What kind of archaeology do we want? Introduction

Do archaeologists recover the material record of past processes or the residues of the material conditions that made the presence of a kind of humanness possible? This paper attempts to emphasize the importance of distinguishing between these two options and argues the case for, and briefly contemplates the practical implications of, an archaeology of the human presence. Archaeology's propensity to range across a variety of theoretical approaches, from the positivism of the new archaeology, through structuralism, post-structuralism and phenomenology, and on to the current concerns with the extended mind, network theory and the new materialism, and all within a period of fifty or so years, has been taken as indicative of an intellectual posturing that detracts from the 'real' business of doing archaeology (Bintliff 2011 and 2015). This criticism seems, to me at least, to miss the point. All these theoretical approaches are no more than ways to think about the same fundamental question: why do we do archaeology? They allow us to evaluate what we are attempting to bring into view by our study of the material residues of the past. The means by which we establish the object of our studies are not the same means as those that we must employ to achieve such an objective. It has been the failure to distinguish between our definition of what we are studying from the question of how we intend to study it that has resulted in the various theoretical approaches appearing as if they were needless methodological distractions rather than the essential mechanisms that will open-up perspectives on the reality that is the objective of our studies. This confusion between objective and method, which is expressed by the assumption that the objective of archaeology is given by the current methodology, continues to have a detrimental effect upon wider perceptions of the discipline. Most outside observers, along with all too many practitioners, define archaeology in the banal terms of digging, discovery of old things, and the physical analysis of those things (cf. Thomas 2004, 67-9). It is from this perspective that the history of archaeology is written as the development of techniques of recovery and material analysis. This consigns archaeology to the role of antiquarianism, the relevance of which for many contemporary concerns seems marginal at best. Such a negative perception surely contrasts with the more challenging view that archaeology could offer of itself, namely as an enquiry into the full chronological and global extent of humanity's place in history.

The Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, 2014

This article revisits the object of archaeology in light of the New Materialisms. Orienting recent work around three propositions with respect to the reality and definition of things – that is, things are assemblages, things are participants, and things are things – it lays out the core features of the New Materialisms and goes on to addresses some compelling methodological issues. Ultimately, this article raises a challenge that New Materialist perspectives reveal a self-definition for archaeology, not as the study of the human past through its material remains, but as the discipline of things, as an “ecology of practices” that approaches the world with care and in wonder.

Routledge, 1992

All things archaeological - from archaeological method, the connections between archaeology and modernity, through a process-relational paradigm, to the heritage industry and archaeology as a mode of cultural production, with an outline of archaeology as craft. Overall it is an exploration of the archaeological imagination, as I called it when I was at University Wales Lampeter, with archaeology a relationship between the remains of the past and present interests. I wrote this book while still making my way into archaeology - it brought together what I had been saying with Chris Tilley in the 1980s with a personal vision of what the archaeogical past means to many people now. The book takes risks with experimental writing and imaging, including eidetics and collage. Twenty five years after publication it is pleasing to see that much of what I was writing about then has come to figure significantly in archaeological thinking: — the book is a kind of analysis of the discourse of archaeology and exemplifies an interest in how the past may be mediated - written and visualized - imagery, simulation, narrative — the book argues for an extension of archaeological interest to include the contemporary world - archaeologies of the contemporary past, with a particular focus upon the convergence of archaeology and contemporary art — in this the book deals with archaeology's cultural associations with modernity - horror fiction to gardening, forensics to fakery — the cultural politics of archaeology are revealed through an ethnography of archaeology, archaeologists and those with archaeological interests the book argues for a new conception of heritage - not academic disdain for popular interest in the remains of the past, but a celebration of certain kinds of actuality that embody creative relationships with the past — rather than have archaeology only engaged in explaining and interpreting the past, the book argues for a post-interpretive turn to take us beyond epistemology into work upon the materiality of the past - ontologies of relationship between past and present — this means thinking about the materiality of cultural experience and its embodiment - a focus on experiences past and present in a process-relational paradigm related to a reading of Nietzsche, Bergson, Adorno's negative dialectics, and Deleuze's nomadics.

Norwegian Archaeological Review , 2018

In this paper there are some thoughts addressing issues of the future of archaeology that are especially dear to my heart, including questions of who sets research agendas, dissemination of archaeological knowledge, multiscalar interpretation of archaeological data, celebrating the ambiguity of the archaeological record, and putting the dialogic nature of archaeological research into practice as the dominant form of its dissemination. These would push archaeology towards a discipline whose boundaries are fluidly defined, flowing into other disciplines easily, driven by sensorially rich and complex lateral thinking and playful exploratory imagination. A discipline that defies categorization as either ‘humanist’ or ‘scientific’ but is nevertheless grounded in empirical data.

American Antiquity 61.1: 75-88, 1996

American Anthropologist 122(2), 2020

Post-modernity has a distinctly pre-apocalyptic feel to it, and this feeling has seeped into archaeology. A review of the scholarship from 2019 attests that archaeologists are having to reckon with present-day conditions and phenomena as they structure their research, delineate the material world, and affirm archaeology's relevance. Furthermore, these concerns have moved from the realm of the rarely spoken and come to constitute a critical conversation in the field. In a number of respects, the contours of archaeology now hinge upon the discipline's responses to developments in real time, including: How can archaeological knowledge production escape the logistical and epistemological bounds of late capitalism and its failures? Can archaeology contribute to future-building, and what would that look like? Does archaeology have to be scholar-activism to achieve the goal of making the past matter (to whom) (for what)? [archaeology, contemporary archaeology, future archaeology, current issues]

Current Swedish Archaeology 20, 2012

In the light of some significant anniversaries, this paper discusses the fate of archaeological theory after the heyday of postprocessualism. While once considered a radical and revolutionary alternative, post-processual or interpretative archaeology remarkably soon became normalized, mainstream and hegem-onic, leading to the theoretical lull that has characterized its aftermath. Recently, however, this consen-sual pause has been disrupted by new materialist perspectives that radically depart from the postproces-sual orthodoxy. Some outcomes of these perspectives are proposed and discussed, the most significant being a return to archaeology-an archaeology that sacri fices the imperatives of historical narratives, so-ciologies, and hermeneutics in favour of a trust in the soiled and ruined things themselves and the memories they afford.

2013

How archaeology works - from the point of view of its practitioners. This is an essay for Kristian Kristiansen. It appeared in his Festschrift edited by Sophie Bergerbrant and Serena Sabatini, Göteborg, University of Göteborg, 2013. It is a continuation of a conversation we started with Bill Rathje at Stanford that appeared in the collection Archaeology in the Making that I edited with Bill Rathje and Chris Witmore (Routledge 2013) and outlines the main findings presented there - how archaeology works as a discipline, its agendas and practices.

It is widely acknowledged that the practice of archaeology emerged in the modern period. However, this article makes the more radical claim that modernity represents the ground of the possibility of archaeology. Archaeology is deeply connected with modes of thought, forms of organization, and social practices that are distinctively modern. So ironically, archaeology studies past worlds through an intellectual apparatus that is thoroughly embedded in the present. In this essay, the various strands of archaeology's debt to modernity are investigated, and it is suggested that the discipline can aspire to a 'countermodern' position by embracing considerations of meaning, ethics, politics, and rhetoric.