Pre-critical archaeology. Speculative realism and symmetrical archaeology

Abstract

The rise of Symmetrical Archaeology has subtly recast archaeology as the study of things and not the study of the past or past peoples. This new description of the archaeological endeavour is often met with criticism. This paper continues in the critical vein but embraces a different strategy of engagement. Here, second-wave Symmetrical Archaeology is brought to the fore: its historical development explored, its methodology outlined, its current theoretical basis assessed. Part critique, part defence, I consider the logical underpinning of the second-wave, focusing on ontology and agency. Utilizing Levi Bryant’s ontic principle, I attend to these two issues and frame this style of archaeology as Pre-critical Archaeology. A caveat seems necessary: whilst I spend time with Symmetrical Archaeology in this paper, that does not mean I am a convert. Rather, my ambition here is to see things from the point of view of a Symmetrical archaeologist.

The Mandate for Speculation: Responding to Uncertainty in Archaeological Thinking

“…Instead of treating the archaeological facts as the touchstone of a given archaeological theory, this speculative empiricism is driven by the conviction that the subject matter of archaeology continually unfolds in multiple ways through the very practice of archaeology, thus necessitating a speculative understanding of archaeology's epistemology (Witmore 2014;. In essence, the rather broad 'posthumanism' of archaeology appears to be developing as a reaction against the reductive strategies of positivist as well as post-structuralist archaeologies (for recent discussions, see Govier 2022;Govier & Steel 2021). In this sense, the archaeological record, as a phenomenon in the present, is treated as radically multiple, relational and dynamic, emerging from-rather than reducible to-the archaeologist's engagement with it (see also Shanks 1995, 54-5).…”