The second installment of A Symmetrical Archaeology was organized as a full session at the Society for American Archaeology at San Juan, Puerto Rico (April 26-30th). Organized by Timothy Webmoor with Bjørnar Olsen, Michael Shanks, and Christopher Witmore, the session brought together an international and trans-disciplinary group of thinkers to present a Manifesto for Symmetry in archaeology and the human sciences.

With few exceptions archaeology under-theorized its relationship to the material past prior to Clarke’s ‘loss of innocence’. Subsequently, a burgeoning ‘theory literature’ has attempted to systematize the relations between human behaviour and material culture. We argue that the resultant ‘turns’/diatribe characterizing recent archaeological thinking derives from the shared, humanist presupposition of a radical division between people and things. In accentuating links and crossovers with technoscience studies and empirical philosophy, this session seeks to re-characterize archaeology’s unique role in studying mixtures of humans (behaviour) and material things. Such a ‘symmetry’ of people-things forefronts archaeology in an inclusive ‘ecology’ of ‘naturecultures’.
Joining the organizers were:
Dan Hicks, Dept. of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Bristol, UK
Alfredo Ruibal, Archaeology Center and MetaMedia Labs, Stanford University
John Schofield, English Heritage, UK
More information on the Symmetrical platform of a discipline of things may be found at ‘Events and Articles’ @ http://traumwerk.stanford.edu:3455/Symmetry/814.