The disjuncture between ‘what we do’ and ‘what we say we do’ has contributed not only to a great deal of conversation and debate it has also lead to a fair amount of angst and misunderstanding in archaeology (i.e. theory/practice split or the homebase/field bifurcation). Many (myself included) firmly believe that this disjuncture can only be addressed by following up close what ‘we’ (understood to encompass people, institutions, media, materials, things, etc. which comprise an archaeologist) actually do in practice.

Anthropologists and sociologists have long enrolled ethnography and ethnomethodology as set of practices for engaging with what scientific practitioners do (this has been especially successful when they have been bold enough to free themselves from the weight of epistemology!). Hitherto, archaeology, sadly, has been in large part ignored by these practitioners (refer to my entry from October 23, 2005 and Tim Webmoor’s from November 6, 2006), though there are notable exceptions in the related field of the philosophy of science with the important work of Alison Wylie. Thankfully, the tides are changing and this is in large part due to a few archaeologists who have taken the initiative themselves.
A recent book edited by Matt Edgeworth, Ethnographies of Archaeological Practice: Cultural Encounters, Material Transformations is an example of this initiative and will help us along the path to knowing who we are! The volume pulls together a diverse and welcome body of ethnographic work with archaeology (beyond the well-known reflexive strategies operating at Çatalhöyük, Turkey) from projects throughout Europe and the Americas

From emergent considerations of ethnography in the work of Louis Dupree to the integration of ethnography in the reflexive methodologies of the interpretive school to the locus of the chapters which comprise the book, in his introduction Edgeworth provides a valuable historical survey of such ethnographies of archaeology and points toward potential futures. Beyond recognizing that such ethnographies of archaeological practice help develop a ‘kind of ‘critical ontology of ourselves’,’ the book calls attention to how other entities and practices are co-constitutive of what we archaeologists are and what we produce.
As Edgeworth is aware, there are other genealogies of these sorts of practices which could be written. Were one to cast the net even wider, fruitful synergies with philosophy of archaeology might be dredged up. Indeed, as Wylie has so clearly shown under this rubric—philosophy of science—a number of scholars—among whom, Kelley and Hanen (1988) should be noted (also refer to Embree 1992)—have argued for a ‘robust sociology of archaeology’ (2002, 15).
The sub title of the book, ‘Cultural Encounters, Material Transformations,’ forefronts one of its great virtues: ethnographic interest is not only taken with the lively interactions among people with cleaver ideas but also with the mundane and unacknowledged things; the latter being an important feature of Edgeworth’s work (2003 and 2006b; also refer to Matt’s entry from March 23, 2006).
Here Ethnographies of Archaeological Practice makes strides in moving away from the exclusive interaction of individuals with their status, rules, ideas, etc. to also (but not exclusively) engage with the mediational qualities of things (a move which is shared by symmetrical archaeology). Within the papers, a range of approaches is deployed—including multi-sited ethnographies, actor-network-theory (ANT), linguistic anthropology—and many are combined with a rich archaeological sensibility.
In what follows, I would like to provide a short and partial list (in no particular order) of good practices constitutive of a meta-archaeology. Under meta-archaeology, as a broader rubric, fall ethnography, ethnomethodology, science studies and analytical philosophy. These are fields of critical practice which may be enrolled to actively reassess and reconfigure our most fundamental categories, understandings and practices within archaeology, ‘no matter how deeply rooted in common sense they may appear to be’ (Latour 2005, 25). Indeed for Edgeworth, ‘the potential of the ‘field’ of ethnographies of archaeology lies in its capacity to facilitate alternative ways of looking at things, no matter what the prevailing orthodoxy might be’ (2006, 14). As such, many of these practices are exemplified in various chapters of Ethnographies of Archaeological Practice (though here I do not attempt to engage with every chapter in detail).
Rework that which is taken-for-granted locally!
A point superbly articulated by Håkan Karlsson and Anders Gustafsson in their case study of the signposts and information boards deployed at heritage sites by the Swedish heritage board. For Karlsson and Gustafsson the ‘ritualized’ use of signposts has solidified into a method of communication which ‘has a closed structure in the sense that it requires active senders (heritage managers) and passive receivers (the public)’ (145). Here ethnography (and I would suggest their approach might be better classified under the rubric of ethnomethodology) was enrolled as a means to highlight, shake up, provoke, question, re-think what have become entrenched sets of relations between Swedish heritage management and the public; sets of relations which the authors maintain are based upon oversimplified dichotomies; sets of relations which are mediated by the modes of articulation installed at archaeological sites.
Multiply the groups…
Many groups, whether site directors, specialists, financial contributors, students, state officials, or local communities, come together in the production of knowledge on an archaeological project or in relation to the monuments, features, things of the material past. A number of chapters focused on the dynamic of various groups on the ground. Cornelius Holtorf, details textures of the disparate experiences of, and relations between, the various ‘archaeological cultures’ at the site of Monte Polizzo, Sicily (a project where I also happily spent two seasons). Denise Maria Cvalcante Gomes documents interactions between local communities and archaeologists in the Amazon. Likewise, Angela McClanahan maps out relations between a global heritage organization, management groups and local people in the context of the Orkney Islands. And Michael Wilmore details group tensions manifest along the lines of a division of labor—e.g. between excavators (‘diggers’) and surveyors (‘settlement people’)—and class in the Leskernick project in the UK.
…but, more importantly, multiply the elements of group co-constitution!
Unlike the Greek goddess Athena, groups do not spring from the head of Zeus fully formed. They have to be produced or better still, co-produced. Another merit of the book is to be found in how many of the authors emphasize processes of becoming rather than static categories of being. As such, groups are best suspended in a constant process of formation.
Thomas Yarrow, for example, beyond breaking the excavation down into different sites/interactions also focuses on the mutual or, better still, co-constitution of the archaeological site and the groups that excavate it: ‘The interest is in how people create the site and in turn they are created by it’ (21). Rather than focus on the site as a bounded ‘object’ of archaeological endeavor, Yarrow teases out sets of relations between volunteers, academics, landowners, trustees and the material contexts (though more detail here would have been welcome). Through a series of examples of what he refers to as multiple sites of knowledge (echoing the ‘multi-sited’ approach of Marcus 1995 and 1998) Yarrow argues, contrary to the common notion of the context as the explanatory concept, that these interactions are what come to constitute, or rather ‘bring into being,’ the ‘site’ or ‘context’—in this instance a Mesolithic site in the Vale of Pickering, Yorkshire, UK.
Indeed, as Yarrow has previously pointed out in the context of excavation (2003) action is not limited to the realm of walking, thinking, talking bipeds but is distributed among many other things (also Olsen 2003; Knappett 2005).
Identify the actors! Then follow them…
Within this archaeological collective are gathered theodolites, maps, cascades of other media, or even Munsell color charts (also refer to Tim Webmoor’s entry from July 22, 2006). There is a need to study these transactions up close.
In his chapter Charles Goodwin focuses in on how the cognitive activity of archaeologists is not to be found exclusively inside their skulls ‘but rather within the organization of the larger activity in which their work is embedded’ (49). Here Edward Hutchins’ excellent thesis on distributed cognition from Cognition in the Wild proves to be a seed of inspiration. Goodwin exemplifies this by focusing on the mediating role of a Munsell color chart (‘a historically structured architecture for perception’ (50)) in archaeological practice. For Goodwin the moment during which a clod of soil (pedologists wince when one uses the term ‘dirt’!) on the tip of a trowel is best matched up to a coded color rectangle, above which is pierced a circular hole (this reduces the distance between the soil and a dark yellowish brown shade, 10 YR 3/4), is precisely the moment at which ‘nature is transformed into culture, or more properly where dirt, the raw material of the world that is the distinctive focus of archaeological investigation, is transformed into analytic categories and documentary materials’ (50).
This is vast chasm to be negotiated by such a seemingly small gesture, involving such a negligible distance between a clump of earth and a Munsell code. Following Hutchins (1995), Goodwin recognizes that the outcome of this transformation can easily be transferred and ‘incorporated in the unfolding chains of inscription that lead step by step from the dirt at the site to reports in the archaeological literature’ (50). Perhaps, then, it is better to say that the transformation Goodwin focuses on is a small gap, one of many, with are mediated by a series of such transformations (Latour 1999, 58-61). And, furthermore, it is this series, which in the archaeological process is manifested as a chain of references (which is traceable and therefore circulates), that mediates what we do in relation to the material world and what we have to say about it (Witmore 2004).
Goodwin’s points are, to be sure, well made. Moreover, Goodwin, quite rightly emphasizes the importance of understanding the Munsell page as simultaneously material and conceptual (51). In other words, no bogus asymmetrical definition of the Munsell color chart as wholly material or totally conceptual is assumed.
This is to be symmetrical.
More archaeologists are beginning to critically, creatively and constructively engage with actor-network-theory (Olsen 2003; Knappett 2005; Shanks 1998; Webmoor and Witmore 2005; Witmore 2004; also refer to the Archaeolog category heading actor-network-theory). In their chapter, David Van Reybrouck and Dirk Jacobs ‘taking an actor-network theory approach’ argue for a mutual constitution of both scholars and data (and, yes, the second hyphen has an important role to play as the theory should not be understood as a separate domain!). For Van Reybrouck and Jacobs, ‘the socialization of individuals into scholars cannot be detached from the objectification of observations into data’ (33). I will return to this process of transformation shortly.
In preparing the ground for their discussion of the mutual constitution of both ‘facts’ and a field worker (in the process of gaining competence), the authors begin with subsections entitled ‘beyond the rescue metaphor’ and ‘beyond social constructivism.’ While, I wish there was more time here for me to elaborate on why the preposition ‘beyond’ is inappropriate to actor-network-theory (although refer to my entry from July 22, 2006), I should note that the former (addressing the inadequacies of the rescue metaphor) is a point which was adeptly made by Gavin Lucas in his superb 2001 article ‘Destruction and the rhetoric of excavation.’ Regarding the latter, the authors are quite right to point out that facts are not the only entities—actually collectivities, to be more precise—produced in the process of excavation. So too are the archaeologists. There is, however, time here to ever so briefly reflect upon what constitutes a good ANT account verses a not-so-good ANT account.
Van Reybrouch and Jacobs point of entry, for how an ‘individual is turned into an archaeologist’ is with the ‘solitary sociologist.’ At the outset, the authors have begun with the individual as a key ingredient in their study. To restrict oneself in advance to ‘individuals’ as an ontological domain is a mistake—a basis tenant of ANT is that we are always dealing with complex mixtures, with collectives! Indeed, ANT arose as an alternative to the problem of the ‘individual’ in relation to ‘society’ (refer to Callon and Law 1997). Secondly, they ask ‘how could there not be a dual constitution of natural facts and social actors?’ (40). So long as the mutual constitution comes across as a ‘dual constitution’ one has not dug deep enough into the multiplicity of entities and relations which lend themselves to the co-production of a collective; one has not pealed back enough layers of association and transaction to ‘map’ the Actor-Network. There are always bewildering variety of agencies which have to be carefully and creatively unpacked. One cannot move so fast with ANT (Latour 2005).
Indeed, fast is an understatement. The chapter came across as a supersonic gloss of how a ‘single person,’ a ‘solitary sociologist,’ gains competence without going deeper into the idiosyncrasies of the interactions, the transactions which lend themselves to the formation of a collective (a sociologist is already a complex actor-network). Co-constitution should acknowledge these various agencies no matter how seemingly insignificant they may be! Indeed, Actor-Network-Theory breaks down when it is subsumed to a metaphysics which it fought so hard to distinguish itself from—i.e. the individual, the dual bifurcation of the social and natural, processes of socialization and objectification. This is not what symmetry means. Indeed, it is not even ANT. ANT uses an awkward vocabulary brimming with actants, mediations, articulations, delegations, translations precisely because they are designed as ‘a way of moving from one agency to the next’ without presupposing or assuming what is ‘natural’ (Crease et al. 2003, 18). Here I will recommend that the authors undertake a deeper reading of book which they quote only once, almost as an after-thought, or better still, a subsequent articulation (Latour 2005).
I am being a bit unfair. There is no denying Van Reybrouck and Jacobs have a number of salient and well-formulated points—chief among them: alliances may be formulated with the most seemingly trivial of entities in excavation.
Therefore, trace the associations!
Associations between various entities, no matter how seemingly insignificant, are critical to the archaeological process. In this process of transformation media play crucial roles. Jonathan Bateman in his excellent chapter is thoroughly aware of this when he seeks ‘an understanding of the role of archaeological drawing in the discipline to fully illuminate how the interlacing of knowledge, people, practice, and things constructs archaeology—in physical, social, and intellectual forms’ (69). But unlike Bateman I would contend that media are more than simply ‘representations of archaeological truth.’ The accuracy of a plan, a map, a drawing, rests upon the chain of transformation that lies behind its co-production and, more specifically the traceability of that chain—i.e. those traces which mark the steps of its manifestation and thereby facilitate reiterative studies (notebooks, measurements, sketch plans, etc.). Furthermore, drawing tools are not simply ‘representations of personal and professional experience, knowledge, and belonging’ (Bateman Figure 6.5 text, 75), they are, I suggest, full-fledged mediators in the articulation of a map or a plan (Witmore 2004). As such, the ‘subjective interpretive process’ is not the root of an image’s inception (78) rather it is the distributed set of practices which can only be understood if we respect mediating roles of all the actors. This is the basis of ANT!
Concluding comments…
There are many other chapters of interest in the book: a narrative of a day in Everbody-Knows-Land (Çatalhöyük, Turkey) by Oguz Erdur; an exploration of site-specific ethics in the ethnography of archaeology by Lisa Breglia; essays by John Carman and Timoteo Rodriguez.
The overall emphasis upon ‘actual fieldwork’ juxtaposed with the lack of interest in other work whether in the lab or in an archive or indeed in the study is unfortunate. What of an ethnography of an archaeologist at a computer screen shuffling through the cascades of maps, plans, diagrams, notebooks, etc? Surely, does this not lie within the vast realm of sociological research (xii)?
The book sacrifices more developed and in-depth studies for shorter chapters which serve to survey a broader range of work. Fifteen chapters are given but 184 total pages. This trade-off not only cuts the analyses short (far too short in some cases, leaving the arguments to come across as less than convincing), this trade-off also narrows the range of citation. This is unfortunate as the importance of these chapters may fall short of the mark for those who seek more detailed and comprehensive analyses. With such a great line-up of imaginative and innovative practitioners from a variety of disciplines, the collection left me wishing for more development, more elaboration, more detail, more, more, more!
Be that as it may, for most readers the major point of the book will ring loud and clear: such ethnographic practice is a critical aspect of what we do. It helps us to distance ourselves just enough to understand that there is no such thing as ‘business as usual’ in archaeological practice. Ethnography, ethnomethodology, science studies, analytic philosophy, all of which fall under a broader rubric of meta-archaeology, are critical aspects of getting on with business, so long as we understand the business of archaeology to be a co-creative process which deals with the multiplicity of the material past and its associated relations as it is mixed into the present. Moreover, Ethnographies of Archaeological Practice is engaging and thought provoking. For these reasons the book will become a key text for any archaeologist who wishes to step back from their practices and understand why what we do does not always fit with what we say we do.
References
Callon, M. and J. Law, 1997: After the individual in society. Lessons on collectivity from science, technology and society, Canadian Journal of Sociology, 22(2), 165-82.
Crease, R., D. Idhe, C.B. Jensen, and E. Selinger, 2003: Interview with Bruno Latour, in D. Ihde and E. Selinger (eds.), Chasing technoscience. Matrix for materiality, Bloomington, 15-26.
Edgeworth, M. 2003: Acts of discovery. An ethnography of archaeological practice. BAR 1131. Oxford: Archaeopress.
Edgeworth, M. (ed.) 2006a: Ethnographies of Archaeological Practice. Cultural Encounters, Material Transformations. AltaMira Press, Lanham, Maryland
Edgeworth, M. 2006b: Acts of discovery. An ethnography of archaeological practice, Social software version. Chiasme.com SOFTbooks. Available at: http://traumwerk.stanford.edu:3455/edgeworth/Home
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Hutchins, E. 1995: Cognition in the Wild. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
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Knappett, C. 2005: Thinking through Material Culture: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
Latour, B. 1999: Pandora’s Hope. Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Latour, B. 2005: Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
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Marcus, G.E. 1995: Ethnography in/of the world system. The emergence of multi-sited ethnography, Annual Review of Anthropology 24, 95-117.
Olsen, B., 2003: Material culture after text. Re-membering things, Norwegian Archaeological Review 36(2), 87-104.
Shanks, M. 1998. The Life of an Artifact. Fennoscandia Archeologica 15, 15-42.
Webmoor, T. and Witmore, C. 2005. Symmetrical Archaeology. Stanford: Metamedia, Stanford University. http://traumwerk.stanford.edu:3455/Symmetry/Home (assessed 20 September 2006).
Witmore, C.L. 2004: On Multiple Fields. Between the Material World and Media: Two Cases from the Peloponnesus, Greece, Archaeological Dialogues 11(2): 133-64.
Wylie, A. 2002: Thinking from Things: Essays in the Philosophy of Archaeology. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Yarrow, T., 2003: Artefactual persons. The relational capacities of persons and things in the practice of excavation, Norwegian Archaeological Review 36(1), 65-73.