(Potsdamer Platz: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_102-00843,_Berlin,_Verkehrsturm_auf_dem_Potsdamer_Platz.jpg)
IN-BETWEENESS and CHIASMA
“… it is an aspect of time (as you say), but also boundaries and definitions – things don’t end where we delimit them” (Posted by Brad on Oct 13/2009 11:14AM)
“ .. Movement is critical as the glue in connecting … ” (Posted by Oscar on Oct 15/2009 04:17AM)
In Part 2 (Observation), we suggested that archaeological documentation favors movement between sites and rest at sites (for the purposes of documentation). We also noted in Part 1 that archaeological traces are accretions of movement. The tension between these two observations serves as a jumping off point for Part 3. On the one hand we have the ontological understanding of place as one of continual accretion and movement. On the other, archaeological practice has, to this point, tended to focus on the documentation of sites, creating movements that are stops and starts in relation to place. Thus, place, in-betweeness and chiasma (defined below) are all outcomes of movement. Here, in emphasizing ontology, we outline how movement forces us to blur existing boundaries. We replace the sharpness of boundaries with the notions of transition and transcience. Our emphasis is on how places and the in-between come to be, not with what a place is or is not. We begin with in-betweeness.

Place:non-place (the problem of dichotomies, yet again)
From a literal perspective, in-betweeness is the ‘space’ between places. But in the sense being used here, in-betweeness is productive only while moving. It is concerned with the work of transformation that occurs in passing from one place to another – the intermizzio. To deal with in-betweeness is to deal with conceptions of place, an admittedly large topic. In this piece we want to address one conception in particular, because the notion of movement bears strongly upon it: the binary of place and non-place. Augé (1995) argues for locations with decidedly ‘non-place’ character: they are real and physical, but lie outside of the everyday and routinized places, only becoming apparent through flow and transience. Gonzalez-Ruibal (2008) picks up on this definition, drawing attention to places of destruction and forgetting brought about by supermodernity (Auge’s term). Non-places are (by necessity) either areas that defy a sense of locatedness or a sense of attachment. The non-place status of airports, for example, as given by Augé (1995) and Sheller and Urry (2006), prescribes an individual’s interaction with their environment by channelling you through security checkpoints. It is this movement and transitory nature that facilitates the passage of travellers to other locations that further instils other movements. Foucault’s prison as heterotopias (1986) similarly displaces the individual, prescribing movement and interaction in a controlled cycle of power dynamics. In this sense, place is awarded positive connotations while non-place is decidedly negative.

(Photo by Oscar Aldred)
There is, however, an opportunity to think about the in-betweeness of transience, which is not about dwelling as in place (through all the types of investments that pertain to this) but rather a dwelling in movement (a different conception of Heidegger’s gathering cf part 4). Consequently, rather than ‘place’ being formed already or becoming entirely stable or restful, it is always in the making: in becoming. So, too, must the in-between be in a process of becoming. As Ingold puts it, whenever we encounter matter it is in movement, in flux, in variation (after Deleuze & Guattari 2004; Ingold 2010: 94). The constitution of place therefore emerges from a project that involves the movement of life/dwelling in which convergence and chiasma, or the crossing between diffuse boundaries, are generative, that are always on the balls of the feet, so to speak (Merleau-Ponty 2002 [1968]; Deleuze 1993; Shanks 1992; Witmore 2006; http://humanitieslab.stanford.edu/23/105). Chiasma is a critical metaphor here because it draws attention to the tenuous nature of boundaries and convergences. With each intersection, something new arises. New boundaries, new places and new in-betweens. Critical, though, is that this depends on active movement. Non-places therefore do not so much occupy the space where places are not, so much as they, following Augé, extend over the area in-between. Place and the in-between depend on ever-shifting engagements with a shifting world that is comprised of movement. For archaeology, it is incumbent upon us to account for this transitory nature, both in the past and in the generation of our own research.

(Photo by Oscar Aldred)
If, as we suggest, movement is a necessary element of an ontology of place, then a definition of place becomes less cognitive and less dependent on boundaries. Principally, movement suggests a continual process of becoming. Simply put, places are not so much defined by their solidity and concretization, but through the flows and convergences that occur in and through them. This is gathering that is continuously on the move. Many scholars have put forward this notion in other contexts (for example, Hamilton & Whitehouse 2008 and the discussion of megalithic quarries on Rapa Nui, and Latour & Yaneva 2008 in discussing architecture), but we expand this ontology also to place. They are not locations per se, but the becoming of located practices brought together through movement. It is thus spatial and temporal, but also situational. Everywhere is potentially a place, and movement (of people, materials, etc.) articulates when there is a where. The dichotomy is, in a sense, not a given, but one that emerges: as does location and meaning. Rather than concerning ourselves with the boundaries and limits of places and non-places, we might better express this as a concern with how movement coalesces in locations and what senses of place arise as a result (in an ongoing process). We might also recall Marilyn Strathern (1996) who asked, if a network is always in process at what point does it become solid enough to be examined?
Expressions (of immaterial in material)
It is important to express and give an archaeological perspective on place and on the in-between. Doing this though, depends to some degree on inferring the immaterial through the material we encounter. In particular there is a concern to address the issue that things moved between (they produce the in-between while simultaneously breaking down the boundaries of place). We can therefore begin by understanding the material matrix we encounter in terms of how a place is comprised through movement. By this it is meant that we can ascertain what has moved in order to constitute a place. In our session, examples of this were brought forth in several of the papers. Christine Reiser’s paper discussed the necessary movement of groups, ideas and materials between small communities in Connecticut. Bradley Sekedat’s paper highlighted the diverse origins of technologies that enable mining in Attica. The developing picture is that locations are materially interconnected to broader landscapes, that places are comprised of concurrent material presences, and that places originate in the flows of movement – even as they defy definition through movement’s very constancy.

(Photo from: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ruta_Nacional_A006_(Argentina)_-_edit_4.jpg)
Flows (flows of place and places as flows)
Movement is continuously generative, and if we want to understand it archaeologically, we need to develop approaches that can cope with the fluid conditions of generative practices. Materials and bodies flow between places and within places – movement is a necessary condition for places to exist in both respects. Thus, how we attend to location is important, and we should see it as the intermixture of people and things that are present together. However, locations themselves are also in motion because places are so often defined with respect to what goes on at them; we may take an example to illustrate this point. Mining, for instance, requires multiple different steps or stages of activity, all interdependent, and all requiring movement across a landscape that is itself moving (cf. Massey 2005; Bender 1992, 1998, 2001, 2002). Communities move between locations as well – workers walk from homes in towns to fields and mines, as an example. In general, and in brief, movement is, as Oscar Aldred noted, the glue that bonds the place world. Behind the sense of location, connected with place, task, landscape, trade, economy, etc., lies movement. Movement serves to connect landscapes and disparate places, while simultaneously creating fluid borders and boundaries to those very integrated places. Movement activates the in-between by showing that it is itself connected to other places, while simultaneously redefining place all the time. Movement therefore creates new juxtapositions that highlight the active nature in the constitution of landscapes and the importance of understanding these processes for archaeology. The fluid boundaries of place and the notion of dwelling in movement feed into our concluding section: Fluid Interdependence.
References
Augé, M. 1995. Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. Translated by J. Howe. London; New York: Verso.
Bender, B. 1992. Theorising landscapes, and the prehistoric landscapes of Stonehenge. Man 27: 735-755.
Bender, B. 1998. Stonehenge: Making Space. Oxford: Berg.
Bender, B. 2001. Landscapes on the move, Journal of social archaeology 1(1): 75-89.
Bender, B. 2002. Time and landscape, Current anthropology 43: S103-S112.
Deleuze, G. 1993. The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. T. Conley (trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. 2004. A thousand plateaus. London: Continuum.
Foucault, M. 1986. Of other spaces. Diacritics 6: 22-7.
González-Ruibal, A. 2008. Time to destroy: an archaeology of supermodernity. Current Anthropology 49 (2): 247-279.
Hamilton, S. and Whitehouse, R. 2006. Phenomenology in Practice: Towards a methodology for a “subjective” approach. European Journal of Archaeology 9(1): 37-71.
Ingold, T. 2010. The Textility of Making. Cambridge Journal of Economics 34(1): 91-102.
Latour, B. and Yaneva, A. 2008. ‘Give me a gun and I will make all buildings move’: An ANT’s view of architecture in Networks? In Geiser, R. (ed.) Explorations in Architecture: Teaching, Design, Research. Basel: Birkhäuser. 80-89.
Massey, D. 2005. For Space. Los Angeles; London: Sage.
Merleau-Ponty, M. 2002 [1968]. Phenomenology of perception. London: Routledge.
Shanks, M. 1992. Experiencing the Past: On the Character of Archaeology. London: Routledge.
Sheller, M. and Urry, J. 2006. The new mobilities paradigm. Environment and Planning A 38: 207-26.
Strathern, M. 1996. Cutting the network. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 2(3): 517-535.
Witmore, C. 2006. “Vision, Media, Noise and the Percolation of Time: Symmetrical approaches to the mediation of the material world”Journal of Material Culture 11(3), 267-292.