Enduring relations: Exploring a paradox of new materialism

Abstract

In this paper we examine tensions between understandings of material things as either bundles of relations or as things-in-themselves. Rather than take either of these positions, we instead set out an argument for approaches that allow us to modulate between these understandings whilst treating both as relational. Taking such a position allows us to understand how things endure through time without returning to any notion of essence. We explore the theoretical arguments through an analysis of one particular enduring material phenomenon: the Neolithic chambered tomb of West Kennet.

Assemblages and Scale in Archaeology

“…viii Here the difference between this and the Object Orientated Ontology of Graham Harman (2012) should be readily apparent (cf. Fowler and Harris 2015). ix An argument that suggests that typologies -whether of pots or monuments -are simply imposed by archaeologists on to the material implicitly accepts a 'hylomorphic' model (Deleuze and Guattari 2004, 450, where form is always imposed from the outside on fundamentally chaotic matter (Protevi 2009, 15).…”

“…What is produced is a population of real entities -the pots themselves -and this population is as real an assemblage as any of the individual artefacts (Lucas 2012, 195). The critical realisation is that these scales of analysis are not simply the imposition of the analyst, though they do emerge in part from our work, but rather instead are always real and always relational (Fowler & Harris 2015).…”

Changing Assemblages: Vibrant Matter in Burial Assemblages

“…As Fowler (2013a, 29, 53) argues, the properties of an assemblage or a component emerge from interactions (relations) and are historical, meaning that past relations affect the current properties of an assemblage or component. Even when some relations, and thereby properties of an assemblage, change, other properties of assemblages endure precisely because some of the relations within that assemblage continue (Fowler 2013a, 29;Fowler & Harris 2015); for example, the atomic forces that hold together the molecules within a clay pot endure, meaning that the form of the vessel remains largely similar from 2000 BC to the present, but other relations that vessel is in have shifted and changed, allowing different properties to emerge.…”

“…Whilst we have seen a variety of new theoretical work focusing on the importance of relations in recent years (for example, Alberti et al 2011;Conneller 2011;Fowler 2013a;Fowler & Harris 2015;Harris 2013;Hodder 2011;Ingold 2011;Jones 2012;Lucas 2012;Olsen 2007;Olsen et al 2012;Shanks 2007;Webmoor 2007;Webmoor & Witmore 2008;Witmore 2007), little of this work has explicitly sought to consider how it is we theorize and study change in a relational framework (exceptions include Fowler 2013a,b;Fowler & Harris 2015;Harris 2014a;Jones & Sibbesson 2013;Lucas 2012).…”

Twenty Years On

“…In the first instance, the language that we use to describe things, objects and artefacts has itself come under scrutiny. The frameworks we might draw on for the interpretation of the relations between people and things (broadly conceived) has been enriched by work that insists on not just a dialectical model, but rather draws on concepts of materialism (Fowler and Harris, 2015), ontology (Rio, 2009), vibrancy (Bartolini, 2015), affect (Born, 2011), and valency (Taylor, 2015) in order to describe the multilayered ways in which persons and things might be drawn into relations with one another. Lively debates have ensued as to the proper 'subject' of material culture studies, which range from Ingold's (2007) advocacy of a focus on materials instead of materiality to a turn towards ontology that has suggested the decomposition of the very master categories in favour of multiple and different object worlds (Henare et al, 2007).…”