Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-7jkgd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-26T09:26:28.291Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Archaeology, symmetry and the ontology of things. A response to critics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2015

Bjørnar Olsen  and
Christopher Witmore
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article responds to recent critiques of ‘symmetrical archaeology’. It addresses three common claims: (1) that symmetrical archaeology fails to see a difference between living and non-living entities, (2) that symmetrical archaeology makes no room for humans and other living things, (3) that symmetrical archaeology lacks any sincere ethical concern for things. This article demonstrates how these claims are based on common misunderstandings or misreadings, and offers further clarifications as to its perspective on ontology, ethics and things.

Keywords

symmetrical archaeologysymmetrythingsethicsontology
Type
Provocation
Information
Archaeological Dialogues , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , December 2015 , pp. 187 - 197
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barrett, J., 2014: The material constitution of humanness, Archaeological dialogues 21 (1), 65–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bryant, L., 2011: The democracy of objects, Ann Arbor.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarke, B., 2012: Autopoiesis and the planet, in Sussman, H. (ed.), Impasses of the post-global. Theory in the era of climate change, Vol. 2, Ann Arbor, 58–75.Google Scholar
Fowler, C., and Harris, O.J.T., 2015: Enduring relations. Exploring a paradox of new materialism, Journal of material culture 20 (2), 127–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fowles, S., 2010: People without things, in Bille, M., Hastrup, F. and Sørensen, T.F. (eds), The anthropology of absence. Materializations of transcendence and loss, New York, 23–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graves-Brown, P., 2013: Review of In defense of things, Journal of the Royal Anthropology Institute 19, 183–84.Google Scholar
Hamilakis, Y., 2013: Archaeology and the senses. Human experience, memory, and affect, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Harman, G., 2009: Prince of networks. Bruno Latour and metaphysics, Melbourne.Google Scholar
Harman, G., 2012a: Weird realism. Lovecraft and philosophy, Winchester.Google Scholar
Harman, G., 2012b: The well-wrought broken hammer. Object-oriented literary criticism, New literary history 43, 183–203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harman, G., 2013: Bells and whistles. More speculative realism, WinchesterGoogle Scholar
Harman, G., 2014: Materialism is not the solution. On matter, form and mimesis, Nordic journal of aesthetics 47, 94–110.Google Scholar
Hodder, I., 2012: Entangled. An archaeology of the relationships between humans and things, Malden, MA.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingold, T., 2012: Toward an ecology of materials, Annual review of anthropology 41, 427–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latour, B., 2014: Agency in the time of the anthropocene, New literary history 45, 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lingis, A., 1998: The imperative, Bloomington, IN.Google Scholar
Morton, T., 2013: Hyperobjects. Philosophy and ecology after the end of the world, Minneapolis.Google Scholar
Olsen, B., 2003: Material culture after text. Re-membering things, Norwegian archaeological review 36, 87–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olsen, B., 2007: Keeping things at arm's length. A genealogy of asymmetry, World archaeology 39, 579–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olsen, B., 2010: In defense of things. Archaeology and the ontology of objects, Lanham, MD.Google Scholar
Olsen, B., 2012a: After interpretation. Remembering archaeology, Current Swedish archaeology 20, 11–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olsen, B., 2012b: Symmetrical archaeology, in Hodder, I. (ed.), Archaeological theory today, Cambridge, 208–28.Google Scholar
Olsen, B., 2013: Reclaiming things. An archaeology of matter, in Carlile, P.L., Nicolini, D., Langley, A. and Tsoukas, H. (eds), How matter matters. Objects, artifacts and materiality in organization studies, Oxford, 171–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olsen, B., Shanks, M., Webmoor, T. and Witmore, C., 2012: Archaeology. The discipline of things, Berkeley, CA.Google Scholar
Pétursdóttir, Þ., 2012: Small things forgotten now included, or what else do things deserve? International journal of historical archaeology 16, 577–603.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pétursdóttir, Þ., 2014: Things out-of-hand. The aesthetics of abandonment, in Olsen, B. and Pétursdóttir, Þ. (eds) Ruin memories. Materiality, aesthetics and the archaeology of the recent past, London, 335–64.Google Scholar
Pluciennik, M., 2013: Escaping from the pen?, Archaeological dialogues 20 (2), 155–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pollock, S., Bernbeck, R., Jauß, C., Greger, J., Rüden, C. von and Schreiber, S., 2014: Entangled discussions. Talking with Ian Hodder about his book Entangled, Forum kritische Archäologie 3, 151–61.Google Scholar
Smith, L., 2006: Uses of heritage, London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sørensen, T.F., 2013: We have never been Latorian. Archaeological ethics and the posthuman condition, Norwegian archaeological review 46, 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, J., 2015: Why ‘the death of archaeological theory’?, in Herschend, F., Hillerdal, C. and Siapkas, J. (eds), Debating archaeological empiricism, London, 11–37.Google Scholar
Webmoor, T., 2012: Symmetry, STS, archaeology, in Graves-Brown, P., Harrison, R. and Piccini, A. (eds.), The Oxford handbook of the archaeology of the contemporary world, Oxford, 105–20.Google Scholar
Webmoor, T., and Witmore, C., 2008: Things are us! A commentary on human/things relations under the banner of a ‘social’ archaeology, Norwegian archaeology review 41, 53–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Witmore, C., 2004: On multiple fields. Between the material world and media. Two cases from the Peloponnesus, Greece, Archaeological dialogues 11 (2), 133–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Witmore, C., 2007: Symmetrical archaeology. Excerpts of a manifesto, World archaeology, 39, 546–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Witmore, C., 2011: Interview. Jonas Zakaitis talks with Christopher Witmore, The Federal 2, October, 11–20.Google Scholar
Witmore, C., 2013: Which archaeology? A question of chronopolitics, in González-Ruibal, A. (ed.), Reclaiming archaeology. Beyond the tropes of modernity, London, 130–44.Google Scholar
Witmore, C., 2014: archaeology and the new materialisms, Journal of contemporary archaeology 1 (2), 1–22.Google Scholar
Witmore, C., 2015: Bovine urbanism. The ecological corpulence of Bos urbanus, in Clarke, B. (ed.), Earth, life and system. Interdisciplinary essays on environment and evolution, New York, 225–49.Google Scholar