoluted and plural, the second empiricism avoids the bifurcation of nature into social multiplicity, on the one hand, and natural unity, on the other. This brings us to the second proposition. PROPOSITION TWO: AVOID THE BIFURCATION Knowledge comes from experience, and what grounds this ultimate doctrine of empiricism is that one cannot know certain problems such as ‘what is red by merely thinking of redness’ (Whitehead 1978 [1929], 256). As Whitehead puts it in Process and Reality, one ‘can only find red things by adventuring amid physical experiences in this actual world’ (256). Within the tradition of British Empiricism, and particularly the work of John Locke (2008 [1690]), sensation and reflection constitute the basic ingredients of our common knowledge. Situated with respect to objects, these ingredients could be distinguished in terms of primary and secondary qualities. So-called primary qualities are those supplied by nature, which an object possesses independent of human beings (or for that matter other objects). Mass, shape, size, texture, motion—these qualities are those held to be subject to geometrical proof: length, width, height, weight, density and so forth. Alleged secondary

44 Christopher Witmore qualities were those supplied by the human mind in the interaction with an object. Primary and secondary qualities delimit ‘what is in the mind’ from ‘what is in nature’, and these two domains form the obligatory bases for what William James (1912) called the ‘ordinary empiricism’. Recognizing objects as discrete, the ordinary empiricism favoured ‘separation’ at the expense of ‘conjunction’ (James 1912, 42–44). For Locke, initial experience involved ‘sense-data’, and the mind would subsequently enter to supply relations. Thus goes the old empiricist motto: nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu—‘there is nothing in the mind that was not first in the senses’ (Aquinas 1972 [1256–1259], ques. 2, art. 3, response 19). Of course, this distinction between what is in the senses and what is in the mind belongs now to an outmoded philosophical past. Notwithstanding, the sensible, as Quentin Meillassoux (2008) has expressed so clearly, exists as a relation between the observer and object observed. These sensible relations correspond to what are traditionally understood as secondary qualities, while those qualities regarded as inseparable from the object denote primary ones. For Whitehead, this separation of the subjective and objective was a presumption that bifurcated nature into two: ‘the nature apprehended in awareness and the nature which is the cause of awareness’ (2006, 16). Within archaeology it is quite common to conflate the bifurcation of nature with fundamental attributes of experience, whether labelled in terms of interpretation and data, mental judgment and sensory impressions, theory and practice, present and past, or words and the world. Consider how Matthew Johnson defines empiricism in ‘its more sophisticated form’ as resting on ‘a conceptual division between “things” or “the real world” on the one hand, “words” or “concepts” on the other, and the prioritization of the former’ (2010, 239; my emphasis). To avoid bifurcation, however, is not to simply write off one side at the expense of the other; rather, it is to give both sides back to a nature undivided. One must refuse to regard perceptions as distinct from reality. Both the brown of the soil and the chemical composition of the organic materials contained therein are in the same boat—one cannot pick and choose (Whitehead 2006 [1920], 44; in archaeology see, for example, Tilley 2004, 10–12; Witmore 2006). James stated the point thusly: ‘The parts of experience hold together from next to next by relations that are themselves parts of experience’ (1978 [1907], 173). To put it yet another way, the observer is never separate from that which is observed, because, as Steven Shaviro puts it, ‘they are both present in the world in the same manner’ (2009, 27). There is more to these considerations in the case of archaeology, to which I will return shortly. For now let it suffice to say that to accept these bifurcations as starting points to be transcended is not to take leave of the problem. To regard concepts and things as equipollent is a hyperbolic act of hubris, even abuse. This is, on the one hand, because consciousness was far too diaphanous (transparent and flimsy), as James puts it, to take a place among first principles set in contrast to the totality of the material world (1912, 29)

Archaeology and the Second Empiricism 45 and, on the other, because this drama grants central privilege to that relationship between humans and world—more of the latter will be said below. With regard to the former, a purified notion of consciousness bears no correlate in reality as an entity; for James, to speak of consciousness was to add more than what is given in experience.4 As a matter of contrast, we might consider how cognitive scientists, for example, now routinely situate those powers of the mind, formerly held to operate internally and free of the material world, as integral to a more ‘distributed consciousness’—one that operates in exchange with flat projections, texts, instruments, groups of interlocutors and legions of other entities (Hutchins 1995; in archaeology, see Malafouris 2004 and 2008). Meanwhile, the ordinary empiricism tends toward a reality made up of objects that lacked any transformative imprint from relations. Relations, as alleged secondary qualities, wasted over the deeper substance of entities (Witmore 2012). Whitehead famously remarked that if we desire a record of experience devoid of interpretation, then it is just as well to ask a stone to record its autobiography (1978 [1929], 15). A corollary to an ordinary empiricism with its bifurcated nature is ‘conceptualism’ where ‘universals’ are mind-made (Quine 1980, 14; also see Davidson 2001). This partitioning has left its mark on those now stale debates which turn over distinctions between universals and particulars. But this transcendence of neutral statements beyond nature occurs at the expense of the scaffolding of rooms, tables, file-folders, archives, computers, media and the associated ‘ecology of practices’ that give rise to and sustain so-called ‘universals’ (Olsen et al. 2012; Witmore and Shanks 2013). Indeed, for example, if we desire to transfer notions of what archaeologists deem to be methodologically adequate in the Basin of Mexico to the Southern Argolid in Greece without any consideration that locality and idiosyncrasy matter and that practice is impacted by materials, then we would never really get much farther than the valley edge at the base of Cerro Tláloc (pace Blanton et al. 1996). For one to maintain a ‘view from nowhere’ (Nagel 1986) is to sort out the world in advance without putting in the requisite work to better understand it.5 We will return to this issue below for it has bearing upon numerous debates within the profession (e.g. Alcock and Cherry 2013; Blanton 2001). In a few words, just as there can be no experience devoid of interpretation, there can be no universals detached from localized practices of classification, metrology and standardization (Bowker 2005; Callon 1998; Daston 2000). Indeed, those properties that can be measured have as much to do with relations, whether they are with a theodolite or perspective space, as they do with the definitive attributes of the thing. Relations among archaeologists, planning frames, measuring tapes and context sheets along with computers, archives and institutions are part of the co-emergence of any material past (this term, ‘co-emergence’, will become clearer shortly). These components are far too diverse to be boiled down to two domains alone—succinctly, what are the definitive attributes of a thing, and what is supposedly added to this reality through sensation.

46 Christopher Witmore And yet this old Kantian drama privileges the coddled twofold of humans and the world (Harman 2009, 67–68), thus leaving behind those dealings between sheep, green grass and stone enclosures; car tires, suspensions and worn limestone blocks; or a total station, grid paper and a reference marking out the location of a denarius of Otho dating to 69 CE. Sitting out the game on the sidelines, such relations were not even of secondary importance for the British empiricist John Locke (2008 [1690]), who referred to them as tertiary properties—interactions between sun and wax were third string. One finds this hierarchy of value to be pervasive within archaeology (Olsen 2006 and 2010). Let us consider this point further. With hermeneutic considerations in archaeology, for example, interpretation is locked in a dialectical dance between the interpreter (always human) and the ‘context’ of the object considered (cf. Hodder and Hudson 2003, 195–203). This sophisticated tradition, which has pushed such considerations to the trowel’s edge (Hodder 1999), has nevertheless missed legions of rapports between strings and baulks, theodolites and maps, sieves and sherds. With phenomenological archaeologies, similarly, privilege is granted to human access to the world (cf. Barrett and Ko 2009), while relations between nonhumans are consigned to the natural sciences (cf. Tilley 2004). Phenomenology brackets the world as presented to human consciousness. Phenomena—those things reduced to that which is brought to light, the stuff that is apparent—rest upon the correlation between things-in-themselves and categories of human understanding (see Harman 2009, 124–34; and Meillassoux 2008). Relations, however, are a problem for all entities; trowels can be said to ‘interpret’ loose silt among cobbles as much as any hermeneut, but not in the same way; the soil encasing a menhir ‘feels’, ‘touches’ or ‘experiences’ the standing megalith as well as any archaeologist, but, again, not in the same way. Why deny these nonhuman relations attributes of what is normally filed under the label of ‘subjectivity’? This democratic openness to the mediating potential of all entities, this flat ontology, undermines any identification of primary and secondary qualities with a bifurcation of nature into the material world and human beings. It is, indeed, Whitehead who gives back to experience what is held to be exceptional about humans. This realization strikes against the bow of correlationism, the doctrine that holds that primal rapport between humans and the physical world as co-originary (see Meillassoux 2008; in archaeology, refer to Lucas 2012). In his discussion of correlationism, Graham Harman underlines how ‘for the correlationist, not only are there no independent states of affairs apart from the primal rapport, but a human observer must also be one of the two ingredients of this rapport’ (2009, 124). Thus we encounter correlationist tendencies in the common denunciation of that old mantra ‘things speak for themselves’. To believe that things can speak, as Shannon Dawdy (2010, 778) maintains, is delusional. Artefacts, for Dawdy, ‘may have a type of agency, but it is largely a situated and historical agency created by human

Archaeology and the Second Empiricism 47 habitus’ (778). Beyond an implicit expectation that things should ‘speak’ in the way of humans,6 there is a belief that humans need to be there to observe the rapports between levees and water, cars and mud. But recall how a rill of water and lines of stone mutually articulate each other in ways that should not be regarded as mere background interactions to verbal statements. They do not require that monopoly of ‘human habitus’ in order to mutually constitute each other. To be sure, ‘A51’ is co-produced by the heterogeneous alliances that comprise the AEP, but this is not to say that lines of stones were not being realized by numerous agencies prior to their purported ‘discovery’ by the Red Team on that humid summer morning in 1980 (Witmore 2014). Succinctly, a revitalized empiricism does not take leave of the term ‘empiricism’. We are, to be sure, justified in the maintained use of the term by its oldest of etymological roots in the Greek term empeiria, which is concisely translated as experience. A slogan, then, of the second empiricism is to ‘move closer to experience’. Again, a main hinge between the ordinary empiricism and its successor is not to regard the bifurcation of nature as a starting point—a move which any dialectical, transcendent solution would champion (Webmoor and Witmore 2008). The dialectics where progress occurs through contradiction, to be sure, has not put these issues definitively behind us, because it accepts a given opposition, what it wishes to leave behind, as a starting point, and this occurs over and over and over again. The second empiricism, by contrast, acknowledges the status of such rifts as one of many possible outcomes in our attempts to strike upon ‘what we should be attentive to in experience’ (Latour 2005, 111). What then is missing from the discussion thus far is a consideration of how archaeologists can nonetheless package the material world into two dimensions. In other words, how can ‘representation’ occur in the second empiricism? Indeed, one of the primary faults of the empiricism discussed by archaeologists is to be found in how poorly it represented the material world. While it was certainly not the case that this empiricism, exemplified in the diverse work of Lewis Binford or David Clarke, failed to recognize the practical constraints of making contemporary observations regarding material things, it was, nonetheless, overly reductive in its rendering of experience, and this was due to a form of representation centred upon things of the material world as matters of fact. Let us now turn to the third proposition. PROPOSITION THREE: DATA ARE SIMULTANEOUSLY REAL AND ARTIFICIAL Establishing ground for this third proposition requires us to first ask, what are data? Here, consider two definitions of data in archaeology. Data are, as Lewis Binford maintains, ‘the representation of facts by some relatively

48 Christopher Witmore permanent conviction of documentation’ (1987, 392; my emphasis). Facts, for Binford, refer ‘to aspects of the actual occurrence of an event’ (392). Quite astutely, Binford recognized that archaeological facts are never historical facts (past events) but are always contemporary observational events. Indeed, archaeological ‘facts’ are, in the words of David Clarke, ‘observations in which the nature of the observer and his intentions play a large part in which “facts” are observed and recorded’ (1978, 19). According to Binford, the responsibility for a faithful portrayal rests with the archaeologist who must ‘seek out experiences as widely as possible in order to provide reality checks on the accuracy and utility of his ideas’ (1987, 403). The archaeologist is accountable, and it should be added, that these matters of fact are subject to modification through future experience (cf. James 1912; also Wylie 2002). Facts could be built upon facts. In a shift away from questions of fact, Ian Hodder defines data ‘as a set of dynamic, dialectical, unstable relations between objects, contexts and interpretation’ (1999, 84). For Hodder, ‘interpretation is involved in the construction of data’, and, as such, excavation is justly regarded as a highly skilled activity (1999, 102–3; also refer to Berggren and Hodder 2003; Hodder 1984; Lucas 2001). Here, emphasis is placed upon the steel edge in excavation, and interpretations are debated among various specialists (excavators; ceramic, faunal, lithic or micromorphological specialists; and so forth) in the trenches. But that is not all. More groups have a stake. Because, as Hodder (2000) puts it, interpretations impact data, attempts must be made to involve more stakeholder groups on the ground. To be sure, as Alison Wylie (2002) has so effectively demonstrated, we may well find comparable, antecedent considerations within archaeology in the work of Clyde Kluckhohn (1939, 1940) or John W. Bennett (1943, 1946). Arguing against a kind of ‘narrow empiricism’ where sensory facts were given priority over theory, both Bennett and Kluckhohn acknowledged the importance of theory in conditioning facts (Wylie 2002, 32). The very presence of the return to similar debates signals not only the problem with regarding this bifurcation as a starting point (Webmoor and Witmore 2008) but also that we have not yet moved close enough to experience! Admittedly, such careful genealogical considerations are outside the scope of this essay. Importantly, while neither of these understandings of data can be boiled down to a complacent acceptance of the kind of neutral, dispassionate statement that comes from nowhere (Stengers 2008, 92), both can be said to rest upon the ‘bifurcation of nature’ discussed in the previous section where hard, objective, ‘primary’ qualities are separate from those soft, sensuous, ‘secondary’ qualities that are supplied by a human subject. As specified with propositions one and two, we run afoul of our objects when we seek to split them into such portions or, indeed, begin as if they once were (however, see Harman 2013). Though it was savvy to the impact of the archaeologist, the brand of empiricism articulated by Binford and Clarke ultimately reduced objects to

Archaeology and the Second Empiricism 49 archaeological facts—facts they may be, but, as we saw with the example of ‘A51’, they are also a lot of other things besides (Latour 2005, 21). With the form of interpretivism expounded by Hodder, we are presented with a dialectical dance, which builds upon a radical separation entirely of our own making (Webmoor and Witmore 2008). For Hodder (1999), data are both objective and subjective. This scheme of ‘guarded objectivity’ would be perfectly fine were it not for the precarious and disorienting position we must now occupy between two non-existing poles of a world torn asunder. Pulled in two directions, one must now become socially constructivist with reference to the materials and realist with reference to the ‘social’ at the same time (also consider Hodder and Hudson 2003, 241–42). For the second empiricism, both ways of representing data—an ordinary empiricism where the real is conflated with actual facts and a dialectical interpretivism that begins with/builds upon a bifurcated world—are untenable. The past is not discovered; rather, it is produced (a point that will be qualified shortly) in the present by working with what is left behind—this was somewhat of a credo for Michael Shanks and Christopher Tilley (1992; echoed for example in Hingley 2005). For Shanks and Tilley, facts can be separated neither from value, nor from concepts, nor from theory. Facts, returning to their etymological roots, must be fabricated, and, in this, theory can never be divorced from practice (Shanks and McGuire 1996). To put it another way, archaeologists are never wholly separate from the material pasts they co-produce; there is no neutral view from elsewhere; there is no static record. Here the term ‘co-production’ speaks to the wider ecology of participants that take part in the manifestation of the material past (Witmore 2004; Olsen et al. 2012). The chain of transformation between the trowel’s edge and the final document is thick with moments whereby archaeologists, trowels, gridded paper and string swap properties with things deemed to be of the material past. Even the basic question of whether a dark soil-encrusted lump is ceramic or stone leads to a gauntlet of tests at the site of Roman Binchester in County Durham, UK. Through a series of steps—the texture of the surface, the sound made by the tap of a trowel, the moist imprint left after a bite of the teeth—an undetermined lump acquires further definition as either a sherd of Roman grey ware or a bit of sandstone. If relations must be understood to take part in the compositional reality of archaeological entities, then these entities cannot move as pure forms from place to place. Every new relation has the potential to transform an entity in some small way, but we should not jump to any conclusions that relations exhaust what entities hold in reserve (Lucas 2012; Olsen 2010). Likewise, what provides the grounds for any record—texts, maps, photographs, archived artefacts—are also moving and continually transforming within new fields of relation. Records do not take flight from the reality of the world, and this was something positivists failed to realize. Should you ever do so, you will never read the same report in the precisely same way twice (see Olsen 2005 and 2010 for a discussion of this point in relation to

50 Christopher Witmore post-structuralism). It is worth taking a brief moment here to consider how knowledge too is caught up in an ongoing process of formation and therefore requires ongoing work to maintain. Any historical text, for example, is also comprised of archives, institutions, administrative personnel, curators, ordered shelves, air conditioning, organizational standards, databases, not to mention the long chains of articulation, selection, filtering, acquisition and so on that gave rise to that text (see discussion in Auslander et al. 2009). While most archaeologists recognize that the old positivist mantra of adding another brick to the edifice of knowledge related to an image of generating ever more accurate copies of the material world no longer holds (consider the longstanding rationale of Classical Archaeology in terms of accumulation, as it has been discussed by Morris 2000; also Siapkas 2001), few have grasped the full implication of what remains. Whenever we attempt to manifest a fragment of Roman grey ware in two dimensions, something of the manner of its reality is lost, and something of the manner of its reality is gained (Latour 1999). The reality of the sherd can be fully encapsulated neither in a field notebook nor in an image in a database. Circulating relevant qualities of this bit of ceramic requires the work of translation, which occurs across a series of steps, a series of many small gaps (Latour 2005). In the course of this work, this archaeological labour, the sherd is displaced and modified (Webmoor 2007; Witmore 2004). If, therefore, there can be no translation without transformation, then the old correspondence model of truth must be jettisoned. With the correspondence model of truth, the philosophy of language postulated that the gap between two distinct spheres—language and the world—was bridged by a reference that resembles the thing verified (James 1978 [1907]; Latour 1999).7 Accuracy rested on a fidelity to the things shown as faithful copies (Harman 2009), and, in this, progress in knowledge came about through refining this fidelity (consider Richard Rorty’s [1979] felicitous polishing of the mirror of reality—a goal still held in the back corridors of some archaeology centres, institutes and anthropology departments). Rooted in an over-simplified understanding of the relationship between the world and words, facts and interpretation, data and theory, this image of accuracy has not grappled with the complex, non-linear, careful, exhaustive, protracted, messy, iterative process by which archaeologists build an accurate portrayal of the material world (Witmore 2004). Accuracy, of course, rests on how words, texts, maps or photographs correspond to an original situation, but it is also rooted in the iterative potential for revisiting the series of steps between the material world and those words, that text, that map, that photograph (Latour 1999; in archaeology, see Webmoor 2007; Witmore 2009). In other words, the trials and tribulations that rest behind any final publication of archaeological materials unfold across many steps—steps which bridge many small gaps; there is no single chasm between words and the world. Gaps between entities are legion, as Bruno Latour (1999)

Archaeology and the Second Empiricism 51 emphasizes, and translation, the negotiation of these gaps, is omnipresent (Harman 2009, 73–79). Any commitment to accuracy, any obligation to a faithful portrayal, any measure of adequacy with respect to the things manifest demands full disclosure of every step along the path taken to generate a statement, a notebook entry, a report, a final publication about the material entities that co-emerge through these very archaeological interventions. Equally, a duty to accuracy on the part of subsequent researchers must translate into both a spirit of caution (not quite the steadfast scepticism and distrust characteristic of the ordinary empiricism) with respect to the adequacy of the claims made and, occasionally, reiterative action through retracing the paths taken.8 Such loyalties situate archaeology within a continual ‘tuning process’, to borrow from Andrew Pickering (1995). And the burden of proof demands we open up every step of this process to the possibility of public scrutiny (cf. Hodder 1999). ‘Co-emergence’ is a key principle for the second empiricism. Contrary to the notion that data exist as enduring nuggets of reality that persist in spite of all the escapades around them, contrary to the presumption that data may be transmitted in an absolutely pristine state from one site to the next, all actors are impacted and perturbed by others. All actors swap properties and are modified in the course of their transactions (such are basic tenants of process-relational approaches, including Actor-Network-Theory; see Law 2008). Stated differently, for a ‘series of stone-lined pits’ to come into being at the site of Binchester, a whole host of entities—WHS trowels, undergraduate students, bits of stone and rubble, sediments, unit supervisors and so forth—must lend their action over the course of a few days of excavation in July of 2010. Anything and everything can be a mediator, and all these mediators are transformed in the course of this action: Trowels are further worn; undergraduate students become more adept at recognizing subtle differences in soil consistency, compaction and colour; bits of stone and rubble are further freed of encasing soil and thus defined as subsets of larger features; sediments are displaced to rubbish piles; unit supervisors gain more confidence in their understanding a context, feature, a site. Within this community of practice, all co-emerge. Indeed, features similar to what are now taken to be ‘stone-lined pits’ had been recorded as rubble/slumping paving in the course of earlier excavations on the site.9 So, to sum up, data are neither invented, because their reality plays a role in their formation, nor discovered, because they are altered in significant ways by archaeological scrutiny. Data are not only starting points; they are also achievements. Data are artefacts (note may be taken of the spin on Clarke’s point that ‘artifacts are the archaeologist’s main data’ [1978, 13]; also see Stengers 2010). And accuracy rests upon the traceability of those achievements to an original situation, a situation that always begins in medias res. From this vantage point, none of our forays as archaeologists have dug deep enough to the bedrock of ‘fundamental entities’ (Clarke 1978; also Shennan 2004), as they have all left in place a single natural unity across

52 Christopher Witmore which dance rich multiplicities of interpretation, meaning, significance and belief. ‘Differing views’ could be taken of the ‘same facts’ as Clarke (1978, 19) put it. Succinctly, our pluralism is one-sided in its concerns for social or exclusively human-oriented groups. With the turn away from matters of fact in recent years, we have become adept at detecting and incorporating the relevant parties. Of course, many archaeologists recognize the vast difference between made and made up, constructed and ‘socially’ constructed (see Alison Wylie’s [2002, 161–78] discussion of a ‘mitigated objectivism’). Facts must be both fabricated and real at the same time (Latour 1999, 127). But in this we have emphasized a rich multiplicity of ‘human subjectivity’ dancing on top of solid matter as discrete entities—solid matter represented, nonetheless, as data built upon indisputable matters of fact. Full stop. FROM AN ORDINARY EMPIRICISM TO EMPIRICISM 2.0 I must caution you that empiricism 2.0 looks very little like that of its ordinary predecessor. The tendency of deciding in advance what part the materials deemed to be of the past should play was one of the fallacies of the ordinary or first empiricism because the material world was reduced to facts. And while the first empiricism should be familiar to any archaeologist, there are other legacies, which are recurrent: the persistent delusion that we begin with the past that is separate from the present, the dream of transferable methodological standards from nowhere, and a common ontology of substance that results in enduring objects. I will now sum up the difference between the first and second empiricism with a closer look at these three points of discrepancy. First, rather than assume the past to be demarcated and distinct, we may now regard those things that hold something of the past as coextensive and involved. From this angle, we move from time as successive to time as simultaneous. With the latter, any given ‘material past’ becomes an active participant, a mediator within current and/or past states of affairs. Consider a brief example related to the Larissa above Argos, Greece. In the winter of 1822, a force of volunteers would defend the Larissa against ten thousand troops under Dramali (Finlay 1877, 291). Until this ragtag bunch had franticly rushed up the hill from the town below, the old castle of Argos was regarded as but a ruin (Gell 1810; Leake 1830). However, in this course of the mêlée the former ruin took on new characteristics; it offered up different properties, and in the most desperate hours the outcomes of Ancient Greek, Frankish, Venetian and Turkish achievements as bastions, towers and an inner and outer enceinte (along with a few hundred reinforcements from Lerna under Ypsilantis himself, black powder rifles and horses) would lend their aid. Such polychronic exchanges between the castle and, for example, the Argives and the Frankish overload Villehardouin, the Venetians and the Ottoman Turks, Bertoldo d’Este and the Pasha

Archaeology and the Second Empiricism 53 of the Morea, the Ottoman Turks relieved by the Seraskier and the Venetians under Morosini, or, once again, the Venetians and the Ottoman Turks (for the history of the Larissa, see Andrews 2006) speak to the coextensive nature of the past. And in these exchanges, 1212 CE, 1397 CE, 1463 CE, 1686 CE or 1715 CE are but coordinates for much more complex temporal folding, for much more intense episodes of turbulence spawned by heterogeneous, polychronic transactions. Second, rather than argue for transferrable methodological bases that operate irrespective of locality, we now recognize how local idiosyncrasies mediate methodological outcomes. Consider the question of scale in regional survey. This question has received a good deal of attention in recent years largely due to a persistent cadre of Mesoamericanist archaeologists— including Richard Blanton, Steve Kowalewski and Gary Feinman—who argue that myopic Mediterranean survey archaeologists should be operating across larger areas with 100 per cent sampling and contiguous coverage in order to do justice to the regional scales at which past societies operated (for example, Blanton 2001; Blanton et al. 1996). These archaeologists, however, consider scale in terms of size and zoom within perspective space: that is, ‘putting things into a frame’ (Latour 2005, 186) through the measurement of blocks of area—the bigger, the better. This is the mapmaker’s space—a perspective space that unfolds at a distance of less than a meter from a map on a computer screen. Other spaces, other understandings of distance, however, arise at the nexus of different relations on the ground (also see Ingold 2007): in the course of a farmer moving between Halieis and his plot on the heights above Costa; a shepherd urging his flocks along a drove road; or with a fisherman between the harbour in Vivari and the shoals off the south side of Platia Island. None of these movements operate free of the circadian rhythms of light and dark, rain, gale force winds or a Spartan invasion. Other mediators, any entity, can potentially impact scale, and, because of this, any frame derived on the basis of best practice in one locale abstracts from realities on the ground in another. Costa is immeasurably farther away when a division of troops is camped outside the city walls of Halieis; a drove road sticks to the uncultivated heights and will avoid a fresh field of grain at all costs, or at least this is the case in daylight hours; Platia Island might as well be Crete in the heights of a stormy winter. For the second empiricism, ‘a view from nowhere’ (Nagel 1986) cannot be imposed arbitrarily—what constitutes a region has to be made; this cannot be settled in advance. But note, also, that if transferable, universal standards are out as to the proper scale of survey, so too is it difficult to establish a detached notion of adequacy with respect to good work. Judging better and worst translations was a simpler affair with the former empiricism because it put so much labour into staffing the field of archaeological knowledge production with common umpires. Whether you were in Girikihaciyan, Turkey; Hatchery West, USA; or Teotihuacan, Mexico did not matter because adequacy was

54 Christopher Witmore judged with respect to transferable standards of ‘data’ collection, explanation and publication. Such criteria, however, are neither self-evident nor indisputable; they too are local achievements, they too need to be explained, and they too should be situated as tentative outcomes open to constant re-evaluation with respect to the questions being asked—questions which, as we have seen, result from a long chain of scholarship. The second empiricism does not appeal to arbitrary universal officialdom. As Isabelle Stengers puts it, ‘A claim should be related to the demands it has to fulfill’ (2008, 92; also James 1978 [1907]). Considerations regarding the adequacy of our work can no longer be severed from the conditions under which that labour was deployed; adequacy must be related to the questions that practitioners are trying to answer. Good work is a localized, risky and humble affair and can now only be considered in light of the constraints under which it was mobilized. Third, rather than endow those ‘things of the past’ with a determinative specificity that renders subsequent actor-relations as purely derivative, things are now deployed in the plural, as matters of concern, rather than matters of fact (after Latour 2003, 2004 and 2005). By matters of concern I am referring to those shared obligations, cares and worries—those things that are lures for common feeling. Consider another example: the small church of Ayios Ioannis (Saint John) in Lefkakia, near Nafplion, Greece (Figure 2.4).

Figure 2.4 Church of Ayios Ioannis from east, June 2010. Photo: C. Witmore.

Archaeology and the Second Empiricism 55 Set at the northern edge of a low hill is a small church built in the midst of a square structure of carefully fitted polygonal masonry. The Orthodox church—which enjoys local renown for its window, a journey through this is held to be miraculous for sick children (Sarantakis 2007)—is but a few hundred years in age; a mere drop in the temporal bucket when compared with its stone superstructure, a former fourth-century BCE tower, perhaps associated with the defences of Asine. Both the exterior and interior portions of polygonal masonry are whitewashed; the interior is thickly coated in wall plaster. If these polygonal walls are static, stubborn, impassive objects across which historical events have swept, then their incorporation into the fabric of the church of Ayios Ioannis, the iterative coats of whitewash or plaster, would be but derivative. What is a former tower for some is a matter of contention for others. A portion of the church of Ayios Ioannis, a plastered interior edifice, a tower associated with the defences of ancient Asine—these polygonal walls are all these things; which occasion we encounter is a matter of orientation, gathering and ongoing figuration. In this way, the arbitrary separation of statics and dynamics with respect to an archaeological record (Binford 1981; Binford 2002 [1983]; Lucas 2001) proves to be just as unjust to experience as the assumption of durable substance and transient relations. Everything is dynamic, and in this way the polygonal limestone superstructure of Ayios Ioannis is not so much a substance as it is a performance (Harman 2009, 44), an ongoing series of events. CONCLUSION As archaeologists, it is not a requisite task of the second empiricism to tackle these difficult metaphysical questions; as archaeologists, we only have to be open to other associations that things might be implicated in. And empirical adequacy demands that we do not decide in advance what part the past should play in the world. As science studies has shown, reality does not take a holiday from the interactions of archaeologists, institutions and ideas— what we have called discourse (Shanks 1996). Our work is part of our experience, and we practitioners are in the same boat as the entities we seek to understand. Ultimately, it is not so difficult to recognize the differences between the first and second empiricism. Two domains in a bifurcated world are jettisoned in favour of legions of mediators who are modified through their alliances and associations, but not reducible to them. No longer faithful copies of the material world, data become translations that are simultaneously real and artificial. Transferable notions of what we deem methodologically adequate are placed to one side in favour of a situated understanding of adequacy with respect to good work. Indisputability of the real as matters of fact gives way to cautious negotiations around matters of concern—this leaves open the possibility for realities in the plural. The outlines of a second

56 Christopher Witmore empiricism are far from fully sketched. However, with the second empiricism the world becomes a much more interesting place, and archaeology has everything to gain. The key point of the second empiricism is that in order to be faithful to experience we must go forward into the world and not pretend to separate what we know from how we know. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This essay has benefited from conversations with several colleagues and graduate students who worked with me in Greece, including John Cherry, Elissa Faro, Georgia Ivou, Alex Knodell, Thomas Leppard, Bradley Sekedat and Zoe Zgouleta. I am grateful to Benjamin Alberti, Gavin Lucas, Timothy Webmoor and Joseph Zehner for commenting on various iterations of this essay and to Bjørnar Olsen and Michael Shanks. I thank Peter Carne for information pertaining to Binchester as well as Zoe Zgouleta and Georgia Ivou for details concerning examples from the Argolid, Greece. I am especially grateful to the conference participants for their insights into an earlier version of this essay, which was presented at the ‘Archaeologies into the 2010s’ workshop in Uppsala (November 6 and 7, 2010). Finally, I am grateful to the editors for helping to improve the clarity of the article as it appears here. NOTES 1. These details are extracted from the 1980 AEP Red Team field notebooks, which are currently housed in the Metamedia Lab in the Stanford Archaeology Center. 2. The AEP defined the term ‘site’ in the following manner: Sites, if we mean by that term places of habitation and special-purpose activities (e.g., animal folds, storage buildings), are identifiable, at least in Greece, as specific places in the countryside. . . . Our working definition of a site was ‘any location with ancient features such as architectural remains, or a concentration of cultural materials, e.g., artifacts, ecofacts, or manuports, could be identified, having a recognizable boundary’ (see also Plog et al. 1978). . . . The term ‘site’ is thus nothing more than a convenient way to designate a locality where cultural materials were found, apparently belonging together. Thus a grave only a few square meters in area was called a site, just as was a walled settlement many hectares in extent. Our definition of site included isolated features, such as a well or an inscription, but was intended to exclude materials deposited or distributed solely by natural processes. (Jameson, Runnels, and van Andel 1994, 221) 3. These laws play a large part in the pervasive activity of ‘informal’ construction in Greece (see Potsiou and Ioannidis 2006). 4. One should acknowledge that James’s solution never takes leave of the problem in the way Whitehead does.

Archaeology and the Second Empiricism 57 5. We may for the sake of comparison consider Tim Ingold’s (2010) important discussion of the hylomorphic model of creation where form (humans) is (are) assumed to be one kind of entity that can be imposed upon matter (nature), another kind of entity which is taken to be ostensibly separate from the former. 6. Bjørnar Olsen cleverly plays upon this expectation of speech on the part of things: ‘If things were invested with the ability to use ordinary language they would . . . talk to us in ways very banal, but also very imperative and effective: walk here, turn, bow, lie down, gather, depart, etc.’ (2006, 97). Underlining the difference in how people get on with things in ways irreducible to linguistic play, Olsen draws out the banality of such an expectation. 7. For more here, see http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-correspondence/ (accessed 17 December 2014). 8. Michael Shanks makes a distinction between scholasticism and criticism, which is relevant here. The former, scholasticism, involves redundant citation and argument within the elaboration of thoroughly accepted, and hence canonical, matters of concern; the latter, criticism, is an ‘attitude of healthy skepticism and suspicion’ set within the moving project of knowledge (Shanks 1996, 118). 9. For some readers, the spectre of relativism will creep in, but this is only because many quickly disassociate relativism from realism. The relativism of the second empiricism is not some trite embrace of the tired and misguided belief in anything goes; there are still better and worst translations of the material past. More will be said on this point shortly.

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60 Christopher Witmore Pickering, A. 1995. The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency and Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Plog, S., F. Plog, and W. Wait. 1978. “Decision Making in Modern Surveys.” In Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, vol. 1, edited by M.B. Schiffer, 383–421. New York: Academic Press. Potsiou, C., and C. Ioannidis. 2006. “Informal Settlements in Greece: The Mystery of Missing Information and the Difficulty of Their Integration into a Legal Framework.” Proceedings of the 5th FIG Regional Conference, Accra, Ghana. https:// www.fig.net/pub/accra/papers/ts03/ts03_04_potsiou_ioannidis.pdf (accessed 17 December 2014). Quine, W. 1980. From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays. 2nd rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rorty, R., ed. 1967. The Linguistic Turn: Recent Essays in Philosophical Method. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Sarantakis, P. 2007. ΑΡΓΟΛΙΔΑ ΟΙ ΕΚΚΛΗΣΙΕΣ & ΜΟΝΑΣΤΗΡΙΑ ΤΗΣ. Athens: Oiatis Editions. Shanks, M. 1996. Classical Archaeology Experiences of the Discipline. London: Routledge. Shanks, M., and C. Tilley. 1992. Re-constructing Archaeology. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. Shanks, M., and R. McGuire. 1996. “The Craft of Archaeology.” American Antiquity 61 (1): 75–88. Shaviro, S. 2009. Without Criteria: Kant, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Aesthetics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Shennan, S. 2004. “Analytical Archaeology.” In A Companion to Archaeology, edited by J. Bintliff, 3–20. Oxford: Blackwell. Siapkas, J. 2001. “Paradoxes of Classical Archaeology.” Current Swedish Archaeology 9: 83–92. Sloterdijk, P. 2006. “Mobilization of the Planet from the Spirit of Self-Intensification.” TDR: The Drama Review 50 (4): 36–43. Stengers, I. 2008. “A Constructivist Reading of Process and Reality.” Theory, Culture & Society 25 (4): 91–110. ———. 2010. Cosmopolitics I. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Thomas, J. 2004. “The Great Dark Book: Archaeology, Experience, and Interpretation.” In A Companion to Archaeology, edited by J. Bintliff, 21–36. Oxford: Blackwell. Tilley, C. 2004. The Materiality of Stone: Explorations in Landscape Phenomenology 1. Oxford: BERG. Webmoor, T. 2007. “What about One More Turn after the Social.” World Archaeology 39 (4): 563–78. Webmoor, T., and C. L. Witmore. 2008. “Things Are Us! A Commentary on Human/ Things Relations under the Banner of a ‘Social’ Archaeology.” Norwegian Archaeology Review 41 (1): 53–70. Whitehead, A. N. 1978 [1929]. Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. New York: Free Press. Whitehead, A. N. 2006 [1920]. The Concept of Nature: The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College November 1919. Teddington, UK: Echo Library. Witmore, C. L. 2004. “On Multiple Fields: Between the Material World and Media; Two Cases from the Peloponnesus, Greece.” Archaeological Dialogues 11 (2):133–64. ———. 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.

Archaeology and the Second Empiricism 61 ———. 2009. “Prolegomena to Open Pasts: On Archaeological Memory Practices.” Archaeologies (special issue “Experience, Modes of Engagement, Archaeology,” edited by K. Ryzewski) 5 (3): 511–45. ———. 2012. “The Realities of the Past: Archaeology, Object-Orientations, Pragmatology.” In Modern Materials: The Proceedings of CHAT Oxford, 2009, edited by B. Fortenberry and L. McAtackney, 25–36. Oxford: Archaeopress. ———. 2014. “Archaeology and the New Materialisms.” Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 2 (2). Witmore, C., and M. Shanks. 2013. “Archaeology: An Ecology of Practices.” In Archaeology in the Making: Conversations through a Discipline, edited by W. Rathje, M. Shanks, and C. Witmore, 380–98. London: Routledge. Woolgar, S., T. Cheniti, J. Lezaun, D. Neyland, C. Sugden, and C. Toennesen. 2008. “A Turn to Ontology in STS?” Unpublished paper circulated at the “A Turn to Ontology in STS?” workshop at the Said Business School, Oxford University, 25 June 2008. Wylie, A. 2002. Thinking from Things: Essays in the Philosophy of Archaeology. Berkeley: University of California Press.

62 Frands Herschend

Comment Frands Herschend

Generally speaking, I am in total agreement with the arguments put forward by Christopher Witmore. In many ways he summarizes what archaeology has become over the last thirty-five years, starting with the first reactions against the archaeology of Mats Malmer (in Scandinavia only), Lewis Binford and David Clarke—that is, reactions against the simplified contextual order necessary to produce an archaeology of self-fulfilling prophecy. Today, neither their craft nor that of traditional post-war archaeology is by any means dead, but they are at least understood for what they are, and so are a number of simple reflections of the present, which are dressed up as interpretations of the past. Before I comment upon the second proposition put forward by Christopher Witmore—‘avoid the bifurcation of nature’, the only section where I may have a point to make—I will summarize what I think constitute the conditions for an archaeological understanding of the past: ‘consciously understanding’ (i.e. epistemology) being today’s only disciplinary problem. In my opinion, it is one of the general strengths of the historical analysis, and thus also of the archaeological, that such an analysis can make the perspective its story as well as making its story the perspective. I read Christopher Witmore’s chapter, as a text on archaeology, as an example mainly of the second (the perspective is the story). Proof in archaeology is circumstantial. For this reason, simplifying prehistoric societies to societies governed by general laws that were linked with causality has proven itself to be the intellectual dead end of the discipline. Proof being circumstantial, one of the characteristics of archaeology is the importance of misinterpretation or misunderstanding. Since we are always discovering the mistakes of others and ourselves, a change in attitude to the ‘presently archaeological’ is always necessary and ongoing. In the few cases where we come close to formal proof, such as statistical module-analysis of a set of significant measurements, the cardinal concern that presents itself after any convincing mathematical analysis is expressed in questions such as, under what circumstances and in what ways was this system used? Archaeology loops back to circumstance. So far I do not think I diverge too much from Christopher Witmore’s line of reasoning. Owing to the nature of its source material, which is often arbitrary and fragmentary, archaeology is prevented from giving a fair and general description of the past, if ‘fair’ is taken to mean meaningful and covering in a non-trivial way. The archaeological vision is narrow and focused on remains, while archaeologists know that the interesting questions are lost

Archaeology and the Second Empiricism 63 in the empty space between remains. Archaeology happens to be about the agency of humankind because it was once widely agreed upon by archaeologists that this was the only common denominator behind the observed and also that this was a worthwhile topic when modernity was about to establish itself. The agency of humankind is obviously a much wider field than its material results. Having lost most of its links to modernity and its nineteenth-century legacy, with the exceptions of working with indigenous people or preventing entrepreneurs from (mostly) destroying an environment, archaeology today is mostly a rewarding personal experience and one which is intriguing on different intellectual levels. Concerning his second proposition, Christopher Witmore argues that we should avoid the bifurcation of nature and certainly not seek it. When recognizing an object as discrete, we must not impose separation upon it at the expense of conjunction. We must avoid divisions such as the one between ‘things’ and ‘concepts’. Christopher Witmore states his position in slightly different ways (e.g. ‘To avoid bifurcation, however, is not to simply write off one side at the expense of the other; rather, it is to give both sides back to a nature undivided’). But surely, humans and their agency being part of nature, there is no position from which we can give back anything to nature—suffice it to say that we can only accept human agency. It does not help that we can prove that there is no division between theory and data and that there is no reason to prefer ‘understanding’ over ‘explanation’ or reason to believe that one exists independently of the other; it does not help because it is within the power of humans, a vital part of their agency as it were, to discriminate in just that way (e.g. by defining ‘the I’ and ‘the Other’ as a relation, ‘I the Other’, or indeed as entities, You and Me). Having discharged division, Christopher Witmore goes on to advocate relations between any two entities in their general sense—one of his examples is the relation between the menhir and the soil encasing it—and asks himself: ‘Why deny these nonhuman relations attributes of what is normally filed under the label of “subjectivity”? This democratic openness to the mediating potential of all entities, this flat ontology, undermines any identification of primary and secondary qualities with a bifurcation of nature into the material world and human beings’. The problem with this position rests in its patronizing attitude to the nonhuman. Turning the soil and the menhir into related subjects gives them not only rights but also duties which they have not asked for and may not want. By not denying the soil and the menhir rights, humans become the well-meaning and patronizing spokespeople of all the entities that we have ‘subjectivized’ or indeed subjected. One cannot escape the nature of one’s agency, in this case its power aspect, which seems closely related to the way human beings create meaningful, even compassionate, relationships. It is characteristic of human relations that they need not be symmetrical, even if they are mutual. Defining input rooms and collapsing them into a new and meaningful output room is an essential cognitive capability (cf. Cognitive Blending).

64 Frands Herschend Collapsing the input rooms ‘Nonhuman’ and ‘Subjectivity’ into the output room ‘Relation’—that is, denying these nonhuman relations subjectivity— would seem to be a model cognitive approach. I am aware that my comments are close to being unfair, not least because I actually like Christopher Witmore’s approach to archaeology. But being unfair was the point, because it is such a typical behaviour when it comes to human agency.

Archaeology and the Second Empiricism 65

Comment Michael Fotiadis

I have long thought that we, archaeologists, are not very adept at summarizing philosophical doctrines—‘distilling them to their essentials’, as it were—in order to explain them to our audiences; that we are much better instead at plucking ideas from philosophers and adapting them to our archaeological purposes; and that ‘tinkering’ and ‘bricolage’ may, in short, be appropriate names for what we do with philosophers. I hasten to add that I attach no negative charge to those names and to our practice of plucking ideas. On the contrary, I regard such plucking and bricolage as a special case of mediation and realignment of agencies,1 as the new, reformed empiricism would have it. But back to where I started—Witmore could not, of course, have ‘read my thought’ that (to put that thought now more emphatically) we better leave the task of explaining philosophical doctrines to philosophers (and concentrate instead on plucking their ideas and adapting them to our purposes). And so, he has taken up the arduous task of charting in a few pages the differences between two sorts of empiricism: one originating with Locke and still cultivated today, the other being a twentieth-century product (championed in the present by Bruno Latour) and constituting a radical critique of the first. How successful this charting is, it is for you, the reader, to find out. I suspect that if you are not already familiar with (some of) Latour’s work—that is, if you have not only read but also intensely thought about/with it—you will miss crucial details and remain sceptical about the merits of the ‘second’ empiricism vis-à-vis the problems of the ‘first’. Nor will the comment you are reading help you in this respect. What use would it be to you, for instance, if I intimated that I find Latour’s distinction between ‘matters of fact’ and ‘matters of concern’2 rather overdrawn, unnecessarily sharp, that I am unhappy with his either/or here and perfectly happy instead with the idea that matters of fact remain, long after they have reached that status, matters of concern: that, as Latour has made clear in many occasions,3 even when they pose as firmly established, perfectly solid and untainted by the fickleness of human affairs, facts remain fragile and need to be cared for, embraced by hosts of techno-institutions and political formations,4 in order to remain facts—that is, resources to you for coming to terms with your existence? Philosophy takes patience; it cannot be done in a few pages; it is not any easier than archaeology. And so, you will have to read much more extensive texts by, but also around, Latour before you see some of the niceties of the critique of Lockean empiricism provided by Witmore and sense their relevance to your everyday archaeological work (see also Fotiadis, this volume). Who, which scholar, would after all want to pick up his/her philosophy from an archaeologist?

66 Michael Fotiadis A couple of other points—Latour has no kind words for epistemology (scientific practice raises no interesting epistemological questions, he has argued)5 and is keen instead on ‘re-ontologizing’ scientific knowledge. Advice of the sort ‘we should be getting closer to experience, not farther from it’ and ‘we should not oversimplify what is given in experience’ (Witmore, this volume, following Latour) must be seen in the context of that effort—a crucial ‘battle’, indeed, in the ongoing ‘Science Wars’.6 Let us leave aside here the fact that archaeology is hardly a significant ‘battlefield’ in those wars. It seems to me that our reluctance today, in the 2010s, to take experience (Erlebnis) seriously is a ‘leftover’ from the days of the New Archaeology: that it has much to do, in other words, with the radical depreciation of ‘contexts of discovery’ (to use good old twentieth-century empiricist parlance) and the supremacy accorded instead to ‘contexts of justification’. I have no energy to visit here once more this distinction (see Fotiadis 2001, remembering Carl Hempel and the New Archaeology). But I bring it up, first, because it constitutes a prime example of the ‘bifurcation’ Witmore discusses and, second, because, as a ‘leftover’ from another era, it provides an illustration of a past truth that survives to, and informs practice in, the very present (see also Witmore, this volume, his Larissa example): it serves some—the majority, I think—as a resource, informing their habits of thought, and is for others a topic, a bone of contention. One last thing—Latour introduced since some years the collocations ‘first empiricism’ (from Locke to William James) and ‘second empiricism’ (after James’s ‘radical empiricism’). He rarely uses those collocations, however, and, when he does, he does so discreetly and circumspectly. Others are now adopting them, including us archaeologists, and I am afraid that, unless we do so equally circumspectly, we will soon turn them into slogans, mere flags of allegiance. NOTES 1. ‘Special’ in that the mediators are things conceptual, not material. For the archaeologist as bricoleur, see Fotiadis 1992, 144–46. 2. See Latour 2004, esp. 221–37; 2008b, 39. 3. See, e.g., Latour 2000, 254–55; but also 2004, 247: ‘All matters of fact require, in order to exist, a bewildering variety of matters of concern’. 4. Think, e.g., of the multitude of agencies involved in securing something as routine in archaeology as a sequence of radiocarbon dates. 5. Latour 2008a, pt. 2. 6. See, inter alia, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 30 (1), 1999, for debates concerning Latour’s and Andrew Pickering’s work.

REFERENCES Fotiadis, M. 1992. “Units of Data as Deployment of Disciplinary Codes.” In Representations in Archaeology, edited by Jean-Claude Gardin and Christopher Peebles, 132–48. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Archaeology and the Second Empiricism 67 ———. 2001. “The Historicism of Postprocessual Archaeology and Its Pleasures.” In Historicization-Historisierung, edited by Glenn W. Most, 339–64. Aporemata: Kritische Studien zur Philologiegeschichte 5. Göttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht. Latour, B. 2000. “On the Partial Existence of Existing and Non-existing Objects.” In Biographies of Scientific Objects, edited by Lorraine Daston, 247–69. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 2004. “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry 30: 225–48. ———. 2008a. “A Textbook Case Revisited—Knowledge as a Mode of Existence.” In The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, 3rd ed., edited by Edward J. Hackett, Olga Amsterdamska, Michael Lynch, and Judy Wajcman, 83–112. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ———. 2008b. What Is the Style of Matters of Concern? Amsterdam: Van Gorcum.

3

Public Archaeological Challenges in the 2010s Learning from Participatory Action in Practice Katherine Hauptman

Archaeologists are confident that their subject is interesting, is valuable to society, and has something special to say about humanity. Many people from outside the professional community are also intrigued and cultivate an interest of their own, but why do people care for archaeology? Which archaeologies are important and to whom? How can archaeology be useful outside the academic discourse? In this chapter I discuss archaeology and heritage in the public sphere, especially the interaction between professionals and the public from a pedagogical perspective. Archaeology is not limited to educational contexts; it is frequently presented in popular form on TV, in exhibitions, and in popular culture, and it is affected by the method of dissemination (Holtorf 2004, 2007). At the same time, heritage is valued, managed, and used in politics (e.g. contributions in McManamon and Hatton 2000; Hamilakis and Duke 2007; Preucel and Mrozowski 2010; Smith, Messenger, and Soderland 2010). During the 2000s, archaeologists began to show interest in archaeological practice and its interactions with society (e.g. Marshall 2002; Merriman 2004; Svanberg and [Hauptman] Wahlgren 2007; Moshenska 2008). However, more studies within the field of public archaeological communication are necessary to improve our knowledge. The first part of this chapter is concerned with the need for more profound work in the area of public archaeology and greater participation in heritage projects. The second part focuses on practice and learning, using a selection of public archaeology projects. Finally, in the closing section, the discussion is summed up, and it is suggested that increasing the people’s participation in archaeology is the most important challenge facing public archaeology. PART 1: THE GAP Very soon after I became a student of archaeology, I experienced a gap between what was considered interesting academic knowledge and the histories that were mediated to the so-called ‘interested public’. At least in my

Public Archaeological Challenges 69 milieu, working with popularization had a low status. One reason for this was that it was not recognized as research, but another reason was probably that the popularized content often seemed to reflect stereotypes and values that were not promoted by current research theories. If you wanted to be successful as a researcher, this was not the path to follow—not many with theoretical ambitions did—and while the research perspectives developed and changed, the popular mediation often stayed in a given form, far away from contemporary knowledge. Nowadays, the gap between the different representations of history is a recognized problem in the heritage sector, and there has been a shift in the kind of knowledge being promoted. More interaction and more dialogue about the usage of history is necessary, but this process cannot be a one-way street. If the professional community wants to make an impact on the use of history in society, it needs to develop pedagogical methods based on evoking current questions, instead of just teaching history. Therefore, public archaeology and other interdisciplinary studies in the public sphere are important. As an archaeologist, I want to facilitate communication, improve the mediation process, and move towards more complex histories. Hopefully, this development will benefit the general public, but it is likely that such a development will have an even greater impact on the professionals. We must listen to our audiences and learn new things about ourselves.

Nerd Knowledge A few years ago, teenagers from a Swedish upper secondary school class answered these questions on an ‘introduction to their archaeology’ visit at The Swedish History Museum: What comes to mind when you hear about the word ‘archaeology’? How can archaeology be explained? Almost every answer included the word ‘excavation’. Many students also thought that archaeology represented object-based knowledge, while only four pupils said that understanding the past was a part of archaeology. Nobody mentioned the phrase from George Orwell’s description of the future in his book 1984, which is commonly used by scholars when arguing that archaeology and heritage management play important roles in society: ‘He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past’. The teenagers mentioned different scientific methods, but they did not mention that the archaeologist interprets the material in order to understand what it represents or that critical perspectives are needed. Neither did they associate heritage or archaeology with the danger of misusing history. On the other hand, the students did not choose to write about adventures or popular culture phenomena. This was probably a result of the learning

70 Katherine Hauptman Table 3.1

Swedish School Classes Explaining Archaeology

What is archaeology? Excavation Artefacts Scientific methods Research Prehistory/Ancient monuments History Understanding the past Heritage

48 20 11 11 11 10 4 2

Note: The 51 pupils were in their third year of advanced history (Historia C) at an inner-city upper secondary school. They were about eighteen years old and were likely from middle-class families. Before coming to the museum, they prepared for the discussion through school classes about archaeology. Most of the pupils wrote two or three words in their notes; there was no restriction on how much they should write.

situation, which was focused on academic archaeology and might not have permitted thoughts that were linked to leisure. One of the pupils said that archaeology equals nerd knowledge. This can be viewed as a joke, but it is likely that the statement is key for understanding the gap between what archaeologists are doing and public engagement. The Swedish school curriculum emphasizes different interpretations of the past, heritage processes, and the role of history in understanding our own times, but it seems that important aspects of learning are being overlooked in order to achieve these aims. The same can be said of the archaeological community’s approach to the broader public.

New Aims, Old Practices The professional archaeological community in Sweden seems to want to interact more with society. The National Heritage Board writes about citizen dialogue, the universities put forward the so-called ‘third task’1 (in Swedish, tredje uppgiften—which is public communication), and the museums are eager to stimulate their visitors. In recent years, a series of studies have focused on the importance of inclusion, multi-vocality, and a broader understanding of how history is used in society (e.g. Burström, Winberg, and Zachrisson 1997; Burström 1999, 2006; Högberg 2004, 2013; Aronsson 2004; Burström, Elfström, and Johansen 2004; Karlsson 2004; Gustafsson and Karlsson 2004; Holtorf 2004; Alzén and Aronsson 2006; Holtorf and Högberg 2005/2006; Svanberg and [Hauptman] Wahlgren 2007). But these issues raise some questions: Who has the right to explore the past and to be part of creating new history? Which voices are heard? Certain problems arise when official society controls interpretations of the past (Furumark

Public Archaeological Challenges 71 2013). People take an interest, but often they do not participate actively, something that could be considered an ethical and democratic dilemma (e.g. Karlsson and Nilsson 2001; Karlsson 2004; Aronsson 2004). Many institutions claim that they want to increase public inclusion, but to do so a discussion about learning styles and knowledge, together with a set of new methods and work practices, is needed. These are crucial topics in museum studies, and they are well integrated in learning, but they are only rarely addressed. The context of communication requires examination. Learning and communication is a research field in its own right, and it should be treated as such rather than being regarded as simply a mediation of pre-formulated archaeological results. A few years ago, during a well-attended two-day conference on public archaeology at The Swedish History Museum in Stockholm, about 120 archaeologists and museum professionals who were participating in a workshop were given the task of creating their own public archaeological dream project. After the participants chose a favourite idea, the most important part of the workshop began. This consisted of elaborating all the projects up

Figure 3.1 A public excavation from the project Search for the lost city, 2008. About four hundred people participated actively by digging, while another seven thousand visited the event. The project is further discussed in the second section of this chapter. Photo: Katherine Hauptman / The Swedish History Museum.

72 Katherine Hauptman to the point where all members of the group participated in all the projects. Finally, the group had to agree on one of the projects as its collective choice for presentation to the other groups. The predominant aim formulated in these possible projects (many of them were great potential projects) was ‘to enhance the interest in history/ archaeology/maritime archaeology’. Other aims were to use archaeology for discussing current topics in society, to explore which historical issues interest people and which kinds of heritage are valued, to make more people participate in conscious heritage use, and simply to tell a good story. One can conclude that many of the suggested themes from the archaeology workshop correspond to common public interests, but, when describing working methods and innovative projects, the professionals still struggled with linking their ideas with groups other than their usual audiences.

Different Landscapes of Interest Most visitor surveys show that museums attract only parts of the potential audiences. Although Swedish museums have as many as between seventeen and eighteen million visits per year, large groups do not generally attend. A recent evaluation of the free-entrance reform, which allowed free entrance to the state museums during 2005 and 2006, revealed that visitor numbers clearly increased but the audience had not broadened (Myndigheten för kulturanalys 2014). The ‘museum population’, at least at the central museums, is more educated, more urban, and more likely to be female than the Swedish average. This pattern is well known in many countries and is applicable to heritage interaction outside of museums as well. According to the survey ‘What does heritage mean to you?’ (in Swedish, Vad betyder kulturarvet för dig?), only 12 per cent of the Swedes are actively involved with heritage through, for example, folklore societies or similar organizations. There is also a strong overrepresentation of older people in comparison with the number of younger people. However, more than 80 per cent of those surveyed would like to learn more about their local history (Tengrud, Öhrvall, and Johansson 2002). For people in general, the contemporary past is more engaging than distant periods, at least according to their survey answers. This does not match the media reports on archaeology, nor does it connect with what archaeologists and ethnologists traditionally value. Some years ago, a large contract archaeology project (the so-called Slättbygdsprojektet) was conducted in the Swedish province of Östergötland. Public communication was given priority in this project. The aim of this project was to address the public according to the concepts of democratization, participation, accessibility, and dialogue as they were described in the new heritage sector development programme Agenda Kulturarv (Riksantikvarieämbetet 2004). Over the course of the project it became clear that many people in the local area had information about the excavations or had visited the sites.

Public Archaeological Challenges 73

Figure 3.2 Those who regularly visit cultural activities and take interest in the historical traces visible in the landscape tend to be more eager to look after their neighbourhoods and preserve them for the future (Tengrud, Öhrvall, and Johansson 2002).

However, the evaluation of the project indicated that archaeology is not necessarily comprehended as synonymous with knowledge of (pre)history (Andersson, Aronsson, and Pettersson 2005). Many of the visitors to the sites got their archaeological information through the media (e.g. their daily paper). Here, a paradox becomes evident (also compare Snäll and Welinder 2008). The news exoticizes the past and emphasizes how past times differ from today, while the reports often concentrate on a few special stories. Consequently, the communication which is conveyed has overtones other than those formulated within the project. Often, the visitors to the excavation sites were interested in the local history, and this was their main reason for attending. However, an interest in local history was not responsible for bringing new groups to the sites. A visit sometimes had the purpose of seeking knowledge, but more often people tended to say that it was fun to see archaeological work in person and view the finds. The majority of people had their expectations fulfilled and remained content with their experience, but they also added that they wanted to learn more. Very few people stated that curiosity made them come to the excavation site, nor did they say that it was exciting.

74 Katherine Hauptman The evaluation of the ‘Slättbygdsprojektet’ reveals the discrepancy between new aims and old practices in archaeological communication. Public archaeology is evidently in need of more pedagogical awareness, and the excavation site is clearly a special setting for learning. Museum pedagogy is a developing field within museum studies, where emphasis is put on different approaches to the audiences, how the exhibitions work, communication, interaction, and the contemporary use of heritage and history (compare Kress and van Leeuwen 2001; Selander 2008a, 2008b; Insulander 2010; and, analysing museum visits, also, e.g. Falk 2009; Simon 2010). Scholars still seem to have little knowledge of the forces that catch the audiences’ interest (a new method that differentiates between culture segments was developed by Morris Hargreaves McIntyre [2013]). Archaeologists tend to suggest that stories and the context are most important for developing an understanding of the past. Although many museum visitors say they appreciate stories, the stories are not necessarily what they remember from their visit. According to a recent survey, individual, intriguing objects are what stick in people’s memories (Reach Advisors Insight 2010). One could argue that the heritage sector and the public inhabit separate landscapes when it comes to valuing cultural heritage (compare Karlsson and Nilsson 2001; Lind and Svensson 2001; Tengrud, Öhrvall, and Johansson 2002). The professionals do not take interest in the same questions as the public, and they engage for reasons that differ from those of the general public. In this gap between heritage sector and the public, the heritage sector and the academic archaeology have not yet taken the initiative. It is often stated that heritage professionals need to ‘reach out’, but why should they engage people that currently do not care? To explore this question, the professional priorities must change, and public archaeology can help to bridge the gap between heritage sector and the public. PART 2: LEARNING FROM PUBLIC ARCHAEOLOGY AND PARTICIPATORY ACTION The Swedish History Museum started a series of research and development projects related to public archaeology and new museology (public archaeology according to Merriman [2004]; and new museums according to Vergo [1989] and Message [2006]). The aim of these projects was to explore public participation and historical consciousness through an interdisciplinary approach, with a special focus on archaeology and learning. Research about learning in museum contexts has a long tradition, and the new museology attaches considerably more importance to the pedagogical aspects of exhibition making and how exhibitions work in practice (HooperGreenhill 1999, 2007; Insulander 2005, 2010). In a so-called ‘new museum’, academic knowledge, pedagogic approaches, exhibition production, and marketing interplay. Traditionally, the relation between the institution and the visitor has been strongly asymmetrical, but the new museum should

Public Archaeological Challenges 75 act as a forum for discussion and strive for greater public inclusion (e.g. Vergo 1989; Weil 2002; Lang, Reeve, and Woollard 2006; Message 2006; Falk 2009; Simon 2010). Artefacts are more than objects, though interest is focused more on the stories they inspire than on the object as such (compare with what people tend to remember from their museum visits—i.e. special objects and interactive experiences; see Reach Advisors Insight 2010).

Participatory Action Since 2007, The Swedish History Museum has been working within a participatory action research framework with several target groups aimed at the museum staff, the general professional community, and the general public (for a broad view on action research, see Reason and Bradbury 2008; origins in Lewin 1946). Moving towards a public archaeology requires both theoretical studies and testing through applied research. The museum facilities are thus used for testing ideas from the seminar room and putting these ideas into practice. The focus is twofold: to create useful knowledge and involve people in the creative processes. Action research is a participatory process concerned with developing practical knowing in the pursuit of worthwhile human purposes. It seeks to bring together action and reflection, theory, and practice, in participation with others, in the pursuit of practical solutions to issues of pressing concern to people, and more generally the flourishing of individual persons and their communities (Reason and Bradbury 2008). Action research suggests that the original complex of problems will constantly transform, depending on the participants and how their different kinds of knowledge are utilized while the project proceeds. This approach challenges established hierarchies and suggests that everyone can participate in processes of interpretation, something that tends to irritate the professionals. This approach also effectively discloses the hidden structures of the museum’s practices, and it often contributes to discussions that call for new perspectives and change. Since the use of history can be both controversial and sometimes even offensive to people, it is necessary for archaeologists to engage with as broad a section of society as possible.

Towards a Public Archaeology For those who are serious about their theoretical awareness, obvious priorities should be to focus on archaeological communication and to aim to include more people. Communication is much more than simply spreading knowledge. Interaction is a necessity in this context; consequently, several archaeologists chose to work with people in order to improve inclusion, but they also aimed to develop a better understanding of the difficulties which materialize when such a task is undertaken (e.g. Spector 1991; Marshall 2002; Zimmerman, Vitelli, and Hollowell-Zimmer 2003; Jameson and Baugher-Perlin 2007).

76 Katherine Hauptman Table 3.2

From Mediating Results towards a Public Archaeology

Point of departure

Direction

Aims

One-way communication

→

Interactive communication

The archaeologist creates

→

Collaborative creation

Pedagogical empiricism

→

Learning perspectives, self-reflection

Facts and results

→

Participatory exploration, ethics

Audience with special interests

→

Meeting new public groups

Unclear public aims

→

Aims and stakeholders

On the outskirts of archaeology

→

Integrated within archaeology

Table further developed from Svanberg and (Hauptman) Wahlgren (2007).

Public archaeology should be characterized by a hermeneutic approach to knowledge, where people other than archaeologists participate in processes of knowledge. The communication thus shifts from a pedagogical empiricism that spreads the archaeological results to sharing the journey of discovery with other people and utilizing their experiences. This new approach should enhance the archaeological interface, make more people participate in archaeology, and make them more knowledgeable about archaeology; in addition, it ought to contribute to more co-creative and reflexive public relations.

Public Archaeology at The Swedish History Museum One of the aims of our small-scale public archaeology projects—Future memories, Archaeologist for a day, Suburban home grounds, and Search for the lost city—was to learn through participatory action (Hauptman Wahlgren and Svanberg 2008; Gullström, forthcoming; Hauptman Wahlgren 2010). The projects were evaluated in house, but it was not clear what criteria constituted a successful result. Every project had different prerequisites and good effects, as well as problems regarding internal processes, audiences, or methods of collaboration. Methods for accomplishing and evaluating public archaeological projects are still not very well developed (compare Svanberg and [Hauptman] Wahlgren 2007; Tully 2007). However, generative learning studies can be used as inspiration for a public archaeology learning toolkit—for example, the British Museums, Libraries and Archives Council works consciously with the Generic Learning (and/or Social) Outcomes (GLO) framework (www. inspiringlearningforall.gov.uk; explained in Hooper-Greenhill 2004; see also a critique of how the GLOs are used, in Brown 2007). Over the last ten years, the GLO approach has been implemented by many Swedish museums, including The Swedish History Museum.

Public Archaeological Challenges 77

Knowledge and Understanding Activity Behaviour and Progression

Skills

GLO Enjoyment Inspiration Creativity

Attitudes and Values

Figure 3.3 Generic Learning Outcomes according to the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, www.inspiringlearningforall.co.uk.

The Generative Approach In an academic example some years ago, Caryn McTighe Musil formulated six learning phases for university students to achieve generative citizenship. The aim was to challenge the privileged middle-class students to work with less-privileged groups in society. This would give them an informal education in social consciousness and help everyone to participate in society on equal terms in the future. Musil points out that many universities have good intentions to move beyond traditional academic teaching, but she also states that there is often a lack of strategies for dealing with social inclusion. To achieve a structured and purposeful integration of societal issues in education, she formulated a table with six phases that characterize the different steps in an exclusive or mutually generative relationship between the university and the student versus society (Musil 2003).

78 Katherine Hauptman In the introduction to the anthology Archaeology as a Tool of Civic Engagement, Barbara Little takes Musil’s characterization as her starting point, and she compares the different phases with the varying approaches of archaeologists to the societies within which they work (Little 2007, 7–8). Although Musil’s and Little’s arguments need remodelling, they are useful points of departure for analysing archaeological public work. Therefore, I have modified the framework presented here to match the needs of public archaeological projects. Recently, Nina Simon, a researcher of participatory museum experiences, presented a table illustrating levels of visitor participation in museums in relation to community engagement goals (Simon 2010; Simon also writes about participatory museum learning in the influential blog Museum 2.0, museumtwo.blogspot.com). According to her classification, the museum can be defined as contributory, collaborative, co-creative, or hosted (Simon 2010, 190–91). Simon focuses more on participation than on learning outcomes, but the grouping is complementary to the learning perspective. Table 3.3 is divided into six groups, from Delimited to Generative. It is important to point out that the implicit set of values which can be interpreted via this line of reasoning are only valid if the aim is to create a project that includes full co-creative participation at every step of the archaeological process. This could be an interesting challenge, but in practice it is rarely the purpose of a public project. Most disciplinary archaeological projects will, for obvious reasons, find themselves in the Unformulated group because they do not have an explicit public aim; our projects did, but they were, by way of introduction, only indistinctly targeted somewhere around the Charitable group.

Analysing Public Aims and Outcomes According to Table 3.4, The Swedish History Museum’s projects had different outcomes; which of them was most successful can only be analysed in relation to the respective aim. Future memories involved many contributors, it was discussed within the professional community, and it received large media coverage. Archaeologist for a day had even more participants and was immediately integrated into the ordinary museum activities. Suburban home grounds involved fewer people, but it had the most potential for in-depth learning, and the project therefore came very close to achieving public archaeology goals. Finally, the interdisciplinary project Search for the lost city had the largest audience; it touched upon a research field that merged telepresence and visitor interaction, and it also evoked great public curiosity. Future Memories During the spring of 2007, the collection, exhibition, and incavation project Future memories was held at The Swedish History Museum. The aim of the

Public encounters are used as a resource for archaeology. The public is a resource that should be engaged.

Unformulated

Charitable

The public as a resource in need of guidance.

The producer group is delimited from the public.

Delimited

Conscious

Objective The outcome will benefit the researcher; there is little desire to include other groups. Knowledge will benefit the researcher and the already initiated public. Satisfying the mainstream audience; increasing interest.

Interchange between giver and taker; generates new knowledge within the project framework.

Mono-cultural content.

Studies of ‘the Other’.

Responding to public expectations and spreading knowledge to new groups; awareness of multicultural conditions.

Spreading knowledge without interaction with other groups.

The producer group is a message sender, but the receiver is not clear. Invitation for public participation in a pre-formulated setting; some adaptation for different groups. Altruistic aid to satisfy the public’s need for knowledge; often targeted at disadvantaged groups. Public engagement subordinated to other project objectives; unclear public aims.

Desired outcome

Project setting

Interaction

Public Archaeology Aims and Outcomes

Public aims

Table 3.3

Participatory Observation

Popular Science

Surveys about how people use heritage sites. Hands-on activities; participation in an excavation; showing backstage museum work. Learning activities for selected groups; school classes following an excavation as part of the children’s education.

Public involvement without influence.

Short-term impact, but limited learning outcome from a social perspective.

(Continued)

Action Research

Disciplinary Research

News reports from excavations; sensational finds.

Increased disciplinary knowledge; no social impact for the public.

Long-term relationships with theoretical and practical items; deepening historical interest.

Perspective

Examples

Expected impact

The public and archaeology as mutual resources that strengthen each other.

The public and archaeology as mutual resources that create new opportunities together.

Reciprocal

Generative

Democratization aims; awareness of power, culture, and gender relations; openness to alternative perspectives; appreciation of different types of knowledge. Additions to the Reciprocal: intercultural work, sustainability, deep learning.

Reciprocal interchange with learning aims.

Generative collaboration between all parties involved, with the aims of learning and making changes.

Project setting

Interaction

Perspective Participatory Action Research

Participatory and Appreciative Action Research

Examples Research circles; interactive public activities.

Interactive project which aims to influence and change society.

Expected impact Public engagement and visible results can challenge traditional norms and practices.

Raise awareness of use of history; sustainability; stimulate belonging (resulting in long term change); influence established archaeological practices.

Desired outcome Long-term learning potential; new tools supporting changes in society and self-reflection.

Tools for democratic processes; potential to include everybody; influence on historical consciousness in contemporary society.

Note: The table illustrates six different public objectives for archaeological projects. In order to correspond to the expectations of organizers and participants, the setting ought to match the stated aims. Every category can include multi-disciplinary projects, but Charitable, Reciprocal, and Generative are multidisciplinary and interactive by definition. The table can be used as a planning tool or as a resource for analysing public archaeological projects.

Objective

(Continued)

Public aims

Table 3.3

Public Archaeological Challenges 81 Table 3.4 Analysis of the Public Outcomes from Four Projects at The Swedish History Museum 2007–2008

Public Aims

Suburban Search For Future Archaeologist Home the Lost Memories For a Day Grounds City

Delimited: the producer group delimited from the public Unformulated: public encounters as a resource for archaeology Conscious: the public as a resource that should be engaged Charitable: the public as a x resource in need of guidance Reciprocal: the public and archaeology as mutual resources that strengthen each other x? Generative: the public and archaeology as mutual resources that create new opportunities together

x x

x x x

x?

Note: The projects were all target-oriented development projects, but they lacked awareness of the public aims as they are stated in the table.

project was to develop a pedagogical method for discussing the contemporary consciousness of history (Hauptman Wahlgren 2010). The concept is also related to the time-capsule idea and can be described as a new interpretation of a time-capsule event. What you should do is get a box for a month, and drop everything in it and at the end of the month lock it up. Then date it and send it over to Jersey. You should try to keep track of it, but if you can’t and you lose it, that’s fine because it’s one less thing to think about, another load off your mind . . . (Warhol 1975) The concept of future memories plays with the established idea of memorabilia from ancient times, but it turns the concept on its head. The same goes for the closing incavation ceremony, which focused on the significance of archaeological excavations. An excavation is actually in conflict with a preservation capsule. It is a destructive process with the potential to reveal the unknown, and therefore it is also an intriguing and thought-provoking event. In Future memories, the focus was on issues such as the meaning of things and their stories, and the assembly of the collection. Some of the questions

(a) Figure 3.4a–c

Future memories. Deposition, interpretation, and incavation.

Photo: The Swedish History Museum.

(b)

(c) Figure 3.4a–c

(Continued)

84 Katherine Hauptman explored were first raised in connection with earlier incavation projects which had been performed in university contexts ([Hauptman] Wahlgren 2006; compare Holtorf 2001). Unlike the previous events, this time the emphasis was on the museum over a fairly long collection and exhibition period. The aim was to spark dialogue and reflections during the activity period instead of concentrating on reports and discussions afterwards. The public decided what was to be exhibited and collected by placing their future memories in a case along with a reminder note. Their descriptions of and ideas about the chosen artefacts were registered in the museum database. Public involvement in the creation of a new collection provided a new perspective on how we deal with exhibited archaeological objects. As it turned out, the personal reflections on the memories chosen for the future influenced the perception of other exhibited objects and their history in the museum. The project also shed light on the question of what has been deliberately deposited in the past and what has been accumulated through unconscious processes. The museum was enriched by new stories and knowledge of the public comprehension of artefacts. Future memories also gained unexpected media attention. Finally, the idea of Future memories provoked a professional debate among archaeologists on why certain objects are perceived as containing information about the past while others are dismissed as not being museum-worthy (Hauptman Wahlgren and Svanberg 2008).

Figure 3.5 The economic value of the objects was not linked to the quality of the stories added. Photo: The Swedish History Museum.

Public Archaeological Challenges 85 The aims of the project in relation to the general public can be characterized as predominantly Charitable but with Generative elements. We wanted to inspire people’s curiosity and get them to reflect on history. Visitor contribution was crucial, yet the museum-collection system set boundaries for participation. The donated objects became extensions of the museum visit. Their stories were registered in the museum database, and they are accessible through the website alongside the other artefacts. Public participation generated situations that became problematic and ethically challenging—for example, the deposition of Nathan’s ashes; Nathan had died in a motorcycle accident (this is discussed in Hauptman Wahlgren 2010). Archaeologist for a Day The project Archaeologist for a day consisted of a public archaeological excavation of The Swedish History Museum itself. The visitors of summer 2007 were invited to take part in the excavation in the central courtyard of the museum. A large number of artefacts from the last 350 years, which were related to the history of the area, were found and collected. The project demonstrated the learning possibilities that can be achieved if we involve people in the archaeological process, as well as the limitations of the collection database system, which proved to be less user-friendly than intended. Archaeologist for a day began as a project that aimed to literally and metaphorically excavate The Swedish History Museum (Svanberg 2008). Previous exhibitions are well documented and archived, but the pedagogical activities that have been performed over the years are only briefly described. It was posited that excavating the courtyard would possibly provide complementary information. The objectives were divided between exploring the museum history and the potential previous remains, and developing public interaction at the excavation site and inspiring discussion about the museum history and collection practices (Hauptman Wahlgren and Svanberg 2008). The excavation was conducted over three seasons and was led by professional archaeologists who also blogged about the proceedings. The actual digging and interpretation of the finds was done by the visitors. The excavation was very popular with the visitors, and several thousand children and adults participated. Many of them also wanted to try out find management and interpret the site. Afterwards, most people searched for their own finds on the website. The excavated remains consisted mainly of cultural layers from periods prior to the building of the museum. Therefore, the original questions about museum history shifted to longer-term questions about events on the site. This project can be labelled Conscious. The setting was interactive and pleasurable, and it had the potential to engage. The visitors were invited to participate within a specific framework, and they had few opportunities to influence the situation. The activity generated some internal debate

Figure 3.6 The objects and interpretations have been registered in the museum database, and the participants can search for finds from the excavation on the museum website (search the collections, inventory no. 34759 with sub-numbers, http://mis.historiska.se/mis/sok/invnr.asp?invnr=34759). Photo: The Swedish History Museum.

Public Archaeological Challenges 87 about collection practices and how user-friendly the database is, but mainly the work was carried out in line with the ordinary museum summer programme. The archaeologists employed for the project were responsible for implementation of the excavation, find management, documentation, and reports. Yet they were only a limited part of the overall public archaeology concept, which included several other projects. This meant that the possibilities for sharing experiences and evaluating different approaches when developing activities were limited. Suburban Home Grounds Suburban home grounds (or Public contract archaeology as we have called the project elsewhere; see Hauptman Wahlgren and Svanberg 2008) explored the relations between the public and Swedish contract archaeology through the engagement of museum staff in a major archaeological project. The project was to be collaborative but with no specific requirements about location or participants (aside from targeting the contract archaeology business, where community dimensions are usually neglected). A future engagement with local communities and contemporary material would undoubtedly result in a very different archaeological system. The Swedish contract archaeology system seldom allows for any in-depth public interaction or for excavating remains from historical periods. Still, many archaeologists are eager to reach out, and several important public projects are executed each year. The problem is not primarily a lack of interest in communicating results—rather, the difficulty posed by integrating public projects and ordinary archaeological work is an obstacle. Public engagement tends to be added as an afterthought instead of being treated as significant to archaeology. Suburban home grounds took place in Hjulsta, north of Stockholm. There were some issues with adjusting the project to the excavation timeplan, and we were unsure whether the excavation firm would be interested in cooperating. We initially aimed to have varied community participation, but in the end the project was mainly developed in collaboration with the local school in Hjulsta. (pedagogue from the museum, addressing the school children): What did you learn from the co-operation? MIRIAM: Before, I didn’t know there was anything out there. KEVIN: The experience of taking part in an excavation. I didn’t even think that people lived here earlier. SUSANNA (teacher): You were pretty surprised about the fact that someone wanted to read your texts in a museum. GUDON: Yes, we didn’t think anyone would be interested . . . KEVIN: . . . in us teenagers. ANNA

88 Katherine Hauptman

Figure 3.7 The pupils worked with the archaeological project mainly in their Swedish classes. Several of them improved their writing and reading skills during the project period. Photo: The Swedish History Museum.

SUSANNA:

You went from saying ‘Who wants to read our stupid texts?’ to making beautiful texts that have been exhibited. People actually admire them. CAREL: Sometimes I have pictures [in my head] of what it looked like here [in Hjulsta] before. Over there was a creek. GUDON: The most special thing was that we were able to make our own exhibition, and we were invited to dig. Not many schools get to do that. We felt important. Although the project had Unformulated parts, some aspects can be described as Reciprocal or even close to Generative. We aimed to be open to the needs of participants, and therefore the concept was initially tentative. In spite of some time constraints, this was no doubt the most instructive project and consequently the most successful according to the general aims of public archaeology. We established relationships with the pupils and suggested frameworks for their performances, but they were free to interpret the task and to influence the result. Over a period of about eight months the museum staff visited the school several times. Together with the pupils, we searched for information and discussed historical Hjulsta. The children worked with future

Public Archaeological Challenges 89 memories and reflected upon their favourite places in Hjulsta. They then participated in the excavation and interpreted their own finds. Finally, they constructed an exhibition which told the story of their Hjulsta at The Swedish History Museum. Even though this project was based on long-term participation, better tools are needed for a fully Reciprocal concept, including better preparation and more opportunities to follow up on the project. Nevertheless, because of the learning outcome, both for the children and for the museum staff, there are Generative and hopefully also sustainable aspects to the project. Search for the Lost City Search for the lost city sprang from questions about modern heritage sites, the use of history, and the handing over of memories between generations. In this project, these questions were combined with research fields of distance communication and telepresence (Gullström et al. 2008; Gullström 2010). The project had four complementary aims: • To extend the museum beyond the building and meet new visitor groups that do not usually come to the museum. • To focus on the modern heritage by activating a site that is little known today. • To complete a public archaeological excavation in order to promote inclusion and learning. • To collect personal narratives and contribute to creating interactive encounters. Over a period of two weeks in August 2008, the building of The Swedish History Museum was extended, using a video-mediated window, to include an archaeological excavation. This excavation was the site of a reconstruction of medieval Stockholm which was built for the great General Art and Industrial Exposition of Stockholm of 1897. Consequently, it was an

Figure 3.8 The 1897 half-scale replica of the medieval city of Stockholm (‘Olde Stockholm’) and the same view before the excavation in 2008. Left photo credit, the Stockholm City Museum; right photo credit, The Swedish History Museum.

(a) Figure 3.9a–b During the project, both children and adults excavated the remains of the All Saints’ House from 1897. Not everyone wanted to participate actively, but we found that the somewhat-confusing setting of this multi-activity event affected conversation and the questions from the visitors in general; it seemed as if people felt freer to ask questions. They also stated that their understanding of what happened in 1897 had changed because of their on-site experience. Photo: The Swedish History Museum.

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(b) Figure 3.9a–b (Continued)

excavation of the late nineteenth-century image of the Middle Ages, and the activities supported a discussion about how this image still affects research and public conceptions of medieval life. An exhibition about the 1897 event was shown simultaneously at the museum, and the mediated window made it possible for people in the exhibition hall and at the excavation site to communicate—to talk and to see each other—in real time.

92 Katherine Hauptman The fair is documented in photographs and drawings, but very few visible traces remain on site today. Owing to its importance in its time, the large number of visitors, and popular souvenirs, the 1897 fair still reverberates in the public memory. Today, it is a very popular recreation area, but, contrary to what its historical importance would imply, it is not recognized at all as a cultural heritage site. The project was Conscious with a few Charitable features. The setting— which included interaction, discussion, and the opportunity to attend the excavation—was partly Charitable. Our aim was to achieve Reciprocal aspects through the collection of narratives from the public. The collecting achieved some breakthroughs, but we were not able to fully follow up on the contributions within this limited project. The excavation of the house was designed to consist of many different parts; this was a little confusing for the visitors and served to promote spontaneous conversation among people. Although no remains were visible above ground, many visitors expressed that they had attained a new understanding of the large-scale medieval town reconstruction by visiting the actual site. They were also intrigued by the fact that this had attracted so little attention as a heritage site. Through this project we learned many things about how to develop an activity with the potential to be Generative. PART 3: SUMMING UP—APPROACHING IMPORTANT PEOPLE The bases for the described projects were comprised of true curiosity and the urge to research specific issues such as people’s relations to their local history, their views on how history and future interconnect, and the relations between different heritage sites and materials. However, when we tried to discuss complex aspects of the past, a translation dilemma arose between the professional community and the public. In my view, pedagogy and learning aspects should have priority when communicating archaeological issues. The field of public archaeology still needs to be further explored (Merriman 2004; Svanberg and [Hauptman] Wahlgren 2007).

Participatory Action Research Public archaeology that is based on action research enhances the possibilities of working reflexively with development of co-creative participation. Action research is conducted in order to influence rather than study prevailing conditions. Hence, this implies active participation from all involved parties, with mutual openness, respect, and recognition of different types of knowledge, including diverse social and cultural perspectives. A project presented must be credible. For public archaeology it is not enough to arrange an excavation with buried objects. Engagement should

Public Archaeological Challenges 93 stem from everyone’s genuine interest, including the archaeologists. It is important for the participants to see that their contributions are further processed in order to understand the context in which they participated. Finally, all participants should be able to study the results and express what they have learnt, and they should have the opportunity to apply the experiences in new contexts; the same goes for the archaeologists.

Public Aims and Outcomes Public archaeological projects should be based on explicit public objectives. However, not all projects have the same potential, and not all can aim to be as inclusive as possible. We must be aware that different public objectives will result in different learning conditions. In addition, this is an important issue when returning knowledge to the disciplinary practices within the individual organization; such a return is required in a Generative project. Long-term projects which have deeper relationships with people are more likely to result in those engaged learning new information, and in addition it develops the organizations involved. This is self-evident, but in reality many of the public projects are conducted so as to involve as many people as possible in short-term encounters. Hence, by appreciating the development aspect of public projects, the institutions would gain greater results from their engagement in society.

Learning Aims An excavation site can be perceived as a stereotype which involves exotic knowledge about the past being sought; at least, this idea is often mediated through popular culture. Therefore, either the excavation can be a pedagogical tool for inviting people on a participatory journey that deals with the past or it can just reaffirm popular biases. My experience of public archaeology projects indicates that it is difficult to break free from what seem to be the expected questions and interpretations at an excavation site. In this situation, the archaeologist struggles with what may be called ‘pedagogical empiricism’, and the public become less creative in their questions in comparison to what happens in pedagogically elaborated projects such as Future memories, for example. Nevertheless, the excavation metaphor is one of the strong points of archaeology, along with the combination of practice and materiality versus theory and reflection. By using a learning approach, the public encounters can be developed and contribute to a better understanding of how the audience connects their archaeological experiences to other meaningful issues in society. In fact, an examination of the communication situation itself is probably the most important feature for reaching ambitious learning goals. The learning may be successful even if other objectives do not turn out as

94 Katherine Hauptman expected. Therefore, it is important to evaluate the learning aims separately from other project objectives. A Generative public project should include learning aims suitable for all parties involved, including the archaeologists. The archaeologist’s view is often considered to be the normative perspective, but it could also be considered the perspective of one social group. By taking in other points of view and formulating alternative aims for knowledge assimilation (such as Generic Learning Outcomes), learning potential is broadened. If experiences such as conflicts and other problems are added to the analysis, learning within a project can be great even if the project fails in other aspects.

Learning More through Participatory Action Public archaeology can be used as a tool for rethinking old archaeological practices. It also creates deeper public relations and gives people access to complex and thought-provoking histories. The public archaeology projects at The Swedish History Museum stimulated discourse way beyond the specific project objectives. Problems that arose when public interaction clashed with museum practices became interesting starting points for reflection on desired principles and subconsciously managed structures and traditions. In that sense, the interactive projects provided us with the opportunity to re-examine established patterns and inform new practices (Hauptman Wahlgren and Svanberg 2008). My experience is that taking part in actual encounters between people is far more important than every step of the activity, setting, and organization working flawlessly. The conversation and being part of an explorative process is exciting and makes everybody feel included. This is something that participants say is unusual: ‘Am I really going to take part in a true archaeological excavation?’

MAKING ARCHAEOLOGY GOOD TO THINK WITH2: CHALLENGES INTO THE 2010S Archaeology has the potential to be an important tool for learning—more so than the study of interesting things. Many archaeologists would agree that the interpretations of past societies enhance our understanding of humanity and provide perspectives on contemporary ways of living. I would add that archaeological practice has the potential to involve different learning styles, which makes it ‘good to think with’. Therefore, the development of public archaeology is an obvious challenge for the future. From the discussion in this chapter, three key development areas can now be formulated. These are presented below.

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Engagement Public interest in history/archaeology seems to exist, but professional archaeologies do not necessarily engage the public. This implies that the professional and the public archaeologies are based in different fields of interest. Public archaeology can help to bridge the gap.

Dialogue The heritage sector aims to open channels of dialogue with the public, but, in practice, the focus is on anchoring heritage in society according to the professional values rather than listening to public needs. This is one of the reasons for the low usage of learning perspectives in archaeological public communication. The development and further study of the learning aspects will be a challenge, but, if we are successful, involving archaeologies that matter to more people will be created.

Participation Time and again, archaeology is proven to be an intriguing combination of theory and practice. Everyone can join a journey of discovery which gives food for thought and enhances existential reflection. Yet archaeologists are afraid of inviting people to participate. Instead, the archaeological results are often presented in a traditional way which makes people passive listeners. Today, we can choose from a wide range of ways to make participation happen—either in the excavation pit, in the museum, or in cyberspace. The greatest challenge is for the archaeologists to share the privilege of setting the agenda with other competent people. NOTES 1. The Swedish universities’ three tasks are researching, teaching, and public communication. 2. The expression ‘archeology is good to think with’ is a paraphrase of Claude LéviStrauss’s famous statement that animals are not being highlighted in human culture because they are good to eat, but because ‘animals are good to think with’.

REFERENCES Alzén, A., and P. Aronsson, eds. 2006. Demokratiskt kulturarv? Nationella institutioner, universella värden, lokala praktiker. Norrköping: Tema Kultur och samhälle, Campus Norrköping, Linköpings universitet. Andersson, J., P. Aronsson, and B. Pettersson. 2005. Uppdragsarkeologins publika sida: Slättbygdsprojektet; Utvärdering. Linköping: Avdelningen för arkeologiska undersökningar, Riksantikvarieämbetet. Aronsson, P. 2004. Historiebruk: Att använda det förflutna. Lund: Studentlitteratur.

96 Katherine Hauptman Brown, S. 2007. “A Critique of Generic Learning Outcomes.” Journal of Learning Design 2 (2): 22–30. Burström, M. 1999. “Cultural Diversity in the Home Ground: How Archaeology Can Make the World a Better Place.” Current Swedish Archaeology 7: 21–26. ———. 2006. “Samskapande samtidsarkeologi.” Primitive tider 9: 15–22. Burström, M., B. Elfström, and B. Johansen. 2004. “Serving the Public: Ethics in Heritage Management.” Swedish Archaeologists on Ethics: 135–47. Burström, M., B. Winberg, and T. Zachrisson. 1997. Fornlämningar och folkminnen. Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet. Falk, J. H. 2009. Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Furumark, A., ed. 2013. Att störa homogenitet. Lund: Nordic Academic Press. Gullström, C. 2010. Presence Design: Mediated Spaces Extending Architecture. PhD diss. Stockholm: Kungliga Tekniska högskolan. ———. Forthcoming. “A Mediated Window to the Stockholm Art and Industry Fair of 1897: Remote Presence and Public Interaction as a Means of Exploring and Evoking Interest in Cultural Heritage Sites.” Submitted to Public Archaeology. Gullström, C., L. Handberg, K. Hauptman Wahlgren, and F. Svanberg. 2008. “The Mediated Window: Enabling Remote Presence to Cultural Heritage Sites.” Paper presented at the NODEM 08. http://nodem.org/nodem-2008-iceland/. Gustafsson, A., and H. Karlsson. 2004. Kulturarv som samhällsdialog? En betraktelse av kulturarvsförmedling. Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet. Hamilakis, Y., and P. G. Duke, eds. 2007. Archaeology and Capitalism: From Ethics to Politics. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. (Hauptman) Wahlgren, K. 2006. “Memories for Our Future: An Archaeological Incavation in the Swedish Suburbs.” Public Archaeology, no. 2: 131−35. Hauptman Wahlgren, K. 2010. “Future Memories in the Rear-View Mirror.” In The Museum as Forum and Actor, edited by F. Svanberg. Conference report from a museum conference in Belgrade, December 2009. Hauptman Wahlgren, K., and F. Svanberg. 2008. “Public Archaeology as Renewer of the Historical Museum.” Public Archaeology 7 (4): 242–59. Högberg, A. 2004. “Historiemedvetande och uppdragsarkeologi: Tankar om alternativa kunskapsmål.” Meta (Lund) 3: 3–18. ———. 2013. Mångfaldsfrågor i kulturmiljövården: Tankar, kunskaper och processer 2002–2012. Lund: Nordic Academic Press. Holtorf, C. 2001. “Archaeological Incavation Berlin-Schliemannstraße.” Final Report. Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge. http://web. comhem.se/cornelius/Incavation/incavation1.html. ———. 2004. From Stonehenge to Las Vegas: Archaeology as Popular Culture. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. ———. 2007. Archaeology Is a Brand! The Meaning of Archaeology in Contemporary Popular Culture. Oxford: Archaeopress. Holtorf, C., and A. Högberg. 2005/2006. “Talking People: From Community to Popular Archaeologies.” Lund Archaeological Review 11/12: 79–88. Hooper-Greenhill, E., ed. 1999. The Educational Role of the Museum, 2nd ed. London: Routledge. ———. 2004. “Measuring Learning Outcomes in Museums, Archives and Libraries: The Learning Impact Research Project (LIRP).” International Journal of Heritage Studies 10 (2): 151–74. ———. 2007. Museums and Education: Purpose, Pedagogy, Performance. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Insulander, E. 2005. Museer och lärande, en forskningsöversikt. Göteborg: Statens museer för världskultur.

Public Archaeological Challenges 97 ———. 2010. “Tinget, rummet, besökaren: Om meningsskapande på museum.” PhD diss., Stockholm University. Jameson, J. H., and S. Baugher-Perlin, eds. 2007. Past Meets Present: Archaeologists Partnering with Museum Curators, Teachers and Community Groups. New York: Springer. Karlsson, H. 2004. “Archaeological Morals between Modernity and Post-modernity.” In Swedish Archaeologists on Ethics, edited by Håkan Karlsson, 71–84. Lindome: Bricoleur Press. Karlsson, H., and B. Nilsson. 2001. Arkeologins publika relation: En kritisk rannsakning. Göteborg: Bricoleur Press. Kress, G., and T. van Leeuwen. 2001. Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. London: Arnold. Lang, C., J. Reeve, and V. Woollard, eds. 2006. The Responsive Museum: Working with Audiences in the Twenty-First Century. Aldershot: Ashgate. Lewin, K. 1946. “Action Research and Minority Problems.” Journal of Social Issues 2 (4): 34–46. Lind, H., and E. Svensson. 2001. “Sentida bebyggelse i antikvarisk och arkeologisk verksamhet—en tematisk utvärdering.” In Sentida bebyggelse i antikvarisk och arkeologisk verksamhet, edited by H. Lind, E. Svensson, and J. Hansson. Projekt uppdragsarkeologi. Rapport 2001:2. Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet. Little, B. J. 2007. “Archaeology and Civic Engagement.” In Archaeology as a Tool of Civic Engagement, edited by B. J. Little and P. A. Shackel, 1–22. Lanham, MD: Altamira Press. Marshall, Y. 2002. “What Is Community Archaeology?” In “Community Archaeology,” special issue, World Archaeology 34 (2): 211–19. McManamon, F. P., and A. Hatton, eds. 2000. Cultural Resource Management in Contemporary Society: Perspectives on Managing and Presenting the Past. London: Routledge. Merriman, N., ed. 2004. Public Archaeology. New York: Routledge. Message, K. 2006. New Museums and the Making of Culture. Oxford: Berg. Morris Hargreaves McIntyre. 2013. “Culture Segments.” Lateral Thinkers. Manchester. http://mhminsight.com/articles/culture-segments-1179. Moshenska, G. 2008. “Community Archaeology from Below: A Response to Tully.” Public Archaeology 7 (1): 51–52. Musil, C. M. 2003. “Educating for Citizenship.” Peer Review 5 (3): 4–8. Myndigheten för kulturanalys. 2014. Vem besöker de centrala museerna? Redovisning av ett regeringsuppdrag. Governmental assignment, revised 2014–02–05. Preucel, R. W., and S. A. Mrozowski, eds. 2010. Contemporary Archaeology in Theory: The New Pragmatism, 2nd ed. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Reach Advisors Insight. 2010. “Got Stuff? Great! It’s Memorable!” October 22. http://reachadvisors.typepad.com/museum_audience_insight/2010/10/got-stuffgreat-its-memorable.html. Reason, P., and H. Bradbury, eds. 2008. The SAGE Handbook of Action Research, 2nd ed. Los Angeles: SAGE. Riksantikvarieämbetet. 2004. Människan i centrum: Agenda kulturarvs programförklaring. Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet. Selander, S. 2008a. “Museet, utställningen, besökaren.” In Individ, samhälle, lärande; Åtta exempel på utbildningsvetenskaplig forskning, 36–42. Ulf P. Lundgren (red.), Stockholm: Vetenskapsrådet. ———. 2008b. “Tecken för lärande—tecken på lärande: Ett designteoretiskt perspektiv.” In Design för lärande, edited by A. Rostvall and S. Selander, 28–59. Stockholm: Norstedts akademiska förlag. Simon, N. 2010. The Participatory Museum. Santa Cruz, CA: Museum 2.0.

98 Katherine Hauptman Smith, G. S., P. M. Messenger, and H. A. Soderland, eds. 2010. Heritage Values in Contemporary Society. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Snäll, A., and S. Welinder. 2008. Uppgrävt och nedskrivet: Om arkeologi och kulturmiljövård i massmedierna. Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet. Spector, J. 1991. “What This Awl Means: Toward a Feminist Archaeology.” In Engendering Archaeology. Women and Prehistory, edited by J. M. Gero and M. W. Conkey, 388–407. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Svanberg, F. 2008. Arkeologisk undersökning av Statens historiska museum. Samtidsarkeologi—varför gräva i det nära förflutna? : rapport från en session vid konferensen IX Nordic TAG i Århus 2007. Huddinge: Arkeologi, Institutionen för kultur och kommunikation, Södertörns högskola. Svanberg, F., and K. (Hauptman) Wahlgren. 2007. Publik arkeologi. Stockholm: Historiska museet. Tengrud, K., R. Öhrvall, and J. Johansson. 2002. Vad betyder kulturmiljön för dig? Stockholm: Statistiska Centralbyrån. Tully, G. 2007. “Community Archaeology: General Methods and Standards of Practice.” Public Archaeology 6 (3): 155–87. Vergo, P. 1989. The New Museology. London: Reaktion Books. Warhol, A. 1975. The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again. New York: Harcourt. Weil, S. E. 2002. Making Museums Matter. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Zimmerman, L. J., K. D. Vitelli, and J. Hollowell-Zimmer, eds. 2003. Ethical Issues in Archaeology. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press in cooperation with the Society for American Archaeology.

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Comment Charlotta Hillerdal

What is the primary concern of archaeology: the past, things, or people? For Katherine Hauptman the answer is clear—it is people. For the public involved in the projects described in her chapter, however, the answer seems to be ‘things’. Thus, there is an interesting discrepancy between what institutional archaeology wants to do and how the larger community perceives it, but the importance of things in reaching out to the uninitiated public is also highlighted. These two worlds, the archaeological and the public, meet in the museum— it is an established arena for public engagement and an institution with a mission to communicate and educate. However, as Hauptman comments, museums struggle to attract wider groups in society—their audience mainly derives from the educated middle classes, and often the audience is older and female. The museum sector today has bigger aims, and the question then arises as to how the museum can peel off the label saying ‘old fashioned’, shake the dust off, and rise to the task of appealing to a younger and more socially diverse audience. The solution advocated by Hauptman is public engagement, and public engagement on a more symmetrical and democratic level. We need to tear down the fence built between the professional heritage sector and the people for whom the heritage is preserved, and this means letting people into the creative and interpretive stages of research, rather than providing them with a finished product. Hauptman suggests participatory action is the way forward, and the projects at The Swedish Historical Museum put this into practice. The results were predominantly positive, and the museum managed to involve a much more diversified audience than mainstream exhibitions. However, they were not without their difficulties (inconsistency being one of them), and Hauptman’s plea is for a more coherent objective, one involving the development of new tools for public interaction—tools which will bridge the gap between new aims and old practices. So far her claims seem very legitimate—heritage should always be discussed and created in the public domain, and there should always be a constant dialogue between experts and laypeople. The question is, how far can you take this? Historically the relation between museum and visitor is asymmetrical, as Hauptman points out, but how do we equalize this relationship without corrupting the knowledge base of the professional? From the results of Hauptman’s project we can draw the conclusion that public interest is piqued by recent histories, local history, and intriguing objects rather than the foreign, the ancient, and stories. Should these public highlights be made into guidelines, much of the empirical material that professionals prioritize would be lost. If the ‘authoritarian’ professionals do not cast light upon the distant past, who will?

100 Charlotta Hillerdal As Hauptman notes, when the public is involved in an archaeological project on a coequal level, the professionals need to be prepared for a different outcome than that which was anticipated. A truly symmetrical project cannot give interpretative prerogative to the professionals, nor can the professionals be allowed to guide the project towards their conceived conclusion. Although novel in the museum sector, the ideas of action research and participatory action advocated by Hauptman can be identified in several current archaeological projects. In a project led by Dr Bob Johnston at the University of Sheffield, Researching Community Heritage, these ideas are taken even further (Researching Community Heritage 2014). Building on the idea that heritage actively empowers people when engaging with their past (Harrison 2010), Johnston claims that community archaeology can become a form of social justice. The action heritage projects at the University of Sheffield explicitly target socially deprived areas and groups of people that generally have very little engagement with the heritage sector. The experiences from these projects are very similar to what Hauptman notes: The projects develop and take on a form shaped by the communities, one which is often very different from the original vision. For these types of projects to work, researchers and professionals have to be ready to accept these different outcomes. Herein lies an inherent problem: Action heritage is a social project, not a historical one. It seems inevitable that it will always be a sideline to archaeological research (i.e. very important for engaging the wider public in heritage issues and historical discourses), but never actually replacing professional archaeology. The dividing line between public and professional archaeology might have become fuzzier through participatory action research, or perhaps even erased, but, in the end, can we really avoid redrawing the line back in? Finally, as public institutions, who should museums cater to? Hauptman demands clearer aims for public engagement in museums, something that should be a given in any heritage department. With the threat of becoming cultural dinosaurs hanging over them, how can museums strike a balance between being an anachronistic institution and stepping over into the entertainment business? Being more accessible and engaging a wider public are both commendable ambitions, but in doing so historical museums need to include their other aims: preservation, communication, and education. I think we still have some theoretical ground to cover before we can develop a heritage project that is social and historical, public and professional, symmetric and educational. REFERENCES Harrison, R. 2010. ‘Heritage as Social Action.’ In Understanding Heritage in Practice, edited by S. West, 240–76. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Researching Community Heritage. 2014. http://communityheritage.group.shef.ac.uk.

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Comment Julian Thomas

Katherine Hauptman’s contribution draws our attention to an important paradox. Of all the academic disciplines, archaeology is amongst those that can most readily engage the imagination of a broader public. Yet what excites that public may actually be quite remote from what interests archaeologists. Hauptman illustrates this point powerfully with her anecdote of a class of high school students for whom understanding the past did not register as a feature of archaeology. In the context of this volume, it is significant that Hauptman lays stress on the importance of an active involvement with empirical materials as a more effective way of engaging people and facilitating their learning about the past. As she notes, heritage professionals are generally enthusiastic about the task of promoting a wider interest in the past, but very often the reaction to their efforts is a passive one: People consume exhibits, displays, and artefacts, rather than participating. Emphasising the tactile qualities of archaeological evidence and the experience of discovery, Hauptman points to the singular role that excavations can take on as locations for active learning, through practice and participation. However, it is here that the contrast between professional and lay understandings of archaeology comes into play. For as Hauptman argues, people have to be caught up in the excitement of a project if they are to learn from it. A ‘replica’ excavation of a ‘non-site’ could not be expected to generate much enthusiasm. Yet the preconceptions that a non-specialist will bring to the excavation site may be quite different from what animates the professional, which in turn may appear to the neophyte to be rather dull ‘nerd knowledge’. Clearly, we as archaeologists need to know far more about how the everyday, non-specialist perception of our discipline in the wider community is generated. Hauptman points to the way that news reports of archaeological discoveries are selective and exoticized, focusing on exceptional objects rather than the contribution that a site might make to our understanding of a particular period. More generally, the media coverage of archaeology is often affected by what is considered to be ‘telegenic’ and by the need to tell a straightforward story, shorn of complexities and contradictions. To some extent, this does mean that any project that seeks to engage a non-professional public needs to put some effort into drawing people in, explaining why even the most mundane of finds can be important, and showing how features and artefacts can form the basis around which interpretations are constructed. Quite rightly, Hauptman suggests that this can be achieved by encouraging participants to build stories around their own finds. Archaeology in the field, then, can encourage people to take part in active learning in a way that is more difficult to achieve in a museum or exhibition

102 Julian Thomas context. However, Hauptman acknowledges that this requires immersion and commitment, so that there may be inherent limitations to a project called Archaeologist for a day. As she notes, long-term projects in which enduring relationships are created and sustained between archaeologists and other participants may be the most effective pedagogical format and the one from which archaeologists themselves are likely to learn the most. In my own experience, research excavations that take place over a period of several years, with a team returning to a site over many seasons, may provide the context for engaging with a living community and inspiring a lasting interest in its heritage. While there may be difficulties inherent in the popular conception of archaeology, it is nonetheless the case that communities (whether rural or urban) are often excited by the deep history of their locality, just as we may be interested to hear about the people who occupied our house in the past, or our family history. Here the past is personal as well as of general interest. Hauptman suggests that archaeologists may be fearful of inviting people to participate in their projects, but there is actually an established tradition of welcoming local volunteers onto an excavation, which can be combined with less participatory activities such as site open days, site tours, and public lectures in local venues to help communities to connect with their past. Quite rightly, she points out that archaeological excavation can be a tool for learning more than interesting information about the past. This is true of archaeology students as well as the wider public. A number of authors have drawn attention to the role of excavation in constructing and maintaining a disciplinary identity (e.g. Moser 1996). However, rather less has been said about the way that participating in fieldwork can foster a variety of social and life skills, which can make the experience a particularly valuable one for people with learning difficulties or disabilities. Reviewing a range of projects that The Swedish History Museum has been involved with, Hauptman notes that excavations rarely have an explicit public engagement objective. This prompts the question of whether involving the public in some capacity, or at least developing an outreach strategy, should not be a mandatory component of any large-scale developer-funded contract excavation. This is not to say, of course, that commercial field units have not always taken the need for outreach and education seriously. Hauptman emphasizes that we should ‘share the journey of discovery’, thereby democratising the practice of archaeology and opening up the study and interpretation of the results of fieldwork. This is a commendable aim, but it reveals a tension that most archaeologists will be familiar with. It has always been one of the most attractive aspects of archaeology that it is open to amateurs, who can make a genuine contribution to knowledge about the past. But at the same time, archaeology is a craft, composed of a multiplicity of skills that have to be acquired and developed throughout a career (Shanks and McGuire 1996). In my fourth decade in the subject, I still personally feel that I am struggling to work out how to ‘do’ archaeology. So the message that ‘anyone can do it’ is decidedly double-edged. We might agree with

Public Archaeological Challenges 103 Hauptman that we should ‘share the privilege’ of working with and interpreting the past but still recognize Yoffee and Sherratt’s (1993, 7) disquiet at the erosion of professional authority that is threatened by allowing multiple accounts of the past to stand. This concern takes on a greater urgency in the context of the undermining of trust in professionals and ‘experts’ by the political class which has contributed to the emergence of the ‘audit culture’ of neo-liberalism (Shore and Wright 1999, 558), and the increasing stigmatisation of the humanities within the university sector as ‘hobby subjects’ that do not contribute to the overriding goal of ‘wealth creation’. Why support expensive departments of archaeology, producing graduates in a pseudoscience which can be satisfactorily undertaken by a person with no background knowledge? One answer to this conflict may lie in reconsidering the role of the archaeologist. We should celebrate our professional competence and our accumulated disciplinary skills, but not as a means of establishing ourselves as ‘gatekeepers’ who can monopolize access to the past. Instead, we might see ourselves as stewards or mentors, who can guide others in their encounter with the past. However, such a role should not prevent us from discriminating between proposed interpretations, particularly when the circulation of distorted claims about the past might have negative cultural and political consequences. REFERENCES Moser, S. 1996. “Science, Stratigraphy and the Deep Sequence: Excavation vs Regional Survey and the Question of Gendered Practice in Archaeology.” Antiquity 70: 813–23. Shanks, M., and R. McGuire. 1996. “The Craft of Archaeology.” American Antiquity 61: 75–88. Shore, C., and S. Wright. 1999. “Audit Culture and Anthropology: Neo-liberalism in British Higher Education.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 5: 557–75. Yoffee, N., and A. Sherratt. 1993. “Introduction: The Sources of Archaeological Theory.” In Archaeological Theory: Who Sets the Agenda?, edited by N. Yoffee and A. Sherratt, 1–10. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

4

Students First, Please! Michael Fotiadis

In this essay I try to weave together three themes. The first of these I call, somewhat ominously, archaeology’s ‘loss of political compass’. I take account of archaeology’s past, if only to argue that the discipline’s political commitments of yesterday cannot very well serve in the present globalized condition. The second theme pertains to the archaeologist’s education. Drawing on my ca. twenty-five years of experiences as a university educator in the United States and Greece, I observe that—whereas late twentieth-century archaeology classes often allowed for a broad, theoretically informed learning and for a measure of reflexivity—today’s classes are content with presenting facts about the past and training students in technical aspects of research. This reorientation in the substance of the archaeologist’s education is not just driven by top-down policies; it also enjoys the favour of our students, who are more than ever before concerned about employment. Third, I turn to a newly emerging form of empiricism, or ‘second’ empiricism as it is sometimes called, and I outline aspects of it that could be helpful in our search for a new political compass. I also argue that this new form of empiricism is well worth passing on to our students. I offer no guidelines for that ‘passing on’; such matters can best be decided with local circumstances in view. But I consider that ‘passing on’ a necessity: Contemplating the future of archaeology is, to my mind, unthinkable without taking into account our students and reflecting on the education we provide to them. Archaeology today is about doing field research and about displaying and publishing the finds, but it is also about teaching students in the university classroom (and thus preserving, while negotiating and modifying, earlier versions of knowledge). This chapter is concerned primarily about archaeology in the latter context. It addresses issues that would be of greater concern to fellow university teachers (and is written with them in mind) than to professional archaeologists occupied in fieldwork and the display and publication of the findings. The latter are, of course, the majority worldwide. ‘You never write history, you always re-write it’, my guru once said. That wisdom has stayed with me. ‘Never,’ ‘always’—we had been talking about modernity, of course, specifically, about scholarly cultures of the last two hundred years, although in retrospect the same wisdom seems pertinent to

Students First, Please! 105 the scholarship of older times as well: Think, for example, of medieval scholars incessantly emendating classical antiquity’s texts. Furthermore, while the expressed object of the guru’s wisdom is history, its substance is, no doubt, equally applicable to archaeology. But where does the weight of that wisdom lie? There is, first of all, a pragmatic realization: Before you even picked up the pen to write your first line, history had already been there, written by countless others before you. And so, pretend as much as you like, you can never write the history of a subject as if you were the first to do so or as if all previously written history of that subject would suddenly fall into oblivion in the wake of your effort. You live in an already thoroughly historicized, thickly plotted world. This pragmatic realization is, however, only the preamble to the guru’s wisdom. The full force follows: In an already historicized, thickly plotted world, why would you resolve to write history unless you sense that the plots in circulation are fallacious—that is, unfair to one or another collective (society, population, community, nation or whatever type of human gathering)—and that their lasting effect has been to add insult to the injury already brought to such a collective? Unless, in other words, you are motivated by indignation and you are prepared to redress the injustice you discovered? All this sounds extreme and can be even misleading (after all, not every one of history’s plots in circulation is fallacious). Still, the guru’s wisdom contains a kernel that merits all our attention. It enjoins us to treat the writing of history in the present as a political, not just an epistemic, task. It insists on the importance of something we know yet in practice we are inclined to overlook—namely, that the historian’s work is start to finish a politically significant task; that history is ultimately about moral hierarchies, values, about who is worth what. Writing history in the context of our already thickly plotted world offers opportunities to negotiate established hierarchies and values: to re-write history. Seizing those opportunities and engaging in that politically meaningful task, I add, promises to be an invigorating and gratifying process. In the opposite case (i.e. when the self remains complacent with the existing plots), no such promises are on offer. So it is too with archaeology, which, with regard to its political effects, hardly differs from history (see also Herschend, this volume). Archaeology, however, finds itself today in that ‘opposite case’: We are all too often far too much concerned about the epistemic issues of our practice; far too little, about the political ones. Or perhaps worse—‘today’, that is, in ‘liquid times’ (in Zygmunt Bauman’s succinct collocation; see below) or ‘supermodernity’, the problem perhaps is not intellectual indolence or lack of courage to engage in politically meaningful projects. The problem rather appears to be an extraordinary difficulty in conceiving of such projects in a world where the political certainties, positions and counter-positions of yore sound hollow, out-of-date. (In fact, the guru’s wisdom—a political position itself—has the sound of another era.) The stage has been shifting. To borrow Griselda

106 Michael Fotiadis Pollock’s phrase from a few years ago, ‘The whole imaginary of political stability, of social functioning—and its opposite, of violent overthrow and revolutionary change—no longer have the same pertinence they once enjoyed’ (Pollock 2007, 111). Let me backtrack a little in my argument. The nature of the relationship between archaeology and the modern (nation-)state has long exercised me, and I am still puzzled about it. One question is, would there be a discipline of archaeology today without the modern state? Perhaps—certain popes (most notably, Pius II in 1462) issued bulls ‘forbidding injury to any ancient monument in [their] dominion’ (Ady 1913, 204), and other popes (e.g. Sixtus IV, 1471–1484) made their collections of antiquities available to select publics (Pastor 1900, 419; see also Stenhouse 2005). Gestures of this sort anticipate institutions that, several centuries later, became fundamental to the rise of archaeology. Still, the formation of archaeology as a durable scientific practice in the course of the nineteenth century would, I submit, be impossible without the succour of the modern state.1 It was the nation-state that embraced archaeological scholarship by providing it with resources and a favourable legislation and thus transforming it into a respectable scientific practice. It was through state patronage that knowledge about antiquities was transformed from a rarefied pursuit, the prerogative of the upper crust in the time of the antiquaries, into a public good and a resource for the cultivation of the common person (see also Fotiadis 2012, esp. 144–45). In short, the link between the modern nation-state and archaeology is not merely chronological (i.e. their simultaneous formation) but thoroughly historical: a matter of historical interdependency. That close association with the nation-state has since about 1800 been archaeology’s condition, serving archaeological practice in diverse ways, not merely as a neutral frame or a provider of funds and facilities. The modern state has also been an important source of intellectual capital, of models of thought and action. Think, for instance, of the concept of ‘archaeological culture’, which was so crucial for the archaeology of the late nineteenth century and up to the interwar period: Did not those ‘cultures’ grow out of modernity’s fascination with itself, and did they not mirror, especially in the presumption of territorial homogeneity, modernity’s nation-states? Think further of the concept of the ‘region’ that was deployed from the 1960s on in ‘regional projects’: It was justified by appeals to natural boundaries (rivers, mountain ranges and the like), but was it not in fact thoroughly statist, inspired by the notion of administrative district—county, eparchy, shire, Turkish vilayet or Greek nomós? Remember also the techniques of knowledge implemented in regional projects, especially in ‘intensive’ surveys, techniques which I once compared to the census undertaken by the state (Fotiadis 1993, 161–64). Think last of the archaeological ‘expeditions’, or ‘campaigns’, to foreign lands, mounted by European states ever since Napoleon Bonaparte’s time: Have they not been modelled after the military exploits of the state, and have they not been legitimated by appeals to

Students First, Please! 107 modernity’s dynamic technologies, now taken as a proxy of moral worth? In short, archaeology has long been dependent on the state for the power of key concepts and methods and, thereby, for the authority of its knowledge constructs. Take the state away—be it a liberal, a pluralist, perhaps even an autocratic state—and our practice begins to feel hollow. Let us think, then, of this association (however unoriginally, so many decades after Michel Foucault) not as a liability, an ‘interference’, diverting our practice from its epistemic mission, but rather as productive of knowledge—that is, productive of both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ knowledge. Furthermore, I cannot think of the modern state without at the same time thinking of progressive political forces and conservative ones, of ‘left-wingers’ and ‘right-wingers’, and I have the same difficulty thinking of archaeology, and of the human sciences in general, without reference to the same distinction. We still live in nation-states today, but those states are politically a good deal more pallid than they were a generation ago, and their legitimacy appears to be in peril. We are now under the sign—to resort again to Bauman’s words—of ‘negative’ or ‘selective globalization of trade and capital, surveillance and information, violence and weapons, crime and terrorism, all unanimous in their disdain of the principle of territorial sovereignty and their lack of respect for any state boundary’ (Bauman 2007b, 7). Such global forces seem to be beyond the reach of political control by any state, even the wealthiest and mightiest. Power, the exercise of which until yesterday rested firmly with the state, has suddenly become de-territorialized. It now flows at electronic speeds through the channels of the Internet, arriving at a place no sooner than leaving it behind, wreaking social havoc in its trails. Back home all too little is left of that mid-twentieth-century political ideal, the welfare state, which provided securities against the individual misfortunes of its citizens. The messages currently coming from the sites of political power focus on flexible employment as the sole cure for such misfortunes (Bauman 2007b, 14). The retreat of the state from the function on which its claims to legitimation were founded for the better part of the past century throws the issue of legitimation wide open again. A new citizenship consensus . . . cannot be presently built in the way it used to be built not so long ago: through the assurance of constitutional protection against the vagaries of the market, notorious for playing havoc with social standings and for sapping rights to social esteem and personal dignity. The integrity of the political body in its currently most common form of a nation-state is in trouble, and so an alternative legitimation is urgently needed and sought. (Bauman 2007b, 14–15) Yet Bauman, as commentators on his recent work on ‘liquid modernity’ often point out, is in no position to offer a compass for a course of political

108 Michael Fotiadis action and resistance. Globalization, he tells us, is ‘a parasitic and predatory process, feeding on the potency sucked out of the bodies of nation-states and their subjects’ (Bauman 2007b, 24). It is a planetary issue, one that you will either confront on a global scale or not at all. And as long as political action remains focused on the local setting, the answer is unmistakable. In a world in which polities one after another are co-opted by neo-liberal ideals (see, e.g. Lave, Mirowski, and Randalls 2010), theorizing about alternative worlds finds itself at a loss. Bauman’s is a dark, millennial vision: the end of an epoch, modernity; the beginning of another, ‘liquid modernity’; full of uncertainty, hazards and precariousness. That vision, moreover, tallies with the visions of other theoretically inclined sociologists. Ulrich Beck and his collaborators, for instance, have for some time been thinking in terms of a ‘second modernity’ and of ‘reflexive modernization’, a process, that is, the side effects of which call into question its own premises: Simple modernization becomes reflexive modernization to the extent that it disenchants and then dissolves its own taken-for-granted premises. Eventually this leads to the undermining of every aspect of the nation-state: the welfare state; the power of the legal system; the national economy; the corporatist systems that connected one with the other; and the parliamentary democracy that governed the whole. . . . The normal family, the normal career and the normal life history are all suddenly called into question and have to be renegotiated. (Beck, Bonns, and Lau 2003, 5) As key conceptual divides such as nature/society, peace/war, work/leisure that guided action in modernity become flexible and negotiable, and as hybrid realities come to the fore, ‘the experiential and theoretical coordinates are changing at the same time as the basic institutions’ (Beck, Bonns, and Lau 2003, 13). Note also that, like Bauman, Beck and colleagues too are concerned about the correct diagnosis, not about a cure. It would be surprising if such understandings of the present left no mark on human sciences such as history or archaeology. (It makes no difference whether those understandings are realistic descriptions of the world or spectres of the soul projected onto the world: People react to ghosts as if they were palpable, solid realities.) The effects of the new era, ‘liquid modernity’, are indeed evident on archaeology’s epistemic capital, even more so on archaeology’s interface with its audiences, including university students. I will concentrate on the latter area, but I start with the former. We owe the revision of our epistemic capital mainly to the critique of foundationalism that was passionately undertaken from the late 1970s to the 1990s under the banner of post-processual archaeology. To give a few examples—we work today on the premise that identities, individual and collective, are negotiable and modifiable rather than fixed by nature, but

Students First, Please! 109 this proposition would have made little sense about four decades ago. Historicizing our constructs—placing them in, and critically reflecting upon, the context in which they emerged—can also be related to post-processual anti-foundationalist thought. As a consequence of that historicizing, many of archaeology facts have been pried out of their former niches in the bedrock of certainty and have been relativized. A further consequence has been a generalized suspicion on our part toward the significance of everything that poses as a solid archaeological fact. Another example: it is to postprocessual archaeology, in particular to its phenomenologically informed wing, that we owe efforts to negotiate the divide between (human) subjects and objects (human or nonhuman), categories that were fundamental to archaeology in modernity.2 Other changes have reached our epistemic capital by more direct routes: They are related to our life experiences in today’s world rather than to post-processual wisdom (but note that those ‘life experiences’ are shaped to a degree by metaphors that revolve around the notion of liquidity—what has recently been called the ‘metaphysics of flux’; Sutherland 2013). For instance, we are more likely today to interpret our field observations in terms of flows and networks (flows of people, flows of capital; information networks extending across national borders) than to focus on social structure. We may also be more eager to think in terms of turbulence and chaotic processes rather than of determinate transformations (although some of these ways of thinking have precursors in the old systems theory of the 1960s and 1970s). Let me turn to the interface of archaeology with its audiences, where the consequences of the new era, ‘liquid modernity’, are clearer. I have in mind the commodification of archaeological knowledge via the growth of the cultural heritage industry, but also the reorientation of archaeological education toward training and away from a broader, theory-rich education. Now, the heritage industry, its mesmerizing effects on the public, the economic stakes involved in it and the like came into focus and were subjected to critical analyses already three decades ago; I will not repeat the act here (see Wright 1985; Hewison 1987; also Shanks and Tilley 1987, chap. 4). But the 1980s were a time of reflexivity for archaeologists, and theorizing and ‘thinking through’ one’s conceptual apparatus and politics seemed as essential as the air we breathe—so much so that we could not imagine that such ‘thinking through’ and reflection would one day be luxuries, elevated intellectual pursuits bearing only marginally on everyday practice. And so, in the 1980s, the heritage industry and those occupied in it appeared as if they belonged to a different ‘department’, one that catered to the expectations of the lay public and was therefore of indirect relevance to the ‘real’ work of the archaeologist. It did not seem imperative at the time that archaeology adjusts its ethos and teachings to the demands of the heritage industry (see also Hauptman, this volume). However, that ‘department’ has by now grown to considerable dimensions—institutionally, demographically and, above all, ideologically. For one, many more universities today offer degrees

110 Michael Fotiadis related to cultural resource management and to museum studies; programmes that grant such degrees appear to attract more inquisitive students than traditional archaeology programmes; and, when those students graduate, they may have fairer prospects for employment than archaeologists.3 At the same time, thanks to the growth of the leisure and tourism industries, many more people travel to museums, exhibitions and archaeological sites. But, to come to the ideological growth of the heritage industry, the message that now comes from my students is that archaeology, like all good things, is expected to have a utility—more precisely, a use value and, therefore, a market value. The majority of students, that is, act as if they were good neo-liberals and thus play straight into the mouth of their declared enemies: the Bologna process and the Greek state’s higher education reform laws of recent years (the implementation of all of which activist students oppose with loud demonstrations and sit-ins). In short, the coming-of-age of the heritage industry has transformed archaeological knowledge from a field of reflection to a commodity for trade and consumption. We are, then, very far from the ideology of archaeological education as edification, as cultivation of the self (Bildung), farther yet from the guru’s admonitions to practice archaeology, including its teaching, as a politically meaningful task. We, the teachers, are co-opted by a view of education as training, and we are under pressure to adjust the contents of our classes accordingly—that is, to provide students with a stock of encyclopaedic ‘certainties’, pertinent to clearly delimited domains, and do so ‘efficiently’, by omitting consideration of anything that would complicate those ‘certainties’. Mindful of the logic of utility, classroom audiences show little patience for intellectual exercising, reflexivity or ‘thinking through’. It is finishing one’s degree that matters for any kind of future employment, even the most remote from archaeology.4 Confronted with this logic, teacher-to-student admonitions of the sort ‘you are here not only to “get a degree” but, above all, to expand your horizons’ sound unconvincing even to the teacher and leave him/her with the sense that his/her ideas and values are out of date. Audiences are not prepared to hear one more time, ‘Yes, archaeology will not easily find you employment, but it is good to think with’. They resist the idea that our discipline’s legitimacy may rest with its potential not to improve your material life but to enrich your world. The distinction between ‘life’ and ‘world’ (see Heller 2005, esp. 72), which served us as a trustworthy compass in modernity, makes a good deal less sense as modernity gives way to liquid times. One trait of today’s archaeology students that deserves close consideration is their predilection for knowledge that is detached from its historical matrix. That predilection, I suggest, is a corollary of naïve doctrines of empiricism: doctrines that have long been in circulation and are shared by folks well beyond the university classroom—indeed, by scholars and laity alike. Still, the vitality of such doctrines manifests itself with notable clarity in the classroom. Specifically, students are eager to learn ‘the facts’ and

Students First, Please! 111 ‘the last word of science’ about any issue that comes to the table but have no curiosity for the history of the issue. What archaeologists knew in the past and how they learned what they know now are matters which, when added to instruction, perplex the audience. And, when the class is presented with different interpretations of the same field of observations, students still expect to hear which interpretation is the ‘right’ one (‘and if the others are wrong, why does one bother with them?’). In short, today’s archaeology students are uneasy about the idea that facts emerge and are modified in networks in which humans do much work and which have a pronounced temporal dimension, and that this holds as much for ‘wrong’ as for ‘right’ interpretations. Facts are for them established truths about the world that can stand all by themselves, free from the historical matrices in which they emerged and in which they have been maintained. Note, however (and here I respond to a perceptive comment made to me by Johannes Siapkas), that facts for students are not ‘established’ in the sense they are for scholars. For scholars, facts have long careers: They are carefully stored and conserved; they are subject to revisions; one can return to them at a later time; and so forth. This is not the case for students, for whom facts are rather short-lived things, to be used at exam time, then to be disposed of. Facts and students thus appear to be caught in the ‘universal transience’—the disposability of all things—reigning over ‘liquid modernity’ (see Bauman 2007a, 127). Here, then, is the rub: How can we encourage our students to think through, and break away from, such a naïve, banausic empiricism (now coupled with neo-liberal values) and the concomitant contempt for history, without at the same time cultivating in them an equally naïve relativism? How can we offer to them a healthy constructivist position, one that would take account of the human side in the process of archaeological knowledge, without at the same time instilling in them radical doubt and scepticism about the possibility of ever acquiring good, sturdy knowledge of anything? (Remember, students are quick to come to farfetched conclusions, just as they are prone to entertaining conspiracy theories.) Traditional constructivist positions, of the sorts that were advocated during the heyday of postprocessual archaeology, would achieve more than their intended purpose. By placing all their emphasis on the ‘situated-ness’ of the knowing subject, those arguments rendered themselves liable to charges of unbridled relativism and cognitive anarchy. To put the matter less cautiously—postprocessual archaeology was successful in historicizing the knowing subject, yet, in spite of the anti-foundationalist zeal, it stopped short of attempting to historicize the object of knowledge as well. The asymmetry between knowing subject and the object of his/her knowledge, which was so fundamental for moderns, thus survived, and it now resurfaces as a vexing theoretical problem. Before, however, we can treat our students to a ‘healthy constructivist position’, we, today’s teachers of archaeology, must have one for ourselves. And if we are ambivalent about post-processual wisdom regarding this

112 Michael Fotiadis matter, we need to seek alternatives. Responding to the challenge posed to the participants of the Uppsala workshop by its organizers (see the introduction to this volume), I will in the remainder of this essay concentrate on an emerging theoretically informed version of empiricism, one that attends to the issue of asymmetry I just noted, attempts to steer clear from the treacherous shoals of relativism, and may, to my mind, constitute a more productive response to our students’ and the wider public’s propensity to find comfort in banausic forms of empiricism. Although such work has been developing in a field distant from archaeology, in the field of science studies, some aspects of it seem to me equally pertinent to our archaeological concerns, including our concerns with teaching. I have in mind in particular Bruno Latour’s proposal about knowledge as a mode of existence (see especially Latour 2008),5 a philosophical position for which the label ‘second’ empiricism is sometimes used (see also Witmore, this volume). I too will resort to that label below, but not without scruples: Labels always reify (Latour would say ‘black-box’) the things they name even before those things take a relatively firm shape, and that is the reason for my scruples. I limit the discussion here to aspects of Latour’s wisdom which I find relevant to the development of a ‘healthy constructivist position’ relevant to archaeology; I could not possibly summarize his ever shifting and expanding (and thus difficult to follow) positions on many fronts. In the first place, this ‘second’ empiricism constitutes a critique of the ‘first’ empiricism (of Lockean descent), from which the naïve ideas I encounter among my students today derive.6 Seen from the viewpoint of the ‘second’ empiricism, the students’ version presupposes, on the one side, sturdy, unchanging objects (they remain what they are no matter what one thinks or says about them) and, on the other side, intelligent humans who are now able to acquire true knowledge of those objects (and we need not pay attention to the shaky ideas people entertained in older times and the intermediate steps they took before hitting on the right diagnosis). This is the familiar view of ‘changing, progress-prone humans vs. the unchanging, ahistorical nature of things’, or, for short, ‘active human subjects vs. passive natural objects’ (with a chasm of cosmic dimensions between them to be bridged through human work), and even the ‘representation vs. reality’ or the ‘word vs. world’ view. Latourian wisdom has it that this view is itself a human artefact, a creature of European modernity indeed, and a strange one at that: It is a rather unrealistic, mystifying conception of the process by which knowledge is produced and the root of the epistemologist’s dilemma, ‘either one is faithful to empiricism or s/he slides into self-defeating relativism’. The production of scientific knowledge does not proceed by first positing a gaping chasm between itself and the world, then by trying to bridge that gap and wondering if it can ever do so (Latour 2008, 94–95; see also Latour 1993, 98–100). It would be more realistic, so goes Latourian wisdom, to posit that knowledge emerges from continuous chains of human experience, from successive steps along pathways, each step following on the step before; that as long as those

Students First, Please! 113 chains of experience remain continuous and they are not interrupted (e.g. by intellectual fatigue, by the researcher’s frivolity or by the evil policies of a totalitarian state),7 the resulting knowledge offers no scope for doubt of the epistemological sort; that the knowing subjects as well as the objects of their knowledge are not fixed ‘ingredients of the world’ but rather ‘successive stations along the paths through which knowledge is rectified’—they are constituted (I would say, configured and reconfigured) in the course of successive encounters: Knowledge becomes a mystery if you imagine it as a jump between something that has a history and something that does not move and has no history; it becomes plainly accessible if you allow it to become a continuous vector where time is of the essence. Take any knowledge at any time: you don’t know if it is good or not, accurate or not, real or virtual, true or false. Allow for a successive, continuous path to be drawn between several versions of the knowledge claims and you will be able to decide fairly well. (Latour 2008, 88; emphasis in original) The trouble with the ‘first’ (Lockean-type) empiricism is that ‘there is no place in it for time, nor for instrument, nor for people, nor for rectification, nor for institution’ (Latour 2008, 97; emphasis in original). Building on earlier work on ‘collectives’ (e.g. Latour 1993, 4, 104–11; 1999, chap. 6) that comprise human and nonhuman actors, Latour also makes it clear that instruments (technology) and institutions (disciplines and their underpinnings) are essential not only for the emergence of new knowledge but also for the continuing existence of previously secured knowledge (e.g. Latour 2000, esp. 251–53). And so, objects (i.e. the objects of study) too, not only subjects (the humans that study those objects), turn out to have a history: A good deal happens to them, they are transformed into something they were not—they enter a new mode of existence—once they come to the attention of humans. They stay active in the collectives; they interact with the human actors; their identities change as they are studied and restudied. Their careers depend on the careers of the collectives—so much so that rearrangements in the collectives may result in radical transformations of the objects. And, just as technology can with time become outdated and disciplines can turn into fossils, so too good, sturdy knowledge can age, become outdated and be consigned to oblivion. ‘Time is of the essence.’ Here, then, is a conception of knowledge production that is at once historicist (to be secure in your current knowledge about a state of affairs, you must retrace your steps, connect to your previous states of knowledge) and constructivist (knowledge emerges and is maintained in collectives that include colleagues, institutions, instruments—in a word, humans and all their contraptions) yet does not drown in its iconoclastic fervour the ‘voice’ (‘tune’, ‘dance’) of the thing ‘out there’.8 The latter remains just as much a

114 Michael Fotiadis constitutive part of the collectives as do our thoughts, institutions, instruments and the like. Readers will observe that no room is made here for ideological biases or for discriminatory politics, which, no doubt, could become part of the chains of the researchers’ experience and thereby vitiate the knowledge they produce—that Latour’s recasting of empiricism cannot very well explain, for example, the rise of racist human science in the late nineteenth century and its persistence well into the twentieth century. Readers may further counter that, by leaving out of account the effects of ideologies and politics, Latour is somehow reiterating the old view that science is a self-correcting enterprise, regardless of its historical context.9 These are large issues, and they cannot be given proper attention here. Yet such criticisms may be rushed: Latour’s is not a claim that the collectives forming around scientific objects are incorruptible by politics or ideology (much less that they exist outside history); and corrupt collectives, like corrupt instruments (e.g. my poorly calibrated GPS), will corrupt the objects on which they work. More important yet, to claim, as Latour does, that, when the chains of experience remain continuous, the resulting knowledge offers no scope for doubt of the epistemological sort is not to say that the knowledge articulated at each step along the pathway is immune to criticism on epistemic grounds or for its political effects. But such reservations should not stop us from appreciating the virtues of the newly emerging, reformed empiricism. I have focused in this essay on one of those virtues, its critical response to worn-out forms of empiricism that are in wide circulation today—forms that routinely surface in the university classrooms I teach (and, I confess, not always uninvited by me): To communicate with the audience, I am often co-opted by the concepts and vocabulary the audience is more familiar with. I often find it easier, that is, to articulate my narrative by appealing to ‘ahistorical’ scientific fact, and equally often, depending on the matter in hand, to invoke a purely cultural(-ist) explanation for a scientific fact that was current, say, around 1910 and was then abandoned. In brief, teaching archaeology with the new, reformed empiricism in mind is a challenge and at once a learning experience for me, not only for the students. But the challenge is worth taking up: Presenting archaeology students with an alternative to the naïve empiricist hegemony of ‘ahistorical’ facts (and of the attendant dilemma which implicates an equally naïve relativism) may be a political gesture of broader than just local sweep. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I thank Frands Herschend and Johannes Siapkas for inviting me to participate in the brainstorming meeting in which this essay originated. I also thank Nico Momigliano and three anonymous reviewers whose comments on drafts of the essay helped me clarify several points.

Students First, Please! 115 NOTES 1. There can be no disciplinary practice of any kind without a ‘tomorrow’, and that is what the state could provide for archaeology—hence, my stress on durability. 2. The critique of foundationalism has, to my mind, been the greatest contribution of post-processual archaeology. Because of its anti-foundationalist commitment, furthermore, post-processual archaeology refused to consider itself a ‘successor science’. As I indicated about a decade ago (Fotiadis 2001, 354–55), post-processual thought prudently lacked the resources to offer its own ‘grand narrative’, a narrative that would oppose and displace all other narratives. It limited its scope to interrupting the existing narratives, saying ‘yes, but’, and thus negotiating what was claimed before: the errors and fallacies that had hardened in the long course of practice and, by the 1970s, posed as irrefutable truths. I suggested at the time that this inability of post-processual archaeology to offer its own narrative of the past was not a negative quality or flaw but in fact a great strength, and I still think so. The blind spots of post-processual archaeology lie elsewhere, and I will have something to say about this later. 3. Statistics on such matters are hard to come by. I base my claims on soft indicators: conversations with students, recommendation letters I am asked to write for them, consultation with fellow educators in several universities in Greece and other countries, and also on the facts that an extraordinary number of museums of every kind have been created in Greece since the late 1980s, and several new university programs and positions in the domain of cultural management were established in the country in the same period. 4. I have elsewhere estimated that only about 5 per cent of archaeology graduates from Greek universities follow, at least temporarily, an archaeological career (Fotiadis 2010, 450–51). I do not know if a comparable percentage is typical of many countries. 5. My introduction to such thoughts has not, however, been Latour’s multifaceted work but Andrew Pickering’s Mangle of Practice (Pickering 1995). 6. It seems to me that the ‘second’ empiricism begins its work by cunning: first, by disguising itself as (assuming the family name of) empiricism, posing as empiricism’s estranged sibling, then by revealing itself as a form of historicism, in fact as a kind of ‘hyper-historicism’ (which might be an equally appropriate name for it). But ‘cunning’ is only the beginning. 7. Latour (2008) provides no examples of what might ‘interrupt’ the ‘chains of experience’. Because the issue of interruptions seems to me important, I have parenthetically suggested a few possibilities. 8. ‘Dance’ is a term (image) I borrow here from Pickering (1995). 9. The admission ‘Yes, we err often, but not always because, fortunately, a) we have time; b) we are equipped; c) we are many; d) we have institutions’ (Latour 2008, 94; emphasis in original) skirts the issue I raise.

REFERENCES Ady, C. M. 1913. Pius II (Æneas Silvius Piccolomini): The Humanist Pope. London: Methuen. Bauman, Z. 2007a. “Liquid Arts.” Theory, Culture & Society 24 (1): 117–26. ———. 2007b. Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity Press. Beck, U., W. Bonns, and C. Lau. 2003. “The Theory of Reflexive Modernization: Problematic, Hypothesis and Research Program.” Theory, Culture & Society 20 (2): 1–33.

116 Michael Fotiadis Fotiadis, M. 1993. “Regions of the Imagination: Archaeologists, Local People, and the Archaeological Record in Fieldwork, Greece.” Journal of European Archaeology 1 (2): 151–68. ———. 2001. “The Historicism of Postprocessual Archaeology and Its Pleasures.” In Historicization-Historisierung, edited by G. W. Most, 339–64. Aporemata: Kritische Studien zur Philologiegeschichte, vol. 5. Göttingen: Vanderhoeck and Ruprecht. ———. 2010. “There Is a Blue Elephant in the Room: From State Institutions to Citizen Indifference.” In Archeology in Situ: Sites, Archaeology and Communities in Greece, edited by A. Stroulia and S. Buck Sutton, 447–56. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. ———. 2012. “Displays of Classical Sculpture and the Demand for Authenticity.” Lychnos. Annual of the Swedish History of Science Society: 135–52. Heller, A. 2005. “The Three Logics of Modernity and the Double Bind of the Modern Imagination.” Thesis Eleven 81: 63–79. Hewison, R. 1987. The Heritage Industry: Britain in a Climate of Decline. London: Methuen. Latour, B. [1991] 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 1999. Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 2000. “On the Partial Existence of Existing and Non-existing Objects.” In Biographies of Scientific Objects, edited by L. Daston, 247–69. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 2008. “A Textbook Case Revisited—Knowledge as a Mode of Existence.” In The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, 3rd ed., edited by E. J. Hackett, O. Amsterdamska, M. Lynch, and J. Wajcman, 83–112. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Lave, R., P. Mirowski, and S. Randalls. 2010. “Introduction: STS and Neoliberal Science.” Social Studies of Science 40: 659–75. Pastor, L. von. 1900. The History of the Popes, from the Close of the Middle Ages. Vol. 4. London: J. Hodges. Pickering, A. 1995. The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pollock, G. 2007. “Liquid Modernity and Cultural Analysis: An Introduction to a Transdisciplinary Encounter.” Theory, Culture & Society 24 (1): 111–16. Shanks, M., and C. Tilley. 1987. Re-constructing Archaeology: Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stenhouse, W. 2005. “Visitors, Display, and Reception in the Antiquity Collections of Late Renaissance Rome.” Renaissance Quarterly 58: 397–434. Sutherland, T. 2013. “Liquid Networks and the Metaphysics of Flux: Ontologies of Flow in an Age of Speed and Mobility.” Theory, Culture & Society 30 (5): 3–23. Wright, P. 1985. On Living in an Old Country: The National Past in Contemporary Britain. London: Verso, 1985.

Students First, Please! 117

Comment Frands Herschend

The definition of Archaeology—and I think it is perhaps Archaeology with a capital A in the second paragraph, ‘Archaeology today is about . . .’—is an echo of the emancipatory force that changed the discipline in the late twentieth century. Luckily, but much to the chagrin of responsible peers, emancipation is blind and may thus lead people in new as well as old directions—interesting or appalling ones. I sympathize with the essay’s focus on students because it highlights the perpetual need for ‘preserving, while negotiating and modifying, earlier versions of knowledge’. One might add recent and recently produced knowledge as well in order to get out of the university classroom or open its windrows. Fotiadis observes that while other disciplines may flow more easily in ‘today as times of liquid modernity’, here quoting and referring to Bauman, archaeology has difficulty doing so in the classroom. The archaeological backlash is obvious. Outside, too, ‘certainties’ and ‘practices’ are all important. Michael Fotiadis thinks, and so do I, that this classroom will change for the better if and when students become more prepared to tackle the kind of complexity that emanates from the negotiation of earlier versions of knowledge. One problem is the ‘Discovery Channelization’ of the past, or, in Fotiadis’ succinct words, ‘the commodification of archaeological knowledge via the growth of the cultural heritage industry’. Another related problem is education, which has swung from reflexive thinking of the past to the efficient training of students who go for a degree and hopefully a job where knowledge will be only a useful commodity. At least metaphorically speaking, Michael Fotiadis sees the present situation as an illness, or at least a public health problem, inasmuch as he wonders how ‘can we offer to them a healthy constructivist position’. Although I liked making archaeological museums and exhibitions because of their propagandistic possibilities for driving home a message, I find them boring to visit for exactly the same reason. Most exhibitions—owing to their decontextualized, naïve or pornographic showcase empiricism—are best as books in which the objects of idolatry have at least been transformed to pictures. But I am not as worried about the students as Michael Fotiadis. Perhaps I should be. Perhaps I live in a protected area with few archaeology students. I do not see the student collective for the majority of empty seats in class. Perhaps I understand the BA level as an introduction to the MA level rather than as a stepping stone to working life as an archaeologist. Actually, I think that the overcrowded archaeological labour market is an advantage because it will take students five years at university to get to it, if ever they do. The students, as a sample, may thus have mislead me. Nevertheless,

118 Frands Herschend I believe that students have survived the theoretical backlash of the first decade of the twenty-first century, which allowed them to retrograde to naïve empiricism, even if they are not aware of having actually survived it. Most students would agree completely with framework of a new empiricism as outlined by Fotiadis, but they do not see its healing qualities because they consider a change or deconstruction of archaeology as a discipline to be more important. To them archaeology is a rewarding craft, but they do not think that they can excavate the answers they seek—that is why understanding and contextualizing is their research discipline. Archaeology is a department. Students write about mass graves, about what it means to be dead, about buying a house in Ur, about changing religion, about deconstructing intuitive human geography and reconstructing the understanding of landscape and space, about historical ecology, about mind and nature, about graves as expressions and a means to encompass the future—the dead being the minor problem. Links to the present—inspiration from the real-estate market in Stockholm, violent warlord terrorism, the making of cultural identity, the emancipation of burial practices, as well as resilience and global warming— are obvious. The students’ turn has an obvious consequence: They are not really archaeologists anymore. The reason is simple: There is no point in being only an archaeologist. It takes more to understand why the past is interesting than just being a professional archaeologist. There is nothing wrong with craftspeople, but craft does not suffice. Understanding the past through material remains is often pointlessly banal, and the craft is fully aware of that given that it has no way of recovering more than a fraction of the information it deals with—pointlessly banal therefore, but not always so. Students engaged in understanding the archaeological context and making it an understandable expression tend to be critical of the way archaeology, the craft, goes about surveying, investigating and recording. It is the habit of the craft to simplify source material whose agency and quality, nonetheless, are in its complexity. If today’s students are critical of a New Empiricism, it is because it stands out as intra-disciplinary within a discipline that ought to be reformed and relieved of its nineteenth-century deadweight; empiricism is not problematic except that there is too little of it—too little DNA and fossils from excavation layers, too little emphasis on the oddities of graves, too few independent chronological dates to describe local timelines of material sources such as burnt bones or charcoal or grains, too narrow definitions of the archaeological context, too few excavations trying to find the drama of the cemetery scene and too few attempts to analyse the prehistoric endeavour to shape the future and lie to its generations through actions that will result in material remains. In Scandinavian archaeology, deconstructing a discursive node such as a ‘grave’, and pointing out a century or two of misleading formalistic practices

Students First, Please! 119 that reproduce pointless certainties disguised as the archaeological excavation of ‘graves’, is far from the theoretical backlash that was popular some ten years ago. There is no doubt that students take an interest in all kinds of empirical facts and mass documentation such as 3-D photographing and modelling. Like the word processor, which facilitated the writing of theoretical papers from the 1970s onwards, modern technology will make a complex prehistory more significant—that is, more interesting from a modern point of view. However, if I am wrong about my students—if I am wrong to believe them to be intellectually healthy and well (albeit not always bright)—then Michael Fotiadis’s programme for the restoration of the intellectual health of archaeology students is all the more important.

120 Katherine Hauptman

Comment Katherine Hauptman

PASSIONATE ARCHAEOLOGY: FROM PASSION TO LOSING FAITH As a student, and even as a university teacher, I hoped to change the world through archaeology. Now, many years later and after shifting position to a museum context, I wonder why I believed that archaeology had the potential to make a better society. From my current perspective it seems far-fetched. The case may very well be that archaeology has been used more often to oppress people than for doing good. I guess this is an illustration of Fotiadis’s argument about how archaeology (or rather the archaeologists) has lost its political compass, or to rephrase—lost its passion. However, a retrospective scan illustrates that archaeology has always been used to fulfil a purpose, often in connection with power being exerted over land and people. Here, I will comment on the consequences of archaeology merging with a broader heritage perspective, and I will argue that it is necessary for academia to focus more on the action aspect of archaeology. The thing is, I have not lost my compass; I have lost faith in the narrow archaeological perspectives coming from the seminar room. IN-HERITAGE Archaeology is clearly connected to state-formation processes, although I hope it has qualities beyond that of being a tool for territorial power struggles. As Fotiadis highlights, it was clear even to Pope Pius II that boosting heritage was an effective way to uplift one’s own position. This is, however, achieved primarily not through theoretical discourse with your peers but by showing off to a broader audience. The Capitoline and the Vatican museums from the fifteenth century are considered to be the oldest institutions that resemble a modern museum. Through the collections—which were open only for exclusive visits—Pius II skilfully exploited an ostensible descent from the Roman emperors. The national-museum idea sprang from knowledge seeking during the period of enlightenment, but many of the original collections can be traced back to the antiquities: coins and weapons that were collected in royal and aristocratic armoires and curio cabinets. Even so, public displays were not common until the end of the eighteenth or the beginning of the nineteenth century. The British Museum, possibly the first national museum, which opened in 1753, and the Louvre, which was inaugurated in 1793, stand for two

Students First, Please! 121 different museum ideals that are still identifiable among many national museums today. The British Museum collected what was considered to be the history of the world, of course in the colonial tradition of strengthening the nation, but nevertheless the collections were a sign of curiosity and thirst for knowledge beyond the national past. The Louvre, on the other hand, was created during the French Revolution, and it became a role model for other countries in terms of how royal treasures can be transformed into material culture representative of a shift in power structure, and thus it represents new kinds of national heritage (Aronsson and Elgenius 2011). Still, in the nineteenth century neither archaeology nor national museums were public for all. Gentry were allowed to party in the galleries, while common people were thought to contaminate the objects simply by entering. Using specific dress codes, some museums effectively excluded unwanted visitors. The archaeologists were privileged men who could concentrate on their education without worrying about their daily bread. Collecting, excavating and museum building were also to a large extent financed by private patrons. Many men knew that passing on heritage was a way of inscribing yourself into history. In the twentieth century, archaeology and heritage studies were professionalized, and it was argued that they were part of the necessary popular education for people. Although more people had access to museums, heritage sites, and popular books, the power of the experts remained. RE-INVENTING ARCHAEOLOGY The students of the 1980s and the 1990s were well aware that they lived in a historicized world against which the post-processual archaeology rebelled. Many of us are opposed to earlier studies because they were ignorant of contextualization and they aimed to deconstruct seemingly neutral truths to reveal underlying (inter)subjective perspectives. Our post-processual gurus (to borrow Fotiadis’s expression) wrote red-and-black books;1 they were ‘young angry men’ who questioned the established moral hierarchies and introduced different theoretical tools to re-write archaeology (Shanks and Tilley 1987a, 1987b). In some cases the result was flipped archaeologies and new opinion communities, but not necessarily shifted hierarchies. Men with power still held the interpretation privilege. The theoretical discourses, however, coincided with a more democratized university system that allowed for the wider recruitment of students from different social backgrounds. In Sweden, for example, the student groups grew significantly. If students in the old days had problems financing their archaeological careers, the majority of these groups had no prospect of becoming professional archaeologists—unless the concept of the archaeologist is broadened.

122 Katherine Hauptman Unlike other subjects in the humanities, archaeology has a labour market: Only a few people stay within academia, while others continue to museums, and a large proportion find work with contract archaeology or in heritage management. How archaeology is used in everyday practice may be its most noticeable impact on society. This is a challenge which academia must take on, or the gap between different professional roles will be enhanced, minor academic elites will develop in well-built ivory towers, but these will have little societal impact, and there will be a larger working-class with less theoretical awareness and more power in practice. Archaeology has a special responsibility to connect theoretical studies to the empirical. One way of proceeding is to emphasize action research, interactive approaches and participatory perspectives concerning contexts where archaeology is used (Reason and Bradbury 2008).

THE TIME FOR ACTION IS NOW Fotiadis is rightly concerned with the issue of who is acting in the heritage sector, an issue which is related to students’ expectations about the utilization of archaeology. Today’s students are still more likely to come from academic families, but, compared to past times, more archaeologists in the making live under conditions that do not allow them to be educated purely in order to cultivate knowledge. The students from less well-off backgrounds cannot afford to stay unemployed after university. What Fotiadis describes as the students’ lack of ‘curiosity for the history of the issue’ and archaeology’s adjustments to the demands of the heritage industry may very well be a combination of a shifted focus towards the reasons for choosing archaeology and the archaeological community’s claim that they actually make a difference to future society. In that respect, the focus on heritage management is an expected outcome of social theory archaeology. As Fotiadis reminds us, you are never first—you always respond to or resist someone’s interpretation. If more scholars feel that they are not represented in the history being written, perhaps because they belong to a minority group that has been made invisible in previous research, they will be more inclined to focus on a change rather than on continuing the discussion about why the previous situation has been the case (e.g. Silverman and Fairchild 2007). I believe that humanistic discourse must deal with the need to take a stand (e.g. Stottman 2010). The last few years have included the growth of xenophobic and racist movements in several parts of Europe. With their progress and participation in democratic parliaments, public attitudes are slowly displaced and so is the legitimate use of archaeology and heritage. This situation will no doubt also affect academia and cannot be ignored or dealt with as an aside; it will likely be a core concern for archaeology in the near future (e.g. Sandell and Nightingale 2012).

Students First, Please! 123 TEACHING REINVENTED To polarize the issue—are the students increasingly sloppy, or are academic teaching methods becoming obsolete? Although I sympathize with many of Fotiadis’s remarks, I also sense a fear of the seemingly untrustworthy new students and their presumed choices. These students will very likely get a heritage job and influence the future role of archaeology in society. Maybe their discontent with different, sometimes vague, interpretations is exactly what archaeology needs in order to shape up its arguments and regain its strength in the new century. As a teacher, I found the new students’ questions the hardest to answer. While they knew little about archaeological discourse, they were curious about concrete topics such as food, families and labour. They also spotted inconsistencies among the archaeological certainties. Why does pottery characterize one archaeological culture, while another is identified by grave monument? Why do you call it a culture and then use the whole lecture to deconstruct the concept? But this changed; after only a few months the students had already learned what kind of problems befitted the academic tradition, and they were not curious about their original questions anymore. The more knowledgeable the discussions became, the easier the students were to coach. I would argue that the students who demand answers are reminding the scholars of their blind spots. It is not self-evident that archaeology is good to think with. Try different arguments. Why is archaeology good to think with? For whom is it a good thinking tool? Why? These are the key issues for future education. It would be a success if the teacher could provoke the students into processing these themes and asking why after the initial answer. The answer is not the end point: It is only the point of departure for the next question. I agree with Fotiadis’s conclusion that university teaching must be renewed in line with participatory methods, and I would add that the teacher should stay as curious as the students in order to continue learning from the interactive context. The fields of pedagogical research are expanding regarding museum audiences (e.g. Hooper-Greenhill 2007), working-life pedagogy, leadership development and school education (Craig, Meijer, and Broeckmans 2013). Archaeology and heritage studies would benefit greatly from similar approaches. In conclusion—history is about moral hierarchies as well as human hierarchies; you can aim to re-write history or to take on the broader challenge of learning how to re-write your own self-image. The last is a truly passionate attitude. NOTE 1. This expression is originally a reference to Henri Beyle Stendhal’s novel The Red and the Black from 1830. The two books by Michael Shanks and

124 Katherine Hauptman Christopher Tilley from 1987, drafting their preferred future archaeology, were known as the red book and the black book.

REFERENCES Aronsson, P., and G. Elgenius, eds. 2011. Building National Museums in Europe 1750–2010: Conference Proceedings from EuNaMus, European National Museums; Identity Politics, the Uses of the Past and the European Citizen, Bologna 28–30 April 2011. Linköping: Linköping University Electronic Press. Craig, C. J., P. C. Meijer, and J. Broeckmans, eds. 2013. From Teacher Thinking to Teachers and Teaching: The Evolution of a Research Community. Bingley, UK: Emerald. Hooper-Greenhill, E. 2007. Museums and Education: Purpose, Pedagogy, Performance. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Reason, P., and H. Bradbury, eds. 2008. The SAGE Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice. 2nd ed. Los Angeles: SAGE. Sandell, R., and E. Nightingale, eds. 2012. Museums, Equality and Social justice. London: Routledge. Silverman, H., and D. F. Ruggles. 2007. Cultural Heritage and Human Rights. New York: Springer Science + Business Media. Stottman, M. J., ed. 2010. Archaeologists as Activists: Can Archaeologists Change the World? Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Shanks, M., and C. Tilley. 1987a. Re-constructing Archaeology: Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1987b. Social Theory and Archaeology. Cambridge: Polity Press.

5

Archaeology Is History or It’s History Frands Herschend

INTRODUCTION Before one starts doing archaeology, one usually agrees to a proposition similar to the following: In some way or other the material culture known to us is a source material by means of which we can give a reasonable description and interpretation of the past. Our records and sources, therefore, are fair mirrors and fragments of a historical situation. This proposition, however, is by no means self-evident, and theoretical problems ensue if we agree to it. These objections come to the fore in questions such as the following: Why, for example, must human activities result in a reliable record of human activities? Without the means to decide whether or not a proposition is correct, one may wonder whether our sources clarify or obscure by chance, intent, or construction. Not even in the unlikely event of sand or volcanic ashes covering a site one morning, and an archaeological dig beginning straight away, can we be sure that the scenes which we excavate are a fair representation of the past. We may believe this site to be a snapshot of the past, caught by the eruption, but in fact the situation could have been coloured by a number of odd decisions in the short period leading up to the eruption. In most cases, it is obvious that what has survived is an odd selection of material culture. Oddly enough, graves and temples in the Nile Valley play a more important role in the history of ancient Egypt than settlements and farms, and narratives based on tombs’ inscriptions, such as those in Western Thebes, differ from those based on ostraca from the grave builders’ village in Deir el Medina, which is next to the tombs. Time has made craftspeople unique, and dazzling deities are but commonplace. If we focus on only one of two source materials, such as a grave or settlement, the past will change accordingly.1 This problem is caused by our difficulties with differentiating between what is significant and what is an authentic representation of the past. It is more useful, therefore, to state that what has been preserved is comprised of two phenomena: (1) the source material, which always has a presence, albeit rooted in the past, and (2) our records, which are the stuff that history is made of and are not a fair reflection of the past. The past is our

126 Frands Herschend reflection of the source material, not the other way round, and we put the material to use in order to construct a past and make it meaningful and convincing in more or less the same way as we understand the present. We do so because we are certain that there was a past, inasmuch as all our ancestors have reproduced themselves. Our sources are the result of a process that unites an understanding of past and present, a process that projects this understanding as well as its products, such as material culture, upon the future. Material sources exist only in the present and the future in the descriptions which we give to them—they have no past. The past that we understand is inferred. In other words, we must acknowledge that archaeology is entangled with history and that it uses source material which is not necessarily representative. Therefore, the expression ‘archaeology is anthropology’ actually means ‘archaeology is nothing’ unless ‘anthropology’ is the same as ‘history’. Archaeology is a form of history which is seemingly more preoccupied with the past than the present. History is not a naïve study of the past but the study of a past that once, when it was the present, constructed itself by means of its views on a past, a present, and a future. To rephrase—based upon experience, human beings produce something with an expected duration—smiles and nails as well as history. If we want to save archaeology from being no more than a pleasant pastime, one which is in touch with past events, and rescue its potential, we must turn archaeology into history; otherwise it will disappear as a research discipline while other disciplines move ahead. Of course, there will still be fascinating objects from the past—the Discovery Channel, the fading colours of the royal tombs at Thebes—but no research, no discipline, can escape from reality and a fixed heritage. If we view the past as history, we deny prehistoric people the luxury of being pushed forward, unknowingly, by circumstance and evolution, and we deny ourselves the freedom to do so. Past and present human beings become involved in the process of creating a past, a present, and a future. When the past becomes present, people emerge from their self-imposed immaturity.2 This is such a fundamental point in the understanding of the historical that stepping out of this kind of innocence must also be a manifestation of power, especially since we need to define the past in the present, as well as the past which has been lost in living culture or preserved in static veneration. To sum up, the archaeological/historical record is (1) a result of our conscious usage of a past to create present and future cultural expressions, (2) a result of the power which we have (the power to withdraw some records from being consumed by the dynamics of living culture), and (3) a result of the power that we have to renegotiate the status of these records—that is, to reactivate the records (and their impact) for a specific purpose. The most pressing questions when it comes to archaeology as history and its relation to empirical ‘facts’ can be discussed with reference to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. There are just two points to be made. Firstly, Hamlet in

Archaeology Is History or It’s History 127 Hamlet, Prince of Denmark creates a small history that is based on an archaeological excavation (amongst other things). His history was private, but inasmuch as we understand the play, it has acquired a communal relevance. Secondly, the quality of Hamlet’s history as a communal history was tested on a panel of Tiv elders (in Nigeria) who represented the inhabitants of a compound. This test was carried out by the anthropologist Laura Bohannan, and described in her 1966 essay Shakespeare in the Bush.3 GRABBING THE PAST, HAMLET MAKES HISTORY Given that we recognize material sources from the past in the present, there is a simple answer to the question of why there is such a thing as history. The answer is contained in a common, egocentric syndrome that afflicts humans: The Hamlet Syndrome. Hamlet—who is an early example of the royal Danish archaeologist, and a postmodernist—visits an excavation site and an interpretative context (the churchyard) with his assistant, Horatio.4 Hamlet starts to collect information by talking to the grave-digging clown, who is an experienced field archaeologist insofar as his competence has the quality of being so limited that he is an expert, but in the graves of his graveyard, and indeed to a simple mind, he is a processualist or even a traditionalist who is insensitive and trapped in his dig (Figure 5.1). This clown is caught in action, digging up the past as usual; he is satisfied to label only the remains which he takes for granted. Hamlet, on the other hand, enquires about the context, takes out the skull, and gives us, and his audience (i.e. the present world), his much more intriguing interpretation of the find by saying: Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio (Hamlet, act 5, scene 1; cf. Figure 5.1). As we already know from act 2, Hamlet is willing to expand on the notion of the ‘I’ as interacting with or failing to interact with the ‘Other’. He is even prepared to see himself as the ‘Other’, otherness being one of his methods. The clown knew that he was digging up Yorick but saw that as no more than a fact. Hamlet, in turn, produced history. He may have done so by jumping to conclusions with an appalling lack of source criticism, but he is nevertheless right, since, as an archaeologist and a historian with clean hands, he has done the following things: By some kind of contextually based inference founded on the trustworthiness of his fact-finding field archaeologist, he has associated a dated material phenomenon, any old skull, with a past reality and an agent labelled ‘Yorick’ (i.e. the particular jester who played with him a thousand times when Hamlet was a child). Taking advantage of the skull as a metaphor that bridges the ‘I’ and the ‘Other’, now and then, he finds it evident that he is himself linked to the past by understanding and memory. Hamlet, moreover, evaluates the quality of this piece of past reality—‘the Yorick’, that is—as inferior or pathetic in view of the present,

Figure 5.1 The royal Danish archaeologist Prince Hamlet visits an excavation. As an interpretative archaeologist creating history, Hamlet’s method consists of moving the skull away from the diagonal axis, and the categorical and binary division of the scene, which he first established with the grave digger. By moving the skull, he has managed to make the gaze of the jester’s skull the focus of the interaction between him, Horatio, and Yorick. Phenomena such as action, identification, context, and significance link-in with his words and corroborate his understanding. Manipulated picture from the public domain of the painting Hamlet et les fossoyeurs (1883). By Pascal-Adolphe-Jean Dagnan-Bouveret (1852–1929).

Archaeology Is History or It’s History 129 literally keeping his piece of fact, his pars pro toto, impressively at arm’s length. Thus, he allows himself to reify his archaeological material, making it at once both skull and Yorick—something which is definitely past and definitely present and controlled by Hamlet. Taking the skull out of its context, having understood as well as labelled it ‘Yorick’, Hamlet makes the skull itself his context, and in doing this, and by activating the skull, he handles an overflow of meaning in the present and constructs a simple and meaningful history of the past for himself. On this history, Hamlet can build a meaningful present in which he points out: It is a fact that it was. That which stood out as dated material to the clown is history with a fixed present meaning rooted in the past, to Hamlet. In Hamlet’s case both the present and, to the best of his knowledge, also the future are traumatic, and he would like to master his troubled situation. For that reason, by emphasizing or adding a simple, happy childhood experience, he strengthens his view of himself in history as indeed not the one to blame and becomes ‘the decent Other’. He could have viewed his childhood differently, but as things stand he cannot escape his own understanding of his troubled present situation and his equally beleaguered future. He needs his understanding (i.e. he needs history) because otherwise he cannot escape himself and his predicament. The influence of the skull becomes befitting, and, owing to this situation, history becomes meaningful. If the future does not seem to present an obvious solution to the present (i.e. if tomorrow does not stand out as just another day in a series of identical days), then we shall have to turn to the past to justify ourselves and find reasons to act. Hamlet turns to the past in many ways, and his excursion into archaeology is but a detail. Still, it suffices to say that only when there is a need for history does the past as history occur and become manifest rather than possible. For a while, Hamlet, as the historian, succeeded and took control of his future. In doing so, he provides us with an example of the fact that only seldom does that which we expect from the future eventually become history, except of course the trivial, like death. Moreover, when the last scene of the tragedy starts, history has come to an end, and an omnipotent present has created a stage on which one can do nothing but act one’s part and die before silence enters in—die, as it happens, in an instant without bothering much about either future or past. Hamlet, and its historical dimension, shows us that in the light of history (i.e. in the light of what seems to have happened) the tragic consequences of the past and our understanding of it, which is absolute inasmuch as it forces us to act, becomes limited and more bleak than overwhelming. That the historic turns out to be mockingly ironic does not make history less real; on the contrary, it makes it even more significant. There is of course nothing to say that the living Yorick would have supported Hamlet’s analysis, the jester’s playing with the prince having been nothing but duty. In conclusion, on the personal level, history works well, and it does not take more than living one’s life to put oneself in its limelight. Its sources

130 Frands Herschend present themselves by chance, as a result of our being, and most often there is no need to use them in any systematic way. Ultimately, the success of this history rests on a possibly insecure personal future, and the insecurity of past, present, and future, and personal concepts linked to this time frame, such as the ‘I’, happen to be omnipresent. For this reason, people will recognize themselves and their own history simultaneously, simply because to most of us there is always a slight history-catalysing insecurity when it comes to the present/future. This insecurity must be extended to the past, and the technique is simple enough: We feed our history on the predicament of the present and the future, and when we are satisfied it is because the truth in one’s history is understanding oneself, and that is a right which nobody can be denied. For fear of losing this opportunity, people tend to keep some record or memory of the past, or they fall back upon a local archive or a psychologist, thrilled to discover the significance of what they thought was perhaps lost or forgotten. Needless to say, history will work even if its time span is shallow and our analysis appallingly wanting. The reason why history works so well on a personal level is not just a reflection of a possibly insecure personal future. Ultimately, the success rests with the right to decide, or at least the power we have to decide, what the historic is: our right to label the skull ‘Yorick’ and understand it to be the jester. In practice, we use this power together with a simplification of the past when we label something as source material and context, something factual, and we give it a date which at the same time is open to our series of interpretations: → picking out the skull → which is Yorick’s → it becomes poor Yorick! The right to act in this way has nothing to do with Yorick; as long as we can link the skull to ourselves, we have the right to act. Therefore, the sequence → (1) take the skull of a man → (2) who died in his forties → (3) poor man! is as good as any, as long as, and because, we bear in mind that we are also human and mortal—that is, that today we too are the potential ‘Other’. Making history into our history and the history of our ancestors is in other words a brilliant didactic trick, so brilliant in fact that it is not a trick at all but a prime form of relevant and simple history—the answer to the question of why history is interesting enough to become present. This history is ours, and it is legitimate because it is able to accommodate or corroborate a threatening present or problematic future. Since political history with an ethnic dimension can be built on largely the same concept of personal history as individuality and individual action, a vast network of interlocking private and nation-state fragments of history presents itself to most people. It is, in other words, easy to generalize and jump from an egocentric to an ethnocentric politically motivated past. By keeping history on a strictly personal level, we may of course also engage in escapism, such as relating ourselves to Alexander the Great and his personal campaigns (cf. Hamlet, act 5, scene 1). Since problems of the relativity in history do not reside with the individual, we may expect them to link in with the communal instead—that is, with

Archaeology Is History or It’s History 131 broadening the historic from a private to a public sphere in periods when the easy way out would seem more dangerous than beneficial. PRINCE HAMLET IN AFRICA Laura Bohannan spent twenty-eight months in Tivland between 1949 and 1953 studying the Tiv with her husband, Paul, who made his anthropological career from these studies. Eventually, her perspective on anthropology became more holistic than that of her successful husband, and this turn towards another viewpoint on understanding is apparent in her 1966 essay Shakespeare in the Bush. The essay begins when an English friend tells her that the essence in Hamlet is buried in a specific English context inaccessible to most foreigners (e.g. Americans such as Laura Bohannan). However, through individual study and meditation the correct interpretation could nevertheless be granted to the occasional foreigner. Therefore, Hamlet reveals itself to its observant reader or listener. Eventually, Laura Bohannan relates Hamlet to the Tiv elders, whose duty it is, among other things, to reproduce common social norms and values during a season of rising swamps, beer drinking, and storytelling. Understanding the ‘essence’ of society is, in other words, a matter of communal and balanced insights, not individual studies. The contrast and duality of the situation is emphasized when we recall the opening of the essay: ‘Just before I left Oxford for the Tiv in West Africa, conversation turned to the season at Stratford’ (Bohannan 1966, 28)—indicating the difference between ‘season’ in England and Tivland. At the same time, Laura Bohannan stands out as a participating visitor in both of the societies and their seasons. Writing in the 1960s and using irony as a method, Laura Bohannan points out that the circumstances surrounding her second visit to the Tiv (i.e. weather-preventing rituals being carried out) annulled her methodological ideal of the observing outsider. At first, she did not give up her outsider attitude, and, finding the persons she was supposed to interview drunk by noon, she often withdrew to her hut to study Hamlet. In the essay, the research situation of the anthropologist is only hinted at, but in her novel Return to Laughter, which was published 1954, Laura Bohannan describes an anthropologist who has been transformed by field experience and has become methodologically aware of the impossibility of not being a participant observer or being absorbed in the personal affairs of the homesteads she knew best. The experiment is organized in a manner that is similar to the way in which the play-within-a-play is performed in Hamlet insofar as the chief’s reception hut is the location for the telling of a tale that has relevance for the audience. Laura Bohannan is the equivalent of the actors, but she is a single person who is talking to a community instead of four (three players + Hamlet) talking to the king and queen. The test is thus triggered by the

132 Frands Herschend outsider’s approach, but since Hamlet has instructed the players, and Laura Bohannan is a participant observer, play and tale are statements of outsiders as well as insiders. Thus, methodology is kept intact. In the same vein, the differences and the balance between the two societies are also pointed out: Denmark is ruled by a king with supreme power, while Tivland and its villages are ruled by a collective of elders. To sum up— the scene is set in order to test the question, What will happen to Hamlet, a tragedy revolving around the individual, when it is told to a community? In Tivland, where storytelling, contrary to Denmark, is standard procedure, things begin most amiably: Finally, the old man promised that no one would criticize my style, ‘for we know you are struggling with our language.’ ‘But,’ put in one of the elders, ‘you must explain what we do not understand, as we do when we tell you our stories.’ Realizing that here was my chance to prove Hamlet universally intelligible. (Bohannan 1966, 29) When Laura Bohannan starts to tell her story, it turns out to be unacceptably strange. She is interrupted by questions, and she is soon told that she must have misunderstood what the story was really about. And so must we, since we have learned to accept that Hamlet’s father has become a ghost, and we find it acceptable that Hamlet speaks to him. Not so the Tiv—they know of omens, zombies, and witches that may change people, but they do not accept ghosts, not even fictitious ones. Their stories are realistic, and they find it wise to keep youngsters ignorant of situations where omens or witches may be involved because their understanding has to be correct. When Horatio thinks that Hamlet should be told about the ghost, he therefore shows himself to be a fool, and Laura Bohannan, having told the audience that Horatio is a man who knows things, must thus have got it very wrong: ‘So he [Horatio] spoke to the dead chief [the Ghost] saying, ‘Tell us what we must do so you may rest in your grave,’ but the dead chief did not answer. He vanished, and they could see him no more. Then the man who knew things—his name was Horatio—said this event was the affair of the dead chief’s son, Hamlet.’ There was a general shaking of heads round the circle. ‘Had the dead chief no living brothers? Or was this son the chief?’ ‘No,’ I replied. ‘That is, he had one living brother who became the chief when the elder brother died.’ The old men muttered: such omens were matters for chiefs and elders, not for youngsters; no good could come of going behind a chief’s back; clearly Horatio was not a man who knew things. (Bohannan 1966, 29)

Archaeology Is History or It’s History 133 At this point, the story would seem to be corrupt, but when Laura Bohannan continues telling her audience that Hamlet’s uncle married his brother’s wife just two months after the mysterious death, the story is back on track and meaningful. To us, however, it falters because marrying your brother’s widow is exactly what a responsible Tiv would do. Be this as it may, the story soon collapses when the elders understand that Polonius is, for no obvious reason, against Hamlet marrying Ophelia; there is something wrong either with the story or with Polonius. Secure in their worldview, the Tiv elders deconstruct Shakespeare’s, Laura Bohannan’s, and our story. We may think the situation hilarious, the stuff that jokes are made of in Stratford, but Laura Bohannan of course must save her story from breaking down completely and herself from being considered a naïve representative of her gender. The elders on the other hand begin to feel that their deconstruction will lead them to the correct interpretation of Hamlet. The tragedy itself nevertheless develops. The king leaves the actors’ performance, and things become nasty when Hamlet kills Polonius in his mother’s chamber after having shouted ‘a rat!’ The Tiv, however, think that Hamlet for once did something reasonable and Polonius once again something stupid: With a pang, I remembered that these people are ardent hunters, always armed with bow, arrow, and machete; at the first rustle in the grass an arrow is aimed and ready, and the hunter shouts ‘Game!’ If no human voice answers immediately, the arrow speeds on its way. Like a good hunter, Hamlet had shouted, ‘A rat!’ I rushed in to save Polonius’s reputation. ‘Polonius did speak. Hamlet heard him. But he thought it was the chief and wished to kill him to avenge his father. He had meant to kill him earlier that evening. . . .’ This time I had shocked my audience seriously. ‘For a man to raise his hand against his father’s brother and the one who has become his father—that is a terrible thing. The elders ought to let such a man be bewitched.’ I nibbled at my kola nut in some perplexity, then pointed out that after all the man had killed Hamlet’s father. ‘No,’ pronounced the old man, speaking less to me than to the young men sitting behind the elders. ‘If your father’s brother has killed your father, you must appeal to your father’s age mates: they may avenge him. No man may use violence against his senior relatives.’ Another thought struck him. ‘But if his father’s brother had indeed been wicked enough to bewitch Hamlet and make him mad that would be a good story indeed, for it would be his fault that Hamlet, being mad, no longer had any sense and thus was ready to kill his father’s brother.’ (Bohannan 1966, 29–30) This is where the story about Hamlet starts to become dangerous, and the Tiv elders hasten to point out what becomes the end of this storytelling—

134 Frands Herschend namely, that they would like Laura Bohannan to put forward a summary of their understanding of Hamlet to the elders of her country, thus making it possible for her to spread the word, interact, and understand things better. Moreover, the elders in her country will understand that she has been visiting reasonable people. This is of course a very funny story and a memento both for Laura Bohannan and for the rest of us because we think or know that we understand some of the points in Hamlet, but then again the essay also confirms the initial idea of Laura Bohannan’s educated English friend that there is an essence in Hamlet for those who are educated or wise enough to see it. There is little doubt that the elders are concerned by the fact that the world may be incorrectly conceived, and this is the reason they are convinced that there is indeed a history here. They are concerned with the predicaments of the future (cf. ‘If your father’s brother has killed your father . . .’), but they are concerned only with stories that can be understood and, of course, with the problem of empirical observation: ‘One night three men were keeping watch outside the homestead of the great chief, when suddenly they saw the former chief approach them.’ ‘Why was he no longer their chief?’ ‘He was dead,’ I explained. ‘That is why they were troubled and afraid when they saw him.’ ‘Impossible,’ began one of the elders, handing his pipe on to his neighbor, who interrupted, ‘Of course it wasn’t the dead chief. It was an omen sent by a witch. Go on.’ (Bohannan 1966, 29) They then differentiated between secure and non-secure empirical observation, since the noise behind the curtain may or may not be made by a rat. On a more basic level, this means that Hamlet is a story about a historical situation worthy of respect and understanding—something that must be related and understood because we should understand generational shifts. The elderly understand that this shift is indeed a latent future predicament in any society, and they are not prepared primarily to learn from tragedy—that is, from thought-provoking deviance. Instead, they fall back on misunderstandings, commonplace anomaly, historically rooted standard explanations, and logic, thus trying to neutralize any future tragedy. They act in relation to a canon, and to common sense and argument. The elders were not in the mood for radical social revision, but they sensed what was coming and did not let go of their understanding. The moment the old chief understands that he understands the tale and can produce a correct Tiv interpretation, he turns to the public (the young men in his hut). He also turns to the world community of knowledgeable men to corroborate the Tiv analysis, and Laura Bohannan is not blind to

Archaeology Is History or It’s History 135 the theatrical qualities of the old man’s concluding lines, or epilogue of this small play and performance of a travelling, storytelling anthropologist: ‘Sometime,’ concluded the old man, gathering his ragged toga about him, ‘you must tell us some more stories of your country. We, who are elders, will instruct you in their true meaning, so that when you return to your own land your elders will see that you have not been sitting in the bush, but among those who know things and who have taught you wisdom.’ (Bohannan 1966, 33) This said, the beer drinking can continue, and there is no more telling of difficult stories to half-drunk men and youngsters. To the Tiv, Hamlet is a play about a king and queen, and Laura Bohannan has not forgotten to introduce us to the old man’s wife, who speaks against widows mourning instead of remarrying, pointing out that a widow/woman needs someone to hoe her farms. Inasmuch as we can agree that there is an element of generational shift in Hamlet, at least in the way Laura Bohannan told it to the Tiv, Hamlet becomes a better play if we are able also to keep the Tiv interpretation in mind. We may, for example, conclude that among the Tiv, as well as among a number of nation-states, history is still compressed into a present with rules and principles that are easy to accept as norms. To conclude, Laura Bohannan makes a point of emphasizing that there is a correct interpretation of Hamlet. This interpretation turns out to be correct, according to the English as well as the Tiv authorities. During her test in Tivland, nevertheless, it becomes apparent that the correct interpretation may differ considerably. In an English setting, Hamlet helps the individual to deconstruct the present by means of an analysis of the past. In Tivland, it would seem that an analysis could equally help the collective to deconstruct the individual by referring to a canonical understanding of the past based on carefully proven norms agreed upon by the collective. From the point of view of the historical analysis, both ways of using Hamlet are reasonable: In view of foreseeable future problems, we rely on an analysis of the past to master the present. In both cases the emphasis on the present catches our attention. In the individual English Hamlet, there is no future, and that is tragic but permissible in fiction. In the collective Tivland Hamlet, the future, although it should be looked after by means of canonical rules, poses a threat to fundamental social norms, if historical analysis becomes inspired by the individual Hamlet. In both cases, the weakness of the historical analysis is its lack of wider perspective on the future. Canonical history solves every problem immediately, and individual history leaves the future to itself because it is unable to prevent it. The need for archaeology is a need for history. In turn, this need grows with the notion of the future as a predicament. In some societies, nevertheless,

136 Frands Herschend history can (at least for a while) be transformed into a canon that will solve all the problems in the present society—a history in complete accordance with the present—turning society into a truly modern one where any future problems that may occur can be solved by means of canon, thus effectively leaving aside history. The most striking example of leaving history aside is probably the history-based religious canon, which is completely sufficient to govern any aspect of social life. A strong canon-based society has little interest in empirical contexts and patterns of the past because such phenomena are superfluous given the existence of the canon. ‘Canonical’ history tends to become self-fulfilling prophecies. Such prophecies are dissolved when we start to see them as historical source material, and that will happen when it becomes apparent that future problems cannot be served by canon. Nevertheless, the future as a predicament is a common phenomenon, especially when it comes to living one’s own life. When predicaments become evident, the need for our own history is also evident, and a willingness to accept empirical observations, inasmuch as they are linked to possible solutions to our predicaments, is manifest. The problem of history is the problem of communal history because there must be agreement on the predicaments and agreement on the source materials—they must be solved before any communal history can be produced. Global warming, for example, triggers communal predicament, but it has not yet made the source material evident. Not surprisingly, therefore, producing material patterns and imbuing them with possible intent and cause is often felt to be sufficiently professional behaviour, since it provides access to source material and a record that may perhaps be used to create history as a means of problem solving. The need to define the future as predicament and thus the need to produce history is nevertheless the raison d’être also of archaeology. History must be written in order to influence the future, and it is easy to see that the more pressing the predicament of the future, the more obvious the need to address it. No historical analysis is finished if it does no more than describe a past or create a link between the past and the present. Deconstructing the present and its canonical history—something that individualized history is very good at—is only a step in the right direction. Even the future must be taken into consideration: Forgetting about it will not help, partly because the archaeologist’s text lives on to be included in the future it did not address. NOTES 1. The way space is understood in Nils Billing’s dissertation about the goddess Nut (Billing 2002, 163ff.) is thus widely different from the way space is understood by Sofia Häggman in her dissertation about Deir el Medina from the same year (Häggman 2002, 52–55). The materials that these discussions are based on are simply representative of two different histories, and there is little possibility of relating one to the other. Similarly, an understanding of the

Archaeology Is History or It’s History 137 Roman Iron Age of South Scandinavia that is based on graves will result in an understanding of a society widely different from the one understood on the basis of farms and settlements (cf. Herschend 2009). 2. This is a paraphrase of Kant’s (1784) ‘Answer to the question what is enlightenment?’: Aufklärung ist der Ausgang des Menschen aus seiner selbstverschuldeten Unmündigkeit. Unmündigkeit ist das Unvermögen, sich seines Verstandes ohne Leitung eines anderen zu bedienen. Selbstverschuldet ist diese Unmündigkeit, wenn die Ursache derselben nicht am Mangel des Verstandes, sondern der Entschließung und des Mutes liegt, sich seiner ohne Leitung eines andern zu bedienen. Sapere aude! Habe Mut, dich deines eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen! ist also der Wahlspruch der Aufklärung. Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! [dare to know] ‘Have courage to use your own understanding!’—that is the motto of enlightenment. 3. Literature on the Tiv is mostly written by the Bohannans. Laura Bohannan’s views on anthropology are also captured in her novel Return to Laughter, published under the name of Elenore Smith Bowen. 4. Royal Danish interest in the material records of the past is attested in Saxo Grammaticus (Gesta Danorum, c. AD 1200). Saxo tells us about Prince Waldemar of the eleventh century, who took an interest in a possible runic inscription which nevertheless was dismissed by the Royal Commission that he sent to check it: Waldemar, Canute the Holy’s fortunate son marvelled at these, [signs] wished to know their purpose, sent men to walk the rock and to gather with scrutiny the series of the characters that could be seen there. Later these men to cut them into staves precisely as they were incised [on the rock]. They could not gather any sort of interpretation of them. (Saxo Grammaticus. 1978–1980, Gesta Danorum 0.2.5.5)

REFERENCES Billing, N. 2002. Nut: The Goddess of Life in Text and Iconography. Uppsala: Uppsala University Press. Bohannan, L. [Elenore Smith Bowen]. 1954. Return to Laughter. New York: Anchor. ———. 1966. “Shakespeare in the Bush: An American Anthropologist Set Out to Study the Tiv of West Africa and Was Taught the True Meaning of Hamlet.” Natural History 75 (Aug–Sep): 28–33. Häggman, S. 2002. Directing Deir el-Medina: The External Administration of the Necropolis. Uppsala: Uppsala University Press. Herschend, F. 2009. The Early Iron Age in South Scandinavia: Social Order in Settlement and Landscape. Uppsala: Uppsala University Press. Kant, I. 1784. “Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?” Berlinische Monatsschrift, December, 481–94. http://www.deutschestextarchiv.de/kant_aufklaerung_ 1784. Saxo Grammaticus. 1978–1980. Gesta Danorum: The History of the Danes; Books I-IX Saxo Grammaticus. Translated by P. Fisher P. Edited by H. E. Davidson. Cambridge: Brewer.

138 Katherine Hauptman

Comment Katherine Hauptman

ARCHAEOLOGY, OR MAKING SOMETHING NO NON-BEING CAN HOLD

The Plot Herschend invites the reader to a performance in three acts, dealing with the future of archaeology. To do so, he first introduces the concept of archaeology as history and continues by using as an example a scene from Shakespeare’s Hamlet where Hamlet, through an interpretation of ‘dead’ excavated material, turns it into ‘living’ history. The third act of the text retells the experiences of the anthropologist Laura Bohannan, who wanted to test the universal understanding of the Hamlet story by relating it to a group of Tiv elders in Tivland, Nigeria.

Act One—the Nature(s) of Archaeology Many scholars have been preoccupied with defining the nature of archaeology. The reasoning behind these attempts is twofold: Archaeology is defined in order to delimit it from other academic disciplines and also in order to emphasize the unique understanding of culture which archaeological perspectives contribute. I could probably list a dozen more statements that I have come across in defence of the existence of a special identity for archaeology. In parallel, it is sometimes argued that archaeology can be understood only metaphorically—for example, that archaeology is anthropology, philosophy, or social science, or, as Herschend puts it, that archaeology should be history. This, of course, assumes that history is a clear and indisputable concept. I am not sure that these efforts to pinpoint the true essence of archaeology have been particularly fruitful or even that they are necessary. There have been, are, and will be many different archaeologies in action. A third approach to archaeology would be to recognize that archaeology is what archaeologists do when they interpret material culture in order to gain an understanding of human actions. From that perspective, the difference between a context with monumental graves and a context with manifest houses is not a problem, but rather it is the very condition for interpretation. Nevertheless, time matters for understanding. Therefore, the opening sentence in the novel The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley (1953) is a reasonable attitude towards the past: ‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there’. The archaeologist’s next sentence could be ‘Let’s find out what they do there and how they do it’.

Archaeology Is History or It’s History 139

Act Two—Making Hamlet(s) It is not clear to me whether Bohannan’s Shakespeare in the Bush says anything about the universal or cultural understanding of Hamlet. The main problem with the interpretation of Hamlet as a test for communal history is the categorization into Us and Them, which then creates a fundamental gap between an educated and individualistic Western world and the presumably traditional and collectivistic Tiv society. In addition, the difference between what people can accept as meaningful in the context of classical theatre versus what makes sense in a normative storytelling is equal to comparing chalk with cheese. When I was still in high school I saw a renowned and controversial performance of Hamlet at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm, Sweden, which was directed by Ingmar Bergman (Shakespeare 1986). The play was elaborated in a modern setting where Ophelia was ever present on stage without saying a word, and it ended in a shockingly violent machine-gun massacre. I remember the vivid classroom discussions afterwards. Was anyone—even the great Ingmar Bergman—allowed to alter a classical text in this way, according to his own preferences? Several of us were also upset by the simple gravediggers whom we found were portrayed in a way which invited ridicule. To our surprise, the teacher told us that the gravedigger scene was not a modern ironic comment but a part of the original play which is often omitted when Hamlet is performed nowadays, probably because it is considered to be too plebeian for this high cultural piece of theatre. Apparently, Shakespeare himself had more tolerance for a broad audience with different preferences than his later exponents usually have. However, I am unsure about using this caricature as a point of departure for discussing problems with non-interpretative archaeology. Rather, the question is as follows: Why is archaeological material a good starting point for writing history, and for whom is it an advantage? The Bohannan story illustrates a series of structures common to both the societies involved; for example, both sides claim to have the correct interpretation, and both lack curiosity for other views. Both the British and the Tiv also talk about their own societies with reference to only a narrow part of the population—namely, a privileged class—and thus completely ignore the possibility of multiple understandings among their peers. Another common structure is the gender bias against women. Bohannan is accompanying her husband and is not recognized as a professional in her own right; likewise, she is not seen by the Tiv elders as someone who could be an interpreter. They do not try to convince her—they ask her to bring the facts to people in her country who know something. Whether it is an individual or a collective society, the Bohannan story implies that elder men in any culture will argue for their right to be the interpreters of meaning in society.

140 Katherine Hauptman

Act Three—the Human Culture(s) Sixty years have passed since Bohannan’s anthropological studies ‘in the bush’. Still, the periodical World Value Survey with the Ingelhart–Welzer Cultural Map indicates large synchronous differences between countries in terms of survival versus self-expression values, as well as traditional versus secular-rational values. However, these concepts are now shaken, and collective and individual societies mix. Recently, the Swedish playwright Mattias Andersson (2013) was contracted to put on a new play for the same Royal Dramatic Theatre as Bergman’s Hamlet. The assignment aimed to assess the temperature of contemporary Sweden and find out what aspects of their own lives Swedish people would like to see performed on national stage. Like many public institutions, the theatre wants to reach out to a broader audience and attract groups which previously did not think that a renowned and canonical theatre would have anything to offer them; in the past, they would probably not even have been welcome in the posh salons. As the play proceeds, the actors read scenes from different people’s lives. They try hard to understand and perform these other people’s stories. Society is fragmented and time is episodic when seen purely from the point of view of a series of individuals who, one can suspect, will not understand or even be interested in each other’s stories. When the play draws to a close, the audience members are left without answers or the ability to write their own future. The stage is now empty, and Andersson’s own voice hits the audience. He is walking to work and meets the Rumanian Gabriel begging in the street in front of the theatre. Of course he also wants to collect this tragic story as an important piece of evidence from contemporary Sweden. Gabriel, who proves to be well-educated, says he has nothing to contribute to the national theatre; instead, he starts to ask Andersson counter-questions, thus proving that the playwright is not prepared to omit himself in the same way that he requests of others. Lastly, Gabriel simply answers with a quote from the Bible: ‘Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last’ (Luke 13:30). The understanding of other human beings is a universal dilemma no matter which academic discipline, where on earth, or whether it is the past, present, or future. The key question is whether you are curious of the unknown. This is the potential of archaeology: Allow the material culture to resist both communal usage and individual fragmentation, and at best it can provoke you to question your truths. And remember, future history must also be Herstory. In only three short paragraphs called ‘The three oddest words’ the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska has with minimalistic accuracy described the illusiveness of understanding the past and future connections, the silence when talking about it aloud, and the non-existent (Szymborska 1998). By naming these phenomena they slip off and turn into something else. This is also the

Archaeology Is History or It’s History 141 archaeological challenge. The archaeologist must address the ambiguity of creating something which is automatically changed when described, or with Szymborska’s words archaeology is the art of ‘mak[ing] something no nonbeing can hold’. REFERENCES Andersson, M. 2013. The Mental States of Sweden. Performed at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Sweden. Hartley, L. P. 1953. The Go-Between. London: H. Hamilton. Shakespeare, W. 1986. Hamlet. Reworked and directed by Ingmar Bergman at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Sweden. http://ingmarbergman.se/en/production/ hamlet. Szymborska, W. 1998. Poems, New and Collected, 1957–1997, translated by S. Barańczak and C. Cavanagh. New York: Harcourt Brace. World Value Survey. 2014. www.worldvaluessurvey.org.

142 Johannes Siapkas

Comment Johannes Siapkas

The contribution by Frands Herschend touches upon foundational issues about archaeology. Herschend’s chapter addresses issues such as: What is archaeology? Why is archaeology? What is the meaning of archaeology? All of these aspects are elaborated through a multilayered reading of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet: Prince of Denmark. Herschend dwells in particular on the scene in which a gravedigger hands the skull of Yorick to Hamlet. It is the gravedigger in this scene who is perceived as an archaeologist by most people: he digs and has expert knowledge of the graveyard. Hamlet, on the other hand, picks up the skull, labels it, and interprets it. In other words, Hamlet decontextualizes the skull and then produces a new meaning by bringing the past into the present. Hamlet is the archaeologist according to Herschend. Hamlet produces history. In Herschend’s contribution, this is a situation which illustrates the intricate aspects of archaeology. At the core of Herschend’s argument is the notion that archaeology is the interpretation of the material evidence—not the excavation of it. The gravedigger in Hamlet is so busy digging that he misses the point of archaeology. Nevertheless, the gravedigger is not excluded from the archaeological realm by Herschend, but rather he is confined to one of several definitions of archaeology—the gravedigger is a traditional and processual archaeologist who places his emphasis on the excavation. Herschend’s definition of archaeology puts empirical expectations and concerns to the test. Archaeology is often reduced to field archaeological practices, not least in popular accounts and by scholars of other academic disciplines. So, if archaeology is not digging, but rather interpreting, as Herschend suggests, then the questions that pose themself are: What is archaeology for? Why do we need archaeology if archaeology is history and not digging? Herschend’s answer has several nuances to it. The past is a way to deal with our concerns for the future. The overarching predicament is how we frame and deal with the predicaments that we face in the present and the ones that we identify in the future. History—which is the narrated past— is thus constructed with this in mind. It is the contemporary and future predicaments that we seek to elaborate through the past. The representation of the archaeological record is a secondary issue for Herschend—our endeavours to understand the past are primary. The distinction Herschend makes between the past and history is an important one that we tend to miss; historians have postulated a similar distinction since the early 1960s. Furthermore, narrativist issues have remained at the core of the theoretical debates among historians ever since.

Archaeology Is History or It’s History 143 Nevertheless, Herschend is an archaeologist and as much as he questions the empirical excavating tenet in archaeology, he continues, in the end, to have faith in the empirical evidence that archaeology produces. This emerges in the distinction between communal/canonical and individualized history. In order to illustrate the difference between communal and individual history, Herschend turns to an anthropological account of Hamlet. Shakespeare’s play was discussed by the elders of the Tiv, a community in Nigeria. Susan Bohannon used this setting to test whether or not Hamlet could be understood by people in non-Western cultural traditions. This layer of Herschend’s account contains its fair share of humour; the Tiv elders react to other parts of Shakespeare’s play in other ways. In the end, Herschend concludes that there are many correct understandings of Hamlet: our understanding is neither better nor worse than the understanding of the Tiv elders. However, the account of the Tiv elders bears the hallmarks of a communal/ canonical understanding of the past—that is, history is controlled by a body of powerful men. Canonical history is, in other words, history which contributes to sustain power and perpetuate the values and norms of the socially powerful in a community; the past is pigeonholed into the conditions and concerns of the present and the future. Crucially, in a state of canonical history, the past is not reassessed with, for instance, the emergence of new archaeological evidence. Archaeology, as traditionally defined, is accordingly of little use in canonical history. ‘“Canonical” history, as it happens, tends to become self-fulfilling prophecies.’ Herschend contrasts canonical history with empirical history. Empirical/ individualized history takes into account empirical evidence that archaeologists produce. Individualized history builds on an initial deconstruction of canonical history. This is also the one foundational difference between the two tenets of history in Herschend’s account. Nevertheless, both canonical and empirical history are characterized by the predicament of the future. The past is used in order to address our predicaments—history is conditioned first and foremost by these concerns. If archaeology fails to contribute to address our predicaments, it will become obsolete. In a sense, it will become history. Archaeology will be demoted to yet another modernist feature of the social order that we are leaving behind us; it will become a feature for the historians to analyse.

6

Empirical Tensions in the Materialities of Time Charlotta Hillerdal

EVEN THINGS THAT ARE TRUE CAN BE PROVED1 Archaeology has been tackling the Gordian knot of material/culture for two hundred years or so, and one would have expected the issue to have been disentangled by now. However, in light of current theoretical debates, it is clear that this is not the case. For the last few decades, materiality has once again emerged as one of the most debated concepts within archaeological, as well as anthropological, theory (e.g. Buchli 2002; Meskell 2005; Miller 2005; Tilley et al. 2006). The current attempts to unsnarl the tangle focus on the empirical qualities of the archaeological materials (e.g. Ingold 2007; Hurcombe 2010). It is thus possible to identify a neo-empirical trend in contemporary archaeology. Within recent empirical approaches, a theoretical opposition between artefacts as material and artefacts as culture, which is often linked with Descartes’s division of the empirical world into mind and matter (e.g. Shanks 2007, 594), has been identified as the villain of the piece (e.g. Meskell 2005, 2). Thus, the solution lies in a neutralization of this opposition, and only then can an ‘integrated theory of material culture’ be achieved (Knappett 2005, 2)—as evidenced by concepts such as entanglement (Hodder 2012; Ingold 2010), material habitus (Meskell 2005), and interdependency (Knappett 2005, 2). One of these neo-empirical strands is symmetrical archaeology. In this chapter, I will claim that returning to an ontological understanding of the world is not enough to solve the problematic relationship between material and culture. It is not the lack of appreciation of the actual empirical qualities of materiality that poses the real problem for archaeology, but what this archaeological materiality implies. The recurring stumbling block is the relation between time and materiality. Archaeology’s concern is how time can be contained, decoded, read, and understood through artefacts. The most significant quality of an archaeological object is that of being of the past, and although chronological, this is primarily a conceptual characteristic. If this condition is not fulfilled, the object will not be conceptualized as archaeological. However, this thing of the past is also a thing in the present. The cognitive oppositions of then and now meet in the archaeological

Empirical Tensions 145 materiality. Indeed, our whole concept of pastness is tangled up in this materiality: ‘The past is something we conceptualize through inference from things that exist in the present’ (Graves-Brown 2011, 133). Thus, the materiality of an archaeological object is a materiality of historicity, and an archaeological study of the material is by definition more than an enquiry into the object’s ‘recordable’ material qualities. Thus, discussions on materiality inevitably come to touch upon notions of truth, authenticity, and accuracy of representation. It might seem paradoxical that a subject which depends entirely on material objects for its knowledge production needs to ‘return to things’, but this necessity has recently been noted by certain academics in the field (Olsen et al. 2012, 7). It is not unreasonable to assume that this call for the discipline to return to things is made as a theoretical provocation. ‘Things’ have never been far from the centre of archaeological thinking. As Knappett points out, archaeology works with nothing but objects (2005, 167). However, this statement is generated by a perceived notion of an intra-disciplinary rift between the thing as an object (e.g. Fritz and Plog 1970) and the thing as an embodiment of an idea (e.g. Tilley 2006, 60), the material and the mental, which is often expressed in terms of processual versus post-processual and perceived as incompatible (at least for the sake of debate). It is also a timely critique against a post-structuralist movement that ran out of steam: ‘Aspiring to mentalism but condemned to materialism, it is hardly surprising that many archaeologists have given up the former altogether’ (Knappett 2005, 167–68). In this rhetoric, the ‘return to the material’ can become something of a protest against previous theoretical ‘obsessions’ with the social meaning behind objects, where ‘empirical’ becomes proof of a more rooted knowledge: ‘[A]fter the long-lasting dominance of deconstruction, constructivism, and narrativism, we have finally began to long for reality as such’ (Domańska 2006b, 172). However, this rhetoric also paves the way for a direct, empirical approach. Provoked by the desire to go beyond theory, back to the concrete objects and the ‘real’ past, it claims that the archaeological material is at large self-explanatory (Johnson 2011). This philosophy postulates that the object can be isolated from the surrounding social ‘noise’ (cf. Fabian 2002) and projects the idea that somehow the objects hold more truth than thoughts or actions. Material remains are perceived as representatives of the ‘real world’, in contrast to the constructed cognitive society. Theoretical enquiries into notions such as symbolism or meaning are seen not only as unnecessary complications of the empirical reality but also as sources of corrupted knowledge: ‘[O]ur primary sources are not the theories of other archaeologists, or other researchers, but the archaeological material itself. Those theories that do not build on material can be safely ignored’ (Jensen 2010, 3). The materiality of an artefact, which is an irrefutable fact, presents itself as both authentic and simplistic.

146 Charlotta Hillerdal A material (re)turn can subsequently bring about more basic enquiries where empirical conditions solely are allowed to control the questions and theories posed. Additionally, the focus on the thing, to some extent, creates a conceptual dependency on the empiric material. When matter is automatically understood as a matter of fact, problems arise. A MATERIALITY OF TIME? The material significance of an archaeological artefact is somewhat paradoxical: As an object of the past, its value and authenticity lie in its potential to represent something other than the present. The material comprehension of an archaeological object is focused not on what it is and does but on what it was and did. The archaeological object thus functions as material evidence of something that has been, and in that capacity it materializes the past as part of the contemporary. This is the quality on which archaeology draws, sustaining the ‘wish to make the absent present’ (Karlström 2009, 177). The materiality of an archaeological object thus inescapably includes an immaterial aspect of time that makes it different from the materiality of your desk or computer screen. If the archaeological artefact is not given this feature by the present, it is reduced to an object no less contemporary than the showcase in which it rests. The temporal ambiguity of the archaeological object, problematic as it may seem, is a quality which is critical to its materiality. Functionally, the archaeological material can be given the role of confirming or proving the past (as we know it), and as such it plays an important role by providing the firm (material) points in a historic narrative. In the words of Christopher Tilley, artefacts ‘objectify the past present of humans’ (2006, 60). Archaeology then, as the material aspect of history, gives the past form in the present. In the public imagination, this archaeological materialization of history is valuable. The object bridges the distances of time and makes it possible to relate one’s own life to a familiar past (thus history no longer appears so foreign); conceptually, the object is given the ability to provide a historically rooted identity with a material dimension. The artefact is authentic, recognizable, and present, and as such the archaeological material helps us to take control of the past. However, its material features are ambivalent inasmuch as it manages to represent something both reliable and unidentified, and herein lies the potential to create powerful (hi)stories. Traditionally, archaeology is understood as a system of discovery and recovery: the discovery of the ancient remains and the recovery of a historic reality. Archaeology is one of the methods necessary for the reconstruction the past. From this perspective the relation between object, time, and history is static and absolute as well as set in the past. Postmodern theoretical thinking offered a critique of this relationship. Archaeology, it was emphasized, does not recover hidden truths from the

Empirical Tensions 147 past but participates, through its empirical material, in the construction of history (e.g. Shanks 2007, 591) and thus is a contemporary, relational, and sporadic construct. In a direct, unreflective, or naïve (Johnson 2010, 219–20) approach to the empirical, the complexity of time is ignored and reduced to material signposts in a linear chronological development. This kind of approach to the relation between history and material links time with objects, and it locks the artefacts into place in a linear development. The archaeological material is taken to be ‘the record of time’ (for a similar discussion, see Lucas 2012), and the most significant of these records are the archaeological typologies. As an archaeological method, typology represents the scientific ordering of time into a linear material history. This ordering is not unproblematic, as the typological series fixes time to object and provides things with a distinct temporality (Lucas 2005, 120). The method not only burdens history with a chronological expectation, but by its very construction it also links culture with artefact. In typologies, cultural change is allocated to certain distinct objects and forms, and, by their given position in a typology, also to a certain point in a linear development where time ‘[i]nstead of being the measure of movement [. . .] may appear as a quality of states’ (Fabian 2002, 23). As such, the chronology of things confirms conjecture that the past is defined as a succession of events, restricted to its place in the sequence of time. ‘Historical events [. . .] are part of a narrative structure which has a beginning, middle and end’ (Hodder 1993, 269). Consequently, these material chronologies also create a typological dependency on time, where they are expected to present a clarification of historic time and turn materiality into normative types. Thus, time, transferred to the materiality of objects, is as continuous, linear, fixed, and one-dimensional as the history it produces. The conceptual complications caused by a normative understanding of typological time are exemplified in the eighth-century Viking Age town of Birka in central Sweden, a site that has gained almost iconic status in Swedish archaeology. Finds from Hjalmar Stolpe’s late nineteenth-century excavations of the graves on the outskirts of the town, which were some of the earliest scientific archaeological excavations undertaken in Sweden, provided the material background for the Swedish Viking Age chronology that is still in use today (Gräslund 2009, 3; Ambrosiani 1997, 111). Thus, the empirical material collected from this milieu has been set as the norm, despite the fact that Birka constitutes a very unique context in Scandinavian early medieval society, and notwithstanding that graves in themselves represent a very complex and chronologically complicated form of ancient monument. The problem that arises from this ‘flat’ understanding of materiality is illustrated by the finds from a bronze caster’s workshop from the more recent excavations of the black earth of Birka, where objects that are generally dated to the tenth century based on deposits in graves can be directly connected to moulds from the workshop dating to the early ninth century

148 Charlotta Hillerdal (Ambrosiani 2008, 97). This calls the accepted typological knowledge into question in relation to the settlement and could also have even greater consequences for the wider perspective. While the chronologies created from the grave finds are certainly correct, they do not illustrate the straightforward temporal development of types that they have been perceived as representing; rather, they illustrate a different temporality, cultural custom, or fashion in burial practices. The relationship between time and material which is expressed in these typologies, although evidently present, is not as easily approachable as expected. The ideal cultural forms postulated by a typology are rarely retained in the empirical reality, and likewise, as evident in the example from Birka, the pure, typological time is hard to identify in the archaeological material. Typology must be accepted into archaeological theory, simply because it is methodologically necessary. However, when chronology and typology are treated as theoretical models rather than methods, the past society is judged from its pure, ideal, and artificial form of culture, and when chronology does not abide by the rules, it is treated as an anomaly. Thus, we end up with a prehistoric reality where typology presents linear truths and the excavated artefacts represent multidimensional divergences. Post-processual archaeology has established that such notions contribute to an inaccurate understanding of history. Time and history are not at all accurately represented in the one-dimensional and equable material chronologies of traditional archaeology, and it is generally acknowledged that the ‘archaeological recording of time is basically discontinuous and random’ (Olivier 2004, 211). Furthermore, there is no such thing as an ‘objective’ (or an object) or ‘autonomous’ past story that can be exposed and told to the posterity. Archaeology, and with that the archaeological material, exists as a solution to a contemporary need for history. As has been discussed by Thomas (1996), for example, it is archaeological practice that creates the archaeological object. However, over the last few decades, a general resignation in relation to the postmodern and its abilities to further advance archaeological knowledge has developed (cf. Bintliff and Pearce 2011). Postmodern de-construction has created a disjointed discipline, and this loss of identity raises certain questions: Where do we go from here? ‘Is it really our duty to add fresh ruins to fields of ruins? Is it really the task of the humanities to add deconstruction to deconstructions?’ (Latour 2004, 225). NEO-EMPIRICAL TIME Symmetrical archaeology turns against a typological understanding of time and its classificatory relation to history (Olsen et al. 2012, 6). In order to come to terms with the control which chronological time, despite the postmodern contributions to the discipline, still exercises over archaeological thinking, the symmetrical thinkers emphasize the ‘multiple material pasts’

Empirical Tensions 149 accumulated in any landscape or space (Witmore 2007, 556) by criticizing the sharp divide traditionally made between present and past. Archaeological landscapes should be viewed not as a collection of fragmented, stagnated pasts but as a space where objects form active parts of a process that unites past with present—a space where different temporalities with diverse significance are incorporated into the present (Lucas 2005, 41). The past is thus present and active everywhere (Webmoor 2007, 575), and the present has, in this way, always been ‘multi-temporal’ (Olivier 2004, 205). Consequently, the multi-temporality of the archaeological record should also be recognized (e.g. Lucas 2005, 57). The past, it is claimed, is not exclusively past (Witmore 2007, 549). I will return to a discussion on the relationship between past, present, and history later, but it is worthwhile to stop and think about Witmore’s statement for a moment. The implication of the claim is that the past, through its remaining material manifestations in the contemporary, still has agency in the present. This tacitly gives the object an essence that reaches beyond materiality; it is not a thing interacting with a ‘diversity of other entities’ (Witmore 2007, 547)—but a past. Consequently, although the focus is said to be on the ‘materiality and thingness of the trace rather than in its textuality and content’ (Domańska 2006a, 337), the object is nevertheless treated as a representation, or symbol, of a past. Thus, it would seem that object and time are inseparable companions. In a critique of the theoretical dualisms of subject–object, mind–matter, and past–present that traditionally form archaeological thought and colour traditional empiricism, the new empiricism, relying on Latour’s ActorNetwork-Theory, advocates a symmetrical2 approach that acknowledges actors other than the human subject (i.e. things). Symmetrical archaeology aims to overturn the hierarchical approach to the world where mind and humans have priority over matter and things, and instead aims to introduce a horizontal relationship between thing and human that eradicates the border between concepts. Symmetrical archaeology does not study human interactions with the world but approaches the world as a collective, an intricate web of relations and negotiations between a multitude of different entities, be they human, nature, or thing (Witmore 2007, 547). Symmetrical archaeology thus focuses on the multiplicity of the material world, a materiality made up of entanglements and achievements from a great variety of times and places (Witmore 2007, 546–47, 559; Webmoor 2007, 563). Standard archaeological practice, it is claimed, participates in a theoretical segmentation of the world, and thus culture is divided into delimited entities; this segmentation is similar to the antiquarian approach to history, which isolates materiality and implies an unequal relationship between these entities. Likewise, as Latour (2000, 10) points out, archaeologists are the only ones to believe in an ‘object’ as it is conceptualized by modern philosophy. In addition, things are generally treated as products of human intentionality by archaeologists, which confirms a firm separation between

150 Charlotta Hillerdal human and thing. It should instead be recognized that social life, as materiality, is created through interactions with a diversity of entities forming a collective, and thus an entanglement between humans and things is constructed, an entanglement where one single actor cannot be identified and no clear boundaries between agencies can be drawn (Witmore 2007, 552). The new empiricism claims that things have active qualities, asserts that objects form an integrated part of the action, and recognizes a ‘material agency of things’ (Lucas 2005, 114–15). Since the late 1980s, the focus in archaeological theory has moved from the thing as a result of culture to the thing as part of practices. This ‘move’ was partly due to the need to acknowledge humans as active agents who are creating culture, not only living in culture, and the need to see material culture as evidence of human practices:3 ‘[T]he ways in which the artefact interferes with matter and with the social field are discursive with one another. They are both virtually inseparably evidence of agency’ (Wobst 2000, 46). However, it has been claimed that the actual material part of the actions were overlooked: ‘[I]n post-processual explanation, the active agent is present in a variety of theoretical forms but absent in practice’ (Johnson 2000, 225). Symmetrical archaeology aims to make the active agent present in practice, and emphasizes that this role is not exclusive to a human agent. A focus on things as matter (e.g. Domańska 2006a, 337) emphasizes that it is, in fact, the very tangibility of material objects that forms and influences the social as we know and identify it (e.g. Olsen 2003; Ingold 2007). Just as human constitutes thing, thing constitutes human—they cannot be separated from each other,4 nor can any distinct lines be drawn to mark where human ends and thing begins, since personhood stretches beyond the individual body and persons are defined by their relations to others (including the material objects): ‘We are mingled with the things of the world in such a way that we are ontologically indivisible’ (Webmoor and Witmore 2008, 59). The concept of agency is, however, problematic when applied to a thing because the concept of agency is traditionally partnered with intentionality (e.g. Knappett 2005, 128) and there can be no intentionality, motive, or purpose in this instrumentality of power (i.e. the agency of things). Thus, extending agency to things requires a re-conceptualization of the term. Nevertheless, reflexive qualities constitute an integral part of agency,5 and to ‘suggest object . . . can have agency . . . is to frame the question in such a way the answer is a seemingly obvious no’ (Webmoor and Witmore 2008, 60). In symmetrical archaeology, this embedded conceptual contradiction is avoided through a focus on action: ‘[T]hings are active not because they are imbued with agency but because of the ways in which they are caught up in these currents of the lifeworld’ (Ingold 2007, 1), and thus things are identified as actors without intentionality.6 ‘By dissolving the boundary between people who “act” and objects which are seen as inanimate or “outside”, the

Empirical Tensions 151 term “actant” is designed to overcome any a priori distinction between the social, technological and natural worlds. It emphasizes the inextricable links between humans and material things’ (Woodward 2007, 15). By concentrating on action and the relations of the entities participating in heterogeneous networks, symmetrical archaeology can take many more entities and steps into account in its interpretations than conventional ‘subject-centred’ archaeology (Witmore 2007, 551–52, 536, 569). Following symmetrical archaeology, the different entities, irrespective of whether they are human or thing, should not be embodied by socially constrictive meanings—they possess ‘their own unique qualities and competences which they brought to our cohabitation with them’ (Olsen 2007, 586). However, while concepts of agency and actor may clarify the relations between human and thing, they do not solve the problematic relationship between thing, human, and history. Agency and action are concepts describing ongoing practices; they are situated in time, and although they conceptually integrate the past and imply a future (e.g. Barrett 2005, 61), they are, as acts, always situated in the present, and as such restricted to a present. As past, actions still need to be mediated7 by something and interpreted/ received by someone. The thing of the past is thus no more than evidence of past practices, and while acknowledging that the thing is active in the present (as such, situating it in the present) recognizes its complexity, it does not bring us closer to the actions behind the practices of the past. Thus, the concept of agency is not able to bridge the breach between past and present. The claim that archaeology is formed by its practice, and the idea that archaeology is what archaeologists do (e.g. Witmore 2007, 549–51), is taking the statement of Latour ‘if a dancer stops dancing, the dance is finished’ (Latour 2007, 37) to heart. This is a theoretical positioning characteristic of symmetrical archaeology. As a description of the general disciplinary aims of mainstream archaeology, however, it is a misrepresentation. It describes the contemporary social phenomenon that is archaeology, but it does not explain the discipline, nor does it capture the heart of archaeology: that we are, in fact, trying to recapture the dance, no matter how impossible. In symmetrical archaeology, the postmodern perspective has been extended to include a critique of the anthropocentric character of history, which has been identified as the cause of the neglect of things (e.g. Domańska 2006b. History, it is maintained, needs to be revised to include things on premises equal to humans: Required is an approach that might be called ‘a non-anthropocentric history’ or ‘post-human history.’ This kind of history distances itself from a humanist conception that places human beings at the centre of the world; instead, it considers humankind as one among many organic and non-organic beings existing on the earth. (Domańska 2006a, 338)

152 Charlotta Hillerdal In the relationship between people and things, things play a particular role: They participate in the creation of human identity. This must be acknowledged if things are to have the same level of importance as humans. A neo-empirical focus thus dismantles the anthropocentric hierarchical structures in archaeology and incorporates ‘Other voices’ (Webmoor 2007, 573), the ‘Other’ in this case being objects. One of the aims in doing this is to restore the position of things in archaeology in order to allow the thing to have value in itself. This is rhetorically expressed by Bjørnar Olsen: ‘Archaeologists should unite in a defence of things, a defence of those subaltern members of the collective that have been silenced and “othered” by the imperialist social and humanist discourses’ (2003, 100). However provocative his statement, Olsen’s goal seems to be to observe the position and influence of things in the relational networks that constitute society rather than attempt to make the actual voices of things heard. This goal can be attained by considering things in relation to humans and treating them as active agents of social life (Domańska 2006b, 182). Such a post-colonial train of thought (e.g. the emancipation of the subaltern; Spivak 1988) is a reoccurring theme in the neo-empirical description of the relation between human and thing. Archaeology, it is claimed, has dealt with the past as something which is separated, demarcated, and distinct from the present, and thus a dividing line that differentiates ‘Us’ from ‘Other’ has been created. Through this conduct, the past has been made into an object and can thus be treated as a defined and completed entity (Witmore 2007, 556). If we are to come to terms with the past, these borders have to be broken down. I find Witmore’s argument to be a little dubious; while the static view of the past needs to be dismissed and its multiplicity acknowledged, I suggest that the ‘othering’ (as in distancing—i.e. Fabian 2002) of the past is unavoidable for the archaeological project. Ewa Domańska takes her reference to post-colonialism even further when she refers to a colonization of the material world (Domańska 2006b, 182). Domańska seems to experience an opposition, of an almost aggressive sort, between human and thing and their ‘threatening otherness’ (Domańska 2006a, 346). According to Domańska, a condescending attitude towards things is usually displayed in archaeology, and things are only allowed to be integrated into a dominating discourse when their otherness can be neutralized (Domańska 2006b, 180–81). ‘Like any “other”, things can be approached in a twofold manner: We can either treat their otherness as pathology and try to normalize them, making them resemble people; or we can perceive them as “culture” (or cultures), autonomous and self-contained in their non-human otherness’ (Domańska 2006b, 182). To put an end to this dichotomy between ‘Human’ and ‘Other’, she wants to abolish the fundamental break between nature and society, where things are perceived as nothing more than usable objects, and instead incorporate notions of contingency and dialogue in the relation between human and thing. Accordingly, she advocates an ‘ethical (quite contrary to Witmore’s [2007, 547] attempt to present symmetrical

Empirical Tensions 153 archaeology as a neutral alignment) attitude towards non-humans based on close intimate relationships’ (Domańska 2006b, 176). This ideology, she claims, creates counter-disciplines where things previously perceived as ‘Others’ demand their place in the discourse and are allowed to speak in ‘a voice of their own’ (Domańska 2006b, 180). Thus, ‘[t]he object is no longer a subaltern other’ (Domańska 2006b, 180–81). She further claims that we need to establish a relation between human and nonhuman where they will be equals in a relational epistemology (Domańska 2006b, 180). By abolishing the different worlds of ‘social’ and ‘nature’, Domańska follows the doctrine of Latour. However, in treating objects as subaltern Others, she implies an independent ‘world of things’ into which we humans intrude, and by doing so she creates a new dichotomy between the world of humans and the world of things, which is quite contradictory to the theoretical claims of ActorNetwork-Theory. Furthermore, to treat the temporal Other and the material Other as products of the same phenomena that created the colonial Other, as Domańska advocates, is to severely simplify matters. While the colonial Other is formed as a result of inequality and suppression, the temporal Other is but a conceptual consequence of history. The recognition of otherness, it should be noted, is exactly what creates ‘the Other’. Thus, to get rid of ‘the Other’, we need to abolish otherness and bridge the divide; we need to rewrite history and make ‘Other’ into ‘Us’. This is what must be done for the ‘colonial Other’ and ‘Ourselves’, but it is not possible, or desirable, for a temporal Other. It should be noted that the temporal Other (i.e. the recognition of the otherness of the past) is the very precondition for history. The material Other, on the other hand, has no need for an autonomous equality and no means to make that claim. Recognizing objects as social actors which are as important as humans is not the same as giving them moral rights equal to those of humans, nor does it give them the same role as humans. The thing as an actor does not have intentionality, nor do things, on their own account, claim recognition. We can overturn the dichotomy between human and thing, but only symbolically—otherwise this reasoning comes dangerously close to an essentialization of the object and the idea of an immanent meaning that cannot be fully comprehended by mere humans. Thus, taken to its limit, Domańska’s argument is no longer a claim for a symmetrical archaeology but rather an asymmetrical archaeology tilted towards the merit of things. Two problems emerge from this perspective: First, to give the thing autonomy as only a material object is a reduction of its theoretical potential, and thus it is given a one-dimensional meaning. In concentrating solely on material expression, one risks creating a new dichotomy between material and culture; thus the complexity of social structures is ignored, while we try to address material and culture in material terms. Second, this philosophy is producing not a history of people but a history of things (cf. Domańska’s plea for a ‘post human history’, as quoted above).8 While the existence of a past is an undisputable fact, the existence of history is not quite so undisputable. The suggestion that the present is

154 Charlotta Hillerdal made up of multiple (material) pasts which still influence society does not capture the complexity of the relations between past and present. Not all objects of the past fulfil the same function in contemporary society. While the present might be multi-temporal, these temporalities also represent very different aspects of the past. Some pasts play an active part as representatives of a past, while others are not recognized as history but play an active part in the present as exactly present (cf. the network of Roman roads that Witmore [2007, 556] uses to illustrate how the past is still active in the present). The vital point here is that history is not a given; rather, it needs to define what is present and what is past, and time passed needs to be recognized as history to become history. History as a concept fulfils a purpose and answers a need in a society (on social terms and as a social construct). In a society with no need for history, the objects of the past have no value as proof of history. To make the past or the present into history, we need to create a distance from the past. Thus, the othering of the past—human, time, and thing—is a vital part of creating history. Not until we recognize an Other can we make that Other into a story. Simultaneously, via this demarcation, we are also othering Ourselves and creating ‘Our’ past. History is created in the interface between the present and its (perceived) past. In the same way, archaeology, as participant in the creation of historic narratives, needs to identify the past as Other: ‘The development of archaeology is linked to that of the discovery of otherness, of the recognition of differences within what is similar’ (Olivier 2004, 206). Equally, in writing our past, the notion of continuity (i.e. the recognition of sameness and persistence) is a vital part of the historical narrative. In this interplay, the artefact does not only serve to transport an essential core identity (history) throughout the ages, as in a national narrative for example, but it also elucidates the foreign character of this past: ‘[W]hile chronology may help to bridge the distance between then and now through an unbroken continuum, at the same time it also re-asserts the vast distance and time which has elapsed—it reasserts their pastness’ (Woodward 2007, 15). Thus, creating a relation between past and present makes the past into history. Recognizing ourselves in the temporal Other gives us depth in time, while continuation, which is expressed in chronologies, gives us the means to treat history as ours, and with that the possibility of bridging the time that has passed and of making us present in the past through the series of peoples and events leading up to us. The criticized anthropocentric perspective is also a precondition for history. History cannot be liberated from humans any more than the thing can ever be an autonomous actor in the historic narrative. As previously discussed, on the basis of the premises set by history, we can overturn the dichotomy between human and thing—but only symbolically, since the thing can be given agency (or ethical rights) only through the mediation (and acknowledgement) of humans. The empirical material might be the

Empirical Tensions 155 mediator, but it is not the narrator of the past—it is but the medium from which the true narrators, the archaeologists, create their histories. In the end, things do not have a voice of their own. There is an inescapable biased imbalance in the relation between human and thing in the archaeological narrative. There might be equality (mutuality) in the constitutive part, but the power of definition always lies with the human actant, and this power plays a vital role in the creation of an archaeological arte(or eco-)fact. Time needs to be experienced as passed time in order to become history; it is composed of an event, thought, or thing that has gone from active use to being used as a focal point of the past—as the symbol of a passed past and the teller of a story. It is in this capacity that the empiric archaeological material holds its influence over people’s imaginations. In recognizing an artefact as a piece of the past, in an instant that object spans the time separating us from the person who made it, and at the same time it concentrates focus on the time alienating now from then. The closeness and the foreignness of the past are at once summed up in the object. The neo-empirical turn could be seen as the post-processual finding its way back to the processual. It aspires to overcome the meaningless categorization of objects represented in traditional empiricism while still restoring the position of the thing in archaeology and recognizing its importance as a material object. This is achieved by redressing the object and making it the centre of discussion, by recognizing its position in social networks, and by including it as an actor in the relations between actants. Thus, a symmetrical archaeology where things have the same value in social theories as people has been created. Things, symmetrical archaeology emphasizes, are to be interpreted not as symbols of human thoughts or ideas but as equal actors in a network of ongoing relations. This empiricism has managed to move away from the chronologically controlled linear history, acknowledge the complex temporality of objects, and include multi-vocality in the archaeological stories. While traditional archaeology essentialized time in archaeology, and made an object, or more precisely a type, representative of a single distinguishable and demarcated past, the neo-empirical approach to time acknowledges its complexity and recognizes that now is made up of a multitude of different (material) thens interrelating and interacting with each other, and that every materiality, even if confined to only one object, is made up of this multitude of pasts (and presents). This declaration, however, does not seem to be enough to reach their historic materiality or their meaning. It emphasizes the complexity of the present rather than the complexity of the past. On that note, symmetrical archaeology does not manage to take fully into consideration the non-present presence of the past that is claimed by an archaeological artefact. The archaeological materiality is not only matter— it is also immaterial—and this is when the ‘direct’ empirical claims become problematic.

156 Charlotta Hillerdal Not all aspects of materiality can be directly observed, weighed, and measured: There are esoteric implications to the material that reach far beyond those characters, as Actor-Network-Theory tries to emphasize. The relations between different subjects create subjects, both material and immaterial, human and thing alike. What makes Actor-Network-Theory hard, if not impossible, to translate directly into archaeological interpretations is the function that the materiality of the past is given in these complex networks of relations. The material presence of the present is encompassed in an archaeological object, but so is the experience of a materiality that has been. This present relation with a multitude of pasts also presupposes that these pasts can somehow actually be experienced and perceived as meaningful—otherwise there is no point to them. Archaeology deals with a materiality of the vanished as much as a materiality of the present, and since this is the agreed precondition for any archaeological practice, this aspect cannot be ignored when archaeological matters of fact (or concern) are studied. To put it differently, a pot sherd is not only a pot sherd but a pot, a social function, a cultural expression, and a human behaviour. Without these absent properties defined, as Holtorf (2002) points out, the pot sherd is nothing but a little piece of burnt clay. Identified as such, however, it has no relevance for archaeology. By acknowledging the agency of objects and making them the symmetrical equals of human beings, one overlooks the embedded, and conceptually inescapable, anthropocentric foundation inherent in the construction of history. Objects are inevitably subordinate to humans in the social structure: They do not, and cannot, have a role as actants in the social networks. They can be the focus of stories but not the storyteller. A focus on material actors and relational networks does not unravel the subjective entanglement of object, society, and meaning, since the actions of the pot sherd in the past as well as in the future still remain speculative. Objects undoubtedly affect and influence social structures in many more ways than can be reckoned upon or accounted for, and not all human actions are intentional or function in similar ways, but, if the causal actions of objects are recognized as being on the same level as the deliberate actions of human beings in historical relations, we move dangerously close to an animistic understanding of objects. Moreover, there will be no artefacts without action and/or recognition by a potential actor. Objects and humans collectively construct the world of humans, but it is the human mind that animates culture. While objects exist as a constant influence on social networks, it must be recognized that the durability of the object is due to its matter, not its essence. NOTES 1. See Wilde (2008, 3). 2. ‘To be symmetric [. . .] simply means not to impose a priori some spurious asymmetry among human intentional action and a material world of causal relations’ (Latour 2007, 76, italics in the original).

Empirical Tensions 157 3. ‘Practice necessarily requires the presence of an agent, the active participant, although references to the agent are not necessarily reference to the individual’ (Barrett 2005, 149). 4. Actor-Network-Theory explains the social in action. Society is not the backdrop to the actions of different relations. Instead, the social is made up of complex and ongoing relations playing out between different actors, human and nonhuman alike. Thus, the social is performed, and the social is change. 5. ‘Some element of reflexive decision-making is a key aspect of agentic actions’ (Gardner 2004, 6). This means that the agency bestowed on things must always be a secondary agency imposed by a reflexive and decision-making actor (i.e. human). The agency of objects works in the relation between humans and objects, and it is a passive form of agency (a kind of contradiction in terms) given to the object by the human. 6. ‘Action is not done under the full control of consciousness; action should rather be felt as a node, a knot, and a conglomerate of many surprising sets of agencies that have to be slowly disentangled’ (Latour 2007, 44). 7. ‘An intermediary [. . .] is what transports meaning or force without transformation: defining its inputs is enough to define its outputs. [. . .] Mediators transform, translate, distort, and modify the meaning or the elements they are supposed to carry’ (Latour 2007, 39, italics in the original). It is as a mediator that the object, or the human, creates the social. 8. In his article ‘What Do Objects Want?’ (2005), Chris Gosden advocates an object-centred approach to agency, in order to investigate how things create people. Taking it even further, he claims that ‘we should take the desires of objects seriously’ (Gosden 2005, 197), evidently by making them self-sufficient in their relations with humans: ‘The ability of different materials, shapes and finishes to impose themselves on people shows the true promiscuity of pottery which acted as a nexus for influences coming from many parts of the object world’ (Gosden 2005, 206–7). In the end, he concludes that in order to reach an understanding, ‘the crucial context for an object is other objects of the same style’ (Gosden 2005, 197). Thus, he points towards the importance of getting to know the things by investigating their ‘genealogy’, which is created on ‘the principle of least difference whereby each new form is created by steps involving the smallest modification possible from previous exemplars but consistent with the establishment of difference between them’ (Gosden 2005, 203). Apart from rhetorically making things autonomous from humans, it is hard to detect any actual difference between this and the typologies of Montelius and his fellow nineteenth-century archaeologists in terms of this approach. Is the dressing of old methods in new clothes really to be perceived as a theoretical land winning?

REFERENCES Ambrosiani, B. 1997. “Birka–stad i nätverk.” In Amico Amici, edited by J. Ellerström. Lund: Signum. ———. 2008. “Birka.” In The Viking World, edited by S. Brink and N. Price, 94–100. London: Routledge. Barrett, J. C. 2005 [2001]. “Agency, the Duality of Structure, and the Problem of the Archaeological Record.” In Archaeological Theory Today, edited by I. Hodder, 146–66. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bintliff, J., and M. Pearce, eds. 2011. The Death of Archaeological Theory? Oxford: Oxbow Books. Buchli, V., ed. 2002. The Material Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg.

158 Charlotta Hillerdal Domańska, E. 2006a. “The Material Presence of the Past.” History and Theory 45 (3): 337–48. ———. 2006b. “The Return to Things.” Archaeologia Polona 44: 171–85. Fabian, J. 2002 [1983]. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York: Columbia University Press Fritz, J. M., and F. T. Plog. 1970. “The Nature of Archaeological Explanation.” American Antiquity 35 (4). Gardner, A. 2004. “Introduction: Social Agency, Power, and Being Human.” In Agency Uncovered: Archaeological Perspectives on Social Agency Power and Being Human, edited by A. Gardner, 1–15. London: UCL Press. Gosden, C. 2005. “What Do Objects Want?” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 12 (3): 193–211. Gräslund, B. 2009 [1987]. The Birth of Prehistoric Chronology: Dating Methods and Dating Systems in Nineteenth-Century Scandinavian Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Graves-Brown, P. 2011. “Touching from a Distance: Alienation, Abjection, Estrangement and Archaeology.” Norwegian Archaeological Review 44 (22): 131–44. Hodder, I. 1993. “The Narrative and Rhetoric of Material Culture Sequences.” World Archaeology 25 (2): 268–82. ———. 2012 Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Holtorf, C. 2002. “Notes on the Life History of a Pot Sherd.” Journal of Material Culture 7 (1): 49–71. Hurcombe, L. 2010. “A Sense of Materials and Sensory Perception in Concepts of Materiality.” World Archaeology 39 (4): 532–45. Ingold, T. 2007. “Materials against Materiality.” Archaeological Dialogues 14 (1): 1–16. ———. 2010. “Bringing Things to Life: Creative Entanglements in a World of Materials.” In ESRC National Centre for Research Methods NCRM Working Paper Series, Working Paper #15. Jensen, B. 2010. Viking Age Amulets in Scandinavia and Western Europe. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports. Johnson, M. H. 2000. “Conceptions of Agency in Archaeological Interpretation.” In Interpretative Archaeology: A Reader, edited by J. Thomas, 211–27. London: Leicester University Press. ———. 2010. Archaeological Theory: An Introduction, 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. ———. 2011. “On the Nature of Empiricism in Archaeology.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, no. 17: 746–87. Karlström, A. 2009. Preserving Impermanence: The Creation of Heritage in Vientiane, Laos. Uppsala: Department of Archaeology and Ancient History. Knappett, C. 2005. Thinking Through Material Culture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Latour, B. 2000. “The Berlin Key or How to Do Words with Things.” In Matter, Materiality and Modern Culture, edited by P. M. Graves-Brown, 10–21. London: Routledge. ———. 2004. “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry 30: 225–58. ———. 2007 [2005]. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-NetworkTheory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lucas, G. 2005. The Archaeology of Time. London: Routledge. ———. 2012. Understanding the Archaeological Record. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Empirical Tensions 159 Meskell, L., 2005. (Ed.) Archaeologies of Materiality. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Miller, D., ed. 2005. Materiality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Olivier, L. 2004. “The Past of the Present: Archaeological Memory and Time.” Archaeological Dialogues 10 (2): 204–13. Olsen, B. 2003. “Material Culture after Text: Re-membering Things.” Norwegian Archaeological Review 36 (2): 87–104. ———. 2007. “Keeping Things at Arm’s Length: A Genealogy of Asymmetry.” World Archaeology 39 (4): 579–88. Olsen, B., M. Shanks, T. Webmoor, and C. Witmore. 2012. Archaeology: The Discipline of Things. Berkley: University of California Press. Shanks, M. 2007. “Symmetrical Archaeology.” World Archaeology 39 (4): 589–96. Spivak, G. C. 1988. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by C. Nelson and L. Grossberg, 271–313. Houndsmills: Macmillian Education. Thomas, J. 1996. Time, Culture and Identity: An Interpretive Archaeology. London: Routledge. Tilley, C. 2006. “Objectification.” In Handbook of Material Culture, edited by C. Tilley, W. Keane, S. Küchler, M. Rowlands, and P. Spyer, 60–73. London: Sage Publications. Tilley, C., W. Keane, S. Küchler, M. Rowlands, and P. Spyer, eds. 2006. Handbook of Material Culture. London: Sage Publications. Webmoor, T. 2007. “What about ‘One More Turn after the Social’ in Archaeological Reasoning? Taking Things Seriously.” World Archaeology 39 (4): 563–78. Webmoor, T., and C. Witmore. 2008. “Things Are Us! A Commentary on Human/ Things Relations under the Banner of ‘Social’ Archaeology.” Norwegian Archaeological Review 41 (1): 53–70. Wilde, O. 2008 [1891]. The Picture of Dorian Gray. London: Penguin. Witmore, C. L. 2007. “Symmetrical Archaeology: Excerpts of Manifesto.” World Archaeology 39 (4): 546–62. Wobst, M. 2000. “Agency in (Spite of) Material Culture.” In Agency in Archaeology, edited by M. Cobres and J. E. Robb, 40–50. London: Routledge. Woodward, I. 2007. Understanding Material Culture. London: SAGE.

160 Julian Thomas

Comment Julian Thomas

Charlotta Hillerdal’s contribution provides a cogent and timely account of some of the tensions that are presently at work in the discipline of archaeology. In recent years, a series of related philosophical positions have started to emerge, involving a rejection of the excesses of constructivism, a return to the empirical, the development of new materialisms and object-oriented thinking, and the introduction of a ‘flat ontology’. That these approaches have yet to cohere into a recognisable programme is hinted at by Graham Harman’s characterisation of them as ‘School X’ (2009, 6), although the label of ‘sceptical realism’ is sometimes employed. This term implies that rather than obsessing about how any knowledge of the phenomenal world might be possible for a human being, we should concern ourselves with speculating about what that world is actually like. One of the most important common strands that these tendencies share is the critique of anthropocentrism—that is, the belief that humanity is afforded a privileged position in the universe by virtue of an ability to represent and manipulate reality in consciousness, and that as a consequence the world is at the disposal of humankind, to master, control, and consume as they see fit (Dastur 2000, 124). This position is not new, for Martin Heidegger long ago identified an ‘age of the world picture’, in which humanity had replaced the deity at the centre of the cosmos, becoming a transcendental subject before whom other entities were laid out for mental appropriation, while material things were reduced to a stockpile of inert resources (Heidegger 1977). However, in much of sceptical realism the rejection of anthropocentrism is allied to Bruno Latour’s vision of a world composed of networks made up of both human and nonhuman actants. So rather than free-standing entities who act upon otherwise mute and static matter from a position of externality, human beings are presented as immersed in a field of relations between actors of different sorts, each with their own competencies and capabilities (Domańska 2006b, 173). While past attempts to take material things seriously within the social sciences have relied on the notion that they have had socially constructed meanings vested in them by human beings, the new materialisms promise a return to things as such, as actors in their own right rather than as vehicles of human intention. Symmetrical archaeology is to a greater or lesser extent inspired by speculative realism and object-oriented philosophy (Olsen et al. 2012), and as such it seeks to reform the discipline on non-anthropocentric and posthuman lines. As Hillerdal implies, this is broadly a positive development, but it brings with it some difficulties that are yet to be fully resolved. In particular, she points out that although symmetrical archaeology proposes

Empirical Tensions 161 to address the empirical qualities of things, rather than social meanings that lie beyond or behind the object, archaeologists are inevitably drawn to something that is absent and intangible: the past. Ancient artefacts may be engaged in a range of archaeological practices in the present, but this does not necessarily tell us anything about their role in the past. Undoubtedly, some symmetrical archaeologists would take issue with this characterisation. For them, rather than past and present being radically separate from each other, the past actually gathers in the present (Olsen 2012, 26). That is to say, we live our lives within a material world that has gradually accumulated over many generations, because material things endure over time. Past and present interpenetrate. While agreeing with this argument to some extent, I would suggest that it does not do justice to the paradoxical character of the past, at once here with us now, and at the same time absent. Equally, as Hillerdal suggests, archaeological things are distinctive by virtue of the ‘non-present presence’ of the past that adhered to them. Archaeological things are ‘uncanny’ or ‘haunted’. This is because they once formed part of a world that no longer fully exists, part of an assemblage that once included human beings who are no longer alive (Heidegger 1996, 348). These absent presences are implied by the existence of things that survive from the past. Hillerdal refers to the pastness of archaeological things as an immaterial or intangible element. I would prefer to say that ancient artefacts point beyond themselves and imply an absence. For symmetrical archaeology, this talk of absent persons is a reprehensible search for a humanity or a sociality that lies behind and was responsible for material things, and which should be rejected (Webmoor 2007, 567). I would say instead that things and people were alongside each other in the past and that only part of the relational fabric survives into the present. But it is the very incompleteness of this fabric that invites interpretation, in order to comprehend the past totality. This, however, is something that some symmetrical archaeologists reject, preferring description over interpretation (Olsen 2012, 22). Hillerdal’s argument emphasizes the alterity of the past and its potential to disrupt the consoling assumptions of the present. This was the intention behind Michel Foucault’s (1984, 81) ‘genealogical’ approach to the past, which sought to patiently trace practices and discourses back through time in search of ruptures and discontinuities that might undermine their assumed universality. Interestingly, Ewa Domańska (2006b, 180), whom Hillerdal cites, appears ambivalent about this issue, approving Foucault’s assault on traditional historical thinking but associating genealogy with the pursuit of ‘origins’. For Domańska, it is the inherent otherness of objects that is of greater importance, and she dismisses the way that archaeologists have effectively rendered them as quasi-humans through the study of ‘artefact biographies’, thereby normalising them. For Bjørnar Olsen (2012, 22), it is their remoteness from humanity that makes objects unsuitable as ‘storytellers’, or the basis around which narratives can be constructed. Thus,

162 Julian Thomas Olsen argues that archaeologists should stop trying to write history at all and that we should embrace the fragmented and ruined materials that are available to us to write something that is closer to memory, and which may not necessarily involve humanity in any central role. The difficulty that Hillerdal correctly identifies with this focus on the alterity of objects is that it potentially serves to enhance the Cartesian separation between people and things, mind and matter. Instead, we might wish to see people fully immersed in a material world and indeed able to achieve their humanness at all only through their dealings with material things (Barrett 2014, 71). Conceivably, this separation can be attributed to symmetrical archaeology’s debt to Latour (see Thomas, this volume). For while Latour emphasizes the way that things and people get mixed up through translation and mediation, they nonetheless logically precede their relationships and can withdraw from them. Unlike Deleuze, say, Latour has no place for becoming, so that each actor is fully present in the moment of its interaction (Harman 2009, 111). Rather than entering into relationships with alien objects, I would prefer to say that people always already find themselves in the midst of things. Tim Ingold (2012, 436) expresses this well when he talks of an ecology of flows of matter and movement. This ecology is historical, and rather than rejecting history and society altogether, we should seek a history that is not centred exclusively on human subjects, and seek a social archaeology of collectivities made up of people, animals, and things. It is perhaps this concern with a truly relational view of the world that sheds some light on the final issue that Hillerdal raises: that of an ethical relationship with things. It may be that in characterizing the ethical relationship with a thing as the relationship with an other, Dománska (2006a, 347) herself makes the same error as she accuses others of. She anthropomorphizes things, to make them partners in dialogue and reciprocity, and the subjects of rights. Similarly, when she says that caring for things implies a hierarchy, and an ‘infantilization’ of objects, this at once renders things as person-like and invokes a rather restricted notion of ‘care’. When Heidegger talks of caring for things, he means setting them free to be themselves. It is precisely not imposing oneself upon things and bending them to one’s will. It is this relationship with things that Heidegger (1993, 245) describes when he says that humans are not the masters of beings but the shepherds of being. This seems to me to be related to what Charlotta Hillerdal is arguing when she says that objects can be the focus of stories but that they cannot be the storyteller. Human beings give voice to the material world, and render it comprehensible, but they do so from inside the mesh of relations rather than from any position of godlike exteriority. Similarly, our ethical relationship with things is more a matter of how we comport ourselves within the world (respecting the qualities of things, not defacing and exhausting them), rather than affording them human-like rights.

Empirical Tensions 163 REFERENCES Barrett, J.C. 2014. “The Material Constitution of Humanness.” Archaeological Dialogues 21: 65–74. Dastur, F. 2000. “The Critique of Anthropologism in Heidegger’s Work.” In Appropriating Heidegger, edited by J. E. Faulconer and M. A. Wrathall, 119–36. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Domańska, E. 2006a. “The Material Presence of the Past.” History and Theory 45: 337–48. ———. 2006b. “The Return to Things.” Archaeologia Polona 44: 171–85. Foucault, M. 1984. “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.” In The Foucault Reader, edited by P. Rabinow, 76–100. Harmondsworth: Peregrine. Harman, G. 2009. Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics. Melbourne: re.press. Heidegger, M. 1977. “The Age of the World-Picture.” In The Question concerning Technology and Other Essays, 115–54. New York: Harper and Row. ———. 1993. “Letter on Humanism.” In Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, 2nd ed., edited by D. F. Krell, 213–65. London: Routledge. ———. 1996 Being and Time. Translated by J. Stambaugh. New York: State University of New York. Ingold, T. 2012. “Toward an Ecology of Materials.” Annual Reviews of Anthropology 41: 427–42. Olsen, B. 2012. “After Interpretation: Remembering Archaeology.” Current Swedish Archaeology 20: 11–34. Olsen, B., M. Shanks, T. Webmoor, and C. Witmore. 2012. Archaeology: The Discipline of Things. Berkeley: University of California. Webmoor, T. 2007. “What about ‘One More Turn after the Social’ in Archaeological Reasoning? Taking Things Seriously.” World Archaeology 39: 563–78.

164 Michael Fotiadis

Comment Michael Fotiadis

When a new, provocative theory generated in a distant field is adopted by archaeologists, it is often reworked by the latter with so much fervour that it ends up in excesses. Such is the case with Actor-Network-Theory, which originated in the field of science studies and has won a (still small) number of archaeologists since the end of the 1990s. Hillerdal takes a step back from the archaeologists’ versions of Actor-Network-Theory and directs her critical pen onto aspects of those versions that she regards untenable (but she also finds opportunities to criticize the naïve empiricism that informs typological orderings of archaeology’s artefacts). I will focus here on a few highlights. In the section entitled ‘Neo-empirical Time’, Hillerdal discusses recent proposals for a post-humanist archaeology—proposals, that is, which, inspired primarily by the work of Bruno Latour, contend that the true agents of history are not humans (people like you and me and our social institutions) but collectives comprised of humans and nonhumans, the latter being things of all sorts, artefacts plus nature’s elements and their properties. Post-processual archaeology, the same proposals contend, placed an undue emphasis on the social, whereby agency became the prerogative exclusively of humans, while things (artefacts, landscapes) were imbued with meaning and were reduced to signs. It is time, so those proposals urge, to redistribute agency in a symmetrical fashion and acknowledge in practice the agency of things. Hillerdal puzzles at some length about the fundamental question, In what sense can ‘things’—inanimate, inert matter—be counted as agents? In our postEnlightenment, secular world, things are distinguished from humans precisely by their lack of intentionality; if so, how can they count as history’s actors?1 Hillerdal’s most cogent answer to this is a brief quotation from Tim Ingold (‘things are active not because they are imbued with agency but because of the ways in which they are caught up in these currents of the lifeworld’; Ingold 2007, 1). I wish to expand a little on, and reinforce, that answer by pointing out that, for post-humanist thought, agency is not so much associated with intentionality as it is with effect: ‘Things’ (i.e. nonhumans) make you do things—at least, they make you do things in ways that you would not otherwise consider implementing. But that is perhaps a trivial point. More crucial, and closer to Ingold’s (and Latour’s and, by now, several others’) thought, things enter your intentions and reshape them: They are not, that is, mere intermediaries (instruments at your disposal, like a bone needle in your hand) but mediators—they modify your plans of action. No chance here to mistake post-humanist proposals with a Tylorean type of animism. Who can forget, for example, the ‘sleeping policeman’ that Latour celebrated in Pandora’s Hope (1999), or the treatment, in the same book, of the issue ‘guns kill people’? ‘The chimp plus the sharp stick reach (not reaches) the banana’ (Latour 1999, 182).

Empirical Tensions 165 Let, then, be ‘actants’ whole armies of them, or rather collectives (gatherings, societies) of human and nonhuman agencies. Furthermore, note that those collectives have a temporality—in fact, a history: They undergo transformations through time as their members swap positions or as they age and are replaced by new members (which, clearly, applies not just to humans but also to things, such as artefacts). It seems to me, therefore, that contrary to Hillerdal’s assertion, the concept of collectives can very well accommodate the relationship of human and nonhuman collectives to history. That said, I think Hillerdal is right to remind us of key tenets of our (recent) post-processual past, not least as a prophylaxis against excesses justified in the name of a ‘symmetrical’ archaeology. Things (nonhumans), no matter what their form, scale, or chemical composition, can acquire meaning only because humans happen to notice them—and, further, that such meaning enters the causal chains of history and is, therefore, indispensable for our efforts to understand specific aspects of the past. Furthermore, Hillerdal critically observes that the concept of thing-agency put forth by the post-humanist program, whatever its merits, still cannot bridge the distance between past and present. In fact, she argues that the emphasis on bridging that distance may be misguided. One of her points is that the modern practices of archaeology as well as history are predicated on the premise of a radical difference of the past from the present: the alterity of the past (but see Witmore, this volume). And so, yes, archaeology’s artefacts in the present, whether preserved and curated in the museum or captured during fieldwork, may productively be treated as members of multifarious collectives (collectives that include experts of every sort, instruments, institutions, the public, etc.), but what does this really tell us about those artefacts in their ancient contexts? Archaeology is about those ancient contexts, after all; it is not, at least not primarily, history-cum-critique of modernity and its scientific practices. ‘It deals with materiality of the vanished’, but can that materiality really be experienced in the present? Hillerdal here appears to think that the reconstruction of the ancient collectives as a general goal of archaeology is simply impracticable. I only wish to add that collectives, and thing-agency, may still be good to think with reference to past contexts, and even good to heuristically deploy. NOTE 1. We do, however, routinely speak of natural agencies (wind, water, sunlight, glaciers, etc.), and we find nothing strange about such a way of speaking: Does that mean that wind and the like have intentions?

REFERENCES Ingold, T. 2007. “Materials against Materiality.” Archaeological Dialogues 13: 1–16. Latour, B. 1999. Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

7

Neo-empirical Mixtures Johannes Siapkas

INTRODUCTION My argument is simple and straightforward: In this chapter, I argue that we are witnessing a conceptual turn in the humanities. The emerging perspective is characterized by an emphasis on the pragmatic aspects of scholarship and what we do. The empirical evidence (i.e. the archaeological artefacts) and our treatment of this evidence is redefined as the prime concern of epistemological discourses. Neo-empiricism is therefore a suitable denomination for this kind of scholarship. This name is paralleled by other proposed denominations: for instance, non-modernism (Latour 2004, 227), relational ontology (Witmore 2007), and speculative realism (Bryant, Srnicek, and Harman 2011). Neo-empiricism builds on and develops certain aspects of the cultural turn. The cultural turn denotes a wide-ranging refiguring of the humanities, which began in the 1980s. This redefinition of the humanities affected most aspects of scholarship: Scholars introduced and explored topics such as power structures, discourses, and worldviews which had been neglected in previous scholarship. The epistemological foundations were redefined, and new methodological tools were adopted as a result of the cultural turn (see Clifford 1988; Hunt 1989; Bonnell, Hunt, and Biernacki 1999; Greenblatt 2011). However, neo-empiricism differs in fundamental ways from the normative, traditional empiricism that has served as an epistemological foundation in archaeology during most of modernity. Neo-empiricism does not signal a theoretical backlash—it is not a return to traditional empiricism. In contrast, neo-empiricism comes with epistemological sophistication, awareness, and self-consciousness. This chapter aims to elaborate on the convergences and differences between the cultural turn and neo-empiricism. DIVIDES AND TURNS A widespread conceptualization of the humanities is based on Thomas Kuhn’s model. According to Kuhn (1996), science and scholars can both be neatly packaged in paradigms which replace each other in a chronological

Neo-empirical Mixtures 167 order. Following Kuhn, twentieth-century archaeology consists of a culturehistorical paradigm which was replaced in the 1960s by new archaeology or processual archaeology, which in turn gave way to post-processual archaeology in the 1980s (see Trigger 1996). However, it has been clear for quite a while now that scholarship in the humanities is not developing in this clear-cut way (e.g. Lakatos and Musgrave 1970; Kobiałka 2013; Bernbeck 2013). Not only are we able to identify a mixture of conceptual threads, which we can attribute to different ‘paradigms’, in the work of one individual scholar—we can also identify the simultaneous flourishing of various ‘paradigms’ and schools of thought in our institutional surroundings. Furthermore, schools of thought often thrive on influences from each other, and, for better or worse, we often build on the results of earlier theoretical perspectives. The paradigmatic divides that are postulated in Kuhn’s modernistic schemes of scholarship sometimes confuse more than they clarify (see also Wallace 2011; Witmore 2007; González-Ruibal 2013a). Gilles Deleuze, amongst others, has argued that if we want to understand an author, we need to understand the problem to which the author is responding (Bell and Colebrook 2009, 8). In this sense, I think that the shortcomings of essentialism have been the main issue to which the theoretical debates in the humanities have responded since the introduction of the cultural turn in the 1980s. The epistemological debates and turns have aimed to find ways of representing reality without reifying assumptions about immutable innate meanings, clear-cut categorizations, and unbridgeable boundaries between peoples, for instance. The fissure between representing reality and reality emerged as a foundational issue within the cultural turn. Avoiding essentialism is also a primary concern in neo-empiricism. In this sense, there is a clear epistemological convergence between the cultural turn and neo-empiricism. AN OUTLINE OF NEO-EMPIRICISM With ‘neo-empiricism’, I denote scholarship produced by a variety of scholars, including, for instance, Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell (e.g. 2000), Cyprian Broodbank (2000, 2013), Irad Malkin (2003, 2011; see also Malkin, Constantakopoulou, and Panagopoulou 2007), Kostas Vlassopoulos (2007), Denise Demetriou (2012), Carl Knappett (2005, 2011), Ian Hodder (2012), and Alfredo González-Ruibal (2013b). I view symmetrical archaeology as a branch of neo-empiricism (Shanks 2007; Webmoor 2007; Witmore 2007; Olsen 2007). Common denominators for the mentioned scholars are, for instance, (1) the employment of the concept of network; (2) the use of the concept actor; (3) the conceptualization of reality as segmented; (4) the introduction of new levels of interaction; (5) the emphasis on the agency of things; and (6) the influences of Actor-Network-Theory (Latour 2005) and social network analysis (see Watts 1999, 2003).

168 Johannes Siapkas Neo-empiricism is not a coherent ‘paradigm’—rather, it denotes a group of scholars who emphasize these tenets and are influenced by the above features. There are conceptual similarities and differences between these scholars. One fundamental dividing-line can be noted between scholars who use network theories in an abstract, qualitative sense and between scholars who conceptualize networks in more concrete, quantitative ways. Abstract network models are influenced by Actor-Network-Theory, and concrete network models by social network analysis. Concrete network models conceptualize segments of reality metaphorically as networks. Parts of the world function as networks, and information is channelled along certain routes and redirected at nodes in the network (see Knappett 2011; Malkin 2011). The primary aim of this chapter is to explicate the relation between neoempiricism and the cultural turn. I will therefore pay more attention to the abstract branch of neo-empiricism since it exhibits a more complex relation to the cultural turn. Crucially, like the cultural turn, the abstract branch of neo-empiricism is also founded on qualitative approaches. THE CULTURAL TURN AND NEO-EMPIRICISM

Cultural Turn Basics In the cultural turn, culture and the past were conceptualized in ways that differed from normative conceptualizations. Culture was redefined as dynamic; culture and the elements that constitute it—ranging from, for instance, stone tools, ceramics, and architectural remains, to literary texts—are viewed as more or less explicit articulations of identities, intentions, and agencies, and they contribute to shaping reality rather than merely reflecting it. Culture, which is used in an all-embracing anthropological sense, is contested; it is a domain which is characterized by ongoing negotiations between agents. The conceptual primacy given to culture also meant that domains which had not previously been viewed as cultural—for instance, nature and environment— were interpreted as cultural constructs; notions and perceptions about nature were more interesting than nature as such in itself. Definitions and categorizations, which constitute the analytical backbone of normative empiricism and essentialism, were viewed as problematic analytical strategies. The aims towards universally applicable conclusions that characterized the social turn were abandoned, and attention was directed towards specific contextual aspects of culture. Beginning in the early 1970s, scholars like Clifford Geertz (1973), Hayden White (1973), Michel Foucault (1982), and Roland Barthes (1986) began to explore how scholarship contributes to construct a conceptualization of the world. The logics of narrativity, discourses, and episteme were scrutinized. In these discourses of critique and relativism, attention was directed towards the scholarly practices and the entanglement of scholarship with modernity. Scholarship is permeated by, for instance, nationalism, racism,

Neo-empirical Mixtures 169 and colonialism, and this has contributed to sustain these ideologies through the study of certain aspects and through the omission of other areas, of reality. Scholarship is situated in specific contexts. Ideological and discursive distortions also constrain scholarly practices, according to, for instance, the scholars mentioned above. This is far from the claims of objectivity and universality that we find in normative scholarship. From a cultural turn perspective, the pigeonholing of essentialism contributed to enforce the conceptual divide between reality and representations of reality. In the cultural turn, mediation emerged as an important problem.

Constructive Criticism Accordingly, epistemological criticism was a major tenet in the cultural turn. This should, however, be distinguished from the criticism which originates in Ranke’s source-criticism. In a sense, all scholarship is founded on criticism, but, with the cultural turn, criticism reached previously unprecedented levels. Criticism was not only a heuristic tool which served the purposes of authenticating evidence and supporting the conclusions of analytical models—in the cultural turn, criticism addressed the epistemological foundations of scholarship. It was through criticism that the constructivist and relativist aspects of scholarship were highlighted. In contrast, neo-empiricism eschews criticism and relativism. Criticizing earlier scholarship for its shortcomings is not an end. Nevertheless, the shortcomings of normative scholarship are presented as a backdrop and are used to legitimize the development of neoempirical concepts and concerns (Latour 2004, 2005, 1–17; Witmore 2007, 547; González-Ruibal 2013a, 3). Actor-Network-Theory takes its cue from a profound criticism of normative scholarship. Features previously taken for granted (features which were considered stable) are now conceptualized as dynamic features that are re-negotiated; they are de-stabilized. In Latour’s sociology, the matter of facts, the social, is not a domain which explains things; it is not an answer but rather a problem. Latour’s matters of concern resemble the emphasis on negotiations and re-investment of meaning in the cultural turn. The matters of concern which Latour places at the centre of his new sociology turn normative sociology on its head: ‘Positivism . . . is wrong politically. It has reduced matters of concern into matters of fact too fast, without due process. It has confused the two tasks of realism: multiplicity and unification’ (Latour 2005, 256). The matters of concern are, like the notion of negotiation in the cultural turn, propelled by the shortcomings of the discursive strategies that were used to define clear-cut analytical entities and order the evidence in accordance with these taxonomies which permeated normative empiricism. However, in the cultural turn, criticism, in one way or another, did serve as an end in itself; it was not always meant to serve as a means for reconstruction. With the matters of concern, neo-empiricism aims to construct new understandings. In this respect, neo-empiricism reverts to one of the postmodern

170 Johannes Siapkas features of the cultural turn since it reiterates the modernist reaction against the cultural turn that scholarship should not be restricted to deconstructive criticism. Still, with the matters of concern, neo-empiricism brings to the fore the constructive nature of scholarship and questions the claimed objectivity of scholarship in ways similar to the criticism we find in the cultural turn. One indication of this similarity is Latour’s emphasis on the idea that we cannot be relative enough (2005, 122). That is, we have to acknowledge, to a higher degree than usual, that science rests on constructivist foundations. The matters of concern contribute to shed light on the constructivist facets of scholarship—in cultural-turn parlance, the matters of concern articulate criticism.

Agent and Actor I A major difference between the cultural turn and neo-empiricism is the conceptualization of the human agent. A consequence of the dynamic view of culture was the realization that meaning is negotiated and mutable. Things, structures, and humans do not have one innate meaning. In contrast, meaning is the product of, and valid in, specific cultural settings; meaning is produced by the beholders. The emphasis on the fluid nature of structures meant also that human agents were perceived as mutable. In the cultural turn this resulted in an intense preoccupation with the practices of the individual human agents. There are a couple of facets to this interest. The human agent was brought to the fore when the focus shifted to a bottom-up perspective, which inverts and stands in contrast to the traditional top-down perspective—for instance, in the micro-history of Carlo Ginzburg (e.g. 1980, 1993) and the histories of mentalities of Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie (1981), Robert Darnton (1984), and others. In these elaborations the human agent is not theorized. The novelty resides in the shift of focus and the elevation of the mundane individual agent to the analytical centre. Another group of scholars in the cultural turn, however, theorized how agents construct their worldview and how identities are shaped (e.g. Chartier 1997; de Certeau 1984). The practice theories of Pierre Bourdieu (1977) and Anthony Giddens (1984) have been adopted widely in archaeology to this end (see Dobres and Robb 2000). In contrast, the actor, who has replaced the agent as a heuristic catchword in neo-empiricism, remains, in general, under-theorized. As a concept, the actor signals a shift of attention from the internal to the external qualities of the agent. In the end, an actor is something, or somebody, who ‘make[s] others do things’ (Latour 2005, 107, italics in original).

Actions and Practices A conceptual similarity between the cultural turn and neo-empiricism is the analytical focus on actions or practices. In the cultural turn, everyday

Neo-empirical Mixtures 171 practices were conceptualized as the authentic articulations of agency, identity, and culture. Several influential research groups devoted their scholarly attention to everyday practices (see Eley 1989; Moran 2004). This was mirrored in archaeology: Archaeological finds were interpreted as things which reflected the practices of agents. In other words, producing and constructing things did not only result in material products, but these practices contributed to shape the identity of the agents (see Dobres and Robb 2000). In the cultural turn, practices have repercussions for both the external reality and the agent that performs them. Neo-empiricism builds on the cultural turn in this respect. The actions of the actors, and the effects these have on other actors, are placed at the centre of the analytical attention in neo-empiricism. The heuristic focus on what the actors do, as opposed to what they think or say that they do, also includes the scholarly community. The constructivist discourse is visible in neo-empiricism, particularly in the emphasis on what scientists actually do when they do science (see Latour 2005, 87–120; Witmore 2007, 549–51). In other words, the analytical focus has shifted from elaborations that explicate discursive foundations to explications of scientific practices. The emphasis on practices and actions is related to the conceptualization of culture as dynamic and negotiable. An epistemological consequence of the analytical primacy of the actions is that fixed and immutable categories are destabilized and questioned. Categorization is a prerequisite for the essentialism that we find in normative empiricism. The emphasis on actions can, in other words, be viewed as an articulation of the overall concern with essentialism. There are, however, also differences between the emphasis on practices in the cultural turn and the emphasis on actions in neo-empiricism. Practices are conceptualized as embodied by agents, whereas actions are not. That is, by using actions, neo-empiricism restricts attention to the external physical actions and ignores questions such as whether actions contribute to shape the actors and how they do it. The analytical interest in neo-empiricism is confined to the actions, and the second dimension of practices—namely, their constitution of the identity of the agents—is not interesting. Some issues cannot be solved; these should be ignored: ‘There are divisions one should never try to bypass, to go beyond, to try to overcome dialectically. They should rather be ignored and left to their own devices, like a once formidable castle now in ruins’ (Latour 2005, 76). There is a conceptual hastiness, a restlessness, in neo-empiricism. Neoempiricists are not interested in the philosophical pondering of what it means to be a human agent or a thing, or indeed what the past is. A foundation is the oxymoronic, but brilliant, emphasis that archaeology is what we archaeologists do. Elaborations and explorations of the importance of Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and others are not in vogue. It is more important to follow actions, the influence of actions on other actors, and the interaction between actors.

172 Johannes Siapkas

In-Betweenness The notion of in-betweenness was used as a way to channel the scepticism against essentialism that prevailed in the cultural turn. With in-betweenness, a spectrum is postulated that also includes analytically constructed extremes. Whatever is investigated is not defined as a clear-cut entity but viewed as something which floats in the spectrum in-between the heuristic extremes. In this way, the reification of categorizations in normative discourses is eschewed. In-betweenness aims to present reality as complex and evasive; there is more to reality than the analytical categories permit (see Geldof 1999; Clifford 1988, 1997). Concepts articulating similar concerns were developed in different branches of the cultural turn. Hybridity in postcolonial studies (e.g. Bhabha 1994; Rowlands 1998; van Dommelen 1997) and queer in gender studies (e.g. Butler 2006; see Breen and Blumenfeld 2005) also exhibit an emphasis on in-betweenness. In-betweenness is echoed in the neo-empirical concept of mixtures (e.g. Olsen 2010, 2, 9). Essentialism, categorizations, reifications, and fixed immutable entities are notions which have effects that neo-empiricists aim to avoid. Bifurcations and dualistic divides are oversimplified representations of reality according to neo-empiricism (Witmore 2007, 559; GonzálezRuibal 2013a). Furthermore, analytical categories are viewed not as discrete, clear-cut, and bounded entities but as consisting of, and being influenced by, a multiplicity of features and aspects. The concept mixture also signals that there is more to reality than dualistic pairs: Reality resides in-between. In other words, the cultural turn and neo-empiricism converge in the sense that they both emphasize what lies in-between categories. There is, however, a profound divide between traditional normative empiricism and neoempiricism. It is the scepticism about fixed entities that Latour articulates when he says ‘we have never been modern’ (Latour 1993). This expression signals that modernity in itself has not occurred since modern representations of reality have failed. Modernity has never existed as an unmixed, discrete, bounded entity that has replaced the preceding historical periods in an absolute way. Whatever characteristics we attribute to modernity, reality is more mixed than modern representations permit.

Agents and Actors Let me return to the conceptualization of the human agent. As previously mentioned, in the cultural turn the workings of the human agents were given a lot of consideration. In contrast, in neo-empiricism, various concerns contribute to the negligence of this issue. The dualistic oversimplifications between the subject and the object, the inside and the outside, the mind and the body, which have been essential to modernistic scholarship, collapse in neo-empiricism. The analytical interest has shifted away from this distinction. In other words, to continue to explore how agents appropriate

Neo-empirical Mixtures 173 ideas in their surroundings, and how they then articulate them, is to enforce modernistic dualism. In contrast to the cultural turn, neo-empiricism eschews the inside of the agent—the subject—and emphasizes the exterior actions with the notion of the actor. However, in the abstract tenet of neo-empiricism, this is complicated. According to philosophy that forms the basis of neo-empiricism, the inside is the outside and vice versa; that is, the mind is not separable from the body. It does not make sense to uphold the Cartesian dualism since it is through the external sensory experience that we exist and act. The fold is used as a metaphor to capture this (see Hodges 2008); we can imagine the exterior as a surface that folds and becomes/is the interior. The notion of the fold is closely associated with the notion of the machine (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 3–35). If essentialism is problematic, it is pointless to conceptualize a human agent as an isolated, fixed entity. The actor is always acting with, or in relation to, something else. An actor is always caught in a relational constellation—this is called a ‘machine’. In this context, the machine does not denote a mechanical device, but it is a combination of actors, humans– humans, humans–objects, and objects–objects, which merge for a moment and ‘do’ things as one entity. An example is the machine ‘archaeologistwith-a-pick’, which acts differently—that is, makes other actors do things differently—than the machine ‘archaeologist-without-a-pick’ (cf. Witmore 2007, 552–53). That is, an archaeologist with a pick has a very different impact on his or her surroundings, and produces very different results, compared to an archaeologist equipped with something else (a pen, for example). A consequence of the notion of the machine is that the analytical emphasis is shifted to the in-betweenness, to the relationship between the entities which come together as a machine. The machine questions the Cartesian dualism, since it moves away from viewing the human agent as one dualistic mind– body entity and conceptualizes the human agent as an actor in relational constellations with other entities.

Actor-Network-Theory and Machines With the machine, neo-empiricists pay attention to previously neglected levels of reality. They highlight levels below or above the agents. The analytical core has shifted from the entities as such to the relations between the entities/ actors. It is in this respect that the analytical concept network is important. As a heuristic notion, network is used in various ways. In the abstract sense, which is influenced by Latour’s Actor-Network-Theory, network denotes a flow of actions that makes other actors do things in new ways: ‘Action should rather be felt as a node’ (Latour 2005, 44). It does not denote a thing—a physical network—with a multitude of interconnected points (Latour 2005, 129). In this respect, there is a marked difference between concrete and abstract network theories (see Knappett 2011, 53). The conceptual network is equivalent to the concept of the rhizome developed by

174 Johannes Siapkas Deleuze (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 3–35). A rhizome grows horizontally, just below the surface, and does not have any vertical roots. In fact, one of the early names for Actor-Network-Theory was actant-rhyzome-ontology (Latour 2005, 9). These metaphors also articulate a criticism of normative scholarship. The rhizome and the abstract network in Actor-NetworkTheory pay attention to symmetric power relations, and as such they contrast with the tree, as a conceptual metaphor, and with the emphasis on asymmetrical power relations. A rhizome/network is a heuristic concept that aims to capture the complexity of horizontal interactions between actors. The actions of the actors gain meaning within the context of a rhizome/ network. Reality in turn consists of a multitude of overlapping rhizome/ networks (Deleuze and Guattari 1987; see also Bell and Colebrook 2009).

Power The machine highlights a profound difference between the cultural turn and neo-empiricism. Another difference between the cultural turn and neoempiricism is the amount of analytical value that is ascribed to the notion of power. The dimension of power permeated the concerns during the cultural turn (see Dirks, Eley, and Ortner 1994). In contrast, power is avoided in neoempiricism. In the eyes of the neo-empiricist, power has received too much attention and is regarded as a concept that confuses more than it explains. Therefore, neo-empiricism avoids asymmetric vertical power-relations and opts for symmetric, horizontal relations that are conceptualized as networks (Latour 2005, 260–61).

Materiality—not Animism In neo-empiricism, renewed attention is paid to the things or the physical material world around us. In short, neo-empiricism is nourished by the assumption that we—in modernist, normative science—have yet to appreciate fully the impact that the material world has on our lives. Various notions about materiality have played important roles in archaeology, but the neoempirical emphasis on the impact of the material world is a more widespread phenomenon and a common denominator for neo-empiricists across disciplinary boundaries. The neo-empirical elevation of the material world undermines the Cartesian polarity which has characterized modernity. However, although the importance of things and the mutual dependency between things and humans is emphasized, neo-empiricism does not generally advocate that things are equal to humans: ‘To be symmetric, for us, simply means not to impose a priori some spurious asymmetry among human intentional action and a material world of causal relations’ (Latour 2005, 76). The symmetric relation in the machine between things and humans does not mean that things are invested with an independent soul: ‘Objects are never

Neo-empirical Mixtures 175 assembled together to form some other realm anyhow’ (Latour 2005, 85). Things may influence each other, they may have agency, but they do not act independently or act on their own initiative. In other words, the notion of symmetrical expresses an ideal, and we should strive to explicate these aspects, more than we have done previously, rather than a notion which reflects how power relations actually are in this world (although see Hillerdal in this volume).

Modernity The cultural turn was, in some respects, a reaction against the agenda of normative modern scholarship. It was propelled by the intrinsic shortcomings of essentialism and the discursive strategies associated with it, such as the primacy of categorization, the conceptualization of categories as monolithic, and the conceptualization of boundaries as fixed and absolute. The turn away from modern discourses was articulated in critical scholarship which scrutinized the foundations of modern scholarship, but it was also articulated through the introduction of new heuristic tools. These analytical concepts emphasized the mutable and fluid facets of culture. A common denominator of the cultural turn and neo-empiricism is the questioning of overarching grand narratives, such as nationalistic discourses. Analytical topics in the cultural turn—such as the everyday practices of the human agents, micro-histories, and the constructive aspects of living in a culture—also included a distrust of grand narratives with universal pretentions. Neo-empiricism builds on, and enhances, these tenets. Analytical entities which were left under-theorized in normative science are now placed at the analytical forefront. The fragmentation that was introduced in the cultural turn is taken one step further by neo-empiricism. A human agent in the cultural turn could have multiple identities and did negotiate his or her identity, but the agent was nevertheless conceptualized as one agent; in contrast, in neo-empiricism the agent constitutes a segment of a machine. Furthermore, the constellations through which the agent acts are ephemeral; we are perpetually switching between different machines. The notion that reality consists of fragments which together constitute an actant, a machine, or a network permeates neo-empiricism. Accordingly, neo-empiricism is both a development of and a response to the unfulfilled promises of the cultural turn. Although in-betweenness was emphasized in the cultural turn, in many cases this emphasis resulted in the construction of bipolar models, and thus modernist dichotomies were enforced. In other words, the first generation of the cultural turn did not manage to fulfil its postmodern promises and instead perpetuated some modernist notions. In this respect, neo-empiricism has, through the introduction of network theories and the actor, managed to develop heuristic devices that go beyond modernist dualities.

176 Johannes Siapkas QUANTITATIVE NETWORKS In addition to Latour’s Actor-Network-Theory, there are also other network theories which have been appropriated by archaeologists. Network theories have become a topical issue in the last decade, and different groups of scholars have introduced and employed similar heuristic models at approximately the same time independently of each other. In addition to the abstract network theories, there is also a concrete tenet. In the concrete sense, or in the sense of quantitative network theories, the network is used as a metaphor for reality. The world, or segments of it, functions as a set of networks; there are channels of communication and hubs where these channels meet. Information and culture are distributed along these channels and hubs. The heuristic model for the Mediterranean that Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell (2000) proposed in The Corrupting Sea consists of several partly overlapping networks. In their model the Mediterranean world comprises various micro-regions, and in their analysis the Mediterranean resembles networks, since similar micro-regions around the Mediterranean are interconnected. For instance, valleys around the Mediterranean have more in common with each other than with deserts. Furthermore, other conceptual similarities between Horden and Purcell and neo-empiricism are that they aim to ‘avoid reifying the Mediterranean’ (Purcell 2003, 10), and their analytical model of the Mediterranean portrays reality as segmented (Purcell 2003). Similarly, Cyprian Broodbank’s (2013) impressive synthesis of the prehistoric Mediterranean is also based on a dynamic environmental model which accounts for both the mutable environment and the fragmented landscape. Irad Malkin (2003, 2011) has elaborated on network theories in several publications. In A Small Greek World, he applies network theories to Archaic Greek culture and argues that the emergence of ancient Greek culture can actually be conceptualized as a large, extended network. In his model, Greek settlements are viewed as hubs, and their connectedness is viewed as channels along which information is distributed. The degree of connection between the Greek settlements varies: The landscape is folded, and actual distance should not be confused with perceived distance. For instance, Greek colonies that originated from the same mother-city communicated more often with each other than Greek colonies in the same geographic region which had different mother-cities. According to Malkin’s model, the Greek world consisted of a multitude of partly overlapping networks. Greek culture emerged in the colonies, in interaction with Others, and was transmitted back to the core areas through a ‘back-ripple’ effect. In other words, Malkin’s network model explicitly questions the essentialism that we find in normative scholarship; Greek identities were mutable and shaped by the interaction with Others. For Malkin, the network is a metaphor which mirrors ancient Greek civilization. His appropriation of network theories derives, first and foremost, from the social network analysis

Neo-empirical Mixtures 177 (Watts 1999, 2003). Malkin has also edited publications or supervised work in which younger scholars have been influenced by the tenets of network theories—for instance, Kostas Vlassopoulos (2007) and Denise Demetriou (2012). In addition to the influence of social network analysis, these scholars, like Malkin, employ concepts that originated in post-colonial studies. The notion of hybridity, or in the case of Malkin the similar concept of the middle ground, serves to illustrate the conceptual convergences between the cultural turn and neo-empiricism. Another common denominator for these scholars is the emphasis on the segmented nature of reality and the emphasis on multiculturalism in the ancient Mediterranean. Carl Knappett (2005, 2011) has elaborated on network theories in several publications. Like Malkin, he utilizes network theories in order to analyse and explain the past. He adopts a very concrete view of network theories and conceptualizes everything from ceramic analysis to the distribution of settlements in a landscape as networks. Networks function as a conceptual tool which is used to understand the archaeological record. Interestingly, Knappett (2011, 53) addresses Actor-Network-Theory but argues that concrete network theories are more relevant for archaeology. CONCLUSION In this chapter, I have focused mainly on Actor-Network-Theory since it is through this interface that the relations between the cultural turn and neoempiricism are discernible. The concrete applications of network theories serve to illustrate that the turn towards neo-empiricism is wider and cannot be reduced to isolated islands of scholars. Neo-empiricism is expanding the epistemology of the cultural turn in some profound ways; it strengthens the questioning of essentialism—which is fundamental in normative, modernist epistemology—through the introduction of epistemological notions. However, whereas criticism of modernism in the cultural turn was primarily directed at the essentializing practices, in neo-empiricism this criticism is also directed at the tendency to construct bipolar dichotomies. Conceptual dichotomies are viewed as an analytical strategy which obscures and over-simplifies reality. There are variations of network theories, but they all have a common denominator—namely, they conceptualize reality as consisting of multiple entities which are interconnected by a multitude of links. The permeable boundaries which were at the centre of attention in the cultural turn are now viewed as crossed by a multitude of networks. Neo-empiricism has, in other words, been successful at breaking down the conceptual boundaries which were common in normative epistemology. The breaking down of boundaries has also contributed to the portrayal of scholarship as something which does not consist of clear-cut entities. Epistemological positions are also viewed as networks; they influence each other and consist of facets which mingle.

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180 Johannes Siapkas ———. 2010. In Defense of Things: Archaeology and the Ontology of Objects. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press. Purcell, N. 2003. “The Boundless Sea of Unlikeness? On Defining the Mediterranean.” Mediterranean Historical Review 18 (2): 9–29. doi:10.1080/095189603 2000230462. Rowlands, M. 1998. “The Archaeology of Colonialism.” In Social Transformations in Archaeology: Global and Local Perspectives, edited by K. Kristiansen and M. Rowlands, 327–33. London: Routledge. Shanks, M. 2007. “Symmetrical Archaeology.” World Archaeology 39 (4): 589–96. doi:10.1080/00438240701679676. Trigger, B. G. 1996. A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. van Dommelen, P. 1997. “Colonial Constructs: Colonialism and Archaeology in the Mediterranean.” World Archaeology 28 (3): 305–23. Vlassopoulos, K. 2007. “Beyond and Below the Polis: Networks, Associations, and the Writing of Greek History.” Mediterranean Historical Review 22 (1): 11–22. doi:10.1080/09518960701538507. Wallace, S. 2011. Contradictions of Archaeological Theory: Engaging Critical Realism and Archaeological Theory. Abingdon: Routledge. Watts, D. J. 1999. Small Worlds: The Dynamics of Networks Between Order and Randomness. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ———. 2003. Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age. New York: Norton. Webmoor, T. 2007. “What about ‘One More Turn after the Social’ in Archaeological Reasoning? Taking Things Seriously.” World Archaeology 39 (4): 563–78. doi:10.1080/00438240701679619. White, H. 1973. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Witmore, C. L. 2007. “Symmetrical Archaeology: Excerpts of a Manifesto.” World Archaeology 39 (4): 546–64. doi:10.1080/00438240701679411.

Neo-empirical Mixtures 181

Comment Christopher Witmore

Johannes Siapkas argues that we are witnessing a new conceptual turn within the humanities, and he gives it a name: neo-empiricism. With an aim to tease out areas of convergence between neo-empiricism and the cultural turn, his essay ‘Neo-empirical Mixtures’ provides a valuable taxonomy of new trends in classical archaeology and ancient history. Finding nine points of emphasis through which to explore these convergences, Siapkas ultimately regards neo-empiricism as ‘both a development of and a response to the unfulfilled promises of the cultural turn’. I find Siapkas’s synthesis quite appealing, and, in wishing to further this endeavour, my comments are rendered more in the spirit of complement than critique. By teasing out convergences in shadowy borderlands, Siapkas’s chapter omits many lines of divergence, an oversight, which, to some degree, he acknowledges. However, the radical extent of some of these differences, I suggest, draws into question the premise that this scholarship—which includes influences as diverse as Fernand Braudel, Gilles Deleuze, Bruno Latour, and Alfred North Whitehead—exhibits sufficient similarities to warrant a joint classification. For want of white space, I will limit my comment to some considerations of what I see as glaring differences between symmetrical archaeology and what Siapkas calls neo-empiricism. Indeed, the extent of these discrepancies calls into question both the attribution of a shared genus under the banner of neo-empiricism and the threads of an intellectual genealogy rooted in the cultural turn—at least, that is, within the bounds explored by Siapkas. Networks: To begin in effect where Siapkas ends, the notion of network is far too ambiguous to constitute a common denominator for the scholarship placed under the rubric of neo-empiricism, despite qualifications as to concrete and abstract uses of the term (see Morris [2003] for further discussion of the ill-defined terminology deployed in models of Mediterranean connectedness and fluidity). For Horden and Purcell, for Malkin and Vlassopoulos, networks have more to do with the ‘dynamics of connectivity’ between different ‘nodes’ or ‘vertices’. These dynamics include the movements of wineladen amphora, poetry, mercenaries, religious cults, and so forth; that is, they are centred upon kinetic and dislocated associations between myriad locales. With this notion of network, relations are placed at the centre of the analysis (also see Knappett 2011). While it is certainly true that some forays in symmetrical archaeology over-identified things with their alliances, reality was never reduced to a ‘multitude of overlapping rhizome/networks’. For symmetrical archaeology, actual entities—what we hold to be things, and

182 Christopher Witmore the rapports between them—are the primary constituents of reality (Olsen et al. 2012). Latour’s actors certainly fall under this umbrella. A key problem with the notion of network, at least in some cases, is that it tends to neutralize existential space, as Peter Sloterdijk (2009) has suggested. Because the constitutive element is the dot, which lacks volume, the network subsumes inhabitable, three-dimensional space to two dimensions. Thus, it abstracts from precisely the kinds of experiential realities that any empiricism should take seriously. As with Actor-Network-Theory, empiricism 2.0 seems to place too much emphasis on relations at the expense of the autonomy of things (see Olsen 2010; Harman 2013, 40–59; Witmore 2014)—this criticism can be made of my contribution to this volume, which draws heavily upon the radical empiricism of William James. Agent and actor I versus agents and actors-machines: Siapkas makes some very pertinent points here about the interior and exterior of objects. However, the emphasis on two specific types of actors misses some critical differences. Mediators within symmetrical archaeology are not ‘social’ actors; that is, they do not carry action through them from one human or social group to another (Malkin, Constantakopoulou, and Panagopoulou [2007], for example, refer to ‘social’ actors, ‘social’ entities, ‘social’ relationships, ‘social’ systems). It is one thing to speak of the agency of things as a secondary consequence of more monopolistic human agencies. It is another thing entirely to eschew a rift between humans and the rest by treating everything as an actor and thereby placing all entities on the same ontological footing (Witmore 2014). This is why one should not conflate constructivism with relativism, for the thing itself is a participant in its own self-formation. Actions and practices: What actors do does not always trump what they say they do. If this were so, then privilege would be granted to praxis over theory and symmetrical archaeology would differ very little from behavioral archaeology (Skibo and Schiffer 2008, 17–36). But this is not the case. The whole notion of symmetry is deployed in an effort to resist granting privilege to one entity above the other. Ideas and actions, hermeneutic spirals and trowels, Harris matrices and total stations equivalently exist, but that does not mean that they exist equivalently (see Bogost [2012, 11] on flat ontology). Indeed, a focus on what we do was part of an effort to show how oversimplified models of archaeological practice had become. By closely following things, whether ideas or practices, one found a disjuncture where either a description lacked fidelity to those situations it claimed to describe or too much advantage was granted to only a few select participants in a given situation. Thus, our abstractions failed to capture how specific archaeological practices occurred (Witmore 2004). Here we should not forget how practical actions tend to misrepresent and oversimplify things as much as theoretical considerations (Harman 2011a; Webmoor 2012). Siapkas situates essentialism as the negative other of neo-empiricism. This is a fair reading, to be sure. However, a more appropriate petty tyrant in the case of symmetrical archaeology would be reductivism, in the sense that

Neo-empirical Mixtures 183 one thing can encapsulate or exhaust another. Things cannot be subsumed to their active qualities; truth cannot be reduced to power (here I should underline that power is not so much ignored as regarded as an outcome). A symmetrical archaeology cannot ignore the fact that things exceed their relations, for this would imply treating rapports and autonomies asymmetrically (Olsen 2012). In a minimal sense, this autonomy can be construed as a kind of ‘essence’, but this is not something to which things can be reduced. In-betweenness: Aligning the notion of mixture with in-betweenness ignores a critical difference. Mixtures, Latour’s imbroglios, are tied to the rejection of any notion of two purified domains. Since Latour eliminates both modern realms of humans and the rest, since he deals in neither culture nor nature, there can be no in-between. It is no less a misconception to insist that the thing ‘investigated is not defined as a clear-cut entity’. Latour’s philosophy accords all entities an absolute concreteness whereby they are clear-cut in every instance of their existence (see Harman 2009). With this exercise in intellectual classification, Siapkas also underplays the radical differences between the influences behind neo-empiricism. It is, in fact, quite routine to find the work of Deleuze lumped together with Latour (and Whitehead) as process philosophers. However, I agree with Graham Harman (2011b) that to do so is a mistake, as they take radically different ontological positions regarding the question of change. For the former, change occurs because of a primordial flux and flow, of which actual entities are derivative. For the latter, change comes after the fact through the work of individual entities which are primary (Harman 2011b, 275). My point in briefly raising these philosophical matters is to point out that such divergent metaphysical commitments cannot sufficiently sustain any attribution of a shared genus, much less a clear-cut intellectual genealogy rooted in the cultural turn. Still, one cannot equate Siapkas’s synthesis to some network approaches, which often choose to remain under sail tracing the lines of connectivity while rarely dropping anchor to sample the local flavours at ports of call. There is a great deal of subtlety to this essay—the emphasis on eschewing criticism, the connection between matters of concern and negotiation among other things. However, a valid taxonomy requires one to map out not only the lines of convergence but also those rifts which break up the terrain and deny even the most tenacious and intrepid of travellers ease of movement; in this regard, one even wonders what a neo-empiricist take on the emergent perspective of neo-empiricism would look like. REFERENCES Bogost, I. 2012. Alien Phenomenology, or, What It’s Like to Be a Thing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Harman, G. 2009. Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics. Melbourne: re.press

184 Christopher Witmore ———. 2011a. The Quadruple Object. Winchester, UK: Zero Books. ———. 2011b. “Response to Shaviro.” In The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism, edited by L. Bryant, N. Srnicek, and G. Harman, 291–303. Melbourne: re.press. ———. 2013. Bells and Whistles: More Speculative Realism. Winchester, UK: Zero Books. Knappett, C. 2011. “Meaning in Miniature: Semiotic Networks in Material Culture.” In Excavating the Mind: Cross-Sections through Culture, Cognition and Materiality, edited by M. Jessen, N. Johannsen, and H. J. Jensen, 87–109. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. Malkin, I., C. Constantakopoulou, and K. Panagopoulou. 2007. “Preface: Networks in the Ancient Mediterranean.” Mediterranean Historical Review 22 (1): 1–9. Morris, I. 2003. “Mediterraneanization.” Mediterranean Historical Review 18 (2): 30–55. Olsen, B. 2010. In Defense of Things: Archaeology and the Ontology of Objects. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press. ———. 2012. “Symmetrical Archaeology.” In Archaeological Theory Today, edited by I. Hodder, 208–28. Cambridge: Polity. Olsen, B., M. Shanks, T. Webmoor, and C. L. Witmore. 2012. Archaeology: The Discipline of Things. Berkeley: University of California Press. Skibo, J. M., and M. B. Schiffer. 2008. People and Things: A Behavioral Approach to Material Culture. New York: Springer. Sloterdijk, P. 2009. “Spheres Theory: Talking to Myself about the Poetics of Space.” Harvard Design Magazine 30 (Spring/Summer). Webmoor, T. 2012. “Symmetry, STS, Archaeology.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Contemporary World, edited by P. Graves-Brown, R. Harrison, and A. Piccini, 105–20. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Witmore, C. 2004. “On Multiple Fields. Between the Material World and Media; Two Cases from the Peloponnesus, Greece.” Archaeological Dialogues 11 (2): 133–64. ———. 2014. “Archaeology and the New Materialisms.” Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 2 (2).

Neo-empirical Mixtures 185

Comment Charlotta Hillerdal

Johannes Siapkas suggests that the neo-empirical tendencies which we are currently witnessing in archaeological theory can be understood as part of a new conceptual turn within the humanities—a turn towards the ontological. Characterized by a focus on things, but in contrast to normative empiricism, the neo-empirical has an epistemological sophistication. However, as Siapkas reminds us, this new orientation towards fragmentation and mixtures has its roots in the cultural turn, the turn which some of the neo-empiric advocates are so keen to slander (e.g. Olsen 2012). Although I agree with most of Siapkas’s arguments, there are three related aspects that I would like to discuss further: paradigms, power and symmetry, and finally essentialism and bifurcations. PARADIGMS Historians of ideas, and not least archaeologists themselves, like to describe the development of their discipline in paradigms. As any first-year archaeology student could tell you, archaeological thought has moved from a culture historic paradigm, to a positivist paradigm, or as we archaeologists like to refer to it processual, and finally to the post-processual paradigm. From there we are not entirely sure where to go; post modern has almost become an invective, and we can no longer see the wood for all the different theoretical trees. Archaeological theoretical discourse is shattered, maybe even dead. The remedy, it is proposed, is the things themselves, and a discourse that ‘does not aim to establish itself as the latest paradigm shift, although it could make such claims’ (Witmore 2007, 547). The pragmatic approach that Siapkas sees in the neo-empiric is challenged by a paradigmatic view of science. The notion of paradigm, according to Kuhn (2012, 164–66), is not applicable to academic development in the humanities and certainly not to the very young archaeological science. When the disciplinary progress is described in paradigms, it proposes that in the scant two hundred years that archaeology has existed as an academic science, we have made time for no less than three, maybe even four, shifts in scientific thinking of the same magnitude as the heliocentric system of Copernicus, or Darwinian evolution. Such a claim is not only ridiculous but also very unhelpful. Paradigms are incompatible, incommensurable. They are the ultimate black boxes, and for a philosophy focusing on fragments and mixtures of material and conceptual threads, they are paradoxical. It

186 Charlotta Hillerdal would be a blessing if we could leave the notion of the archaeological paradigm behind once and for all, and the symmetrical approach would appear to give us the best opportunity to do so. POWER AND SYMMETRY Although, as Siapkas points out, the neo-empirical cannot be seen as a coherent paradigm, it is united by its focus on things and empirical relations, and its disinterest in hierarchical structures. When approaching things from a neo-empiric perspective, symmetry is the keyword. Instead of assuming an a priori anthropocentric and hierarchical order of humans and things, the empirical material is understood on the basis of its position in a horizontally organized network, which allows for any entity in this relational network, and its relations, to be a primary matter of concern. However, a symmetrical power relation appears to be a conundrum: How could we identify the dominant entities in an equal relationship? The answer is we cannot. Siapkas refers to the symmetrical as the expression of an ideal rather than a notion that actually reflects the reality of power relations in a socio-technical network. Social relevance is not a concern for the neo-empiric. Just as the empirical material is sufficient for archaeological interpretations, so is the archaeological sufficient for understanding reality. However, the analytical value of power might have been exaggerated within the interpretative phase, as the neo-empiric suggests, but how is this compensated for by an absolute negligence of such structures? Whilst directing the searchlight onto previously hidden or neglected empirical relations, do we not run the risk of blacking out the more obvious ones? From that point of view, the symmetrical becomes detached and objectifying; the archaeologists move away from any social and political responsibility or involvement with a claim that these aspects are not relevant to our understanding of the material and its relational link to the past. If we find our answers in things, do we really need to care about people? ESSENTIALISM AND BIFURCATIONS The neo-empirical is seen as a critique of the modern (in line with Latour 1993), characterized by the Cartesian divide between mind–body, culture– nature, and subject–object. This is not the first time that these binary oppositions have been criticized in the history of archaeological research. As Siapkas points out, post-processual tried to bridge them with a focus on ‘in betweens’ and third spaces. The ‘in between’ was also a critique of set categories and the essential. However, he continues his argument, an

Neo-empirical Mixtures 187 ‘in between’ demands its fixed points, and the concept then reinforces the essence of these fixed points. The symmetrical focus on mixtures, on the other hand, does not demand such categorizations. Where the interpretative philosophy focuses on an ongoing negotiation between agents, a conceptual primacy is given to cultures, whilst the neoempirical focuses on the external, on practice in action, thus getting rid of the subject. Agency rather than agent is the keyword. Without a subject there can be no oppositional object, no Us or Them, neither in human nor thingly terms. Whilst conceptualizing ‘the social’ as a relational network rather than a culture, we are ridding ourselves of essential thinking. I cannot help wondering, however, how much of this is also an ideal, similar to the horizontal equilibrium of the symmetrical power relations. While underestimating the post-processual ambition to accept dualistic oppositions within one interpretation, Siapkas might also overestimate the ability of the ontological to dissolve them. REFERENCES Kuhn, T. 2012 [1962]. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: 50th Anniversary Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Latour, B. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Olsen, B. 2012. “After Interpretation: Remembering Archaeology.” Current Swedish Archaeology 20: 11–34. Witmore, C. L. 2007. “Symmetrical Archaeology: Excerpts of Manifesto.” World Archaeology 39 (4): 546–62.

Debating Archaeological Empiricism Some Closing Comments Gavin Lucas

In his Rules of Sociological Method published in 1895, Émile Durkheim invoked a Baconian model of science as the basis for sociology; for Durkheim, this boiled down to one important dictum: a return to the things themselves. He proposed an empiricism for the social sciences which should strive to proceed from observation, avoiding any common sense or cultural prejudices we already have about the social. By things, Durkheim did not necessarily mean material or physical objects, but rather observable phenomena, which, in the case of his science, meant social facts. Durkheim’s use of the word things (choses) should not be treated too lightly: A priest delivering a sermon is as much a thing as the pulpit from which the sermon is given. Thingness is not simply confined to material objects, and his ascription of thingness to social phenomena attracted some criticism at the time (Durkheim 1964, 69–71). That Durkheim chose largely to ignore material culture in his sociology relates not so much to the distinction between ideas and things as between two kinds of things—social things and natural things. Of course, on the basis of this dichotomy, Durkheim has been almost reviled as the ancestor of contemporary social science by proponents of Actor-Network-Theory, having lead sociology down a blind alley for the past century (see for example Vargas et al. 2008). Durkheim was operating under what many of the contributors in this volume call first empiricism or empiricism 1.0. But his call for a return to the things themselves was very much at the heart of late nineteenth-century positivism and philosophy in general. Indeed, it was shared by a contemporary, Edmund Husserl, who made the same proclamation in his phenomenology, as alluded to by Thomas in his contribution to this volume. Husserl even called phenomenology the true positivism (1983, 39). Like positivism, phenomenology wanted to strip philosophy of its metaphysical wanderings and get back to the things themselves, as Husserl proclaimed in his Logical Investigations published in two volumes in 1900 and 1901. Within phenomenology, though, a rather different distinction was made between things— not between social and natural things, but between things in themselves (noumena) and things as they appear (phenomena). This Kantian distinction was used as the platform to focus all philosophical attention on the

Debating Archaeological Empiricism 189 latter through a process of reduction or bracketing: At its core, this meant suspending the most basic metaphysical assumption of all—the existence of a world independent of the observer. This did not mean assuming all things existed only in the observer’s head but rather meant suspending any assumptions whatsoever about existence and focusing simply on experience itself and its content (i.e. things as intentional objects). I have juxtaposed Durkheim and Husserl here because I want to try to complicate what we think we know about empiricism 1.0 before we start to talk about empiricism 2.0 or neo-empiricism. One could even add more authors to the mix, such as William James (1912) and his essays on radical empiricism that he collated in 1907 or Alfred Whitehead’s (1978) rejection of the bifurcation of nature, as Witmore discusses in his contribution. My point is, a century ago positivism, phenomenology and pragmatism all proposed somewhat different versions of empiricism (if they could even be described as such—not to mention the sub-varieties within these broader schools) while sharing a basic common motivation: a return to the things. The return to things and materiality which we are witnessing today across the humanities and social sciences, archaeology included, is certainly not the same return which Durkheim, Husserl and James called for, but we might want to be somewhat more cautious before invoking an empiricism 2.0— especially when it would not be too hard to draw out continuities with these ancestors, a point also raised in a different way in the continuities Siapkas draws out between the cultural turn and neo-empiricism. Which brings me to an important theme which several of the contributions to this volume address: How should we characterize the theoretical developments occurring in the discipline today? Siapkas, Thomas and Witmore all mention the conventional model of viewing theoretical developments as paradigm shifts á la Kuhn and all critique this model, justifiably. Witmore astutely draws on the connection between the almost annual invocation of a new ‘turn’ in the humanities these days and this paradigm model, while Thomas makes the equally pertinent point that such a model creates false expectations of ‘the next big thing’ in theory. In particular, Thomas’s discussion about the recent claims that theory has failed because there has been no new big thing since post-processualism is highly provocative and reveals how we can be victims of our own historiographical narrative. Despite this acknowledgement, however, none of these authors completely give up the idea that there is something new here to discuss. And nor should they. The point is not to deny theoretical innovation but rather to not forget disciplinary pasts and how any consensus is something that has been achieved and fought for, an issue stressed by Siapkas, Witmore and Fotiadis in different ways. Thus, most of the papers in this volume explicitly attempt to grapple with how a broadly related wave of current social theory relates to the materiality of archaeological evidence. This wave includes Actor-Network-Theory, speculative realism and new materialism among others which the editors

190 Gavin Lucas of this volume collect under the term new empiricism or neo-empiricism— or empiricism 2.0. One could certainly contest the appropriateness of this terminology and even critique it for trying to create a sense that this is the next big thing we have all been waiting for, a question explicitly posited by Thomas. But I think it is more productive to focus on what empiricism might mean today in the current theoretical climate. Certainly, the contributors are by no means united on how they see this wave of theory relating to archaeology. Thomas’s observation that this is theory in real time—archaeology participating in a theoretical debate as contemporaries, as issues are being worked through instead of borrowing theory developed decades earlier—is a clear sign that, theoretically, these are exciting times contrary to those who have proclaimed the death of theory. One should expect no consensus here. But in focusing this wave of theory through the lens of empiricism as this volume does, the contributions shed light through both what they do say— and what they do not. Perhaps the most significant by its absence is any real engagement with the term empiricism itself and its genealogy. The new empiricism places a lot of emphasis on ontological issues—the nature of archaeological reality, the objects and subjects of its investigation, their relations to each other and time, essentialism, relationality, networks and so on. It even extends these themes to the way we look at archaeology as a practice—a network of humans and things, knowledge construction as an achievement, a co-emergence. The latter is especially significant as it reveals one of the most basic traits of empiricism 2.0: Ontology precedes epistemology. What I mean is that with empiricism 1.0, all assumptions about the nature of reality were suspended in favour of direct observation/experience; this is clear in Durkheim, Husserl and James, albeit in very different ways. Before we can make statements about what is, we need to know how we know anything. Epistemology as first philosophy has been the basis of Western philosophy since Descartes, culminating in Kant’s transcendental idealism. Empiricism 1.0 is primarily an epistemology. But when we talk about empiricism 2.0, it seems to me we are we talking about an ontology rather than an epistemology—a stance largely supported by the contributions of this volume. In the 1970s, a book calling itself Debating Archaeological Empiricism would have been all about epistemology. This shift is certainly traceable to the work of philosophers like Husserl and James whose phenomenology and pragmatism were among the ancestors of this ontological ‘turn’ (that word again). One could question the appropriateness of using the term empiricism when discussing ontological issues, but for me the main issue here is really epistemological. What could an archaeological epistemology look like in the second decade of the twenty-first century? Of course I will not attempt to answer this question; one could even argue that it is impossible today to talk about such topics as epistemology and ontology as distinct, and certainly there is some truth to this. Indeed, even ethics and politics are folded into this mix. If knowledge creation can be distributed among many different actors—including things—then so can morality.

Debating Archaeological Empiricism 191 Such themes are well rehearsed in the wider literature. But there remains a sense that an ontologically driven epistemology or ethics are flattened, onedimensional projects; they offer a purely descriptive account about how values and knowledge are distributed, how objects enact a morality. But how does any of this help us create a better archaeology? There is a prescriptive element missing here, a sense of what virtues, including epistemic virtues, we should be cultivating—a sense of changing the world, not just interpreting it. This is where the contributions by Hauptman and especially Fotiadis break up the potentially sterile terrain of neo-empiricism, ethically speaking. They remind us that there is more than ontology at stake here. Which brings me to my final point and an issue explicitly drawn out by Thomas and Hillerdal: the status of anthropocentrism. This is one of the issues which frequently brings out the greatest disagreements between archaeologists, many of whom often draw a line over which they will not cross in the rejection of anthropocentrism—although where this line is drawn differs. One facet to this issue concerns the subject matter of archaeology—does it ultimately have to involve people? Thomas accepts that there are good reasons why archaeologists might want to study how things such as plants, animals and rocks interact in the absence of humans but questions whether an archaeology which examines assemblages without any humans at all is really archaeology. Hillerdal takes up another facet of anthropocentrism, the status of archaeology as an anthropocentric practice. For Hillerdal, archaeology, as history, is an anthropocentric construct, and its very existence underlines the necessity to preserve a distinction at some level, between humans and things. This position contrasts with the stance taken by others who would argue that history—the discipline of history—is created by things as much as by people. Archaeology as a practice is no more centred on people than archaeology as a subject. Humans and things conjointly study humans and things. Arguably, in both facets just discussed, the key part of the concept of anthropocentrism here is the latter part of the word:-centrism. Whether humans are the centre or primary matter of concern. No one is necessarily arguing that humans be excluded from archaeology. Ontologically, I believe there are good grounds for contesting this anthropocentrism, even for the discipline of archaeology. Epistemologically and ethically, however, I am more equivocal. For example, I find the critique of correlationism developed by speculative realists (primarily Meillassoux) and discussed by Witmore somewhat fallacious; it rather seems to me that the ontology presented by philosophers such as Harman actually lends support to correlationism rather than undermining it. But this is a debate for another occasion. Politically and ethically, when it comes to practising archaeology—not describing practice or how morality is distributed among actors, but actually making choices, decisions—there is a sense that the new ontology is simply insufficient. It is not that it does not have an ethical or political dimension—clearly it does. Rather, it is not enough. Fotiadis exemplifies this aspect well in his discussion

192 Gavin Lucas of the ethics of pedagogy; indeed, it is striking how the contributions of this volume least engaged with the theory of the new empiricism are also those most concerned with ethical practice—Fotiadis on teaching, Hauptman on public archaeology and even Herschend on history. Herschend’s central point is indeed a good one to end on: He raises the broader question of the very need for archaeology. Why do it? For Herschend, the answer, like the answer to why we need history, relates to our attitude toward the future. Herschend suggests that the need for constructing pasts is a need which becomes more urgent as the future becomes less certain—as the future becomes more of a predicament. One could question such a condensation of a whole discipline’s raison d’étre, but what I find engaging in this is the idea of the present as a space of contingency, a space in which we are required to make choices, make decisions. The new ontology is certainly a platform from which we can re-think our archaeological epistemology and ethics, but, in terms of ethics and epistemology, the debate about archaeological empiricism has surely barely begun. REFERENCES Durkheim, E. 1964. The Rules of Sociological Method. New York: Free Press. Husserl, E. 1983. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy. Book 1. The Hague: Martinus Nijhof Publisers. James, W. 1912. Essays in Radical Empiricism. New York: Longmans, Green. Vargas, E. V., B. Latour, B. Karsenti, F. Aït-Touati, and L. Salmon. 2008. “The Debate between Tarde and Durkheim.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26: 761–77. Whitehead, A. N. 1978. Process and Reality. New York: The Free Press.

Contributors

Michael Fotiadis (PhD, Indiana University, 1985) has taught at several universities in the United States, and since 1999–2000 teaches in the Department of History and Archaeology, University of Ioannina, Greece. A prehistorian by training with fieldwork in Stone Age sites in northern Greece and elsewhere, he also has a strong interest in theoretical questions arising from the practice of archaeology in the nation-state and in the contemporary globalized world (see, e.g., “What Is Archaeology’s ‘Mitigated Objectivism’ Mitigated By? Comments on Wylie,” American Antiquity 59 [1994]: 545–55; “Factual Claims in Late Nineteenth Century European Prehistory and the Descent of a Modern Discipline’s Ideology,” Journal of Social Archeology 6 [2006]: 5–27; “The Historicism of Postprocessual Archaeology and Its Pleasures,” in HistoricizationHistorisierung, ed. G. W. Most [Göttingen: Vanderhoeck and Ruprecht, 2001], 339–64; “Naked Presence and Disciplinary Wording,” in Modernity’s Classics, ed. S. C. Humphreys and R. G. Wagner [Berlin: Springer, 2013], 293–313. He is currently working on the publication of his survey of the Petrota quarry (Greek Thrace), an important source of material for tools in the Stone Age. Katherine Hauptman is Project Manager and Public Research and Development Coordinator at the Swedish History Museum. Currently she is on leave of absence and assigned to the Swedish Government Offices as Research Officer in the Inquiry on Museums 2014/15. She has a PhD in Archaeology, has previously been a university lecturer, worked with contract archaeology and participated in a TV series on contemporary archaeology. Her recent projects include a Viking exhibition which is currently travelling worldwide, research and development on public archaeology and learning in museums, work on methods for gender inclusion in museums and norm critical perspectives on contemporary use of history. She is engaged in questions dealing with the roles in society for culture and heritage institutions as well as how they can promote more tolerance, democracy and inclusiveness for a diversity of people.

194 Contributors Frands Herschend is Professor Emeritus at Uppsala University, Sweden. He worked at the National Board of Antiquities, and as an Assistant Professor at Uppsala University for six years. In 2000, he became Professor and Director of Gustavianum, the Uppsala University museum. From 2004 to 2010, he was a ‘leading professor’ funded by the National Research Council. His research interests are reconstruction, exhibitions, ancient texts, formal prehistoric concepts, mentality, numismatics and settlement history in Scandinavia. In 2009, he published a synthesis of the Early Iron Age in South Scandinavia. Charlotta Hillerdal is a Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Aberdeen. Her areas of interest are archaeological theory, Indigenous archaeology and Viking Age Scandinavia and diaspora. Her research revolves mainly around questions of social identity and ethnicity, ideas of centrality and periphery, archaeological heritage, and the past in the present. She has approached these questions through nineteenth-century fur trade Canada, as well as early urban centres in Scandinavia. Recently her research has focused on Indigenous archaeology and Yup’ik pre-contact history in Alaska. Gavin Lucas is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Iceland. His main research interests lie in archaeological method and theory and the archaeology of the modern world. His most recent book was Understanding the Archaeological Record (CUP, 2012), and he is co-editing with Chris Witmore a new series of volumes called Archaeological Orientations for Routledge. Recent fieldwork in Iceland includes excavations at a postmedieval episcopal manor as well as an abandoned industrial fishing village, the latter as part of a larger collaborative project investigating modern ruins. Johannes Siapkas is Associate Professor in Classical Archaeology and Ancient History at Uppsala University, Sweden. His research focuses on the epistemological foundations of classical studies, and modern appropriations of classical antiquity. He has recently co-authored Displaying the Ideals of Antiquity: The Petrified Gaze (Routledge, 2013), which investigates ancient sculpture studies and museum exhibitions of ancient sculptures. In other publications he has reassessed the appropriation of anthropological discourses in classical studies (“Classical Others: Anthropologies of Antiquity,” Lychnos: Årsbok för idé- och lärdomshistoria [2012]: 183–203), and the influence of race/ethnicity theories in classical studies (“Ancient Ethnicity and Modern Identity,” in A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean, ed. Jeremy McInerney [Chichester: WileyBlackwell, 2014], 66–81). He is currently working on a multivolume study on the epistemology and historiography of classical studies.

Contributors 195 Julian Thomas is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Manchester. His research interests include the Neolithic of Britain and Europe, the theory and philosophy of archaeology, and archaeologies of landscape and architecture. He is the author of Time, Culture and Identity (1996), Understanding the Neolithic (1999), Archaeology and Modernity (2004) and The Birth of Neolithic Britain (2013). Christopher Witmore is Associate Professor in Archaeology and Classics at Texas Tech University (USA). His main research interests encompass Mediterranean Archaeology, especially southern Greece; things and the new materialisms; landscape and chorography; the archaeology of the recent past; the history of archaeology; the science studies of archaeology; and media over the long term. He is co-author of Archaeology: The Discipline of Things (2012), co-editor of Archaeology in the Making (2013) and co-editor of the Routledge Archaeological Orientations series. He is currently working on two book projects: Old Lands: A Chorography of the Eastern Morea, Greece, and Open Pasts: What Becomes of Archaeological Things?

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Index

action heritage 100 action research 75, 92 actions 171 actor 151, 165, 170 Actor-Network-Theory 3, 51, 149, 153, 156, 164, 167–8, 169, 173, 188–9 actors 182 agency 150–1 agent 170, 172 alterity 3 alterity of past 161 anthropocentrism 4, 23–4, 63, 154, 156, 160, 191 anthropology 5–6, 131–2 archaeological backlash 117–18 archaeological cultures 2 archaeological record 2 archaeological theory 1 Archaeologist for a day 85–7 archaeology: as history 138–41, 142–3; is history 126; interpretation 140; interpretation of the past 125; loss of political compass 104; as a methodology 19; modern nation-state 106, 107; passionate 120; political dimension 105; popular definitions 69–70; use value 110 Argolid Exploration Project 38–43 Ayios Ioannis, Nafplion 54–5 Bauman, Zygmunt 107–8 Beck, Ulrich 108 bifurcation 37, 43–4, 47–8, 62–3 Big Theory 15–16, 21, 32–3 Bildung 110 Binford, Lewis 11–12, 13, 18–19, 47–8 Bintliff, John 12–14 Birka 147

Bohannan, Laura 131–5 boudaries 36 bricolage 65 bridges past and present 146 Cartesian duality 1, 24, 73, 144, 162, 174, 186–7 Clarke, David 13, 18–19, 48 co-creative participation 92 co-emergence of facts 51 communal history 127 community archaeology 4 community of practice 51 connectivity 8 context 3 contextualization 121 co-production of facts 49 criticism 169 cultural turn 166, 168–9 culture wars 17 data 47–9 death of (archaeological) theory 2, 11, 27, 32, 34 deconstruction 16 Deleuze, Gilles 167, 173 Domanska, Ewa 152–3 dualism 149 Durkheim, Émile 188–9 ecology of practices 45 education 104, 122 empirical 144 empiricism 1 37, 47, 43, 145, 166, 188, 189; first 52, 66; naïve 11, 110–11, 117–18, 147, 164; normative 168; old 37, 44; ordinary 44, 52; traditional 117 empiricism 2.0 52, 54, 55–6; neo166, 167–8, 181; new 27, 118;

198 Index second 37, 49, 51–2, 66, 104, 112, 114; theoretically informed 112 entanglement 150 epistemology 4, 25, 62, 66 essentialism 7, 167, 177, 182–3 ethnographic method 6 experience 38, 43–4, 47 flat materiality 147–8 flat ontology 24, 26, 46 fold 173 fragment 2 fragmentary 62 fragmentation 2, 7–8, 175 future 129 Future memories 78, 81–5 gap, heritage sector and public 74 Generic Learning Outcomes (GLO) 76–8, 93–4 Grand Theory 15, 17 Hamlet 127–31, 138–40; Tiv interpretation 131–5 Harman, Graham 25–6, 35, 46 healthy constructivism 111 Heidegger, Martin 160 heritage 68 heritage industry 109 hermeneutic 15, 46 hermeneutics of suspicion 15 historicity 145 history: canonical 134, 135–6, 143; individual 135; personal 129–30 Hodder, Ian 21, 48–9 Husserl, Edmund 188–9 ideopraxist 12 in-betweenness 172, 183 incavation 84 Ingold, Tim 25 James, William 44–5, 189 Kantian dualism 37, 188–9 Knappett, Carl 177 Kuhn, Thomas 19–20, 166–7, 185, 189 Larissa, Argos 52–3 Latour, Bruno 3, 24, 27, 50–1, 65–6, 112–14, 149, 160 Leach, Edmund 6

liquid modernity 107–9, 111 literary studies 14–15 local history 73 Locke, John 43–4, 46 loss of innocence 16 machine 173 Malkin, Irad 176–7 materiality 5, 144, 146, 174 matters of concern 54, 65, 169–70 matters of fact 47, 65, 169 meaning: constructed 3; relational 3 mediation past and present 21 mediators 182 middle ground 177 mixtures 25, 35, 172, 183 modernism 38 modernity 104, 106–7, 172, 175 multiple archaeologies (fragmentation) 2 multitemporality 149 multi-vocality 3 museum population 72 museums 120–1 neo-empirical 144 networks 109; abstract 168, 173–4; concrete 168 network theories 177–8, 181–2 New Archaeology 11–12 new museology 74–5 news: exoticizes the past 73 normative theory 4 ontological turn 25; anthropology 6, 7; archaeology 6–7 ontology 2, 3, 5, 7, 190–1 Other: colonial 153; material 153; temporal 153 othering 152, 154 otherness 4, 7 paradigm 19–20, 166–7, 185, 189 participation action 75, 92, 99–100 participatory action research 75, 94 participatory observation 6 past 144, 161; demarcated 52; is history 126; is present 149 pedagogical empiricism 93 phenomenology 46 popularization 69 post-colonialism 152 post-colonial theory 4, 177 post-humanist 25

Index 199 postmodern 175 postmodern theory 146 post-processualism 20–1, 49, 108–9, 148 post-structuralism 16, 21 post-theoretical 2, 33 post-theoretical era 1, 2 power 174 practices 171 predicaments of the future 130, 134, 135–6, 142 present 129, 161 public archaeology 68, 74–6, 92–5, 99–100, 101–3 public communication 70–2 redescription 22 relational 162 relational epistemology 153 relativism 168–9 re-ontologizing 66 representation 47, 125 rhizome, 173–4 right past 111 sceptical realism 160 Search for the lost city 89–96 selective globalisation 107 situated 169 Slättbygdsprojektet 74 social network analysis 167–8 source material 125 speculative realism 23, 26 structuralism 16, 21

Suburban home grounds 87–9 supermodernity 105 symmetrical archaeology 148–50, 167 symmetry 35, 186 technological advances 11 The Corrupting Sea (Purcell) 176 The Hamlet syndrome 127 them 152 theoretical diversity 13 theoretical backlash 166 theory: animated debates 1; point of closure 14; processual 18; a toolkit 12 The Swedish History Museum 71, 74–5, 76, 78–92, 99–100, 102 things 5, 34–5, 54, 145, 150, 155, 161–2, 164, 165, 188 Tilley, Christopher 13 time 155 Tiv 131–5, 143 translation 50, 92 Trigger, Bruce 2 turn 38, 166 twenty-first century, debates about archaeology 1 typology 147, 148 us 152 web of relations 42, 43, 44, 45, 46 Whitehead, Alfred 43–5, 189 Wylie, Alison 48