Originally, the notion of polyagency pertained to the causative capabilities of materialities and intangibilities in more or less a humanocentric way, similar to Gell’s agency concept (Normark 2004a, 2004b). However, now I see it as a phase of becoming and the word agency here relates to something active. Poly means many, and both words together…
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A blog born every 1/2 second – a new beneficial addition to ecademy
Estimates of the blogosphere are that it now expands exponentially, with a new blog born every half second. This watershed media move to digital capture, storage, retrieval and distribution makes information increasingly easy to share and re-mix, but correspondingly difficult to keep track of. The boon and bane of digital fungibility. But if once the…
Open Source Archaeology and Heritage Ecologies? Taking ‘Yahoo!©s’ seriously at Teotihuacan, Mexico
A World Heritage site always attracts a lot of attention. Such archaeological sites are viewed to materially represent irreplaceable ‘heritage’ on a global scale and are defined and protected through the United Nations’ UNESCO declarations (eg. UNESCO 1988). Teotihuacan, Mexico is no exception. Replete with two monumental pyramids (the Pyramid of the Sun being the…
Bergsonian and Deleuzian ontologies for a posthuman archaeology. Polyagentive archaeology, Part III
Can we rely on materialities, objects or humans in archaeological analyses? What should our basic categories of analysis be? What do the humans and non-humans share that make them create a network? Symmetrical archaeology suggests that we should not give primacy to the human while we study archaeological remains. To this I agree (Normark 2004a,…
Hannibal Barca’s Theophoric Destiny and the Alps
Fig. 1 Ba’al stela from Ugarit-Ras Shamra, H. 142 cm, c. 18th-15th c. BCE, Musee du Louvre, AO 15775 That Hannibal was a great strategist, unpredictable himself yet often able to predict his enemies’ actions, has been long appreciated. This is usually all one needs to know as an answer to why Hannibal crossed the…
CHAT 2006: Some Highlights
Andrew Cochrane and Ian Russell The 2006 Contemporary and Historical Archaeology in Theory (CHAT) conference provided an instalment of discussions, dialogues and debates, which did not disappoint those searching for a healthy argument over the relevance of possibilities of performing archaeology in a contemporary world. On the Saturday night (11 November 2006), a host of…