Archaeological Thinking Research Articles

The Influence of British Archaeological Thought on Colonial Archaeology in Japan: A Case Study of William Gowland's “Notes on the Dolmens and Other Antiquities of Korea”

The Influence of British Archaeological Thought on Colonial Archaeology in Japan: A Case Study of William Gowland's “Notes on the Dolmens and Other Antiquities of Korea”

The Mandate for Speculation: Responding to Uncertainty in Archaeological Thinking

The Mandate for Speculation: Responding to Uncertainty in Archaeological Thinking

Acknowledging Inspirations in a Lifetime of Shifting and Pivoting Standpoints to Construct the Past

In this Perspective article, I am able to draw the various strands of my intellectual thinking and practice in archaeology and European prehistory into a complex narrative of changing themes. In this narrative, I draw attention to the inspirational triggers of these transformations to be found in works and words of colleagues and events within and outside my immediate discipline. A group of events between 1988 and 1993 disrupted (in a good way) the trajectory of my professional life and provided a convenient anchor around which my themes pivoted and regrouped with very different standpoints. But some trends in my way of working remained constant and contributed, I hope, to a career of cumulative knowledge. Along the way, I show the significance, in terms of my personal intellectual context as well as archaeological practice in general, of my published works as well as more obscure and some unpublished works that are cited here for the first time.

Times they are a-changin’: a response to Magli and Belmonte

Debates about archaeological interpretation are always healthy and welcome, and when, as here, arguments are not killed off, they inevitably become stronger. Importantly, the comments by Magli and Belmonte (2023) serve as a reminder that reconciling conflicting theoretical perspectives is never easy when times are changing. Grounded in positivism, their critique draws upon assumptions that become justificatory assertions. For better or worse, archaeological thinking has moved away from the processualism of the late 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s—a key turning point being Hodder's (1984) review of positivism in archaeological interpretation and his call for more contextualised approaches. The authors might usefully have consulted this and other works before setting out onto the choppy waters of post-processual archaeology. Many of their points simply escalate questions posed in my original text (Darvill 2022), and they often fail to distinguish between suggestions, arguments and more solid interpretative statements. Notwithstanding, they neatly arrange their response around three issues that are here addressed seriatim.

Self-Organized Cultural Cycles and the Uncertainty of Archaeological Thought

Contributing to the issue of complex relationship between social and cultural evolution, this paper aims to analyze repetitive patterns, or cycles, in the development of material culture. Our analysis focuses on culture change associated with sociopolitical and economic stasis. The proposed toy model describes the cyclical character of the quantitative and qualitative composition of archaeological assemblages, which include hierarchically organized cultural traits. Cycles sequentially process the stages of unification, diversity, and return to unification. This complex dynamic behavior is caused by the ratio between cultural traits’ replication rate and the proportion of traits of the higher taxonomic order’s related unit. Our approach identifies a shift from conformist to anti-conformist transmission, corresponding with open and closed phases in cultural evolution in respect to the introduction of innovations. The model also describes the dependence of a probability for horizontal transmission upon orders of taxonomic hierarchy during open phases. The obtained results are indicative for gradual cultural evolution at the low orders of taxonomic hierarchy and punctuated evolution at its high orders. The similarity of the model outcomes to the patters of material culture change reflecting societal transformations enables discussions around the uncertainty of explanation in archaeology and anthropology.

Where Are We Going? - Attitudes Towards Migrations in Archaeological Thought

Migrations have always been a much debated topic in archaeology. In the first hal f of the 20th century migrations were a common explanation for change in the material culture, but they were also used in a nationalistic and chauvinistic way. After the Second World War a reaction came and many archaeologists rejected migrations as a relevant explanation, whereby migrations more or less disappeared from the archaeological discourse. Such changes in the archaeological interest could be linked to public opinions of the times, as well as to reactions within the discipline. In conclusion it is argued that a discussion about past migrations is important, not least in order to question prevailing ideas about a cultural homogeneity or "pureness" in the past.

On Giants in Swedish Archaeology

Before the development of archaeology there were speculations that prehistory had been populated by giants. Giants are often seen in opposition to a scientific worldview and basic archaeological concepts. It has been emphasised that during the early 19th century there was a break between old beliefs and scientific archaeology. The author wants to show that the belief in giants in prehistory was essentially already gone. It was revived around rgoo by an intensified interest in prehistory. It was central in formulating basic archaeological notions, such as the existence of a Stone Age. The belief in giants and the historicity of folk tales were part of romantic philosophy. The romantic roots of archaeology have been denied but are central for archaeological thinking.

Excavating Archaeological Texts: Applying Digital Humanities to the Study of Archaeological Thought and Banal Nationalism

ABSTRACT To date, the evolution of archaeological knowledge production and theory has been discussed and analyzed using qualitative methods by reading vast amounts of archaeological texts in search of specific discourses or framings of the past. In this paper, we present text mining methodologies from digital humanities that can be applied to large corpora of archaeological texts to trace and evaluate changing knowledge practices. Such a big data approach is imperative. Due to the rapid increase of archaeological publications, qualitative research into the intellectual history of archaeology has become complicated and highly selective. The big data methods presented in this study were tested on a large corpus (4,811 texts totaling over 51 million words) of different types of archaeological texts from the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. The different text mining tools were successful in identifying theoretical trends. Our tools were also successful in charting the decrease in quality due to changed organizational circumstances (developer-led archaeology). Furthermore, we could also map changing banal nationalist framings of the past.

Itinerant Assemblages and Material Networks: the Application of Assemblage Theory to Networks in Archaeology

This paper explores the potential for Assemblage Theory to contribute to current approaches in network thinking in Archaeology. I argue that Assemblage Theory offers improved explanatory models for understanding relationality and how social networks aggregate, change, and disassemble over time at multiple scales. In recent years, network approaches in Archaeology have encouraged the study of complex assemblages. To complement these studies, I argue for the productivity of broadening traditional definitions of assemblage to one that does not discriminate between assemblages of itinerant objects in dispersed networks and those situated within a self-contained site. Following Assemblage Theory, I therefore suggest that assemblage is best defined as a cluster of emergent, relational phenomena and that materials, human actants, forces, and other matter need not be confined to any one geographically delineated space in order to constitute an assemblage. To evaluate the possibilities for Assemblage Theory applications, I examine the movements of walrus ivory objects across the North Atlantic and continental Europe, ca. 800–1550 CE. A reconstruction of the extended network involved in these itinerant materials reveals patterns of material movements informed by economic behavior and political change. The application of Assemblage Theory to this model offers a valuable theoretical foundation to address the interconnected agency and relationality of network entities and components. This approach allows for greater complexity and specificity in identifying and explaining the material networks which generated economic change between medieval Europe and Africa.

Томская научная археологическая школа: период формирования

The article analyzes the formation period of the Tomsk school of archaeological though. The authors indicate that from the very beginning of its existence Tomsk University (TSU) had an organizational basis for archaeological research, that is the university museum of Archaeology and Ethnography. In the early 1940s, first prerequisites for the formation of an archaeological school emerged. They included the restoration of the History Faculty at TSU, the activity of K.E. Grinevich and A.P. Dulzon, the establishment of a students’ archaeological circle, the Basandayka (1944–1946) and Chulym (1946–1951) expeditions. V.I. Matyushchenko created the Tomsk School of Archaeological Thought by the mid-1970s. He was one of the first Siberian scientists to defend his Candidate’s Thesis in Archaeology (1960). It is under his leadership that TSU archaeologists implemented a unified plan for the study of ancient and medieval sites in the Middle Ob region and adjacent areas, created the Fundamental Research Laboratory for Archaeology and Ethnology of Siberia (FRLAES) and regular West Siberian archaeological and later archaeological and ethnographic meetings were first held. Concentration of archaeologists, ethnographers and anthropologists within the framework of FRLAES at TSU made it possible to bring interdisciplinary research to a new level, led to the creation and development of a unified program for studying cultures and peoples of the Middle Ob region from prehistory to the modern period, which in general still determines the peculiarity of the Tomsk School of Archaeological thought. The concepts proposed by the TSU archaeologists were recognized by their colleagues: in the first half of the 1970s V.I. Matyushchenko defended his Doctoral thesis, and some of his students – their candidates’ theses.

Quem faz Arqueologia abre uma janela

O pensamento arqueológico tem passado por efervescente criticismo nas últimas décadas em decorrência de ideias que contestam a hegemonia de categorias modernas. A dualidade humanista, a preponderância da discursividade, além da noção de tempo linear são alguns exemplos de categorias que estão em xeque desde o final do século passado. Esse cenário acabou propiciando uma aproximação mais pertinente entre a Arqueologia e outras áreas, como é o caso da Arte. Neste artigo, então, faço uma análise dessa interação, destacando algumas ressalvas que devemos tomar diante desse diálogo. Ainda, defendo que a Arqueologia deva, sim, utilizar-se da Arte, mas não como mera inspiração, tal qual uma nova espécie de Arqueologia promovedora de analogias, mas como um instrumental capaz de nos municiar de uma epistemologia mais combativa, mais condizente com as características próprias do fazer arqueológico. Por fim, trago aqui exemplos de três trabalhos desenvolvidos nos últimos anos e que julgo ilustrarem tal potencialidade.

Hieroglyphic Texting: Ideologies and Practices of Classic Maya Written Evidence

Given current interests in indigenous ontologies and multiple worldviews, archaeologists drawing on textual evidence must more fully contextualize ancient texts according to how they were perceived and experienced, and understood as capable, in the cultures that created them. This endeavour has methodological impacts for modern interpretations, shifting how we interpret textual evidence as a result of how written realities and histories might have been conceptualized in the past. I examine these topics through the case study of the Classic Maya (250–900ad, Mexico and Central America), using imagery on painted ceramic vessels. I examine how the Classic Maya understood text and writing, asking: how were texts perceived? How did people relate to them? What capabilities were texts understood to have? Based on observations gleaned from the ways in which glyphs are shown, the ways people are shown interacting with them and the work that glyphs apparently accomplish, I argue that the Classic Maya understood texts to be real, relational and persistent. This article suggests a new direction for archaeological thinking about ancient written sources, complementary to other interpretive approaches to texts, by exploring productive possibilities that emerge when we take ancient experiential perspectives into account.

Introduction

Introduction Charles R. Menzies Collaborative research practices have reached a point in anthropology where they are no longer questioned out of the box as problematic. For many new anthropologists collaboration, in some form or another, is understood as a critical component of doing anthropology right. Yet there remains questions about method and approach as well as underlying issues of power and colonialism mixing with naïve good intentions. The papers in this issue push us to consider novel ways of collaboration, to ask when collaboration is not the right direction, to wonder over our intentions, and to consider the implications of refusal for collaborative projects. Our opening essay is an exemplar of where collaborative practices are headed: not simply collaboration in research, but also in writing. There are antecedents to this kind of approach. Allison and Ossman (2014) told the story of their collaboration through narrative and art wherein Allison's exploration of her maternity was the motivation for Ossman's artwork and together they authored a narrative of their experience. The collaboration between Nuxnuxskaca cts'e7i7elt, Sáwllkwa, Euale, and McIlwraith is of a different order. Here we find academics (Euale and MacIlwraith) collaborating with an Indigenous elder (Nuxnuxskaca cts'e7i7elt) and the sentient embodiment of water (Sáwllkwa), who motivates the other three to act on its behalf. This is an approach that takes seriously the call to engage, test, and play with our notions of collaboration. Kotaska's paper draws on her experiences working for First Nations and as an academic engaged in collaborative research. Kotaska challenges us to carefully consider when collaboration is not the right approach. Many First Nations in British Columbia now have their own research offices and engage hired consultants to do their core research. What is the role of the academic researcher in this mix? What are the costs to a community to have collaborative projects underway? With collaborative [End Page vii] approaches more and more the mainstream of university- led research, the time is right to question collaboration as being always the first methodological choice in research. Martindale and Armstrong examine the abstract and theoretical conditions for effective collaboration between Indigenous partners and archaeologists. They both have a long and successful history of collaborative archaeology, which gives a particular salience to their concerns with problematic aspects of contemporary archaeological production. They examine central assumptions that undergird legal decisions, both for and against aboriginal rights and title, and contemporary archaeological thinking that reveals a shared cultural history and ethnocentric bias. Without moving past the inherent ethnocentrism of archaeological thinking, collaborative projects will, they suggest, remain naïve good intentions. Fessenden's paper completes the set by reflecting upon her experience facing a refusal to collaborate. What happens when a project sets off as collaborative but then faces a situation in which the terms of collaboration essentially render the project impossible to complete? This can be a soul crushing experience for any researcher, but even more so when the criterion for success is collaborative from start to finish. Fessenden uses her experience of refusal to explore its place in ethnographic practice and how it might better inform ideas and practices of collaboration. Each of these papers takes ideas of collaboration beyond a simple assumption that collaboration is an a priori positive practice. From expanding the conceptual frame of whom and what one collaborates with through the problematic assumption that collaboration is always required, to questioning the theoretical and cultural barriers to collaboration within mainstream disciplinary thinking, to the idea of refusal as illuminating; each of these papers invites us to reimagine our collaborative research practices and to appreciate the variation in possibilities that confront us as researchers. Reference Allison, J. E., & Ossman, S. 2014. "Making Matrice: Intersubjectivity in Ethnography and Art." Collaborative Anthropologies 7 (1): 1–25. doi:10.1353/cla.2014.0004. Google Scholar Copyright © 2020 University of Nebraska Press

The Vulnerability of Archaeological Logic in Aboriginal Rights and Title Cases in Canada: Theoretical and Empirical Implications

The history of archaeological evidence in Aboriginal rights and title cases in Canada illustrates an alignment between archaeological arguments regarding Indigenous history and recent court rulings. Although there are associations between cases that rule in favor of Indigenous rights and contemporary archaeological thinking and between rulings against Indigenous rights and older forms of archaeological reasoning, we argue that there is a more fundamental similarity. Both Canadian courts and archaeology seem to concur on assumptions of four core legal and historical principles: how were Indigenous societies organized, what was essential to Indigenous culture, what constitutes continuity, and what is the evidence for Indigenous rights. We argue that this convergence has less to do with evidence and instead derives from a shared cultural history, thus creating an ethnocentric bias. If archaeology is to assert its capacity to reveal history within rights and title cases, it must address three issues that emerge from this legal legacy: (1) lingering intellectual naïveté regarding interpretive links between material records and cultural identity, (2) associations between archaeological theoretical explanations for Indigenous history and western cultural practices, and (3) a fundamental ethnocentrism in archaeological understanding of humanity that reflects contemporary asymmetries of power. Contemporary archaeologists often valorize collaborative practices with Indigenous communities and subscribe to an ethic of equality and respect. However, its history in legal contexts in Canada suggests that archaeology is not able to achieve this ambition. This inability is particularly problematic given the increasing influence that archaeological experts appear to have in Canadian legal debates over Aboriginal rights and title.

In praise of outlaws

Abstract‘Outlaw’ is not a common category of archaeological thought but it is perhaps more useful than meets the eye. ‘Outlaws’ are typically viewed as contingent on legal and capitalist systems; they are, I suggest, also material, affective phenomena that draw our attention to how transgression, dissent and disorder are conceived through archaeological thinking. Here, I outline some ways in which ‘outlaw’ figures are ‘good to think with’, particularly for historical and colonial contexts but also for broader, more global frontier situations. Through three sketches of archetypal ‘outlaws’ in southern Africa's recent past, I consider where these disruptive figures draw attention to how mobility, violence, rebellion and state imagination (and the limits thereof) have been imagined through material misbehaviours.

Kufer pełen wspomnień: (auto)biograficzne podejście do dziedzictwa

This paper analyses the so-called biography of a thing as a way of thinking about the value and meaning of heritage. A certain, almost 100 years old, trunk is used as a case study to present how heritage is constituted trough relations between people, things, and places. Indeed, heritage is a kind of relation between humans and non-humans. To back up this thesis, this article offers a five-step approach.First, the starting point is Michael Shanks’ thesis that “we are all archaeologists now”. The British archaeologist – it can be said – argues for broadening the archaeological discourse and to look archaeologically at the world we all live in. From this point of view, a Neolithic pot sherd and a contemporary thing such as a trunk, for example, represent the same category of an archaeological artefact. Through their materiality, they both might be objects of an archaeological scrutiny.Second, I shortly discuss the archaeological research on the recent past. Archaeology is a practice anchored here and now. One of the archaeological perspectives that analyses the relics of the recent past is the approach where archaeologists study their own heritage i.e. the histories of their own families. This is the perspective developed further in this paper.Third, it is argued that the theoretical concept known as biography of a thing, can be useful in the context of the archaeology of the recent past. It is the concept that takes into account the past and present of each artefact, landscape or practice. This approach allows for studying both the social and the material memories which are crucial apropos of the archaeological research on the recent past. Here, archaeologists take into account things as well as people’s memories about them.Fourth, an analysis of a trunk which the author found in the grandmother’s basement is used as a case study to present the potential of the archaeological research on the recent past. Some episodes of the biography of a trunk are highlighted to claim that heritage is constituted through different kinds of relations between many agents, both humans and non-humans.And the last point, the trunk is a good example that shows the limitations of archaeological thinking about heritage through the lens of its preservation and management. Indeed, the crucial conclusion of this article is that, sometimes, the less preservation and management of (archaeological) heritage the better for heritage itself. In other words, destruction and decay of heritage are the very part of its biography.

Ruiny, wszędzie ruiny: Czarnobyl i archeologiczny wymiar dziedzictwa niedawnej przeszłości

For many centuries, scientists, philosophers, artists and others have been fascinated with ruins. However, this fascination usually focused upon ancient and medieval relics. Indeed, it can be metaphorically said that archaeology was built upon ruins. Nonetheless, the archaeological analyses of ruins, their functions, meanings, uses and re-uses over the next centuries had been very selective. In short, modern ruins have been out of closer archaeological attention. It seems as if modern ruins were deprived of social, cultural, and archaeological dimensions. However, this changed during the first decade of the 21st century when archaeologists started to pay attention to the modern ruins. The so-called archaeology of (modern) ruins is one of the most interesting, provocative, and subversive fields of the contemporary archaeological discourses. The starting point of this paper is that there is no “ontological difference” between the Greek, the Roman and the Soviet ruins. All of them can and should be part of archaeological thinking. A two-step approach is applied here. First, the archaeological value of ruins in Chernobyl is discussed. A documentary entitled Czarnobyl – Wst e p Wzbroniony (2015) (Eng. Chernobyl – No Entry ) is reviewed to highlight the processes of transformation of the unimaginable nuclear catastrophe into valuable heritage of the recent past. It is argued that Chernobyl can be seen as “Pompeii of our times”. Second, the review of Czarnobyl – Wst e p Wzbroniony is used as a pretext to shortly present different categories of modern ruins that one can encounter in contemporary Poland. Many of them are related with the Soviet occupation in Poland between 1945 and 1993. The point that I try to back up in this paper is that these Soviet ruins are also part of the archaeological heritage of the recent past. Accordingly, this paper is a call for a closer archaeological interest in the ruins of the recent past in general.

More than representation

In this article I examine how Deleuzian-inspired assemblage theory allows us to offer a new challenge to the enlightenment categories of thought that have dominated archaeological thinking. The history of archaeological thought, whilst superficially a series of paradigm shifts, can be retold as arguments constructed within distinctions between ideas and materials, present and past, and culture and nature. At the heart of all of these has been the critical issue of representation, of how the gap between people and the world can be bridged. In the last decade or so, however, archaeologists have begun to make a more significant challenge to these ideas, and have attempted to offer a critique of our enlightenment heritage that is ontologically, rather than epistemologically, inspired. Drawing on the manner in which assemblages allow for the vibrancy of matter, are non-anthropocentric, multiscalar and more-than-representational, this article argues that Deleuzian thought offers the best chance to rework our understanding of the past in this manner. This is explored through a case study of three scales of analysis of Neolithic Britain.

Storied Lines: Network Perspectives on Land Use in Early Modern Iceland

It is a truism nowadays to say that an archaeological site is embedded in extensive networks of relations. Connectivity has played a role in archaeological thinking for a considerable amount of time, and the adoption by archaeologists of both theoretical and methodological frameworks centring connectivity has become widespread. One such example is network analysis, which has seen a significant surge in interest within the field over the past two decades. Archaeological network analysis is far from a mature science, however, and the character of the archaeological record tends to yield networks with richly contextualised nodes connected by ties that, in stark contrast, are often based on very limited evidence for connectivity. Furthermore, archaeological networks are often accompanied by limited discussion about the implications for a connection between two sites interpreted through a commonality in material culture. In particular, the use of historical records to contextualise the interactions between sites remains somewhat uncommon. This paper takes an archaeo-historical network perspective by characterising land-use practices in early modern Iceland by mapping property records describing relations of ownership, resource claims and social obligations alongside comprehensive field archaeological surveys as extensive networks of interdependence between the known farmstead sites occupied at the time. This approach shows that these vibrant networks, documented both spatially and historically, regularly show signs of emergent properties. As these intersite relations begin to exert their own agency, the networks are cut, and the network lines begin to bundle up in knots and entanglements. The study, therefore, does not aim to quantify the presented networks using formal network analysis, but to use the networks as a starting point to investigate the properties that emerge as people aim to enact and materialise networks of property rights, resource claims and exchange.

Between Marx and Locke: approaching early complex societies

I viewed this review project as an opportunity to assess the degree to which archaeologists have been able to transcend what Gary Feinman (Eurasia at the dawn of history, p. 146) refers to as “impenetrable academic silos and rigid adherence to entrenched ideas”. Happily, I found ample evidence of transcendence, with the exception of Modes of production and archaeology. Historians properly recognise Karl Marx as an important contributor to Western thought in a time of economic turmoil one and a half centuries ago. Especially, his efforts to motivate opposition to an exploitative economic system are highly regarded—I, for one, have made a pilgrimage to view his work-space in the British Museum reading room. And I agree that ideas influenced by Marx and Engels (considering the work of Childe, White, Wittfogel, Polanyi and the like) have been so thoroughly internalised that they amount to a kind of “disciplinary common sense” (in the introductory chapter by Robert Rosenswig and Jerimy Cunningham, p. 1), perhaps better characterised as ‘entrenched ideas’. From the perspective of contemporary anthropological theory, however, I find it difficult to understand why researchers might insist on bringing notions from Marx and Engels directly into today's archaeological thinking and practice, but this is exactly what most of the contributors to Modes of production and archaeology have done.