. . .continued from Part 1 of 2. Temporality The ethnographic examination of archaeological practice has become an established sub-domain (Edgeworth 2006, 2010; Yarrow 2003), although this reflexive platform has not developed in explicit contact with STS ethnographies of science (Knorr-Cetina and Mulkay 1983; Latour and Woolgar 1986; Lynch 1985). The characterization of scientific activity…
things
The principle of symmetry according to Tim Ingold: An occasion for more clarification
When deployed in the context of metaphysics, symmetry is an awkward, even unsightly, term. Those of us who have enrolled this principle have been the first to admit this. We have also been the first to state that we are more than happy to take leave of symmetry. But such vocabulary works because it is…
Object orientations? A commentary on Graham Harman’s intervention in STS and archaeology
Graham Harman diagrams the ‘fourfold’ object for STSers and archaeologists at the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, Oxford Graham Harman recently visited Oxford for a week as part of a Mellon funded Sawyer Seminar. The organisers, archaeologist Chris Gosden and geographer Sarah Whatmore, both of the University of Oxford, put together an innovative format…
ANT, Ants, and Archaeology: A Meditation on Uncertainty
Maria O’Connell, Texas Tech University maria.oconnell@ttu.edu In the video clip, a team examines an underground structure somewhere in Brazil. The team is preparing for excavation. Bert Hölldobler and his crew are about to examine the abandoned ruins of a colony of Atta laevigata; leaf cutter ants (Hölldobler and Wilson 2009, 460). As Bruno Latour writes,…
Archaeology and the Speculative Turn
Here is the Prezi presentation for the paper I gave in Ben Alberti and Yvonne Marshall’s excellent “Worlds Otherwise” session during this weekend’s TAG at Brown University (click on the image above). I left this year’s Theoretical Archaeology Group with a profound sense of enthusiasm and excitement for the work being presented in that venue….
Contemporary and Historical Archaeology in Theory Conference 2009
John M. Chenoweth (UC Berkeley) From October 16 to 18, participants met at Keble College, Oxford, for the 2009 CHAT conference. Over 30 papers engaged with the theme “Modern Materials: the archaeology of things from the early modern, modern, and contemporary world.” Both participants and subjects of discussion were wide ranging. While many came from…