Theory adrift: The matter of archaeological theorizing

Abstract

At a possible transition towards a 'flat', post-human or new-materialist environment, many have suggested that archaeological theory and theorizing is changing course; turning to metaphysics; leaning towards the sciences; or, even is declared dead. Resonating with these concerns, and drawing on our fieldwork on a northern driftwood beach, this article suggests the need to rethink fundamental notions of what theory isits morphological being-and how it behaves and takes form. Like drift matter on an Arctic shore, theories are adrift. They are not natives of any particular territory, but nomads in a mixed world. While they are themselves of certain weight and figure, it matters what things they bump into, become entangled with, and moved by. Based on this, we argue that theories come unfinished and fragile. Much like things stranding on a beach they don't simply 'add up' but can become detached, fragmented, turned and transfigured. Rather than seeing this drift as rendering them redundant and out of place, it is this nomadism and 'weakness' that sustains them and keeps them alive.

Assemblages of practice. A conceptual framework for exploring human–thing relations in archaeology

“…Our conceptual framework originated abductively, by wrestling with the messiness and vibrancy of archaeological things and disorderly yet illuminating deep theory. We are well aware that developing the framework has been an exercise in what some archaeologists may negatively perceive as theoretical 'borrowing' (Pétursdóttir and Olsen 2017). Deliberately, and perhaps controversially, we have sympathetically fitted together ostensibly disparate concepts from the social sciences and humanities according to their compatibilities rather than exclude them based on their perceived incongruencies.…”

New Digs: Networks, Assemblages, and the Dissolution of Binary Categories in Anthropological Archaeology

“…Though archaeologists who adopt such theories draw from different philosophical sources (often DeLanda , ; Deleuze and Guattari ), the concept “assemblage” remains center stage, typically referring to the set of things, people, and organisms that make up a social context (e.g., Skousen ; Swenson ; Van Dyke ). To concentrate on assemblages is to trace situated interactions and flows of action while also recognizing that some things come to act and form assemblages in ways that exceed human intentions (e.g., Pétursdóttir and Olsen ; see also Pétursdóttir ). Such accounts of assemblages in the ancient world, however, might require more critical thought, especially with regard to aforementioned indigenous archaeologies.…”

A taphonomy of a dark Anthropocene. A response to Þóra Pétursdóttir's OOO-inspired ‘Archaeology and Anthropocene’

“…While I find this a worthwhile endeavour, what she means, I think, follows OOO's push of ontology to the detriment of epistemology. In other words, I think she would argue that in the encounter with traces of the past, there shouldn't be any predetermined and ordering frame of reference (the classical understanding of what theories stand for), but instead the engagement should be relational (see Pétursdóttir and Olsen 2017). Thus, instead of a subject who comes to know the world though a specific lens (which is open to analysis – epistemology), we have a subject who learns through direct encounter with the properties of things, a personal, immersive engagement which changes them in return.…”