Roman Cyborgs! On Significant Otherness, Material Absence, and Virtual Presence in the Archaeology of Roman Religion

Abstract

In this article I explore different ways archaeologists can contribute to and learn from theorizing the digital world beyond the traditional functionalistic means of applying computational methods. I argue that current digital technologies can be a very constructive tool to create non-human experience and awareness. I pursue this argument by presenting ideas from a work-in-progress project experimenting with the post-human and the virtual, and by exploring significant otherness in Roman religion and the dark spots in human perception, through the analysis of an absent temple in Rome. Applying post-human philosophies and an expanded concept of virtuality beyond the digital makes it possible to change our approach to object/human/divine relations in Roman cults and how we present Roman heritage towards a post-humanist framework. Through this, digital archaeology can become one of the ways of re-examining and reinventing our ideas of the human, the past and the digital.

New Materialism and Posthumanism in Roman Archaeology: When Objects Speak for Others

“…Due to the intermittent adoption of aspects of Greco-Roman culture into western European history (from language, aesthetics to law), the relation of the West to the ancient Greek and Roman worlds suffers from what Herzfeld deems a false ‘cultural intimacy’ (Herzfeld 2005, 1–38). This has been really damaging to certain subfields like, for instance, the study of Roman religion, where a strict divide between human, object and spirit did not always exist (Mol 2019, 64–81). Of course, post-colonial criticism as well as many subfields within provincial Roman archaeology have advocated convincingly for the recognition of otherness in the Roman past.…”

La competencia digital docente que define al profesor humanista del siglo XXI

“…Primera (en rojo), relacionada con conceptualizaciones relacionadas con el posthumanismo y el aprendizaje humano (Knox, 2016;Mol, 2020;Paredes & Freitas, 2020;Viega, 2020), así como la importancia de la comunicación y la conversación en el ciberespacio. También se advierten estudios críticos acerca del abandono de la idea que la educación abierta tiene un fin democratizador y liberador y empoderador en sí mismo (Bayne & Jandrić, 2017).…”

Giving Voices (Without Words) to Prehistoric People: Glimpses into an Archaeologist's Imagination

“…. First, in addition to the celebration of ambiguity being an underlying aspect of the feminist practice of archaeology (Wylie, 2007), it is also very much at the heart of a post-humanist and new-materialist attitude that blurs the conventional boundaries between real, unreal, and virtual (Yalouri, 2018;Mol, in prep), between human and nonhuman species (Haraway, 2008), and between animate and inanimate subjects (Domanska, 2018;Yalouri, 2018;Mol, in prep) that releases us from the conventions of linear discursive text in order to encourage the representation of ambiguities in non-discursive multimodal formats (Barad 2003;Murray, 2009). .…”

“…In listing some of the requirements of celebrating ambiguity, three aspects of the enterprise emerge as relevant to this article: First, in addition to the celebration of ambiguity being an underlying aspect of the feminist practice of archaeology (Wylie, 2007), it is also very much at the heart of a post-humanist and new-materialist attitude that blurs the conventional boundaries between real, unreal, and virtual (Yalouri, 2018; Mol, in prep), between human and non-human species (Haraway, 2008), and between animate and inanimate subjects (Domanska, 2018; Yalouri, 2018; Mol, in prep) that releases us from the conventions of linear discursive text in order to encourage the representation of ambiguities in non-discursive multimodal formats (Barad 2003; Murray, 2009). Second, a certain playfulness (even irony) enters into the creation of post-humanist archaeological interpretations of the past that requires a willingness to accept this on the part of the audience and academic colleagues.…”

“…Digital formats of the kind listed above are the only way to represent our interpretations of the world, dreams, memories, emotions, and senses as experienced in the ‘dark phenomenology’ (Mol, in prep) of prehistory. In spite of this, as Erik Champion notes, ‘Many virtual environments have aimed for realism rather than for meaningful interaction.…”