James Dixon (Bristol School of Art, Media and Design / University of Bristol Department of Archaeology and Anthropology), jimd_bsamd@yahoo.co.uk
2007 marks twenty years since the publication of the Red and Black Books, ‘Social Theory and Archaeology’ and ‘Re-Constructing Archaeology’ by Michael Shanks and Christopher Tilley. They function as a benchmark for 1980s archaeological thought yet when they were published they received a somewhat mixed reception and still have their detractors. However, they remain important texts and are among the first encountered by undergraduate students and those reading in archaeology from other disciplines. Individual copies have their own lives too and can be found in bags, libraries, on our shelves: bought, perhaps given, read, kept or discarded.
Do these texts play a different role in archaeology twenty years on from that in 1987? What is their effect upon the history of archaeology, archaeology today and archaeology in the future?
This session will examine the influence and life of these texts as well as their place in the history of the discipline through their deliberate fragmentation. Upon agreeing to participation in the project, speakers will be given a randomly chosen (double-sided) page torn from one of the books upon which to base their paper. While freedom will be given to speakers in how they use their page, it is expected that the session as a whole will address such issues as the fragmentary nature of the archaeological record, the materiality of texts, the linearity of archaeological discourse and the importance of disciplinary reflexivity.
Who we are and where our thoughts come from in the historical disciplinary sense are of great relevance to the future of our own personal archaeologies and the wider field. In the last ten years we have seen an increased consideration of archaeology as a cultural producer; museums, television programmes, ‘archaeologist’ stereotypes and, of course, books are among the things we make. How we, as archaeologists, deal with and understand these things, the material culture of our discipline and its fragments, is hugely important. This session will bring together a diverse group of speakers, both established and emerging archaeologists, those who value these two texts and those who don’t, with the aim of considering archaeological texts in an archaeological manner.
Shanks, M. and Tilley, C. (1987) Social Theory and Archaeology. Cambridge: Polity Press
Shanks, M. and Tilley, C. (1987) Re-Constructing Archaeology: Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Introduction: The Red Book
James R Dixon
‘Intellectual Labour and the Socio-Political Role of the Archaeologist’ – then and now
Kristian Kristiansen, Göteborgs Universitet
Shanks and Tilley in their work were keen to stress the dual responsibility of archaeologist: as researchers and as politically responsible for their research. In my page they declare: 'The intellectual must be entirely modern, of his or her own time, constantly aware of and concerned about events and in the society in which he or she lives...... Radical and intellectual commitment are vital components of critique.' Here we can say that those archaeologists who seek to simply to preserve and transmit information about the past are forced to adopt a conservative position. ' While I am in general agreement I raise the question if this also goes the other way around: can you be politically conservative and a radical theoretical thinker? Or to put my finger on the problem I wish to discuss: does there exist any given relationship between a certain theory and a certain political stance? Is the discourse a political or a social institution? I take Bourdieu to my help and 30 years of personal experience with hands on archaeological practice. Finally in the context of this session: is youth a prerogative for formulating radical theoretical critique?
“… a chronic reciprocity…” — partible time and uncertainty in a California midden; or, ‘how I wished for stratigraphy last summer.’
David Robinson, UCLAN
This paper discusses, in an ancillary fashion, the agency of rodents and the bioturbation of California middens. I look at how the material constituents of the intermixed layers represent the partibility of the ‘stratigraphic record’; where does human chronology exist within the burrows of ancient gophers? This is fundamentally an issue of ‘CHRONOLOGY AND ITS ORIGINS’ (page 125). As archaeologists, we are chronic in our obsession with ordering the fragments of the past into agreed sequences (although Indigenous people have their own). Yet, for those of us gophering away in California, the material culture there forces a different tack into time: we must look at the fragments themselves to discern it. In a likewise fashion, this paper includes the torn pages 125 & 126 as the reciprocal materialities of our own chronic profession.
Critiquing Critique
John Carman, University of Birmingham
The opening page of Chapter Six of Social Theory and Archaeology is page 137. This text begins by promising to address “the question of social change and the manner in which transformations in the archaeological record may be described, assessed and interpreted” and ends with the truism that “all views of the past are thoroughly embedded in the present”. Putting the two statements together leads to the larger topic of Chapter Six: a critical (in every sense) review of the major theories of social and cultural change applied in archaeology up to the 1980s.
This paper will apply the principles of critique to the notion of critiquing the work of others as it has been conducted in archaeology. This is a significant trope in archaeological discourse – one with which we are now familiar and indeed trained in academic institutions to replicate. It can, however, be expected to produce only certain kinds of outcomes, such as the replacement of one set of ideas by another, and the route to promotion relying upon the adoption of your approaches over that of another. What if we were trained to use the work of others in different ways? What other discourses might have been developed? What other ways of advancing our careers might we develop? What might be the consequences for interpreting the past? Can we, indeed, avoid indulging in such critiques? These are the thoughts engendered by this fragment of archaeology.
Putting the ‘I’ in Index
Sarah May, English Heritage
The page which inspires this paper, torn from the index, softens the strictures of the session because it refers to a large portion of the book. Like archaeology, the index calls up that which is absent. Indices are a traditional form method of deconstruction in academic thought. The reader approaches from their interest rather than the structure established by the author. Since the publication date indices and reader centered approaches to text have been transformed by the internet - a fact celebrated by Shanks. This paper will examine the theoretical implications of this change with particular reference to the topics referred to, and absent from 'my page'.
The Discipline of Archaeology
Ben Edwards, University of Durham
My pages are headed ‘Subjectivity and power’ and introduce Foucault’s concept of discourse. Here Shanks and Tilley stress how ‘discipline’, as a manifestation of power, produces a very particular kind of subject; and how Western discursive practices allow the domination and subjugation of subjects through the use of discipline. Knowledge is seen as central to the operation of discipline and therefore of power: knowledge is power insofar as the operation of power requires knowledge, and one of the manifestations of power relations is an inequality of knowledge.
As people we are necessarily enmeshed in many discourses, but in this paper I want to concentrate on the discourse we create as archaeologists: the discourse we are engaged in with the past. The ‘archaeologist’, who we are as a type of subject, is partly produced by how we have knowledge of the past - by the operation of our power over the past. Our existence as subjects is therefore based upon our ability to interpret the meaning of the past. So, just as Foucault’s Western institutions use knowledge to create subjects by separation and categorisation, archaeologists ascribe meaning to the past through the disciplines of classification and interpretation. Our interpretation of meaning in the past is reliant on our ability to discipline it and to control it. The questions I want to ask are: what happens if we question the way that we discipline the past? What if the meanings we produce are entirely the result of the way we discipline the past and nothing to do with how people in the past ascribed meanings? Will the meaning of the past change if the way we discipline it changes? If this is who we are as subjects, is it who we want to be?
The Interpretive Consensus
Dan Hicks, Oxford University
Using the torn remains of the red and the black books that were used in bringing about this session, this paper takes as its starting point Susan Sontag's famous assertion that 'the modern style of interpretation excavates, and as it excavates, destroys' (Sontag 1967: 6). The paper traces the rise of the idea of interpretation in British archaeological theory since 1987. It argues that a number of alternative conceptions of interpretation have been brought together, often rather awkwardly, and that this has brought about a state of interpretive consensus that is increasingly unhelpful. The paper concludes by considering how some recent archaeological thinking might be used to reconstruct a 'more-than-interpretive' archaeology.
Sontag, Susan 1967. Against Interpretation. New York: Dell.
Re-Introduction: The Black Book
James R Dixon
Static Artifact or Dynamic Entity: New Directions for Conceptualising and Approaching the Archaeological Text
Brent Fortenberry, Boston University
The text is the primary conduit through which the archaeologist interfaces with the wider field and public at large. Since the professionalisation of the field, the text has essentially been the be all and end all of the archaeological project. One cannot deny that the texts we produce are the results of a discrete contextual event. As such, every assumption, interpretation, and narrative is bound to that moment. Contrast this conceptualisation with a pragmatic agenda: our interpretations should be anything but static. New data, ideas, and paradigms of thought dictate that the archaeologist must adapt in order to maintain relevance. While these two arguments may seem as though they are merely polemics, they represent the difficult negotiation with which we as archaeologists must come to terms. This paper explores the archaeological text through these disparate lenses and attempts to establish a dialogue that will enable us to both embrace and scrutinize its duality.
Representation and Authenticity – some reflections on their place in experiencing the past.
Siân Jones, University of Manchester
“We are to understand that scientific discovery guarantees the authenticity of the trip, a tourist trip into history” …. “The detective work draws the visitor closer to the past. Accordingly it is appropriate that the visitor should be allowed to actually touch the past.” …. “The visitor passively experiences” …. “The journey through time is a sentence against polysemey”.
These are just a few fragments from Shanks’ and Tilley’s analysis of the Jorvik Viking Centre in Reconstructing Archaeology. Academic reactions to Jorvik, which opened to the public in 1984, were mixed. Some argued that it was a ground-breaking initiative, linking archaeological research with public presentation in terms of materiality, education and funding. Others suggested that it commodified the past and represented the onset of a new genre of heritage centres in the 1980s, prioritising entertainment and the leisure experience. From this perspective, Jorvik and heritage centres like it became a touchstone for those starting to interrogate representations of the past and to question their authenticity.
I intend to explore the significance and implications of Shanks’ and Tilley’s arguments in terms of subsequent approaches to representation and authenticity. The ‘Black Book’ was at the vanguard of a body of research in the 1980s and 1990s, which argued that the past is actively constructed. In particular the ‘Black Book’ highlighted the modes of labour, techniques, and ideological discourses that underpin representations of the past. This was to have a powerful impact on the discipline, stimulating students, scholars and practitioners to question the nature of archaeological knowledge, and to develop greater reflexivity about its production and public presentation. However, by challenging the very idea of an authentic or truthful representation of the past, I will suggest that it contributed to a neglect of the concept of authenticity. Here, I think that we need to retrace our steps somewhat, for authenticity remains a powerful motivating force in people’s engagement with, and experience of, the past. It is thus important that we labour to understand how people experience and negotiate authenticity in practice; what qualities, substances, materials, and associations inform people’s sense of authenticity; and how they deploy ideas about authenticity to make sense of their own place in a world.
(Re-) Positioning the Archaeologist through Theory
John Chapman, University of Durham
Resisting what for me was the easiest option - of giving a paper about material culture and the F-word (‘fragmentation’) - I intend to focus this paper on the fashion statements that today’s archaeologists make when picking ‘n’ mixing the fragments of archaeological theory that most appeal to them and enable them to re-position themselves in the coolest way. My two pages – featuring beer can designs – reveal the importance of the ‘Pripp’ logo and of logos in general in 1980s advertising. While Danny Miller has shown how the process of self-identification through objectification works through individual choice of mass-produced consumer items, Naomi Klein indicated the importance of single brands to entire nation-state economies. If individuation through consumer choice is such an important strategy for surviving globalisation, it is hardly surprising that it has steamrollered its way into theory consumption. In this paper, I shall explore theory consumption in the 21st century and the impact that this has on the continuing development of archaeological theory...
Black Book, p.105-106
Josh Pollard, University of Bristol
172 x 244mm, medium-weight paper, continuous text on both pages, six paragraphs indented… Condition good, but pages slightly yellowed with age. Is that true of the contents?
(Shanks and Tilley 1992, 263-64) or A politics of the past present
Chris Witmore, Brown
From discourse and power to democratic pluralism and interpretative politics, pages 263-64 contain reflections on both RCA and STA. Yet even more importantly these two pages manifest elements of a political manifesto. In my contribution I take up the call-to-arms of Shanks and Tilley and seek to revisit the political agenda of a genuine pluralism. My question: what happens when we extend this emancipatory agenda to include things and accommodate our fellow creatures? The pages, now a 1060 word (and 6 acronym) flyer inscribing a bold call-to-arms, provide occasion to engage the politics of a past present.
Response and Discussion
Michael Shanks, Stanford back to sessions