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Reclaiming archaeology
Alfredo González-Ruibal

To William Rathje (1945-2012), in memoriam.

Introduction1
Archaeology has been an important source of metaphors for some of the key
intellectuals of the 20th century (Schnapp et al. 2004; Thomas 2004), including
philosophers, writers, art historians and historians: Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin,
Alois Riegl, Michel Foucault or George Bataille to mention but a few. Some of them
resorted to archaeological metaphors in a very explicit way (Freud, Foucault), others
more unconsciously (Husserl or Heidegger: Edgeworth 2006), but, in any case, the
allure of the archaeological is very present in the making of modern thought. However,
this power of archaeology has also turned against archaeology, because the discipline
has been dealt with perfunctorily as a mere provider of metaphors that other
intellectuals have exploited (Olsen 2010: 2), often in more fruitful ways. Not
surprisingly, if one searches the word “archaeology” in Google Scholar, the first three
results refer to Foucault’s work, not to “real” archaeology—which is ironic, because the
book is actually a rejection of classical archaeological tropes (such as origins and depth).
The tendency towards appropriating archaeological categories did not end in the 1960s:
scholars from different fields continue to explore areas in which archaeologists have
been working for over two centuries, with little or no reference to the discipline. This is
the case with materiality, which is today more associated in the social sciences with
Bruno Latour (1993) than with any archaeologist, or ruins, whose territory is being
carved up by anthropologists, architects, cultural geographers, artists and art historians
(e.g. Edensor 2005; Hell and Schönle 2010; Dillon 2011). More than ever the very term
“archaeology” is used with little or no reference to the discipline itself (e.g. Jameson
2005; Agamben 2009; Yablon 2010). In the hands of philosophers and sociologists,
archaeological concepts are often cleansed and sanitized—detached from the direct

1
I would like to thank Gavin Lucas, Christopher Witmore and Víctor M. Fernández for their though-
provoking comments and criticisms to this chapter and the rest of the book. All errors remain my own.
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engagement with things and the earth that characterizes archaeology. This intellectual
work of purification (Latour 1993) also distracts from the unique character of
archaeology as craft (Shanks and McGuire 1996).
It seems that excavation, stratigraphy or ruins only become important at a trans-
disciplinary level when people from outside archaeology pay attention to them and
somehow dematerialize them. This is due in part to the fact that people like Foucault or
Freud have been able to see the enormous potential of these ideas as tropes to
understand not just strange and dead cultures from the deep past, unconnected from
current concerns, but the human existence in general, modernity in particular, and the
present. Meanwhile, archaeologists have been usually more interested in borrowing
theories from other fields, rather than in developing the theoretical potential of the same
concepts that other thinkers find so useful. We have tried to fit our material into the
frameworks devised by sociologists, anthropologists or historians, who have shown in
turn little interest in what we, archaeologists, have to say using the borrowed categories.
Some recent work shows that the time is ripe for archaeologists to address a
wider audience and engage in theoretical debates from a position of equality, not of
subalternity (e.g. Pearson and Shanks 2001; Olivier 2008; Olsen 2010). Interestingly,
the authors that are participating in this transformation of the theoretical panorama seem
to agree that in order to make archaeology relevant we do not have to take the robes of
other sciences, but rather return to what is most essentially archaeological: the craft, the
tools and the materials that make up the discipline. The aim of this book is to follow this
line of research and explore at the same time how archaeology can be useful to rethink
modernity’s big issues and how the discipline is constituted by and simultaneously
constitutes the modern episteme.
During the last two decades, the relationship between modernity and
archaeology has been thoroughly analyzed. In some cases, there has been an explicit
focus on modernity (Tilley 1990; Olsen and Svestad 1994; Thomas 2004; Lucas 2004;
Schnapp et al. 2004); in others, the relationship has been explored indirectly through the
history of the discipline (Schnapp 1996; Trigger 2006). Archaeology, however, is not
only constituted by modernity and simultaneously helps in its creation: as a science, it
can also study modernity. Archaeological research on modernity has increased in
importance during the last fifty years, first within the field of historical archaeology
(Deetz 1977; Orser 1996, 2010; Hall 2000) and more recently from the point of view of
the archaeology of the contemporary past (Buchli and Lucas 2001a; Shanks et al. 2004;
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González-Ruibal 2008; Harrison and Schofield 2010). These three lines (archaeology as
constituted by modernity, modernity as constituted by archaeology and archaeology as
an exploration of modernity) are three axes present throughout the book.
It is commonly agreed that there could not have been archaeology—at least
archaeology as we know it—without modernity (Thomas 2004; Lucas 2004). This does
not mean that some of the central concerns of archaeology (such as materiality, deep
time, remnants) cannot be explored through different rationalities. Thus, several authors
defend that it is necessary to inquiry into the “archaeological” practices of nonmodern
communities (Hamilakis 2011; Lane 2011), sometimes as part of a postcolonial or
decolonial project (Schmidt 2009; Gnecco, Haber this volume). The idea that the
objects from the past bear meaning and that this meaning encapsulates some sort of
history seems to be very widespread (Schnapp 1993), although it is by no means
universal. In any case, archaeology as a scientific discipline emerged in the modern
European world and is indissolubly linked to modern thinking, with all that it implies,
both positive and negative.
Following the path opened by other authors (Tilley 1990; Schnapp et al. 2004;
Thomas 2004), this book intends to look into the links of archaeology, modernity and
modernism. However, it will also try to do so in at least two new and original ways.
First, several of the contributors to this book propose a reflection on the tropes of
modernity that have characterized archaeology not only within the discipline, but also
outside it, and, in fact, several of the contributors come from other areas: art (Fluxá),
documentary photography (Vergara), cultural studies (Verdesio) and anthropology
(Gordillo). The idea, then, is not just to look at ourselves, but also look at others looking
at us. I believe that there is much to learn from the other’s gaze: from the desires,
misconceptions, findings and intuitions of other disciplines and forms of knowledge.
The idea is to examine the tropes and redefine and reappropriate those that we consider
useful. This reappropriation means both giving an archaeological twist to those
metaphors that have been often de-archaeologized and expanding them (their heuristic
or rhetorical possibilities).
Secondly, the idea is not simply to assess the modern foundations of archaeology,
but to propose ways in which modern tenets can be bypassed. This does not necessarily
mean that archaeology can overcome modernity or that this is something necessarily
laudable. With many others, I think that modernity has much to offer—to start with,
critical thinking and an anti-authoritarian stance, without which this work could not
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exist in the first place. The title of the volume is Reclaiming archaeology. This means
that looking critically at archaeology and modernity involves a double move: first a
thorough critique (of its temporalities, politics and practices, of the preconceptions of
what archaeology is, within and outside the discipline) and then a vindication of what is
worth in it.
Regarding critique, it is generally agreed that there is a dark side to modernity
(Bauman 2000; Mignolo 2000, 2003) that has to be faced, examined and challenged.
This dark side has both political and epistemological implications. Regarding the former,
a line that is specifically explored in this book is the relationship between colonialism
(or coloniality) and archaeology (Gnecco, Haber, Verdesio this volume). It has been
recently argued that colonialism is part and parcel of the modern project: “there is no
modernity without coloniality”, claims Mignolo (2000: 43). A simple syllogism, then,
follows: if modernity is colonial and archaeology is modern, then archaeology is
colonial. The structural links between Western colonialism and archaeological reason
and practice (Trigger 2006; González-Ruibal 2010) have yet to be explored in earnest,
that is, beyond historiography and within the field of archaeological theory. Latin
American scholars are perhaps those who have made the greatest advances along this
line (Gnecco 2009; Haber 2012). Their plea to decolonize the discipline goes hand in
hand with a more egalitarian practice and a more complex vision of the past. The
decolonial project (rather than postcolonial), however, does not end the critical inquiry.
It is still necessary to disentangle the connections between patriarchy, modernity and
archaeology (Hernando 2012, this volume) and between capitalism and archaeology
(Orser 1996, this volume; Leone et al. 1987, and this volume). The word “connection”,
however, is perhaps not adequate. It leads us to think that patriarchy, coloniality or
capitalism are something separate from modernity, whereas in fact they are
ontologically constitutive of it. They are as inseparable of archaeology and modernity as
the Cartesian dualities (body/mind, present/past, nature/culture) that structure both
(Thomas 2004). This is why we need a thorough critical approach, one that goes to the
theoretical foundations of the discipline, rather than mere historiographical or
sociological analyses, as those that have been in vogue in recent years. We have to go to
the moment of enunciation rather than be satisfied with merely describing the
statements that constitute archaeology as a modernist form of knowledge production. It
is by going to the moment of enunciation that we do an archaeology of archaeology.
Agamben (2009: 89), in the wake of Nietzsche and Foucault, suggest that philosophical
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archaeology is that practice that inquires into “the moment of a phenomenon’s arising”.
This means questioning what makes a particular kind of knowledge possible in the first
place and consists not as much in studying the founding fathers and key events, which
often make the core of the histories of archaeology, as in tracing the manifold
ramifications of knowledge and power (Foucault 1969) and the techniques, practices
and statements that are produced across (and eventually constitute) different fields. The
moment of archaeology arising may be stained by modernist prejudice, but, with
Cristóbal Gnecco (2009: 25), I am convinced that “the archaeological ethos based on
epistemic violence can be overcome by a responsible, open, reflexive and compromised
practice”. Therefore, the first critical move, as I have already indicated, has to be
followed by a second: reclaiming the discipline.
In a sense, such vindication is parallel to a vindication of modernity—another
modernity or an altermodernity. I agree with Tilley (1990: 129) when he argues that
“the problem with archaeology in relation to a modernist identity space is that it has not
sufficiently embraced the enormous potentialities provided to create new pasts, new
knowledges, new truths and to use the difference of the past to challenge and restructure
the black side of modernity: domination, exploitation, repression, alienation, violence.
There has been an insufficient modernist dynamic within archaeology itself”. From the
1980s onwards critical archaeologies have expanded and diversified (Leone et al. 1987;
Schmidt and Patterson 1995; Fernández 2005; McGuire 2008; Meskell 2009), but there
is still much work to do.
The contributors to this volume suggest different ways in which archaeology can
be reappropriated and redeployed in a critical way. Some emphasize rhetorical aspects:
archaeological manifestations of the past and present (e.g. Penrose, Byrne, Bailey,
Hamilakis), others methodological (e.g. Harrison, Kobialka, Edgeworth) or theoretical
ones (e.g. Haber, Hernando, Olsen, Olivier, Witmore). How to tell the past and what
units constitute pertinent elements of an archaeological narrative have changed much in
recent times, thanks among other things to the proliferation of new media (Witmore
2009) and the abolition of the time barrier in archaeology (Hicks 2003). The
contributors both play with media and non-conventional time, that is, one which is not
the historicist, unilineal time of conventional archaeology. This archaeology does not
intend to explore the past as gone, but focuses on recent pasts, pasts in the present and
even imagined ones (Byrne this volume). Regarding media, although we have been
accustomed of thinking of innovative forms of expression as electronic media, the truth
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is that archaeology has always played with a variety of mechanisms to deliver its
message (Witmore 2009), and some vintage media, such as photography (Shanks and
Svabo, Bailey, Fluxá this volume) and text, have to be explored further (e.g. Byrne,
Penrose this volume).
Something that we may, of course, ask is: is archaeology worth reclaiming? Is it
not better to invent a new discipline to deal with the material traces of the past? This
question is related (as archaeology itself) to that of modernity. Should we reclaim
modernity at all? An answer might be that “modernity is always two”, as Negri and
Hardt argue. “Before we cast it in terms of reason, Enlightenment, the break with
tradition, secularism, and so forth, modernity must be understood as a power relation:
domination and resistance, sovereignty and struggles for liberation” (Negri and Hardt
2009: 67). Within archaeology there is epistemic and political power, but there is also
the seed of their opposites: resistances to hegemonic knowledge and oppressive politics
(either totalitarian or liberal) (Agamben 2012). Archaeology can buttress the nation-
state and feed its fantasies, even the darkest ones (Arnold 1990; Meskell 1998); it can
help build colonies and disenfranchise entire populations (Abu El-Haj 2001), and it can
do its bit in naturalizing the patriarchal order (Hernando 2008). Yet there has been too
much stress on the negative side of the discipline: archaeology can also be a critical,
progressive force (Shanks 2012: 10). We should remember that the discipline allows us
to recover the muted presence of the subaltern: slaves (Leone et al. this volume, but see
Shepherd, this volume, for the problems inherent to this task), indigenous people (Haber,
Gnecco, Verdesio this volume), the colonized (Given 2004), the victims of political
violence (Crossland 2000, Renshaw 2011). With anthropology and history, it can
document and participate in the creation of other narratives and uses of the past
(Hamilakis 2011). Something that fascinates others of archaeological work is its ability
to render what is invisible visible and to construct complex stories starting from
minimal fragments and traces (Verdesio 2010: 340). Archaeology, indeed, allows us to
find and interpret the ephemeral and humble traces of subaltern lives and show their
existence in the past and their relevance in the present (Orser 2010: 118): finding
microscopic pollen grains in a thin layer of soil can change our ideas of what the people
of African ancestry have contributed to modern American culture (see Leone et al. this
volume). With its subtle gaze, archaeology can challenge the regimes of visibility of
modernity that condemn the subaltern to the shadows (Verdesio 2010: 347-351).
Still, we could reclaim archaeology from a Foucaldian perspective (Foucault
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1969). To say that archaeology is inherently modern or colonial or Cartesian is perhaps


not taking archaeology in its proper dispersion, to accept the interruptions and re-
constructions to which the discipline has been subjected. The énoncés of archaeology,
its “atoms of discourse”, have changed: things that were outside archaeology are
considered today legitimate part of the discursive formation. Perhaps where this is better
seen is in the archaeology of the contemporary past: a tin can from yesterday’s dinner is
now part of the discipline (Rathje and Murphy 1992). The rules of formation of the
archaeological discourse are not the same now and in the mid-nineteenth century, even
if there are manifold connections and coincidences. Archaeology, then, can be
reclaimed through its reinvention: by rejecting elements of discourse that no longer
belong and incorporating others.
Another reason, which might sound spurious, is that we have to reclaim
archaeology because otherwise others will do it in our place and, as archaeologists, we
have certainly something to say about the possibilities and limits of our metaphors.
Strangely enough, the history of archaeology can be read as a continuous rejection of
the archaeological: of materiality (Olsen 2010, this volume), of non-linear temporalities
(Olivier 2008, this volume; Witmore, this volume), of ruins, remnants and fragments
(Olivier 2008, Burström this volume). While we have been busy in rejecting our own
and embracing others’ metaphors, methods and theories, practitioners from other
disciplines have frequently resorted to archaeology to legitimize their fields (Gere 2002).
The idea, of course, is not to fence off our area and claim property rights. It is rather to
cast an archaeological glance upon the archaeological tropes that have been
productively explored by others. One of our missions is to rematerialize the tropes,
which for us, archaeologists, are not just rhetoric devices, but very tangible things with
practical applications: we do excavate the earth, document stratigraphic layers, collect
rubbish, explore ruins and retrieve material memories (Lucas 2012: 207). These might
be powerful tropes for others, but for us they mean our ordinary engagement with the
world. If we did not have that engagement, the tropes would not exist in the first place.
There is nothing inherently wrong with archaeological metaphors. On the
contrary, they help to popularize the discipline outside its frontiers, foster
interdisciplinary dialogues and allow archaeologists to rethink their regimes of
knowledge. The problem is that quite often the metaphorical uses of archaeology
simplify a complex reality or are just outdated. It is comprehensible (even praiseworthy)
that Sigmund Freud was inspired by the excavations of Troy or Ephesus (O’Donoghue
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2004), but that Schliemann’s work in Troy continues to be the referent for some of what
archaeology is (e.g. Solnit 2007: 352) seems less understandable. I would not look into
nineteenth century books to find out how geology or biology works: the same should be
expected of the concern of others with the archaeological. In fact, it can be argued that
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century scholars such as Riegl or Freud were
more acquainted with what archaeology as an academic discipline really was than
today’s non-archaeologists. For the last hundred years, there has been much theoretical
reflection on how archaeology documents the past and what, in fact, it is that
archaeology documents. Few outside archaeology are probably aware of the
transformations in stratigraphic studies and the way they have shaped the discipline
(Harris 1975, 1979; Lucas 2001). Likewise, the metaphor of archaeology as the science
of origins has been challenged for quite a while, not the least by those who study the
present (Buchli and Lucas 2001; González-Ruibal 2008; Harrison and Schofield 2010).
The well-worn archaeological metaphors, thus, may end up producing an impoverished
and unrealistic image of the discipline. This has not escaped non-archaeologists: Freud,
for example, has been criticized for burdening psychoanalysis with too heavy a master-
trope and offering a simplified image of archaeological procedures (Spence 1987;
McHale 1999). Still, there are few that actually look at what present archaeologists
think and do. It seems that archaeologists have little of interest to say: it is their work
and the product of their work that fascinates others, not what they write or think. Thus,
an author of a book on the archaeological imagination feels entitled to do mostly
without archaeological references (Wallace 2004) and in a recent work about modern
ruins (Hell and Schönle 2010), only one contributor out of 25 cites any archaeologist
(Verdesio 2010, who also contributes to this volume).
Not all blame can be put on others. It has been pointed out that archaeologists
have been reluctant to produce theory from within (Olsen et al. 2012) and the main
themes of the discipline have tended to produce embarrassment among practitioners
(ruins, material culture). Thus, while archaeologists were trying to restore completeness
to the fragmentary archaeological record, others were finding in ruins the key to
understand modernity, its regimes of value and its temporality (Riegl 1982; Simmel
1956, 2007; Benjamin 1999) and, ironically, when Carlo Ginzburg (1980) was
suggesting that texts should be interpreted as traces, archaeologists were proposing that
traces should be read as texts (Lucas 2012: 27; also Olsen 2006). Archaeologists have
maintained a colonial relationship with other disciplines and paradigm shifts have often
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been predicated on following another form of knowledge: thus, processual or New


Archaeology in the 1960s defended the transformation of archaeology into
anthropology (Binford 1962) and post-processualism suggested to look at history
(Hodder 1986). It is worth pointing out that, paradoxically, while some non-
archaeologists have been using the term “archaeology” recently to refer to their research
(see Olivier this volume), archaeologists have preferred to label their work as
“ethnography” (Tilley 1996). Embracing other disciplines implies relinquishing one’s
tropes for others which are deemed more heuristically powerful to pursue knowledge.
This situation, however, is changing. Some recent works coincide in producing
archaeological theory that stems from core themes of the discipline instead of importing
them and generates knowledge that is intended to be relevant beyond the discipline
(Pearson and Shanks 2001; Olivier 2008; Olsen 2010; Olsen et al. 2012). This does not
mean, of course, relapsing into solipsism, but rather participating in a dialogue with
others on an equal footing. The dialogue, in fact, has existed before and at times was
initiated by non-archaeologists: a good example of this is Bataille’s Documents, the
magazine where art, archaeology, ethnography and literature shared space between 1929
and 1930 (Ades and Baker 2006). It is in this spirit that this book is conceived: a
reflection on archaeological tropes is an excuse to reconsider both archaeology’s links
to modernity and its unique potential to produce knowledge of the world. By looking at
modernist tropes of the archaeological, we discover not only the power of what is
properly archaeology, but also the links that, through the modern project, the discipline
has with other modes of knowledge production (Shanks and Svabo this volume). In fact,
it is often difficult to know whether a metaphor is properly archaeological or rather a
shared modern notion. This is the case with tropes such as depth, ruination, disclosure,
traces, evidence, evolution, process, collection and typology. Throughout this chapter I
will be comparing archaeology as practiced by archaeologists (“real archaeology”) and
archaeology as imagined or reworked by philosophers, artists and culture historians.
The latter are archaeologies in their own right. It is not my intention to detract from
them, as they have been immensely influential (and rightly so) in the development of
modern (and modernist) thought and they have inspired archaeologists themselves. The
idea is to delve more deeply in that other archaeology, the one that consists in an
engagement with things and the past through a particular set of methods and practices.
In the remaining part of this introductory chapter I will go through the four main
themes that structure this book: method, time, heritage and materiality.
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1. Method
What Holtorf (2005) has defined as “archaeo-appeal” (the allure of the archaeological in
contemporary popular culture) is certainly not restricted to the popular realm. With
exceptions, scholarly archaeo-appeal is not theoretically more complex than common
perceptions of the discipline: the idea of digging to find hidden treasures (real or
metaphorical), excavation as discovery, the fascination for ruins and abandonment, the
archaeologist as a detective in search for clues, all are equally found in popular culture
and in academia (Gere 2002: 202; Kobialka this volume). From this perspective, the
archaeological trope par excellence is the dig and not only for non-archaeologists:
meaningfully, Lucas’ book on fieldwork focuses mainly on excavation (Lucas 2001)
and for most archaeologists (myself included), the first thing that comes to mind when
thinking of “fieldwork” is digging. It is not strange that excavation has attracted most
theoretical reflection by archaeologists (e.g. Tilley 1989; Hodder 1997; Edgeworth 2012,
this volume). The role of excavation as a master-trope, within and outside archaeology,
has to be put in relationship with that of depth and stratigraphy, which are pivotal ideas
in the modernist concept of knowledge, including scientific knowledge and knowledge
of the self (Thomas 2004: 149-157; Thomas 2009; Harrison 2011). In fact, the idea of
the archaeological excavation has focused too restrictively on a few issues, such as acts
of discovery, unearthing and reconstructing the past and the multi-layered nature of the
archaeological record. This leaves aside, on the one hand, many other things that happen
in archaeological excavations and, on the other, many kinds of excavation that are not
comparable to the unearthing of ancient cities, which influenced Freud so much (Freud
2006: 79; Gere 2002; O’Donoghue 2004). The excavation of single-level sites and sites
without positive structures or the work of a variety of specialists in a dig (Hodder 1997)
is conspicuously absent in the modern cultural imagination.
Giving the overemphasis on excavation and its modernist ramifications, it is not
surprising that there is some tiredness among archaeologists with the metaphor. Some
authors consider that the trope itself is problematic, because it creates distances between
past and present, between subject and object (Thomas 2004: 170; Harrison 2011, this
volume; Graves-Brown 2011, this volume). This has led some to try to find other tropes
that articulate the work of archaeologists in more apt and open ways (Harrison 2011,
this volume; Graves-Brown 2011, this volume; Kobialka this volume). Archaeologists
are not alone in this. Literature specialist Jennifer Wallace (2004: 189) has argued that
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“archaeology should move away from the hierarchical privileging of depth over surface
and examine rather surface sites, delimited areas, nebulous spaces”. Actually, even if
the prevalent trope has been that of depth rather than surface, archaeologists have been
doing systematic surface survey since at least the early 1950s and procedures for
obtaining information from the surface have increased dramatically (Bintliff and
Snodgrass 1988; Cherry 2003) as well as the creative modes of engagement linked to
them (Witmore 2007). Today, excavation is perceived as only one part of multi-stage,
multi-scalar fieldwork strategies (Cherry 2011). An old surface method that is being
revitalized in archaeology is what Michael Shanks (2012: 79-81) calls, following an
ancient antiquarian tradition, “chorography” (see also Gillings 2011): “the topic of
chorography is the heterogeneity of inhabitation, the rich variety of life”. The idea is to
capture a sense of place by using a non-linear storytelling, where a variety of stories and
viewpoints are intermingled (cf. Byrne, Penrose this volume). Furthermore, it can be
questioned that contemporary archaeological excavation is about depth: it can be argued
that it has more to do with surfaces. With the gradual shift from Wheeler’s grid to open
area excavation, archaeologists have been more concerned with documenting a
superimposition of surfaces rather than with depths (Wheeler 1975, 1977; Lucas 2001:
157). This is a case in which the archaeological trope is no longer in keeping with actual
practice.
We may wonder whether this coincidence between archaeologists and non-
archaeologists in rejecting the metaphor of depth is just that. Probably not. It has been
noted that depth is the master-trope for time in high modernism and, as such, it does no
longer work as well under postmodern conditions (Thomas 2004). According to Fredric
Jameson (1991: 154), “A certain spatial turn has often seemed to offer one of the more
productive ways of distinguishing postmodernism from modernism proper, whose
experience of temporality—existential time, along with deep memory—it is henceforth
conventional to see as a dominant of the high modern.". This privileging of surface
versus depth is visible in a variety of cultural productions of postmodernity, such as
poetry: what postmodern poets do, according to McHale (1999), is “overlapping and
interfering voices, as if dispersed over a single horizontal plane”. Interestingly, this
critic finds the new spatialization already in Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge, an
“archaeology” that explicitly rejects the conventional metaphor of excavation, since it
renounces to a search for origins and depth (also Megill 1985: 231). The book, in fact,
marks the turning point in Foucault’s set of tropes (from archaeology to genealogy),
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because in The Order of Things the metaphors of depth are still present (Megill 1985:
225-226). By suspecting the trope of depth, then, archaeologists prove to be in
synchrony with the Zeitgeist.
The critique of excavation and related metaphors is necessary and forces us to
look for other sources of inspiration in our own discipline (Harrison 2011: 154).
However, excavation is also something unique to archaeology and that implies an
equally original engagement with the object of study. While I admit that there are
problems with the trope, I think that our mission is to reappropriate it, rather than
abandon it altogether (also Edgeworth 2012, this volume; Hamilakis and Theou this
volume). Why is the idea of excavation worth keeping? I think that there are at least five
main reasons for it: First, it is a purely and unique archaeological phenomenon,
something which defines the discipline and sets it apart (González-Ruibal 2011). I
would say that it even causes envy (think of Sigmund Freud or Mark Dion).
Archaeologists have been the first in developing a methodology for cutting the earth to
gain knowledge and all others who do the same (anthropologists or forensic scientists)
have learned in the last instance from archaeology.
Second, borrowing from Hamilakis and Theou (this volume), I would say that
“an archaeological site is an arena that can allow other forms of cultural production,
beyond the archaeological, to unfold and to thrive”. That is, although excavation is a
quintessential archaeological practice, it is also one that enables the construction of
bridges between our discipline and other forms of knowledge production and creative
interventions (cf. Pearson and Shanks 2001).
Third, sometimes the truth (a vital truth) actually lies hidden under the surface
and its revelation is crucial for political and therapeutic reasons: consider the case of
slavery (Leone et al. this volume) or the victims of political repression in mass graves
(Crossland 2000; González-Ruibal 2011; Renshaw 2011). The idea of the return of the
repressed may well be typically modern, but it is also powerful and critical.
Fourth, archaeological excavations are a public activity (despite attempts to
conceal them): as Moshenska (this volume) makes clear, while science has become
progressively fenced away from the public and black-boxed, archaeological digs have
remained mostly visible and open to social interaction/interpretation (cf. Hamilakis and
Theou this volume). This can happen also with other kinds of archaeological
intervention, such as surveys, but it is more problematic, because they are less spatially
confined and are less appealing to people. It is not by chance that some innovative
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experiments in contemporary archaeology resort to digging as a radical approach to the


present or the recent past: this is the case with the archaeology of homelessness (Kiddey
and Schofield 2011, but see Zimmerman et al. 2010 for a survey-based project) and the
excavation of a van (Bailey et al. 2009). Perhaps it is when archaeology is applied to
non-conventional contexts that it becomes more subversive and appealing. It is also
important to bear in mind that although excavation is an epistemic device that has been
used from the top down to pursue state agendas, it has also been mobilized freely by
people outside academia to connect with the past: a good example of this are the digs
conducted by the inhabitants of modern Kaliningrad (former Königsberg) in search of
the German roots of the city (Sezneva 2007) or the search by Estonians for family
belongings buried during time of war (Burström 2012).
There is a fifth element that makes archaeological excavation special and worth
keeping as a trope: the bodily engagement that it implies and the knowledge that can be
obtained from it (Edgeworth 2012, this volume). This exists also in survey, as it has
been repeatedly remarked from a phenomenological perspective (Tilley 2008; also
Pearson and Shanks 2001: 37-41), but the relationship between body and materiality is
more intense in the case of an archaeological excavation: we encounter there an
unequalled intimacy with things. In fact, this engagement can be considered counter-
modern to a certain degree. Field walking is an essentially modern (Cartesian) activity:
it reinforces the split between the Ego and the world, it creates a detachment between
the observer and the observed, and reinforces the modernist sense par excellence: vision
(Levin 1993; Verdesio 2010). The modern project (or the process of civilization,
according to Norbert Elias) is, among other things, a process of emotional repression
and detachment from the world (Elias 1994). Archaeological excavation is quite the
opposite, despite being an equally modern endeavour: it does not distance us from the
world, but put as in intimate contact with it. Whereas field walking can be related to the
modern flâneur (Benjamin 1999), archaeological excavation is redolent of the work of
the peasant and the miner, a work that has been traditionally suffused with sacredness
and rituality. It is not strange, then, that archaeologists have often left the actual work of
digging the earth to subalterns (Shepherd 2003). If archaeology is a craft, it is
excavation that better captures the nature of the discipline (Shanks and McGuire 1996).
It is also in excavation where the dialectic between estrangement and engagement that
characterizes archaeology is more clearly exposed (Graves-Brown 2011).
Defending excavation does not mean that it has to retain its paramount place in
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the archaeological imaginary and method. A closer examination of the surface practices
of archaeology is needed (Byrne 2007, this volume; Olivier 2008: 86-87; Harrison 2011,
this volume; Kobialka this volume; Penrose this volume) and this includes looking at
excavation as a surface practice. In fact, the simultaneous reflection on digging,
materiality and time shows that the boundary between excavation and other
archaeological practices is less radical than usually thought. Looking at the surface is
also a kind of dig (a metaphorical one), because multiple pasts are often present on the
surface (Olivier 2008). Kobialka notes that sometimes there is more to be known from
the top of the ground than underneath, because all the materials have surfaced due to
post-depositional processes. The same can be said of the temporality of a site.
Sometimes survey yields a multitemporal perspective that is not attested by cutting
through the earth, especially because the most recent evidence and the less monumental
leave little trace underground. In a Bronze Age site in Sardinia, for instance, one can
find the walls of the prehistoric monument (a nuraghe) refashioned as a shepherd’s
shelter and evidence of Punic and Roman occupation in the shape of a few sherds of
pottery. When one digs the site, instead, only the remotest past is actually represented.
Other contexts challenge the clear cut division of survey and excavation. This is the
case with the archaeology of the contemporary past. When one works inside an
abandoned house, mapping debris and removing thin levels of de facto refuse (Schiffer
1987: 89-90), such as layers of newspapers covering layers of clothes, is one excavating
or doing surface survey (an example in Buchli and Lucas 2001b)? What is the
appropriate way to describe this activity? Also, the theatricality of excavation (Tilley
1989; Moshenska and Schadla-Hall 2011; Moshenska this volume; Hamilakis and
Theou this volume) is something that can be shared by other archaeological activities,
such as surveys and exhibitions (Pearson and Shanks 2001; Bailey et al. 2010). Works
such as those of Bárbara Fluxá (this volume) prove that archaeology can be an inspiring
practice beyond excavation (also Shanks 1992): archaeological mapping and remote
sensing can be creatively mobilized to trigger reflections on landscape, heritage,
memory and the past.

2. Time
Time is undoubtedly one of the constitutive elements of archaeology. Archaeological
time has called the attention of non-archaeologists, either because of its depth or its
complexity: a discipline that is able to make the past present through its remains.
15

Archaeological time, perhaps even more than historical time, is strongly associated to
change which is itself related to notions of origins, process, evolution and progress.
Without a strong conception of change, there could be no archaeology. Tilley (1990:
128-129) has glossed the idea of change in modernity as “awareness of continual
change (...); a sense of possibility: that the world can be changed upside down; [and] a
constant force of dynamism that both spurs creativity and forces and crushes us”. That
archaeology is all about change is an external image of the discipline as much as it is
internal. From an external point of view, it seems that by studying the ruins of ancient
civilizations, archaeologists necessarily study (dramatic) transformation: things that
were and no longer are. Yet the practitioners themselves also consider themselves as
primarily involved with change, even if they tend to see it in a much less nostalgic way:
“As archaeologists we celebrate and study change”, assert Harrison and Schofield (2010:
221, my emphasis). In fact, we have been celebrating and studying transformation at
least since the origins of the discipline in the beginnings of the nineteenth century
(Schnapp 1996), but our obsession with change has not been properly examined: what
are its political and epistemological implications? Bruce Trigger (2006) was among the
first to point out that the emphasis on evolution and origins was behind the nationalist
and colonialist projects of the Western bourgeoisie: archaeology provided a history of
the deep origins of Western nations and races and helped legitimize their status in the
present world order. In turn, Hernando (2008, this volume) has argued that archaeology
and history’s emphasis on change is strongly linked to the patriarchal foundations of
modernity, as transformative practices are associated with men and stasis with women
and the subaltern more generally. The trope of change, then, can be a dangerous one,
which is employed to naturalize particular hegemonies—including those that were born
with modernity.
During the last decades, historians and anthropologists have insisted on
reversing the association of change with the dominant groups. This has led to its
democratization: transformation is now considered to be present in any society. While
this might seem positive, from an ethical, political and epistemological point of view, it
is not without trouble. The problem is that it is not just change that is generalized, but a
particular idea of change: what prevails is a vision of dynamic societies in perpetual flux,
which does not necessarily make justice to all human groups. Lévi-Strauss (1966: 234)
already noted that the fact that all human societies can change is patent: the interesting
thing, for him, was to elucidate why some change faster and invest more in
16

transformation, whereas others do not or try not to. The truly critical approach, then, is
not the one that bestows the same temporality to all (a temporality that looks
suspiciously modern), but one that goes to the origin of the idea: why is change
necessarily good? Why do we consider that it is more human to change than to reject
change? Is it really problematic that the pace of change in some societies is slower than
in others? Do we have to perceive resistance to change as failure?
In my opinion, archaeology is in a good position to challenge the modernist
trope of history as change that underscores archaeology. We should be able to envisage
an archaeology that does not only look at change but also interrogates the changeless: an
archaeology that problematizes dominant notions of continuous change as inherently
positive (see Birth 2008) and ponders whether stasis is always invariably negative or
equated with things that are dead: modernity has traditionally created spaces for the
static, lieux de mémoire—national feasts where a fossilized peasant past is celebrated,
monuments, heritage sites (Nora 1989). These clichés also act as elements of reference
to gauge the extent (and importance) of change as progress. Despite some debates on
the long term during the 1980s (Bailey 1981; Hodder 1987), the interest has always
revolved around transformation (either fast or slow): thus, unlike the Braudelian long
term, with its focus on the immobile and repetitive (Braudel 1958), Bailey’s interest was
in the almost imperceptible flux of change that occurs in very long periods of time.
The archaeological fascination with change is understandable, but only to a point.
As archaeologists we routinely document non-change: things and material practices that
stubbornly retain their physicality, mechanical function and social uses for centuries or
even millennia, without great transformations (e.g. arrowheads, rock paintings, stone
walls in the European peasant landscape) (Leroi-Gourhan 1971). In fact, this resistance
to change is something inherent to things themselves. As Michel Serres has defended,
things slow the pace of change: they stabilize relations (between things and people and
between people) and made them durable (Serres 1995: 87ff; Olsen 2010: 139-141;
Lucas 2012: 201-203). Consider the following case: in a site that we have excavated in
Equatorial Guinea, my colleagues and I have found iron objects that were used as
currency almost two thousand years ago (González-Ruibal et al. in press). Virtually the
same artefacts (ekuele) were used in marriage transactions by the descendants of those
communities between the sixteenth and the mid-twentieth century. It is therefore
reasonable to think that they were put to similar ends during the early first millennium
AD. The iron currency is not a mere reflection of a cultural tradition: it has had an
17

active role in stabilizing it and preventing its radical transformation. Without ekuele, the
relationship between wealth, kinship and marriage would have been less solid. What is
fascinating for me is not primarily how these things have changed (they have), but the
fact that they have managed to do it so little.
However, it does not seem correct to point out elements of permanence in the
long term—permanence is something abhorred by modernism (remember the Futurist
manifesto). Apparently, archaeologists, historians and anthropologists, faithful to
modernism (or postmodernism, for that matter), feel that they have to emphasize
perpetual change and flux. When the modern project of emancipation and progress was
restricted to the West, change was equally restricted to Western societies. When it was
opened to the rest of the world, especially with decolonization, the Other had to be put
on equal footing with us. And that meant bringing the primitive back from the past and
giving the people of the past the same temporality of the modern Westerners. This
operation was originally espoused by anthropologists who criticized the allochronic
practices of their discipline: their object of study (the non-Western indigenous peoples)
was systematically placed in another time, which was not that of the anthropologist, but
rather a prehistoric past (Fabian 1983), which was the researcher’s own: archaeology
was deeply involved in the allochronic enterprise. The problem is that by fighting
allochrony anthropologists have frequently ended up producing an equally pernicious
homochrony: one that denies the distinct time of the Other (Birth 2008). If it can be
argued that anthropology (allied to archaeology and history), created a distinct time for
the other, outside the universal time of modernity, the opposite is also true: that
anthropology, archaeology and history have participated in the creation of a universal,
empty time which has engulfed both the West and the rest. The synchronization of the
world was a pre-requisite for the take off of the global capitalist economy in the mid-
nineteenth century, as it was in the preceding century to maximize industrial work
(Thompson 1967; Verdesio this volume). By denying alternative temporalities to the
Other, we collaborate with the modernist enterprise of universalizing time: this was
started in the nineteenth century through evolutionist schemas and is now continued
under a postmodern paradigm that celebrates the historicization of other temporalities.
In archaeology we usually do not have the ethical concerns of falling into
allochrony (as the subjects we study are almost always from another time), but we run
the same risk of anthropology in abolishing alternative temporalities. By denying slow
time and stasis and endowing every society with a temporality of endless change, we
18

suppress alterity. What the stasis of things might tell us is another story: a nonmodern
one, with a different temporality and different values—a different way of being. If we
admit that the naturalist perspective does not make sense in other worlds (and is not
even appropriate for our own!), such as those of the Amerindian peoples (Descola 2005),
why should we think that the framework of modern temporality should be universal?
Rejecting continuous change as the only form of being in time is, for me, part of the
same project that intends to decolonize archaeology and challenge its Cartesian
assumptions. In fact, it can turn out to be political. After all, resistance to change is
often equated with political resistance (González-Ruibal in press).
The problem is not only that archaeology has participated of a modernist
conception of time as perpetual change. The problem is that it has also borrowed the
empty, homogeneous time of historicism (Benjamin 1968: 261), despite the fact that
this is not the time that it regularly retrieves through the material record. Olivier (2008:
61) has called this failure of archaeology to embrace non-linear time as the “missed
revolutions of archaeology”. Whereas psychoanalysis and geology soon got rid of
historicist time, archaeology stuck to it. We can wonder why these sciences and
archaeology had such divergent trajectories. It seems that archaeology has always
suffered from disciplinary insecurity or what Lucas (2004: 111) has called a lack of
confidence in the archaeological project (hence the need of reclaiming it as well).
Midway between history, archaeology and philology, archaeologists have been probably
afraid of ending up in a no-man’s land, an esoteric discipline disavowed by all. In recent
years, however, the idea of heterotemporality is gaining ground in disciplines as
different as biology (punctuated equilibrium, heterochrony) and history (Chakrabarty
2000; De Landa 2000). In this environment, archaeologists can feel entitled to propose
new approaches to time based on the potentials of the discipline (Holtorf 2002, Lucas
2005, 2009, Olivier 2008). Witmore (2006, this volume), for instance, has drawn a
distinction between a kairotic and a chronological time, where temporal pleats, twists
and folds are the norm: time, he argues, percolates. Many archaeologists now coincide
in that we inhabit the past in many respects (Thomas 2004: 170; Olivier 2008; Harrison
2011; Witmore this volume) and this idea has important implications beyond
archaeology: if we inhabit the past, the past has a relevance that has not been properly
acknowledged. The role of the archaeologist, then, it is not just to document remote
pasts that are gone forever but also the prehistoricity of our present. This prehistoricity
is not to be understood as atavism or survival (Lucas 2012: 29-33), but as a present and
19

operative tendency (an arché) which conditions and makes intelligible the present itself
(Agamben 2009: 92).
Another concept tightly related to notions of change, process and temporality is
genealogy, which is a subtle and complex way of dealing with process, particularly with
the historical processes of those things “that we tend to feel are without history”
(Foucault 1984: 76). Foucault used what he called a genealogical method to explore the
production of modern discursive formations, that is, the conditions that made possible
the emergence of truths—bypassing teleological descriptions, linear temporalities, and
the obsession with origins. Besides, he showed that the truths produced by discursive
formations were made not only of words and ideas, but of material elements as well
(hospitals, prisons, factories, books, medicines). These material elements, however,
were treated, in the last instance, as words: the guillotine or the individual prison cell
were taken, in fact, as statements or part of statements (enoncés). Thus, paradoxically,
Foucaldian genealogical works gave things a prominent place and at the same time
dematerialized them. Archaeology can put the flesh back to Foucault’s genealogies
(Witmore this volume): archaeological genealogies, write Shanks and Witmore (2010:
276), highlight distribution and complexity, instead of progress and development.
Historical archaeology (see Orser; Leone et al. this volume), in particular, like
Foucault’s “effective history”, has been examining discontinuities and fractures,
demythologizing grand origins and studying “what is closest but in an abrupt
dispossession, so as to seize it at a distance” (Foucault 1984: 89). We may, nevertheless,
wonder, is the Foucaldian trope of genealogy adequate for archaeology? Should
archaeological genealogies be faithful to those theorized by the French philosopher?
Shall we do without origins? While the modernist obsession with origins has
undoubtedly done a disservice to archaeology, rejecting them following Foucault’s
spatializing operation is perhaps not a good move. What we might work with is with a
different concept of origins, perhaps one that resemble Bataille’s: “Bataille’s case for
the birth of humanity and art in Lascaux, argues Spears (1996: 356), stages and
inaugural moment that preserves the mystery of origin, while highlighting the symbolic
function (inherent to art) that lends authority to the human order”. Preserving the
enchantment of origin, while disclosing the “moment of a phenomenon’s arising”
(Agamben 2009: 89), is perhaps the difficult but only way of conducting a genealogical
search in archaeology.
A modern trope that is at the root of archaeology is the division between
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Prehistory and History (Lucas 2004). This division has created a similar divide in the
discipline between prehistoric and historical archaeology. Nevertheless, as it is
generally understood, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world (but not only), historical
archaeology is the archaeology of modernity and the expansion of the West (Orser 1996,
this volume). This division has been challenged in recent years, on the one hand
because of its racist connotations, since the term “prehistoric” has been used to dismiss
the history of non-state societies and minority groups, including present ones (McNiven
and Russell 2005; Verdesio this volume), at least since Hegel (Guha 2002). Likewise,
the unilineal tale that leads from prehistory to history has been criticized (Matthews
2007). However, as Orser (this volume) eloquently shows, ruling out the division can be
dangerous and troubling: consciously or not, it may end up reinforcing neoliberal
agendas that try to play down the impact of global capitalism. Whereas the concept
historic and prehistoric could certainly benefit from a terminological change (given the
problematic temporal prefix in Pre-history, see Verdesio this volume and below), the
division tries to make sense of a phenomenon of paramount relevance: the emergence of
modernity, capitalism and their globalization (Orser 2010: 120). In fact, it is interesting
that the archaeological divide between the historical West and the “non-historical” rest
almost coincides with one of the proposed beginnings of the Anthropocene (eighteenth
century) (see Solli 2011 and comments). In both cases (geology and archaeology), the
idea is to make justice to the enormous (and negative) impact that the Western political
and economic expansion has had in the world (Orser this volume). Playing down this
divide—the world before and after capitalism—would not only be politically suspect, it
is also epistemologically flawed: archaeology, better than any other science, can
document the global expansion of the West and the extraordinary pace of
transformation—and very often destruction—of world societies and environments.
Historical archaeology offers, then, a material vision of modernity, a process which is
often identified, in a Hegelian way, with the transformation of the spirit.
Archaeology, however, does not only depict time as it finds it. It also helps to
create it, sometimes with negative political implications. This is the case with the
concept of Prehistory, in whose definition anthropology, archaeology and philosophy
share the guilt (Guha 2002). As Olsen and Svestad (1994: 3) remind “Prehistory, as it
came to be perceived and thought of, was not an unrevealed secret which was waiting
for its discoverers. Archaeological discourse was instead shaping this concept of
prehistory in a mould which was handed to it by the modern episteme”, and Lucas
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(2004: 2004: 110-111) considers Prehistory the epitome of the modernist project: a
period of which tradition had nothing to say and was, therefore, beyond the grasp of the
keepers of knowledge: a clean, new past to construct from scratch. While Prehistory is
still a useful term (Taylor 2008; Renfrew 2007), its connotations are often sinister and
therefore have to be investigated (Verdesio this volume). It is interesting that whereas
anthropologists have discarded terms like “primitive” for their allochronic, chauvinistic
and racist connotations, archaeologists still regularly use the term “prehistoric”.
Although the prehistoric has been sometimes used for utopianist purposes (an
interesting example in Wilson 1998: 89-112), “Prehistory” has more often appeared as a
derogatory trope in the collective imagination of the West, despite strenuous efforts by
archaeologists to show its complexity and relevance (Renfrew 2007). At best, Prehistory
is something irrelevant: “The tacit distinction between history and ‘prehistory’”—writes
Zerubavel (2003: 94)—“implies that, like a preface of a book or ‘introductory’ remarks
in lectures, it basically lies outside the official historical narrative and, as such, is
normatively excluded from what we are expected to remember”. At worst, Prehistory
can become a convenient place to put all the rubbish of history: all that is degrading and
brutal, but also all that is absurd, simple or naïf. It is a repository of all that causes us
fear, laugh and disgust: an inverted image of civilization. Archaeology has populated
this place with strange things (stone axes, archaic shrines and tombs packaged with
esoteric tools), while colonial anthropology offered bizarre customs of present
primitives (rites of passage, sexual mores, and bloody ordeals) to enliven the
assemblage. The conflation of the brutish modern primitive and the arcane materiality
of the past one have produced an enduring image of the prehistoric, whose origin can be
traced back to Lubbock’s Prehistoric Times (1865). The prehistoric/savage, so depicted,
could then be easily pitted against the historic/civilized (Todorov 2008: 13-19). The
human capacity for abject evil and every act of moral disorder was thus displaced to the
past, to a moment before history proper—which is the time of civilization, the time of
the State (Guha 2002).
In this case, archaeologists should do an effort to reclaim both Prehistory
(although not necessarily the term) and the means to have access to it (archaeology
itself). Reclaiming Prehistory involves two things. Firstly, we have to “realize and
understand the coeval nature of prehistory with the present” (Matthews 2007: 289).
Secondly, we have to purge the past of its burden of savagery. Ironically, the prehistoric
past is not the most brutal. Quite the opposite: chattel slavery, genocide and nuclear
22

weapons were certainly not invented before the advent of the State. Equating moral
anarchy with Prehistory is a legacy of colonialism that lingers in our minds: it has been
remarked that of all evidences that could have been brought up in the Nüremberg trials,
one that gained especial prominence was a shrunken head from Büchenwald (Douglas
1998). The idea was to prove the barbarity of the Nazis. It seems that what was
important was not as much the brutality of the act itself (much more horrible things
happened in the camps), as the violation of the temporal rules of progress established by
modernity: abject violence was a thing from Prehistory, which could be situated either
in another time (the European Iron Age) or in another space (the land of the Jivaros).
The head, then, implied an uncanny return to the deep past—a perverse temporal loop.
In comparison, the very modern mechanisms employed by the Nazis to exterminate
millions of human beings (Bauman 2000) caused less astonishment: they were in
synchrony with their times. By materially exposing the inherent destructivity of
modernity (slavery, genocide, total war), archaeology can challenge the modernist
opposition between (brutal) prehistory and (civilized) modernity.

3. Heritage
It can be argued that archaeology is a technology for producing (material) memory.
Olivier (2008) has cogently argued that it is not history with which archaeology deals,
but rather memory, as the materiality of the past that is preserved works like objets
mémoire. If we follow the distinction between history and memory proposed by Pierre
Nora (1989), this might also be the case, as the pasts that archaeology evokes often
become collective, living memory. If the Coliseum or the Big Ben can be considered
lieux de mémoire, where memory, paradoxically, no longer dwells, the sites excavated
or discovered by archaeologists can become milieux de mémoire, real environments of
memory, even if sometimes only temporary (cf. Moshenska; Hamilakis and Theou this
volume). While working in Equatorial Guinea, I was told several times that
archaeologists look like witches. People would have probably never said that of a
historian, because they have traditional historians, people that tell stories about the past.
It is our uncanny capacity to summon the past in the present, to evoke presence from
things that makes archaeology akin to magic. In Equatorial Guinea, as in many other
African countries, witches are those who can speak with ancestors and they do so by
abolishing the distance between past and present. They create a third space, made of
both. Archaeologists also engender these third spaces (milieux de mémoire),
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simultaneously in the past and in the present.


This, in itself, would be a good reason for reclaiming archaeology. In a world
that has been characterized as post-mnemonic (Connerton 2009), an activity that brings
memory back to the land can be considered a practice of resistance—or a redemptive
practice (Shanks 2012: 141). According to Paul Connerton, the regime of oblivion or
cultural amnesia that characterizes late modernity is needed by capitalism in order to
erase any remembrance or knowledge of where things come from: it forces us to live in
a hyper-present that makes ever more difficult to imagine even the recent past as real
(Connerton 2009: 87): hence the emergence (and the relevance) of the archaeology of
the contemporary past, urban exploring and the widespread attraction for modern ruins
(Trigg 2006). Archaeological work is akin to the production of a kind of postmemory, a
personal and collective recollection of something of which we do not have first-hand
experience (Hirsch 2008). While the existence of postmemory has been noted in the
relationship of the second generation with a past that has not been lived, we could
suggest an archaeological postmemory for the long term, which is achieved through
archaeology’s ability to produce presence via an intimate engagement with past things
and places. Hirsch (2008: 115-117) has emphasized the role of photographs in creating
postmemory, but images are just one of the elements that are routinely employed.
Ordinary objects can play the same role (Renshaw 2011: 121-184) and archaeology can
work in enhancing their mnemonic qualities.
Paradoxically, the metaphor of the archaeological has been used in modernism
to describe that which no longer dwells in the present (Dada and Futurist manifestos
exemplify this disparaging attitude). Archaeologists have something to blame for this,
with their use of a historicist time that denies the coevalness of past and present and
with their collaboration in the cult of antiquities. This explains the trope of the
archaeologist or antiquarian as a reactionary figure, a person obsessed with a dusty past
and whose work is of no use to present needs and utopias (Schnapp et al. 2004: 3-4).
The place of the archaeologist is the museum, a dusty catacomb for relics: “For me,
museums are places where the works of the past, transformed into myths, sleep—living
a historic life—, waiting for artists to recall them to a real existence”, says the alter-ego
of André Malraux (1992: 63) in his novel The Royal Way. This is a typical opposition:
the antiquarian who keeps the past separate from the present (that is, as heritage), as
opposed to the artist who rekindles the life contained in ancient objects. The thing is
that the mission that modernity has conferred to archaeology has been to look for (its)
24

roots, for a past with which one can relate but from a distance: that is, a harmless, frozen
past. This same detachment has been deemed necessary for the production of heritage.
Here we have a double separation: a temporal distance between present citizens and
their prehistoric or historic forebears and a spatial distance, one that creates barriers and
spaces of exception to display things that have to preserved—natural or cultural relics
(Meskell 2005; 2012, this volume).
If archaeology has been involved in this modernist enterprise, it is now also part
of the solution. On the one hand, it criticizes the detachment fostered by modern
rationality and politics (Meskell; Witmore this volume). On the other hand, it is
collaborating in the emergence of new forms of heritage (Holtorf and Fairclough this
volume) and new roles for the past in light of contemporary needs (an aim that takes us
back to the roots of the discipline), where the modernist dualisms (nature/culture, past
and present, mind/matter) no longer hold and the strict separation between specialist and
public begins to dissolve (Greer et al. 2002; Smith and Waterton 2009). The distinction
that Malraux perceived between the conservative curator and the creative artist no
longer holds. Doing archaeology and managing heritage can also be creative ways of
bringing the past alive.
Perhaps where archaeology can contribute most is in demolishing the time limit
that it has helped to create: this is a nice way of bypassing the trope of archaeology as
an inquiry into the deep past (a trope that exists since Antiquity). Demolishing the time
limit also implies rethinking inherited modern values about what is socially,
aesthetically and economically worth and admitting new elements to the inventory of
what has to be memorialized (cf. Penrose 2007; Holtorf and Fairclough this volume). A
bar from the 1960s in a low-class district can be heritage (Harrison and Schofield 2010:
228-235), the derelict factories along the Thames or the Thames itself (Penrose this
volume), or even a place that no longer exists (Byrne this volume) or that it did not exist
in the first place, like a plantation in colonial Indochina from a novel of Marguerite
Duras (Byrne 2007: 129-146). Or perhaps rather than heritage, they can become places
of memory, milieux de mémoire, sites of counter-memory or counter-heritage (Shepherd
this volume), that challenge hegemonic readings of the past (Hall 2006). Archaeology is
now engaged in tracing new connections between social and personal memories, places
and materialities.
It has been often considered the preserve of artists to change our perception of
place: through site-specific performances, installations, buildings, sculptures or simply
25

by casting a different gaze on the landscape, art forces us to look at places differently.
However, the work of archaeology is similar. By transforming our knowledge of places,
it reinscribes them deeply. In this reinscription, however, objects are not mere passive
surfaces that allow themselves to be reworked, but contribute in an active way (Olsen et
al. 2012). This is particularly the case with those sites that have been marked by a
traumatic history (Bernbeck and Pollock 2007, Shepherd this volume), but there is more.
While traditionally archaeology has sanctioned official stories of civilization, progress
and the nation-state through its focus on sites deemed worth of national remembrance
(Dietler 1998), now it has expanded their objectives to bring back from oblivion places
that have been forgotten in official narratives (Leone et al. this volume; Shepherd this
volume) or that have been purposefully crossed-out by an oppressive chronopolitics
(Witmore this volume): from residences of homeless people (Zimmerman et al. 2010;
Kidder and Schofield 2011) to mass graves (Renshaw 2011). It is perhaps in this
subaltern, “interstitial places” (Harrison and Schofield 2010: 228) where the most
creative interventions of archaeology are possible and where the well-worn tropes of the
discipline can be tested and, often, challenged. Interstitial places are everywhere: Byrne
(2007: x) reminds us that “to the extent that all countries have underclasses, or
dispossessed indigenous minorities, or historical episodes written out of their history
books, then all contemporary landscapes can be said to have these undergrounds that
constitute a kind of ‘twilight zone’ dimension of the earth’s surface. For a large
proportion of humanity, the experience of everyday life thus includes the silent act of
noticing secret traces...”. Archaeology can join forces with that proportion of humanity
in documenting traces and making them into places of remembrance or potential
memory. It can do that on the surface and underground, through excavation and survey,
through conventional methods and alternative, creative ones. It would be wrong, though,
to try to find these interstitial places always in geographical and social margins. This
may well be the case, as with industrial ruins (Edensor 2005) or ghettos, but they can
also be found in lieux de mémoire, as part of the complex stratigraphy of these sites: the
communities that live inside national parks (Meskell 2012) or monuments (Herzfeld
2010: 262-264). While archaeology has been often been employed to sanitized these
places and make them amenable for tourism and national recollection, it can also be put
to work in recovering other experiences and practices that develop in those same sites
(Hamilakis 2011).
26

4. Materiality
Archaeology is usually equated with the study of deep time (Spears 1996). There is
some truth in it, because it is only through archaeology that we can gain access to the
remotest periods of humankind and the discovery of deep time is certainly one of the
landmarks in the development of the discipline. Archaeology can certainly contribute to
the deep history of humankind (Shryrock and Smail 2011). However, as Lucas (2004)
has shown, what defined archaeology from the beginning was not as much a long
chronology as a new method for understanding the past: the analysis of material culture
(also Schnapp 1996: 321-324). It is this premise that makes historical archaeology and
the archaeology of the recent past feasible. The problem with archaeology’s association
with material culture has been the relegation of matter by modern rationality. In the
Cartesian dualism between mind and matter, the weak pair is the second, a fact which
explains archaeology’s own disavowal of things. This relegation, however, does not
start with modernity, but is already present in Classical Greek philosophy (for Plato
matter could never stand up for form) and was reinforced with the advent of Christianity
(Prown 1996: 19). It can be argued that archaeologists have not been the only ones to
work with things. Art historians, too, typically study artefacts. The issue at stake there,
however, has always been spirit, not matter, at least until the twentieth-century avant-
gardes. There is little spirit in a cooking pot—at least of the sublime type.
Archaeologists, thus, interiorized the Western legacy of despising materiality (Olsen
2010). Some led this rejection of humble materiality to the extreme, such as the
Continental school of archaeology as the study of ancient art, which follows the
footsteps of Joachim Winckelmann (Bianchi Bandinelli 1976).
It has not been until very recently that archaeologists have started reclaiming the
importance of material culture, although this has been often carried out within a
Cartesian framework (see critique in Knappett 2002, Olsen 2003, 2010; this volume).
One of the most powerful reasons for reclaiming materiality has been the realization
that things were not failed texts but, rather, valuable evidence in themselves: things,
even trivial ones, could tell another story (cf. Deetz 1977). Buchli and Lucas (2001a)
have taken this point further: it is not that archaeology reveals alternative stories, the
point is that there are things that can only be accessed through materiality: “There are
gaps, shadows, silences, and absences which are not simply outside discourse, but are
often structurally excluded by discourse” (Lucas 2004: 117). Something similar was
27

already suggested by Ian Hodder, when he argued that “it should be clear however that
the ideas that archaeologists reconstruct are not necessarily the conscious thoughts that
would have been expressed if we could travel backwards through time and talk to
people in Prehistory” (Hodder 1992: 18). Despite the emphasis of postmodern
archaeologists on active agents purposefully and consciously manipulating material
culture, it was difficult to negate that there was a reserve in things that could not be
reduced to either the discursive or the conscious. This idea can be elaborated by
exploring what Buchli and Lucas (2001: 12-14) call the unconstituted through the lens
of the Real as described by Slavoj Žižek (1994). Žižek, following Lacan, draws a
distinction between reality and the Real. The former is not the thing in itself, but is
already always symbolized, constituted and structured by symbolic mechanisms.
However, this symbolization always fails: it cannot completely and successfully cover
the whole of the Real, which then appears in the form of spectres. For Žižek (1994: 22),
the Real is a “hitch”, an impediment that causes the continuous emergence of new
symbolizations that try to domesticate and integrate it. It can be argued that most studies
on material culture (archaeological or other) have focused on reality, forgetting the Real.
Yet archaeology finds the Real in its daily work: as wild things that cannot be
constituted in discourse (the abject, the trivial), as debris and ruin, and as everything
that is repressed by consciousness, yet leaves a negative mark in the social fabric—
social antagonism (see Haber this volume). This double nature of the Real is
exemplified by Žižek (1994: 25-26) through the famous Bororo settlement originally
studied by Lévi-Strauss. For the philosopher, the perfectly segmented village of the
Bororo is the materialization of the Real: a traumatic antagonism at the heart of the
community that cannot be verbalized but conditions the life of people.
Archaeology, then, can gain much from being defined not with relation to
chronology, but with relation to materiality: it has been recently argued that archaeology
is the discipline of things (Olsen et al. 2012). It is indeed the discipline of all things,
humble and noble, past and present, in use and abandoned. This is one of the
distinguishing features of archaeology: its indiscriminate interest for the totality of the
material world, no matter how humble or how large (from a pollen grain to an entire
landscape: see Leone et al. this volume), and its concern with the raw, the cooked and
the discarded (Olsen this volume). As in a scene of crime, in an archaeological site
“anything could matter” (Shanks and Svabo this volume). Pearson and Shanks (2001:
44) talk of a “pathological materialism or a materialist pathology”. This “pathology”
28

seems to have started during the late nineteenth century and it constituted a diacritical
element in the definition of archaeology with regard to art history (Lucas 2012: 42-43).
Reclaiming an archaeological view of materiality means vindicating the totality of the
material world. This is in contrast with material culture studies, at least in their Anglo-
Saxon version: while both archaeology and material culture studies are interested in
everyday, unremarkable objects, the latter pick those objects one by one and usually
subject them to a thick semiotic reading (e.g. Miller 1998), whereas archaeology tends
to consider entire material assemblages (González-Ruibal 2006), as is made clear in
excavation reports. In fact, anthropology was concerned at the beginning with the
totality of things as well (Lemonnier 1992), but it soon dropped this mission to focus on
nonmaterial aspects: only a few elements retained the attention of most ethnographers
(such as houses or “art”) and this because they could easily be dematerialized into its
social or cultural constituents. In fact, despite the influence of anthropologically-
inspired material culture studies in archaeology, it is perhaps in a certain kind of history
where we can find a more similar concern for capturing the material world (Braudel
1992).
While social/cultural anthropology was distancing itself from ordinary things, art
was paying increasing attention to them. Duchamp’s urinary inaugurated an era of
artistic passion for the everyday, the tangible and the abject, which culminated in Piero
Manzoni’s canned and labelled merda d’artista (artist’s shit) in 1961. It can be argued
that archaeology and art perform the same operation with ordinary materiality: through
displacement and mediation, they transform it to produce knowledge of the world
(Schnapp et al. 2004: 3). The artistic objet trouvé is one of those coincidences between
archaeology and art where one can legitimately ask if there is an archaeological
influence or, rather, a similar modern background with its tropes of the uncanny and
estrangement from the everyday—the same metaphor of alienation, in fact, would be at
work in Marx’s commodity fetishism (Graves-Brown 2011: 132-133). The
archaeological/artistic relation to the objet trouvé is also related to other tropes of
modernity such as patina (Simmel 1959: 260-262) and aura (Benjamin 1968: 217). The
concept of aura is similarly embedded in notions of alienation and distance. There is,
however, an important difference in how contemporary art confers aura to the industrial
object (such as in pop art) and how archaeology, instead, discloses the aura of the object
(industrial or preindustrial). The main difference is that archaeology usually treats the
object as an index, whereas art deals with it as a symbol or an icon. It is not that these
29

other forms of the sign are absent in archaeological knowledge, but the indexical is of
paramount relevance (cf. Jones 2007).
Consider the two keys on this book’s cover. At first sight, it might seem that
they are there just as a metaphor: perhaps as the keys that open the door to the past or to
some secret or deeply hidden truth—as archaeology is thought to operate. They might
play the role of Bruno Latour’s keys: as a sort of epistemological McGuffin that allows
the theoretical discourse to unfold and as an example of how the material world works
(Latour 2000). They are beautiful objects as well, especially when taken out of place
and set over a blank background that enhances the uniqueness of the artefact (a
modernist intervention). They are, in any case, a displaced/displayed object: keys have
been for hundreds of years saturated of metaphoric meaning. All of this is true in this
case, but there is something else. This something else is what characterizes an
archaeological approach to materiality, which is different from art. The keys on the
cover are not ideal keys, an empty significant ready to be filled with meaning: they are
two nineteenth-century keys from peasant houses recovered from an eighteenth-century
stockyard in Abánades, a small village in Central Spain. The stockyard was occupied
during January and February of 1938 by a group of soldiers belonging to the 549
Battalion of the 138 Mixed Brigade of the Popular Army of the Spanish Republic, who
were preparing an offensive that developed during the spring of that year and yielded
8,000 casualties. The soldiers of the 549 Battalion left many things behind: coins,
insignia, cartridges, bottles... and two keys. These are the keys of the unknown peasant-
soldiers’ homes. As such, they have a specific history attached to this locale and to
certain people. A history for which I care.
While art works at times with objects with a specific “biography”—following
Kopytoff’s (1986) famous concept, also Gosden and Marshall (1999)—, the most usual
procedure is to abolish it and replace it by a generic history (or prehistory). Interestingly,
while there is much site-specific art, such as performances in eventful places (Kaye
2000; Pearson and Shanks 2001; Hamilakis and Theou this volume), there is much less
object-specific art. Marcel Duchamp’s anonymous urinary is the urinary. Its aura
derives from the demiurgic act of the artist. The keys from Alto del Molino have aura
not, or not just, because of the creative operation performed by an archaeologist, but for
being a materialization of a lived past. It is not necessary an artist to feel the drama of
those keys. What is necessary is an archaeologist (or a witch!): somebody who is able to
make the past present again, who can not only recover the artefact, but tell its story.
30

What is at work always in archaeology is a deictic operation that is not always present
in art. Duchamp’s placement of the urinary in a gallery inaugurates its history: it
becomes this urinary because Duchamp decided so. It is an artefact without prehistory
or with a generic prehistory—a trace of historicity that is present in all urinaries as
structural objects (Didi-Huberman 2008: 184-185). It is relevant for its
representativeness, not for its specificity. Whether Duchamp found the object in a public
toilet or bought it from an appliances store is quite irrelevant. The keys of Alto del
Molino, instead, are these keys before they are even found. What the archaeologist does
is transform its extant prehistoricity into presence (Gumbrecht 2004). For this
transformation to take place, it is necessary a respect for things (Haber 2009; Olsen
2010: 38, 152; Knappett 2011; Webmoor 2012): “knowledge, care, and respect for what
objects are in their own being” (Olsen: 2010: 152, 154). This respect is shown by trying
not to impose a narrative from outside, but letting out the thing’s own story. And not
only that: its specific material qualities as well. This is the gist of the archaeological
engagement with things, which is a productive and creative one.
Along with trouvailles, another possible coincidence in tropes between art and
archaeology is typology. Typology as a rhetoric device has grown exceedingly popular
in contemporary art. Bernd and Hilla Becher’s Typologies (2004) is one of the
landmarks, but many artists of the last hundred years have resorted to typological
orderings and inventories of more or less mundane things. To mention only a couple of
representative examples, Camilo José Vergara has documented a variety of material
elements, from churches of African-American communities (Vergara 2005) to gas
stations (this volume), while Sol LeWitt (1980) painstakingly photographed every item
in his house (tools, furniture, appliances, etc)—a compulsion to record everything akin
to that of photographers Cartier-Bresson and Atget (Shanks and Svabo this volume) and
of archaeologists. Related to typology is accumulation as an artistic strategy: through
the accretion of ordinary objects, something of their nature is revealed. This has been
famously used by Arman, whose accumulation of objects in boxes, in particular,
resembles the collecting practices of archaeology and early ethnography (e.g. Fetiches
de la secte des Theophages, 1960). While in some cases (the Bechers), the influence of
industrial archaeology seems patent, in others it is difficult to decide whether the trope
is related to modernity’s obsession with order, control and categorization or whether
there is an archaeological influence. In any case, the work of art and archaeology in
creating typologies is similar: if knowledge is gained from artistic typologies, aesthetics
31

are not absent in archaeological ones. As with other metaphors, theoretically-oriented


archaeologists have often decried typology. This is understandable, since producing
typologies of artefacts has frequently become an end in itself—most notably in the
German tradition (e.g. the Prähistorische Bronzefunde). In general, it is perceived that
typology is a necessary but not very interesting tool: this attitude forgets its creative
possibilities and theoretical implications.
One of the characteristics of archaeology’s approach to materiality is its concern
with entire life cycles—as opposed to anthropology, history and material culture
studies’ usual concern with consumption (Miller 1991). Production, use, abandonment
and reuse have been the focus of archaeological research well before these themes were
taken up by anthropologists and geographers, although often without much theoretical
reflection (but see Schiffer 1987). While material culture students have been working
with discarded things for a while, the study has often been integrated within
consumption studies: recycling, rather than abandonment proper, has been the object of
study (Gregson and Crewe 2003; but see Douny 2007; Naji and Douny 2009).
Destruction, fragmentation and abandonment actually lie at the heart of archaeology,
although they have been understood until recently as a problem to be overcome, rather
than as a matter of reflection (Olivier 2008; Lucas 2012: 206-208). With the increasing
interest for object biographies, in the wake of Kopyttoff’s (1986) influential text,
archaeologists have been paying more attention to fragments and the death and
afterlives of things (Gosden and Marshall 1999; Chapman 2000; Holtorf 2002). Artists,
culture historians and anthropologists seem to have been faster to grasp the creative
potential of broken artefacts and decay. Artists, in particular, have always shown a
fascination for ruination, often archaeologically inspired (Shanks 1992; Dillon 2011).
As it is well known, the metaphor of ruin and fragmentation is also one of the master-
tropes of psychoanalysis (Schnapp et al. 2004: 6): Freud famously observed that
psychoanalysis delved in to the “rubbish heap—the refuse—of observation”
(MacMillan and Swales 2003). Reclaiming materiality from an archaeological point of
view means also embracing decay and fragments (see Burström this volume), not just as
a problem, but also as something constitutive of our discipline that may reveal aspects
of the past and lead to creative interventions in the present (Pearson and Shanks 2001;
Shanks 2012). In relation to this, it is surprising that archaeologists have not reflected
more on traces (but see Pearson and Shanks 2001; Byrne 2007; Olivier 2008; Crossland
2009). They have been a matter of concern for historians, art historians and
32

philosophers (Ginzburg 1980; Didi-Huberman 2008). Carlo Ginzburg has argued that a
historical epistemology based on traces developed during the late nineteenth century, in
which art history, detective stories and psychoanalysis collaborated. This same milieu
was shared by forensic science, which has many points in common with archaeology
(Crossland 2009). The lack of reflection on traces is particularly strange because
archaeology is one of the disciplines that work with the most subtle traces (such as wear
marks in a broken pot, the dispersion of flint debris in an occupation floor or phytoliths
from a rubbish pit). Furthermore, archaeological traces are often of an abject nature:
biological human debris (broken bones or coproliths) and refuse. William Rathje has
been one of the archaeologists that have called attention more decisively to the nature of
the archaeological record as (mostly) garbage (Rathje and Murphy 1992; Rathje 2001).
His vindication of rubbish has gone hand in hand with a praise of archaeology as a
discipline engaged not only with the past, but also with present problems and concerns.
Although abandonment, decadence and ruin have been used as a metaphor of
end or apocalypse (Woodward 2001; Yablon 2010), archaeology proves that reality is
more complex. Archaeologists have always paid attention to the afterlives of places—
sometimes reluctantly. When sites are no longer in the limelight of history and other
specialists turn their backs on them, their material persistence is still carefully recorded
by archaeologists. This does not mean that abandoned or semi-abandoned places have
received all the attention that they deserve: in fact, this is one of the themes that
archaeologists have to reclaim properly, because ruins are often places full of life (Lee
Dawdy 2010: 775-776; Gordillo this volume), where all sorts of things happen—with
and without humans involved (Olsen 2010: 160-170). This is something that has been
discovered by cultural geographers (Edensor 2005; De Silvey 2006) and urban explorers
alike. What archaeology can contribute in this context is to give flesh to ruins, because
they are often dematerialized by other scholars (e.g. Woodward 2001; Hell and Schönle
2010; Yablon 2010), despite the fact that their crude materiality is one of their defining
characteristics and the one that makes them more attractive (Edensor 2005).
A last question that is relevant is: should archaeologists restrict themselves to the
abandoned (even if it is a very recent abandonment)? This is perhaps the strongest
metaphor of archaeology: a discipline that studies what is dead. While the idea that
archaeology works with the present inasmuch as the remains it studies are in the present
has been argued for over a century (Lucas 2012: 20), accepting that it can deal fully
with the present is more problematic because it goes against what is perceived the
33

essence of the discipline. It can be argued, though, that nothing is completely from the
present, as all presents are made of a variety of pasts (Witmore 2007). During the last
three decades several archaeologists from different theoretical positions have argued
that archaeology can deal with present things that are in use (Rathje 1979; Shanks and
Tilley 1987: 209-240; Schiffer 1991; Harrison 2011, this volume; Witmore, this
volume). An archaeological concern for the present, however, has been typically
equated with a focus on the material culture of us (Gould et al. 1981), whereas the study
of the material culture of them, once ethnography has vacated the field, has been left to
ethnoarchaeology (David and Kramer 2001; but see Naji and Douny 2009). This is
problematic, because ethnoarchaeology has explicit analogical goals: there must be
necessarily a return to the past (Gallay 2011: 314-338), whereas the “archaeology of us”
studies Western societies for their own sake, without the need for another time and
another society to be legitimized. I have proposed elsewhere an archaeology of the
present that studies the materiality of western and non-western societies alike
(González-Ruibal 2006), applying an archaeological sensibility (sensu Shanks 1992;
Shanks and Svabo this volume) and an archaeological method. One of the things that
justifies an archaeology in and of the present (Harrison 2011 this volume) is precisely
its approach to materiality, which includes a set of techniques. Archaeology can deploy
its specific forms of documentation to reveal something of the present world that is not
accessible through other means. With this we return to two issues that I have already
discussed: traces and care. A proper archaeological rhetoric of the present has to be able
to interpret and manifest subtle material traces, which pass unnoticed for other
disciplines or are not considered worthy of attention. This is a trope which, I think, is
both preserving: the ability of archaeology to see things that look invisible even if they
are in front of our eyes (Kobialka this volume). The second issue is care or respect for
the thingness of the thing, an attitude that avoids “talking over” things and respects their
silence, recalcitrance and sheer materiality. It is this attitude of respect for the mundane
of today’s material culture that we find in Penrose and Byrne (this volume). But are we
archaeologists alone in this? A growing concern for crude materiality is felt by others
outside the discipline, and not only among sociologists and philosophers (Latour 1991).
The artists of the International Necronautical Society, for instance, say that “what is the
most real for us is not God, but matter, the brute materiality of the external world”.
They propose an alternative to idealist art, one that has as its aim “to let things thing, to
let matter matter, to let the orange orange, and the flower flower” (International
34

Necronautical Society 2010: 111). The heavy materiality of the supermodern world,
with its massive cycles of creation and destruction (González-Ruibal 2008; Olivier 2008,
this volume) undoubtedly has to do with this general realization that matter really
matters.

Conclusions
It can be argued that the modern master-trope of archaeology as a science that is
concerned (obsessed even) with a remote past disconnected with the present is losing
ground. A new philosophical archaeology is emerging that is more in accordance with
the nature of the discipline. Giorgio Agamben (2012) writes in a recent article on the
global economic crisis: “Archaeology, not futurology, is the only way of access to the
present”. This is because “the space opening up here toward the past is projected into
the future” (Agamben 2009: 106): the future of archaeology is always intertwined with
a past, a “future anterior”. Two decades before Derrida (1994: 37) had already argued
that “The future is its memory” and that “The future can only be for ghosts. And the
past”. There is only future if we understand its genealogies and if we care for the past—
for its spectres, which are not just ethereal beings, but also material remnants that dwell
in places. In the last instance, that of Derrida and Agamben is a messianic line opened
by Walter Benjamin (1968) and it is here where philosophical and “real” archaeology
finally seem to meet (Olivier 2008; this volume). Like the mentioned philosophers,
many archaeologists now consider that the dichotomy present/past is not tenable: it is a
burdensome legacy of modernity. For archaeologists, bypassing this dichotomy is
essential: the survival of the discipline depends on it, its relevance in the present and the
future. Only by abolishing that dichotomy can archaeology produce new powerful
metaphors and engage productively with living communities, especially with those for
which the Cartesian dualisms never meant anything (except as a form of symbolic
violence).
Sometimes, however, it is not new tropes that we need, but revisit and rediscover
the potential of the old ones (Olivier 2008; Shanks 1992, 2012). We can claim that
archaeology’s moment has arrived or, rather, returned (Witmore and Shanks 2012). The
old tropes are sometimes as old as modernity: the sensibilities and concerns of early
antiquarians (Schnapp 1996). The strategy, then, is clear: it is not less archaeology that
we need to make our science relevant, but more. Not just importing concepts, but
producing our own. Unlike what this might seem, this does not mean isolation: quite the
35

contrary, it means starting new dialogues across disciplines and liberating the creative
potential of archaeology.
I have argued here that this work entails a double move: first of critique and then
of praise. There is no possible vindication without critique, but critique alone is sterile.
As the contributors to this volume show, archaeology holds an enormous potential: both
for the production of knowledge and for the construction of political critique. I have
suggested here that the criticism and vindication of archaeology ought to follow four
main themes that lie at the heart of the discipline: method (and particularly fieldwork),
time, heritage and memory, and materiality. Let me reiterate that the aim is not to fence
off these areas for archaeology, but rather to show that they can act as bridges between
archaeology and other modes of scientific and cultural production. While
transdisciplinary dialogue is certainly not new in archaeology, the idea defended here is
that it has to take place on an equal footing: for too long archaeologists have been
decrying the lacks and problems inherent to their discipline: the ruins and the fragments
that constitute their data, the recalcitrant silence of things, the unbearable ambiguity of
traces. It is time to look not only forward, but also backwards to reclaim what has
already been achieved and regain confidence in the archaeological project. This is the
spirit into which this volume is born.

Note
The idea of this book owes much to the inspiration provided by the writings of the
different contributors to the volume, as well as to conversations with Bjørnar Olsen,
Michael Shanks, Timothy Webmoor, Christopher Witmore and William Rathje.
Through their work, they have proved in different ways the relevance of archaeology as
a creative and critical discipline and as a tool to examine modernity. For quite a long
time, thinking about archaeology has been a concern and a prerogative of the Anglo-
Saxon academia. This is something that has been changing for the last couple of
decades and there is now an important number of scholars engaged in reclaiming
archaeology from different perspectives. The international array of authors gathered in
this volume tries to do justice to this fact.
William Rathje should have participated in the volume, but passed away before
he could. He was one of the first archaeologists to reclaim the discipline in the spirit
defended here: as a form of knowledge that can contribute to understanding, and even
changing, the present world; that can deploy its methodologies creatively to study no
36

matter what or when; and that does not feel in inferiority with regard to other disciplines.
As most archaeologists, Bill studied garbage. But he was probably the first to claim that
he was proud of it. And he certainly was. This (critical) confidence in archaeology, too,
is what this book intends to defend. Let this introductory chapter be homage to a
pioneer.

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