The CHAT Conference at the University of Aberdeen, November 12th-14th, 2010

Union Square from the Citadel, Aberdeen. Photo taken by Lyn Mcleod and licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.
The Contemporary and Historical Archaeology in Theory Conference (CHAT for short) takes a different guise wherever it goes. This year it was held in the granite-grey, invigorating city of Aberdeen in northern Scotland, taking ‘North’ itself as its theme. As Tim Ingold put it in his keynote address, it consisted of ‘conversations from the North: scholars of many disciplines and inhabitants of many places in dialogue with one another, with animals and plants, and with the land’.

The northern theme and location in Aberdeen brought new faces into the conference, from the Orkneys, Finland, Sweden, Germany, Norway, Denmark, USA and Canada, as well as those who followed road signs to The North along the A1 and A90. But the spirit of CHAT, taking the form of lively discussions, was the same as ever. Hard to pinpoint exactly why the conference consistently works so well, but it always feels like a special kind of meeting-ground for ideas. It might be the relatively small number of speakers and attendees, compared to larger conferences like TAG or SHA, making it easier to get to know people. It could be connected with the nomadic character of CHAT, or the cutting-edge nature of papers. However this may be, it surely has much to do with the emphasis on facilitating genuine dialogue, with plenty of time for audience response built into schedules.
Channelling contemporary and historical archaeology through the theme of the North meant that particular issues, often neglected elsewhere, now came to the forefront. For example, several papers reminded us that archaeologies of northern regions are about the sea as much as the land, and about snow and ice as much as water. Indeed, the point at which water changes from one material state to another, from ice to meltwater and vice-versa, is itself a kind of frontier for archaeology. Thus Pauline Goertz (University of Waterloo) spoke of the threat to archaeological sites in the Arctic from global warming, and the challenge this poses for heritage conservation, while at the same time making us aware of the fragile nature of ecosystems in the face of melting ice and rising sea levels – along with impending economic development of formerly inaccessible regions.
Ecological concerns came through in many of the presentations. Archaeological sites and buildings can be monuments to exploitation of environmental resources carried out on a truly monumental scale. Þóra Pétursdóttir (University of Tromsø) gave a compelling account of fish factories on remote coastlines of Iceland. These deserted buildings testify to the vast shoals of herring – now almost gone from the seas – and the vanished communities that until recently harvested and processed the once immense natural resource.
Time itself can be experienced differently in northern latitudes. A paper by Titta Kallio‐Seppä, Tiina Kuokkanen, Risto Nurmi, Anna‐Kaisa Salmi, James Symonds, Annemari Tranberg and Timo Ylimaunu (University of Oulu and University of York) tackled the issue of linear versus cyclical time in relation to the town of Tornio in Lapland, where lengths of daylight vary from 24 hours in the height of summer to 0 hours in the depths of winter. One of the conclusions of their archaeological and ethnological study was that linear and cyclical concepts of time are not mutually exclusive, and can co-exist and overlap in the same cultural system.

Tiina Kuokkanen and Timo Ylimaunu (University of Oulu) respond to a question posed by Rodney Harrison (Open University). Photo by Jeff Oliver
There were no First Nation or indigenous people of the North at the conference but their voice came through in some of the papers. Jonquil Covello (Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada) questioned the Eurocentric narratives from which accepted discourses of the North have been constructed, and directed us instead to works of indigenous writers from the Northwest Territories, such as the searing novel Porcupines and China Dolls by Robert Alexei (2009). Audio tapes of Cree Elders talking about their material culture were incorporated by Francois Guindon (University of Aberdeen) into his paper about an ethnoarchaeological study in Eastern James Bay, Canada. He explained how the Elders have a crucial role in helping to decide the direction of his research, as key collaborators in it, and that they themselves stipulated that their stories should be shared with as broad an audience as possible. Several other papers dealt with the importance of engagement with local communities.
The North as a space of colonisation and synonym for marginalization were dual themes of many papers. Amanda Crompton (Memorial University, Canada) focused on the French colony of Plaisance in Newfoundland. The settlement has long been regarded as a peripheral, marginal, inhospitable place – or, at least, that was the dominant perception looking in from outside. But centre and periphery are relative concepts, and as the paper went on to show, depend upon position and standpoint. The most marginal place (as seen from a colonial perspective), can be the centre of the world to an inhabitant of the place. What seems like passive economic dependence from one point of view can be re-interpreted as active engagement in trade networks and economic productivity from another. Excavation and study of material culture can help to challenge old colonial understandings of the roles of Plaisance and other northern centres.
There were many other papers – on cartographic norths, northern material cultures, industrial, nuclear and military norths, and so on – and it is impossible to cover them all here. But two papers stood out for me in exemplifying, in completely different ways, important roles of archaeology of the contemporary and recent past.
Daniel Lee (ORCA, Orkney College) argued strongly for breaking down traditional divides between prehistoric and historic studies of Orkney archaeology. Here there is long continuity in use, appropriation and re-appropriation of landscapes. To get to an understanding of prehistoric inhabitation you have to reach it through an understanding of how later generations lived through and transformed (and are still living through and transforming) those very landscapes – and vice-versa. Lee recommended a multi-period approach to multi-period landscapes.
In a powerful paper, Laura McAtackney (University College Dublin) discussed the barely known and little discussed phenomenon of the peace lines of Belfast in Northern Ireland. Introduced in the late 1960s, the material reality of these lines is still largely denied. They do not appear on maps, yet many have been there on the ground for forty years. The paper showed how the walls not only reflect but also help to create social and political conditions. By bringing the materiality of the peace lines into realms of discourse, McAtackney affirmed the role of archaeology in understanding the grounds of conflict and helping to heal social divisions.
Tim Ingold’s keynote talk for this multidisciplinary conference was partly about dematerializing walls of a different kind. He reminded us that knowledge is not a compartmented field, neatly divided into subject areas. From the point of view of a scholar engaged in research it is perhaps more like following a trail in a forest or across tundra, going wherever the tracks we choose to follow take us, irrespective of subject boundaries (though as I have argued elsewhere, these disciplinary boundaries undoubtedly have a concrete reality too, channelling us along well-trodden paths and into ‘safe areas’. Ingold is surely right, however, to encourage us to break free of them). Such trails cross over or run alongside others from time to time at gatherings such as this. The path of a scholar, he suggested in a memorable phrase, is the path of a hunter…
THE NEXT CHAT CONFERENCE
Contemporary and Historical Archaeology in Theory Conference
November 11 – 13 2011
Boston University, College of Arts and Sciences
Theme: People and Things in Motion
Conference website
CHAT website