edited by Duncan Garrow and Thomas Yarrow, 2010, Oxford: Oxbow Books (184 pp + index).

For a while now archaeology has felt that ‘its time has come’. Growing with thoughtful practice, merging established methodologies with sophisticated and cosmopolitan theorizing, a disciplinary maturity urges making a mark in the academy. No need to repeat the by now familiar calls for archaeology to stop borrowing, balance the intellectual budget, assert its unique insights and value its contributions to the wider world. It all sounds a bit like the confidence boosting of proud (most likely of the ‘sensitive’ variety) parents to a diffident teenager leaving home for the first time. Sticking with the maturation metaphors that Tim Ingold so deftly deploys (his contribution to this volume being no exception), this tale of adolescence (and anxiety) is a fair description of archaeology’s relationship with anthropology (understood as social and cultural anthropology). We seem caught up in a co-dependent relationship. Each discipline fixed to the other as points of a compass, now engaged and collaborative, now indifferent and dismissive – or downright demeaning.

There seems to be need of intervention, of careful analysis and re-evaluation of the relationship binding the disciplines. We need to change the relationship. In short, we need ‘relationship therapy’. This is precisely what the recent volume Archaeology and Anthropology: Understanding similarity, exploring difference, edited by Duncan Garrow and Thomas Yarrow, undertakes. Indeed, whether it is Julian Thomas’ mystical sounding call to embrace “presence” or Ingold’s guru-like utterance that ”to be is to know, and that to know is to be”, there is a poignancy on the part of many of the contributions that sets this collection apart, offering introspective analysis and cognitive tools for just such therapeutic possibility.

If the book ultimately fails in its intervention, it nonetheless pulls together some of the most reflective ruminations on the relationship between these two disciplines. Many of the discussions concerning the practices of anthropology and archaeology tend toward the abstract and require a degree of theoretical sophistication and familiarity with both disciplines. As such, the volume may not be suitable as a primer for undergraduates. Yet most readers will be satisfied with the sage comments from veteran practitioners (Gosden, Ingold, Strathern, Thomas) and the fresh thinking from those fully engaged in cross-disciplinary practices (or “Archaeological Anthropologists”; Edgeworth, Filippucci, Fowler, Garrow and Yarrow, Robinson). Rounding out these analyses is a programmatic vision of future research (Feuchtwang and Rowlands), a detailed case study of critically aware ethnoarchaeology with the potentials for analogy (Robinson), and a discussion of methodological differences to refine disciplinary strengths (McFadyen). Finally, there are sophisticated considerations of time as more “boundary object” (Star and Griesemer 1989) and less principle of demarcation in terms of its warp through past and present (Filippucci, Lucas). In all, Garrow and Yarrow’s collection offers the passage point for scholars interested in the states of affairs between archaeology and anthropology. It will also be of more general interest to those seeking these (rare) type of careful considerations of the character of interdisciplinary exchange.
Despite the broad range of issues raised and styles of contribution deployed, Garrow and Yarrow present their goals for the collection and incisively cull some themes that orient the discussions. The primary goal has to do with redressing inequality between anthropology and archaeology. (Throughout the volume the terms “asymmetry” and “symmetry” are used primarily to describe the disciplines’ relative statuses. Less often do they describe theoretical content. They shouldn’t be conflated with analytical tactics of ontological symmetry; for instance, see Lucas this volume, Webmoor and Witmore’s “symmetrical archaeology”.) Secondary goals involve how to name and cure this inequality. In distinction from previous volumes, Garrow and Yarrow explicitly steer away from any standard ‘how to’ manual on cross-disciplinary exchange. As they clearly state, this is not a book on ethnoarchaeology for analogy. There is no intention to showcase how swapping theories and methods can enliven the other discipline, or make the relationship more interesting. Neither is it an historical overview to show disciplinary entanglements. Instead, the book jettisons formal relationships between archaeology and anthropology – historical, methodological or otherwise. This is refreshing. It is also an integral part of their intervention, or “experimental endeavor” (2). For any treatment of the disciplines prefigures archaeology asymmetrically (3). In the political economy for studying what it is to be human, it is the under-laborer with less to contribute; or at least its contributions are valued only when given vision within an anthropological apparatus. This is why their work is to challenge anthropology, to rupture a hierarchical arrangement (4). No easy task. For the anthropological apparatus holding the two disciplines together is a relatively durable network of components: colonial histories, theoretical constructs, institutional infrastructures, pedagogical training and accreditation, publication venues, professional organizations, funding bodies, and the list could be expanded. Granted that this network is far from homogeneous – indeed, while the volume is admittedly UK-centric the arrangement of components is arguably even more stable in North America.
Earlier commentators noting these disciplinary relations have likewise urged parity – Ian Hodder’s suggestion of a flat hierarchy or Chris Gosden’s call to balance the intellectual deficit (5, 7). However, the editors keenly point out that these earlier attempts at dismantling disciplinary inequalities were made within this encompassing apparatus – using the master’s tools, so to speak. Rather than raise the (self-)esteem of archaeology through anthropological approbation, Garrow and Yarrow call for a relationship between the two disciplines that is not predicated upon commonly shared methods, theories or even questions. In short, asserting differences ought to contribute to independence – especially on the part of archaeology. Their message (modifies neoliberal ideals of political citizenship): not unity but symmetry through difference.
With the path to ‘symmetry’ signposted, the subsequent contributions offer interesting and varied perspectives on what we might expect from different rapprochements between the disciplines. Yarrow (Chapter 2) recuperates the notion of “absence” as something productive of a unique disciplinary identity and ontology. This sticky absence has stuck to archaeology since E.B. Tylor’s formulation of culture as immaterial. Consequently, the discipline has been unable to shake off pesky ontological and epistemic hurdles in its attempt to get at the “issues of social life taken to be at the heart of both disciplines” (14). Such a sense of lack or deficiency was browbeaten into archaeology by Leach’s dismissal of the discipline as an equal partner with anthropology (McFadyen and Thomas also address this disciplinary memory). Yet Yarrow sees this has having catalyzed explicit theorization by subsequent generations of archaeologists. Hawkes, Binford and Clarke are some of the individuals Yarrow mentions who have articulated the discipline’s unique knowledge of absence. This may not make archaeology symmetrical with anthropology. If anything, operationalizing absence makes the discipline unique. Yarrow’s goal, then, is not to overcome asymmetry, but to understand its practical consequences (15). Indeed, despite the more recent recognition that its access to social wholes is likewise fraught with interpretive issues (23), anthropology has not been the ‘bigger person’ by turning weakness into strength. Other contributors invoke a leveling of anthropology and archaeology through questioning anthropology’s unmediated access to the ‘people behind the artefacts’ (Fowler, Strathern). While developing such observations might be the easiest road to symmetrical status of the disciplines, Yarrow ends on a note of indifference with respect to the disciplines’ relationship. For archaeology, this is where the volume exhibits a maturity indicative of a discipline that is confident enough to step out from under the shade of its disciplinary elder.
In Chapter 3 Gavin Lucas contributes in characteristic fashion to this maturity by grounding disciplinary discontinuities in empirics. Or, since the discussion tends to be a theoretical reflection upon interpretive strategies, we are given “modes of scientific operation” and how these materializing practices arise from real differences in ethnographic and archaeological contexts. Lucas develops the point about anthropology’s questionable access to people and suggests that both disciplines face the problem of inferring abstract and empirically absent precepts from their observable data. At least this is the case for ethnographic material culture studies that attempt to get at the ‘things behind the people’ and an (influential) archaeological school of thought that aims to get at processes behind ‘the Indians’ (30). This situation has, for archaeology, set up a series of ‘turns’ or attempts to reconfigure the separation of “absent subjects” from the observable record. These attempts have focused upon the redistribution of agency across the people and things divide. This part of Lucas’ argument is a bit sparse, and might have been expanded, especially as he covers vast territories of literature and contentiously concludes that these movements – whether Hodder’s ‘linguistic turn’, queer theory or ‘symmetrical archaeology’ – have all been unsuccessful in restoring symmetry between people and things in archaeological contexts (32). Though not explicitly stated, one senses that these attempts at symmetry within archaeology have been unsuccessful because they have not tackled the more obdurate divide between archaeologists and their data: temporality. The Binford and Schiffer debates over the static-dynamic distinction may have been more productive than these movements, as their exchanges targeted the varying tempos of archaeological and ethnographic contexts. What Lucas argues is necessary, therefore, is a symmetrical redistribution both of agency and temporality. Through discarding the object-event distinction (inspired with Whitehead’s “fallacy of misplaced concreteness”) and proposing documenting “latent” and “manifest agencies”, Lucas hopes to achieve a symmetry that remains fixed to the empirics of our archaeological record – symmetry true to our mode of scientific operation. Rather than a deflection of attention away from the temporal fractures that uniquely characterize archaeological objects. The illustrative example of studying material assemblages and their propensities for action (32) is not entirely convincing, and seems to be a tacit avowal of ‘affordances’ – a concept hotly contested by perceptual psychologists since Gibson’s initial proposal. Whether or not Lucas’ concepts will lead to a more symmetrical archaeology remains to be seen. He concludes by considering the implications of these concepts for the relationship between anthropology and archaeology. Absence in the archaeological record dialectically unfolds to reveal three interlinked types of absences: absent event; absent subject; absent present. These absences uniquely shape archaeology’s mode of operation. As such these empirical asymmetries between archaeology and anthropology cannot be dissolved or overcome. They should not, however, be taken to be inequalities (38). While the chapter is at times remote from the empirics he purports to remain true to, Lucas’ analytic thinking and affirmation of archeology’s unique ‘mode’ suggests to the reader that this generation of archaeologists has its own David Clarke.
McFadyen (Chapter 4) continues the consideration of temporality and absence and their consequences for archaeological evidence through the case study of Mesolithic flint scatters in Wiltshire, UK. Echoing Lucas’ dismantling of the object-event distinction, McFadyen emphasizes the temporal relations holding amongst assemblages of lithic scatters as opposed to their spatial distributions. Agreeing with Lucas’ critique of the static nature of the archaeological record, McFadyen’s lithic scatters are “open” and ongoing (46). Prioritizing the temporal dimension over the spatial, McFadyen stops just short of declaring with Peter Sloterdijk in his Spheres trilogy that space is the outcome or manifestation of temporally organized activities, not the a priori container of them.
Thus far the contributions to the volume have tended to valorize archaeology’s differences, its unique methods, savvy understandings of temporality and the long-term, or its honed formulations of epistemology and ontology. Matt Edgeworth’s essay (Chapter 5) nicely balances such considerations by offering a more optimistic exchange between anthropology and archaeology. Indeed, Edgeworth himself offers the example of a hybrid scholar, or ‘boundary scholar’, with his early development of an “ethnography of archaeology”. He is right to point out that the division itself between the disciplines has to be maintained through boundary practices (56). Therefore, unlike Garrow and Yarrow who want to understand the practical consequences of the asymmetric split, Edgeworth examines how practical actions instantiate and sustain the split – and the disciplinary asymmetry. Taking cues from Science and Technology Studies (STS), Edgeworth skillfully examines how archaeological practice is a “material orientation” (58) that offers unique insights into human-material interactions in the production of knowledge (60). He unpacks the germane example of Goodwin’s anthropological study of the archaeological excavations at Arroyo Secco to demonstrate how the exchange was of mutual benefit, in terms of providing a reflexive insight into archaeology’s material practices, and in influencing the development of Goodwin’s anthropological theory of language and visualization. If Edgeworth’s prognosis for the disciplines’ relationship comes across a bit too positive, the reader is reminded that this perspective has been forged from the struggles of working across policed boundaries.
In the subsequent chapters, Paola Filippucci (Chapter 6) gives an evocative discussion of memory objects and argues that archaeology’s epistemology, by causally anchoring traces to the not-present (74), offers a more robust manner of understanding social memory through avoiding the presentism or malleability of memory of anthropological theorization. David Robinson (Chapter 7) provides a case study of ethnoarchaeology involving rock art in South-Central California to suggest how tacking-back-and-forth (after Alison Wylie’s epistemic formula – and Peirce’s pragmatic ‘cable’) between these subject-side reservoirs of data can bypass a false and unhelpful disciplinary divide. And in Chapter 8 Chris Gosden embodies a Geertzian archaeologist in reminding the discipline of its long tradition of thick “material description”. Appreciation of this highly developed skill for describing the subtle and sensual qualities of things has, ironically, been lost due to the theoretical importance of language and meaning in more recent archaeology (111). Turning instead for theoretical guidance from fields such as STS, Gosden believes that archaeology can again develop its mix of approaches for conducting minute empirics. And in doing so make wider contributions as the “provider of descriptions” (115). Finally in Chapter 9 Stephan Feuchtwang and Mike Rowlands detail an ambitious – and at times abstruse – agenda for reintegrating archaeology, anthropology and history through recovering a Maussian concept of civilization. That is, material practices that “hang together” and give rise to more definite societies (121). This inversion of Tylor’s formulation of culture reinstates priority to what is archaeologically observable: shifting mixtures of these material practices over the long-term. Reformulating civilization as a set of temporalities, their program would have these combined disciplines track “civilizational spreads” (122). Christopher Fowler (Chapter 10) concludes the substantive portion of the volume by echoing Edgeworth in his more optimistic appraisal of the disciplines’ abilities to mutually inform one another through their study of personhood. However, while Fowler symmetrically affirms the partial and fragmentary nature of evidence in both disciplines (with Robinson, Strathern and Yarrow), the initial impetus behind studies of “relational personhood” stems from anthropological theory. And we’re left with a “complementarity” (154) that seems closer to the co-dependent relationship which the editors bemoaned.
The boldness and risky ratiocination of the following chapter by Tim Ingold (Chapter 11) makes it stand out as an intellectual intervention in the disciplines’ relationship. He forecasts a future (2053) wherein the differences between the disciplines have dissipated in a holistic science of life (160). Reflecting back upon what enabled such a union, Ingold suggests it was the letting go of some intractable concepts cherished by the two disciplines, namely the past (161) and the human (164). Dislodged from their etymological roots, archaeology and anthropology were free to pursue the nature of becoming with its attendant lessons of growth, continuation and “carryings on” (164). While a bit pedantic, at times even evoking an Edmund Leach reborn as a sort of priest of “pastness”, Ingold’s dismissal of archeology’s valorization of ‘the past’ is a stimulating intellectual subversion. Ingold resonates with Whitehead’s process philosophy and the non-anthropocentrism of Deep Ecology in valuing things that carry on, endure and last into the present; not those castaways which undergo Lucas’ temporal quarantine and come down to us as the archaeological record (164). This Gestalt switch in perspective away from beginnings and endings, from punctuated origins and dates, toward growth and continuation recasts archaeology as material midwifery; witnessing the “continuous birth”, flow and transformation of people and materials. To make his prognostications symmetrical Ingold likewise castigates the “anthropological machine” for fixedly holding on to the evolutionary concept of homo sapiens as something distinct and set above nature (166-7). Despite (or because of?) the rhetorical flair, with undertones of Ludditism, New Ageism and Pink Floyd all mixed together, Ingold’s essay comes closest to a therapeutic wake up call for archaeology and anthropology.
The final contributions of the volume are commentaries upon the chapters. After Ingold’s provocative piece the very sharp essays by Marilyn Strathern (Chapter 12) and Julian Thomas (Chapter 13) are dulled somewhat. Yet Strathern in particular also explodes (in more austere style) many meta-orientations of the disciplines. Her esteemed work in anthropology and background knowledge of archaeology (Borić 2010) allows her to deftly deploy McSherry’s (after Star and Griesemer 1989) concept of “boundary objects”. She suggests that we ought to give up striving for symmetry between the disciplines in terms of mutual interests, concepts or complementary contributions. This is because such attempts (a few are represented in this volume) rely upon an idea of symmetry that is prefigured by contextual – mereological – thinking: adding together multiple viewpoints or parts sums up to a more complete understanding of a whole; critically, a whole that is singular. As Latour (forthcoming) puts it, drawing together some of the very same sources of inspiration for Strathern (Viveiros de Castro’s perspectivism and relational ontologies, combining Whitehead and Actor-Network Theory), it is the metaphysical belief in social multiplicity undergirded by a singular nature. This is why Strathern prods us that “disparate viewpoints can never add up” (175). Inherited through the more empirical formulation as reductionism in the experimental sciences, mereological thinking is part of the common sense and practice of archaeology – take the manner, for instance, in which we dissect in excavation so that we may later reassemble a (transformed) whole. Strathern’s departure into such Baroque sensibilities leaves us subtle points for approaching the relations between the disciplines. Boundary objects reveal the “bundle of relations” that a discipline coordinates in formulating objects of knowledge (176). These epistemic objects do not have, therefore, fixed or singular ontologies. So little is to be gained by amassing archaeological and anthropological perspectives on a presumed stable and shared epistemic object. Everything, including real symmetry, Strathern suggests, may be gained by looking to the shared processes of assembling and sustaining these boundary objects. By looking inward we may expand our identification outward.
Thomas, in the final chapter, serendipitously offers us the foil to Strathern’s Zen Kõan when he (re)affirms mereological reasoning: how each discipline offers complementary perspectives on societies, “each provid[ing] us with only a partial understanding of the whole” (183). After Strathern’s message of widened identification through letting go of ‘partial connections’, Thomas raises again the boundaries around the egos of our disciplines. But the effect of these final two commentaries brings the various efforts of the contributors into sharper relief. There are and will continue to be ‘interdisciplinary’ type of efforts between the disciplines. Espousing complementarity through viewing disciplines as more or less distinct and piecing together their unique insights into some hoped-for whole understanding of what it is to be human. There are also, we might say, ‘adisciplinary’ efforts by Edgeworth’s type of “boundary scholars” who risk letting go of disciplinary identity in order to tread the sands of shifting and transgressive boundary objects. If Garrow and Yarrow’s own published boundary object fails the ambitious task of arbitrating a satisfactory resolution to anthropology and archaeology’s co-dependent relationship, it nonetheless eminently fulfils its subtitle and provokes readers with a paradox: the path to disciplinary independence is through widened identification.
References
Borić, Dušan 2010. Arriving at a good description: Interview with Professor Dame Marilyn Strathern. Journal of Social Archaeology 10(2): 280-96.
Latour, Bruno. forthcoming. An Attempt at Writing a ‘Compositionist Manifesto’. New Literary History.
Star, Susan Leigh and James Griesemer. 1989. Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects. Social Studies of Science 19: 387-420.
Webmoor, Timothy and Christopher Witmore. 2005. Symmetrical Archaeology, Metamedia Lab, Stanford University. Available at http://humanitieslab.stanford.edu/Symmetry, accessed September 15 2010.