A discussion yesterday with Bruno Latour, after his presentation “Manifesto for Compositionalism” at Oxford, hinged upon how we go about composing our collective world now that ‘nature’ is no longer an organizing category. The difficulty for analyses is that the modernist notion of nature supplied a related host of distinctions which we routinely call upon…
symmetry
Rivers as artifacts
This paper starts with the question: can rivers usefully be studied as artifacts? The question may raise an eyebrow or two. For the most part rivers tend to be regarded as more or less natural features of a landscape or townscape. Even in the midst of towns – bordered by buildings on both sides –…
Archaeology and Science Studies – round 2
Archaeology took on Science Studies (again) at the collective (4S) Society for Social Studies of Science and the History of Science Society and Philosophy of Science Association Conference this past weekend (November 2-4, 2006) in Vancouver, BC, Canada. The working title for the conference this year was: “Silence, Suffering and Survival.” While there has been…
THE CLEARING: Heidegger and Excavation
text by Matt Edgeworth images by permission of Fotis Ifantidis In the midst of beings as a whole an open place occurs. There is a clearing, a lighting… Only this clearing grants and guarantees to us humans a passage to those beings that we ourselves are not, and access to the being that we ourselves…
Deprivation through ‘dialectics’: Why some archaeologist’s are hamstrung by things and why things are hamstrung by some archaeologists
Over the last few weeks I have been causally reading through the various chapters in a recent book edited by Elizabeth DeMarrais, Chris Gosden and Colin Renfrew entitled Rethinking materiality: The engagement of mind with the material world (2004). The book, the material product of a symposium with the same title held in March 2003…
Symmetrical Archaeology at Society for American Archaeology (SAA’s) in Puerto Rico
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…