Signs of Mission: Material Semeiosis and Nineteenth-Century Tswana Architecture

Crossland, Zoë

doi:10.1086/670168

Cited by 14 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 74 publications

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“…Many of these studies focus on religious architecture (Baron 2014(Baron , 2016Coben 2006;Fogelin 2014Fogelin , 2015Schoenfelder 2011;Stanish 2012;Swenson 2018). Other interesting applications include the houses of missionaries in nineteenthcentury southern Africa (Crossland 2013), changing site plans in the wake of the Pueblo Revolt (Liebmann 2008), and conflicting ideologies of house configuration at a nineteenth-century commune in Massachusetts (Preucel 2006, chapter 8).…”

Section: Icon Index and Symbolmentioning

confidence: 99%

Peirce and Archaeology: Recent Approaches

Baron

2021

Annu. Rev. Anthropol.

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The philosophy of Charles S. Peirce, and in particular his theory of signs (semiotic), has seen increasing interest within archaeological theory over the past 20 years. This article reviews Peirce's most influential ideas within archaeology, directs readers to where in Peirce's voluminous works they can find these ideas, and discusses how each of them has been applied by archaeologists to a variety of different research topics. In addition to the semiotic, these ideas include Peirce's metaphysical doctrine of synechism; his methodological pragmatism; abductive logic; and the phenomenological concepts of firstness, secondness, and thirdness. Finally, I discuss two research areas—materiality and paleolithic archaeology—in which a combination of Peirce's ideas has led to important new insights.

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Section: Icon Index and Symbolmentioning

confidence: 99%

Peirce and Archaeology: Recent Approaches

Baron

2021

Annu. Rev. Anthropol.

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“…Peirce (CP 5.476) described this as Ba modification of a person's tendencies toward action, resulting from previous experiences or from previous exertions of his will or acts, or from a complexus of both kinds of cause.^In a world comprised of continuously changing facts, we have no choice but to habitualise new circumstances and thus change our thinking accordingly. Crossland (2013), for instance, illustrates how Sotho Tswana communities experienced dynamic changes in their daily practices because of the architectural (and semiotic) changes motivated by British missionaries who sought to reproduce the spatial patterning of British homes, towns, and villages. As she demonstrates, the architecture brought by the missionaries forced the Tswana to make adjustments in their previous habits of action and thought, by exposing them to new layouts.…”

Section: Sensibilities/dispositions and Peirce's Take On Belief-habitmentioning

confidence: 99%

Material Engagement Theory and its philosophical ties to pragmatism

Iliopoulos

2018

Phenom Cogn Sci

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Material Engagement Theory (MET) is currently driving a conceptual change in the archaeology of mind. Drawing upon the dictates of enactivism and active externalism, it specifically calls for a radical reconceptualization of mind and material culture. Unpersuaded by the common assumption that cognition is brain-bound, Malafouris argues in favour of a process ontology that situates thinking in action. In granting ontological primacy to material engagement, MET seeks to illuminate the emergence of human ways of thinking through the practical effects of the material world. Considering that this is a characteristic example of a pragmatic take on cognition, this contemporary theoretical platform appears to share a lot with pragmatism. As of late, scholars working at the intersection of philosophy, semiotics, and cognitive science have made important steps towards the rapprochement between pragmatism and externalism. Looking to contribute to this growing corpus of work, the present paper focuses on MET's relation to the pragmatism of Peirce, Dewey, and Mead. Having elsewhere recognized the overlap and complementarity between Malafouris' and Peirce's theories in particular, I developed a pragmatic and enactive theory of cognitive semiotics that is suitably geared to trace the nature, emergence, and evolution of material signs. Therefore, besides noting some obvious historical connections, I hereby aim to establish (at least part of) the theoretical backdrop upon which this composite theory is supposed to function, while also exploring new potential avenues. Given that this cognitive semiotic framework can be seen as a pragmatic extension of Malafouris' enactivist approach to archaeology, the current paper delves into MET's theoretical underpinnings, seeking to complement its working hypotheses and concepts with philosophical notions and ideas advanced long ago. This synthesis ultimately concludes with a call for the reconceptualization of 'representation' as a heuristic concept.

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“…Nevertheless, Fredriksen and Chirikure and Paul Lane (2004) have argued that models of defensiveness and stress presume too much about the relevant permanence of these settlement sites, the relationships between people and landscape, and the cosmological and social reasons behind how and why people moved. Indeed, Zoë Crossland (2013) has queried the willingness – by 19th-century observers and archaeologists alike – to believe that towns did not want to move. Lane (2004) posits that these townscapes moved with respect to the availability of water and cosmological connections with rainfall.…”

Section: The Raidermentioning

confidence: 99%

In praise of outlaws

King¹

2018

Arch. Dial.

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Abstract‘Outlaw’ is not a common category of archaeological thought but it is perhaps more useful than meets the eye. ‘Outlaws’ are typically viewed as contingent on legal and capitalist systems; they are, I suggest, also material, affective phenomena that draw our attention to how transgression, dissent and disorder are conceived through archaeological thinking. Here, I outline some ways in which ‘outlaw’ figures are ‘good to think with’, particularly for historical and colonial contexts but also for broader, more global frontier situations. Through three sketches of archetypal ‘outlaws’ in southern Africa's recent past, I consider where these disruptive figures draw attention to how mobility, violence, rebellion and state imagination (and the limits thereof) have been imagined through material misbehaviours.

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Signs of Mission: Material Semeiosis and Nineteenth-Century Tswana Architecture

Cited by 14 publications

References 74 publications

Peirce and Archaeology: Recent Approaches

Peirce and Archaeology: Recent Approaches

Material Engagement Theory and its philosophical ties to pragmatism

In praise of outlaws

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