Archaeological Review from Cambridge - 34.2: Beyond the Human: Applying Posthumanist Thinking to Archaeology
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- Title Page; Publisher Information; Inner Title Page; Contents
- Weird Relations: A Prolegomenon to Posthumanism and its Archaeological Manifestations
- ‘Crafting Agency’: An Inquiry into Symmetrical Human-Thing Assemblages
- Neolithic Ashmounds of the Deccan, India: A Posthumanist Perspective
- Reaching them a Human Paw: Relational Approaches to Maglemose Companions
- “The Good God in the Form of Montu”: Pharaoh as the Warrior God on the Battlefield
- Manifestations that Matter: A Case of Oaxacan Ruin Possession
- Commentary: Difference and Posthumanism in Archaeology
- Assemblage Thought and Archaeology
- Architecture, Society, and Ritual in Viking Age Scandinavia: Doors, Dwellings, and Domestic Space
- Archaeology of Identity and Dissonance: Contexts for a Brave New World
- Care or Neglect? Evidence of Animal Disease in Archaeology
- Ceramics in Circumpolar Prehistory
- A Kerma Ancien Cemetery in the Northern Dongola Reach: Excavations at site H29
- Forthcoming Issue
- Cover Artist; End Page
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Item Open Access Commentary: Difference and Posthumanism in Archaeology(Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 2019-12-21) Harris, Oliver JT; Haughton, Mark; Kay, David K.Item Open Access Manifestations that Matter: A Case of Oaxacan Ruin Possession(Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 2019-12-21) Leathem, Hilary Morgan; Haughton, Mark; Kay, David K.In order to understand the tensions and ties between Mitleños and INAH, I consider the role that these ‘relics of another world,’ as Bandelier (1884) once described the ruins, have in reconfiguring the communities that live within and around them. A striking relationship exists between the production of history, the way it is mobilized and performed, and the vitality or ‘becoming’ of monumental heritage. Landscapes such as Mitla’s are constituted by sedimentations of contested pasts. Saturated, then, with multiple meanings, Mitla’s seemingly ‘inanimate matter’ is animated by conflicts over definition. Indeed, it is continuously resignified by these exact disagreements. As such, this paper is an archaeological ethnography , interrogating what it means to be possessed by and dispossessed of monumental heritage in Oaxaca, Mexico. There are two particular social formations I am seeking to elucidate. First, I am interested in why it is that the ruins decided to manifest, to ‘show themselves’, at this moment in Mitleño history and in this particular, intangible yet embodied way. Second, what does it mean to listen to the ruins and to dwell with them? In my response to these questions, I move between posthumanist scholarship in archaeology and anthropology and the cosmological and historical worlds of Mitla, suggesting ultimately that both possession and dispossession must be understood in relation to the ruins’ own distinctive qualities and, equally, the ongoing control of heritage sites by INAH.Item Open Access “The Good God in the Form of Montu”: Pharaoh as the Warrior God on the Battlefield(Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 2019-12-21) Matić, Uroš; Haughton, Mark; Kay, David K.Ongoing discussions in anthropology call for the abandoning of the representational approach of cultural constructivism, which opts for one nature or world (reality) and many worldviews or cultures (e.g. Viveiros de Castro 2015). ‘Ontological turn’ and ‘cosmological perspectivism’ instead plead for the existence of many different ontologies and many different worlds. Such an approach consists of describing and comparing beings, presences, and existences in their constantly changing and diverse situations (Piette 2015). Western ontological categories cannot be used to explore those of non-Western settings (Alberti et al. 2011) and novel concepts coming out of the ethnographic encounter are encouraged (Henare et al. 2007). How others think, concepts they deploy, and the worlds they describe may be very different to ours (Viveiros de Castro 2015). Ontological pluralism allows us to populate the cosmos in a richer way, to compare worlds, and to “enter into contact with types of entities that no longer had a place in theory and for which a suitable language will have to be found in each case” (Latour 2013: 21). Often the people we study do things which appear to us as wrong, but maybe we have reached the limits of our conceptual repertoire (Carrithers et al. 2010). We should “follow the natives, no matter which metaphysical imbroglios they lead us into” (Latour 2005: 62). Maybe the most controversial ontological discussion in Egyptology is the one about the divine status or nature of the pharaoh. According to some, the king had a specific divinity, but he was not divine from birth, as he needed to acquire his divinity through rituals of accession to the throne (Barta 1975; Hornung 1982). Other authors do not attribute divinity to the king at all (Goedicke 1960; Grimal 1986; Posener 1960). A more nuanced approach sees the institution but not the individual king as being divine (O’Connor and Silverman 1995). The divinity of the pharaoh, being part of a different ontology than our own, is hard for us to comprehend. Joachim Friedrich Quack (2010) asked if the king is treated in a way so special that he had an ontological status different from human beings, not only as a representing office, but also as a person. Following the question posed by Quack and the current discussions in anthropology, in this paper I will explore the textual and iconographic attestations of the battlefield emanation of the pharaoh as god Montu and vice versa.Item Open Access Reaching them a Human Paw: Relational Approaches to Maglemose Companions(Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 2019-12-21) Hjørungdal, Tove; Haughton, Mark; Kay, David K.Posthumanist, relational approaches challenge human supremacy, as well as big hunter supremacy. They embrace more than one subject in notions of the making of life and the world. Aspects of this discussion are taken up in relation to the South Scandinavian Maglemose. The beaver lodge appears as an ambiguous but central material meeting point in a waterlogged scenery. Approaches to rhythm, practices and materiality in human-animal shared Maglemose landscapes have great potential.Item Open Access Neolithic Ashmounds of the Deccan, India: A Posthumanist Perspective(Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 2019-12-21) Paddayya, K; Haughton, Mark; Kay, David K.It is now four full decades since Andrew Sherratt (1981) coined the interesting concept of the ‘Secondary Products Revolution’. He developed it for highlighting how, proceeding from the use of cattle and sheep/goats primarily as meat-giving sources in the initial phase of the Neolithic in Eurasian areas, secondary products of these domesticates began to play a dominant role and, in fact, effected a revolutionary change in the later Neolithic stage. In particular, Sherratt drew attention to the role played by milk and wool in daily life and the use of cattle for traction in tillage and transport. This concept has been very helpful to researchers in understanding the developmental trajectories of various early agro-pastoral communities in the Old World. Sherratt (1981: 263) even felt persuaded to state that “[t]he secondary products revolution marked the birth of the kinds of society characteristic of modern Eurasia.” In this paper I intend to broaden the scope of the concept of secondary products and add cattle-dung to the list, which is a waste product resulting from animal-keeping. Taking a cue from posthumanist thought, I have recently hinted at the possibility of considering ashmounds representing burnt cow-dung formations as an agentive power that actively shaped the life-world of the Neolithic pastoralists of the Deccan region in India (Paddayya 2019: 120). In this paper I want to expatiate upon this observation. First of all, I will briefly introduce readers to the topic of ashmounds and the different views and opinions offered over a long period of time about their age and origin. I will then explore the possibility of bringing the whole theme within the fold of posthumanist conceptions of the very nature of archaeological record.Item Open Access ‘Crafting Agency’: An Inquiry into Symmetrical Human-Thing Assemblages(Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 2019-12-21) Núñez-García, Alicia; Haughton, Mark; Kay, David K.By seeking to redefine the boundaries of the human, posthumanism has promoted approaches that bring focus to non-human entities (Braidotti 2013). Within this framework, many forms of posthumanism have developed. The new materialisms question a human-centred ontology by conceiving matter as self-transforming and self-organising (Coole and Frost 2010). These include, for instance, Bennett’s (2010) theory of vital materialism and Barad’s (2007) agential realism. Assemblage theory analyses the ontological way material systems self-organise (DeLanda 2006; Deleuze and Guattari 1987). These philosophical theories have made their way into archaeology. Since Gell’s (1998) anthropological exploration of art, especially visual artefacts, as an entity acting upon its own use, perhaps the most structured attempt to introduce posthumanist thinking to archaeology has been symmetrical archaeology. Initially, symmetrical archaeology was influenced by Latour’s (1993, 1999, 2005) exploration of the shifting networks of relations between entities in Actor-Network-Theory (ANT). Here, societies are formed by objects and people, acting together in equal capacities and forming networks. Early ideas of symmetrical theory focused on removing human primacy over agency and understanding the world as a shifting flow of ‘agents’. However, in a ‘second wave’ of symmetrical archaeology, Olsen (2010) developed these ideas further (Harris and Cipolla 2017). Influenced this time by Harman’s (2011) Object-Oriented Ontology, Olsen (2010) moved beyond relational association to focus on the qualities of things in themselves. This paper will focus on this last perspective and the issues with its approach to the agentic relations within archaeological networks.Item Open Access Weird Relations: A Prolegomenon to Posthumanism and its Archaeological Manifestations(Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 2019-12-21) Kay, David K Haughton Mark; Haughton, Mark; Kay, David K.‘Posthumanism’ has become an increasingly visible term over the past decade or so, both within the academy and more broadly. However, as it encompasses a great range of ideas and issues, it can be hard to define what it actually is. In many ways, this heterogeneity lies at posthumanism’s conceptual core—a gathering of intellectual perspectives that share as a basic tenet the belief that the human subject should not be regarded as a stable or bounded substance with ontological primacy over other beings/things, but rather a decentred phenomenon constituted within immanent networks or flows (a general theoretical position often referred to as a ‘flat ontology’). In this contribution, we review the debate on posthumanism as it has occurred within the broader academy before exploring its archaeological implications. This article introduces a volume which continues the Archaeological Review from Cambridge’s engagement with cutting-edge theory in archaeology.Item Open Access Title Page; Publisher Information; Inner Title Page; Contents(Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 2019-12-21) Kay, David K; Haughton, Mark; Kay, David K.Item Open Access Cover Artist; End Page - ARC 34.2: Beyond the Human: Applying Posthumanist Thinking to Archaeology(Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 2019-12-21) Kay, David K; Haughton, Mark; Kay, David K.Item Open Access Forthcoming Issue(Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 2019-12-21) Kay, David K; Haughton, Mark; Kay, David K.Item Open Access A Kerma Ancien Cemetery in the Northern Dongola Reach: Excavations at site H29(Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 2019-12-21) Minor, Elizabeth; Haughton, Mark; Kay, David K.Item Open Access Ceramics in Circumpolar Prehistory(Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 2019-12-21) Webster, Cecily A; Haughton, Mark; Kay, David K.Item Open Access Care or Neglect? Evidence of Animal Disease in Archaeology(Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 2019-12-21) Maguire, Rena; Haughton, Mark; Kay, David K.Item Open Access Archaeology of Identity and Dissonance: Contexts for a Brave New World(Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 2019-12-21) Kocsis, Andrea; Haughton, Mark; Kay, David K.Item Open Access Architecture, Society, and Ritual in Viking Age Scandinavia: Doors, Dwellings, and Domestic Space(Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 2019-12-21) Lamb, Andrew; Haughton, Mark; Kay, David K.Item Open Access Assemblage Thought and Archaeology(Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 2019-12-21) Matthews Boehmer, Thomas; Haughton, Mark; Kay, David K.Item Open Access 34.2 Beyond the Human: Applying Posthuamnist Thinking to Archaeology(Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 2019-12-21) Kay, David K; Haughton, Mark; Kay, David K.; Brown, Ella J. M.