[...]ed communities that changed in composition and through time in neolithic and bronze age
assemblage --replace--> context
assemblage = phenomena --> temporary, contingent, unbounded
Latourian critique of categories =/= beyond human correlationalism
pluralizing ontology ==> charges of relativism <-- ‘objective knowledge =/= contingent foundations’ }--> nonrepresentational approach =/= over interpretation, abstraction
archeology operates by seeking strong and effective articulations between theories, apparatuses, material remains
ontological realism (=/= naturalism, constructivist) --> objectivity and truth are contingent, but also demonstrable and robust
@Chloe
material record: an expression of **how past gathers in the present** (=/= fragmentary evidence of history <-- forensic approach)
past continuously unfolding and therefore changing
Alberi --> (social) ontology: a new interpretive tool
additive work (=/= reconstructive)
archeological accounts of other's ontologies
animal turn in archeology --> nonanthropocentric zoological studies
Willerselv
Viveiros de Castro
Amazona --> animism (more than any other anthropological material) has provided modes of relationality to archeologists to interpret material patterning in archeological records --> [*]animism: an ethnographic meta-analogy for past ontologies
•blurring between nature and culture
•relationship with other-than-human agencies (animal, spirit, artifact)
==✕==> ontological critique
Viveiros de Castro --> systemize amerindian thought into a metaphysics ==> to have an reciprocal effect on anthropological thought (western naturalist metaphysics)
reference to a “common world”
new animism ==> ontology becomes another name for culture
Alebrti outlining:
•anthropological project that considers ontology as a critical question productive of conceptual engagement
•work of archeologists who theorize and practice archeology on the basis of indigenous theories
}--> where new animists turn to animism for a source of analogies, critical ontology turns to animism for a source of theory
perspectivism: multiple natures (worlds) + singular culture (way of knowing those worlds) [~ working from *commonality* rather than *alterity*] --> a theoretical bomb =/= analogies based on ethnographic content
spirits experienced as diminutive yet brilliantly decorated or huge and grotesque
the more intense ==> the more body it is
(the promise of thinking through) [*]thing: a nonspecified ontological category that can be “filled” through ethnographic observation that is designed to allow ontological alterity to inform its content
recursive anthropology --> alterity: a function of the divergence between ethnographic materials and the assumptions the analyst brings to them
(if) ontology: what is ==> alterity: part of what others say ‘what is’ that does not make sense to us
(the danger of) a new metaontological orthodoxy becoming a immutable metaphysic
archeological alterity: things that do not make sense ontologically (escape traditional frameworks)
archeology's new kind of reflexivity
•openness
•wonder: an intentional naivete, naive empiricism (==> sustain altering + enabling meaning, to be besieged & committed to ---> go to Cinderella =/= moving beyond)
•emphasis on descriptive =/= theoretical
•attentiveness to our embodied responses
(a question of critical ontology in archeology -->) how are we to mobilize & manifest (describe & transform) the new past from things? [<-- my question in my research on ajayeb]
•how i am subjectively involved in the past we investigate
•how i am objectively part of those pasts
the all encompassing (nonlinear) descriptive writings of ancient and antiquarian travelers --> what is encountered imposes itself ==force==> a choice ==> description
kinetic activity + the experience of being in the field
aesthetic attentiveness of bestiaries
pragmatic use of the word ontology in archeology --signal--> the potential world-shifting nature of what is being studied
to be ontological = entirety of the analytical apparatus and what is being studied should be included in the analysis
(caught up in the process:) the object of study + analytical scaffolding + method + analyst
the degree to which an approach is willing to do ontology to itself (investigate its own ontological assumptions)
metaphysical archeology + ontological anthropology --> perspective on reality
(assign things to preexisting conceptual structures =/=) looking for ways things can have an impact on your thinking, concepts, ontology ==> unlocking what is most “of the past” about things
...................................
Alberti
Ingold
correspondence: (a pre-conceptual practice -->) epistemological intimacy in the practices of art, science, and anthropology
•a way to understand one's own research process
(archeology: a science of correspondence)
Alberti suggesting to separate arts and crafts (for analytical purposes)
artwork: non-conceptual outcomes of practice
artwork & archeological things --share--> ontological problem of how to make something new [~ *sensations/past never before experienced/thought*] out of (circumscribed body of) materials
archeological things carry both sensation & *residue of concepts* with them (~~> artistic research =/= artworks)
==> resurrect the conceptual potential immanent to the specific arrangement of materials (and their temporary forms)
(ontological dilemma [of both art and archeology]:) *how to anticipate the coming into being of something sensed but as yet not thought?*
(---> go to metaphor)
scientific interpretation and explanation of the past <-~ archeology
{my work: speculative interpretation and explanation of the past [--> prefigure new becomings + intensification and unleashing of ‘i am part of what i seek to understand’ (= my subjectivity)] =/= lock the past into predictability}
•my ‘things’ in ajayeb are to an extent ‘archeological things’
contemporary science --gives--> ontologically relational world (<-- to be acknowledged by art and archeology)
archeology --Alberti--> fostering **a particular sensibility to what is of the past in things**
anthropology: the art of inquiry
(something you can learn from)
[*]archeological sensibility: a pervasive set of attitudes towards traces and remains, towards memory, time and temporality, the fabric of history
-Shanks
craft --Ingold--> knowledge grow from the crucible of our practical and observational engagement with being and things
(Aristotlean poiesis ~~-->) [*]craft: slow and intimate knowledgeable work (of how we get along with the world; that cultivates in oneself the skill for discerning the *meanings that are already there*) --> ontological paring of conceptual language & physical condition
==> meaning and concepts are drawn out of objects (not given to them)
•Haraway --> companion species = biologist + creatures
•Barad --> concepts are literally embodied by the differing physical apparatuses
•
(we need more) art: careful accumulation of skills
21st century historiographic trends in art
artists increasingly *deploy simulacra of archeological practices and motifs* in their work
art practiced as craft (but not all the time) ==allow==> knowledge grow from the insight of being in the folding of life [of infantile grandious fantasy, as well] ~=? anthropology
producing contemporary ruins to draw attention to *the work of the present in the production of the past*
*artists take archeology as muse*
(through borrowing from archeology artists)
•create a kind of intellectual framing
•incorporate archival research
•themes of memory and entropy
•question of absence
•
prosaic nature of archeological research
production of the finds
the way Dion distorts archeological work (allegorizing archeologica[...]