Timely Things

Olsen, Bjørnar; Shanks, Michael; Webmoor, Timothy; Witmore, Christopher

doi:10.1525/california/9780520274167.003.0007

Cited by 36 publications

(75 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The long-term evolution of agricultural systems, marked (as ever) by the disproportionate appropriation and control of resources by increasingly smaller portions of the human community, found one expression in the slave economies of the classical world. It was slaves who built the Hadrianic aqueduct that served Corinth, a ‘raw physicality’ that seems to be forgotten when we read that: “The Hadrianic Aqueduct would be non-existent without the raw physicality of mortar, brick, and stone, combined with geometry, survey labor, and craft experience” (Olsen et al 2012: 120).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The new antiquarianism?

Barrett¹

2016

Antiquity

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Christopher Witmore (2014: 215) recently observed that “things go on perturbing one another when humans cease to be part of the picture. A former house may be transformed through relations with bacteria, hedgehogs, water, compaction”; and if the materials that archaeologists confront are material memories (cf. Olivier 2011) from which a past is to be recalled in the future, then The kind of memory that things hold often tells us little of whether materials strewn across an abandonment level resulted from the reuse of a structure as a sheepfold, a series of exceptional snow storms, the collapse of a roof made of olive wood after many years of exposure to the weather (rapports between microbes, fungi, water and wood), the cumulative labors of generations of badgers, children playing a game in a ruin, or the probing roots of oak trees (Witmore 2014: 215). In other words, the things that archaeologists confront bear the memories of their own formation without the necessity of a human presence, and the traditional and often exclusive priority given to a human agency in the making of those things and in giving them meaning is simply misplaced. Things get on “just fine” without the benefit of human intervention and interpretation (Witmore 2014: 217). Should archaeology therefore allow that it is not a discipline concerned with excavating the indications of the various past human labours that once acted upon things, and should it eschew the demand to “look beyond the pot, the awl or a stone enclosure for explanations concerning the reasons for their existence” (Witmore 2014: 204)? Consequently, is archaeology now a matter of following the things themselves to wherever they might lead—what Witmore characterises as the New Materialisms—and if so, are we now to practise archaeology “not as the study of the human past through its material remains, but as the discipline of things” (Witmore 2014: 203)?

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The new antiquarianism?

Barrett¹

2016

Antiquity

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…However, even they are composed of fluid assemblages, performed at a chemical level, and are prone to erode or dissolve if not maintained (Edensor 2012). They do, however, highlight the complex temporalities of assemblages; what Law and Mol (1995, 279–80) term ‘gradients of durability’; that is, that durability is a relative term which relates to the longevity of the networks and connections of which an assemblage is formed (see also Olsen et al 2012, 143–45). They demonstrate this through the example of a Nazi tank trap, which is slowly decaying but outlived the Nazi network, but, as a material presence, may become something different (such as a heritage object) as it is enrolled in other sets of interactions.…”

Section: Approaching the Problem: Towns As Assemblagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These two illusions are closely linked as they relate to the temporality of the features excavated. As Olsen et al (2012, 86–90, 97) highlight, such archaeological representations are not ‘mirror copies’ of the archaeology and stand in for the physical archaeology itself. As such, they are an active part of our reflections on the past and, if we do not acknowledge their power, may impede the emergence of pasts which capture the fluidity and nuance of past urban worlds; rather than thinking about what these representations show, we can ask where they might take us (Dewsbury and Thrift 2005, 96).…”

Section: Approaching the Problem: Towns As Assemblagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assemblage urbanism. Becoming urban in late medieval Southampton

Jervis¹

2018

Arch. Dial.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

It is proposed that assemblage theory offers the possibility of exploring archaeological evidence in innovative ways, in order to write alternative narratives of urban development. By combining historical and archaeological scholarship with work in contemporary urban geography, it is proposed that the concept of urban decline in the later Middle Ages is problematic and a more fruitful alternative approach would be to focus on the transformation of urban assemblages. These ideas are explored by drawing upon archaeological evidence from Southampton, UK.

show abstract

“…It is rather about trying to understand how and why this infiltration occurs, and what the consequences are for the continuity of humans and non-humans. The aim of symmetrical archaeology is thus to explore how humans and non-humans coexist, and what implications the distinction between humans and non-humans has for our understanding of past and present (and their intersections), and of ethics and responsibilities on the part of humans (Olsen and Witmore 2015; Olsen 2012; Olsen et al 2012; Webmoor 2012). In short, symmetrical archaeology questions conventional Cartesian ontology in favour of a flat, heterogeneous ontology.…”

Section: Object Agency Present-at-hand Versus Object Agency Ready-to-mentioning

confidence: 99%

Hammers and nails. A response to Lindstrøm and to Olsen and Witmore

Sørensen¹

2016

Arch. Dial.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Two contrasting arguments on the merits of symmetrical archaeology and an associated discussion of object agency appeared in a recent issue of Archaeological dialogues (Lindstrøm 2015; Olsen and Witmore 2015). While Torill Christine Lindstrøm extends a thorough, yet hardly new, criticism of the notion of object agency and of symmetrical archaeology, Bjørnar Olsen and Christopher Witmore provide a clarification in its defence (even though their article is oddly categorized by Archaeological dialogues as a ‘provocation’). In this reaction article, I take issue with a number of arguments by Lindstrøm and by Olsen and Witmore: first of all, I challenge Lindstrøm's representation of object agency, which I believe is in need of corrections. Second, I contend that Lindstrøm fails to identify a number of fundamental contributions within the framework of symmetrical archaeology, thus allowing her to caricature symmetrical archaeology as ‘old wine in new bags’. Third, even though Olsen and Witmore's defence offers helpful clarifications, I believe that their contribution invites us to discuss the vocabulary of symmetrical archaeology, scrutinizing why there is an apparent tendency to misunderstand its arguments and merits. Lastly, I take issue with Lindstrøm's dismissal of ‘different ontologies’ as a result of political correctness.

show abstract

Timely Things

Cited by 36 publications

References 0 publications

The new antiquarianism?

The new antiquarianism?

Assemblage urbanism. Becoming urban in late medieval Southampton

Hammers and nails. A response to Lindstrøm and to Olsen and Witmore

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About