Changes [Sep 14, 2008]
Curriculum Vitae
Exploding: dissolving the unity of a thing
In Greek Classical Archaeology (i.e. the archaeology of the Iron Age Aegean), the stuff of archaeology – objects, buildings, texts, landscapes – are usually treated as discrete entities. That is, entities which have an existence that is bounded; this boundedness distinguishes them from other objects, people, places (see Shanks 1996). This desire to delimit, to draw a circle around the entity, can be understood to be analogous to the process of ‘black-boxing’ the archaeological (Webmoor and Witmore 2008).
There are, however, strong reasons for suspecting that the unity of ‘things’ is not in and of itself a ‘natural’ or given ontological reality. Primarily following Bruno Latour, Witmore and others have argued that seemingly distinct material entities are in fact an accumulation of materials, processes, people and time. Latour undermines the Cartesian subject/object divide by positing an ontology of things as essentially hybrids, which precede any attempt to purify them into Cartesian categories (1993). Using the etymology of thing as gathering as an appropriate metaphor for working with, the hybrid nature of quotidian thingness has been explored, exploding the myth of the boundary between thing and context (Webmoor and Witmore 2008; Witmore 2007a; 2007b). This reflects work done by Shanks, who has emphasized the richness of the associations and activities embodied in an object (Shanks 1999).
Things, then, are more appropriately understood as composites; by this is meant an accumulation of various phenomena (material, action, thought, humans and non-humans, time) in a certain space at a certain time. It is proposed that these composites, these accumulations, are both diverse and rich to an extraordinary degree (cf. Webmoor and Witmore 2008). This understanding borrows heavily from the work of Jacques Derrida, and in particular his related concepts of play and différance. These mechanisms relate to the relationship between signifier and signified in Derrida’s post-structuralism (Derrida 1978: 289-292; 1984: 84; Howells 1999:50-52, 133-135). According to the operation of différance, each signifier refers to something else outside of it; however, in a universe composed solely of signifiers, this results in an eternal chain of regress of signification, whereby no one signifier can ever simply signify itself (pace Shanks 1999: 18). This, then, is the eternal play of the sign; meaning is elusive and fleeting, referring always to the external, with the process of reference changing with each interpretation.
Différance is a powerful tool for dealing with the non-bounded object, as has been noted (Olsen 2005: 88). As things represent gatherings, so the sum of their parts must contain other sums, other gatherings; that is, as we explode the thing, if we follow Derrida we must admit the explosion of its constituent parts. As a gathering itself, each component needs to be understood in these terms of meeting and accumulation. The implication of this conjunction of Latourian mixtures with Derridean textual analysis is significant. In order to fully explore the depth of this significance, this digital media project will attempt to follow, as fully as possible, all the fleeting traces that accumulate in a series of accumulations – a thing.
In the early 20th century the British School at Athens excavated the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia in Spartí, Greece (Dawkins 1929; 1907-08). During the excavation, alongside numerous other small finds, several thousand lead figurines of hoplites were removed from the strata of the sanctuary. One of these now resides in a glass case in Spartí museum. It is proposed to address this particular thing, and to pursue as far as possible the various other entities which are realized in it. A wiki structure lends itself ideally to such a project. The initial point of entry into the web of associations will be the thing itself; a page with appropriate illustrations and liquid text commentary. Through this liquid text it will be possible to start to delve (digging seems a highly appropriate metaphor) into the network behind the figurine. Using links to deeper wiki pages dealing with various associations (lead metallurgy; archaic Sparta; state violence; fieldwork in Laconia), the reader-excavator will be able to move in multiple axes, both down into deeper networks of association, and also across, when other things, times and places segue into one another. Ultimately, the reticulate structure of the wiki will permit a highly individualized exploration of what it is to be an object.
Upon successful completion, this project will have achieved several goals. Firstly, the Latourian mixture will have been thoroughly exemplified, and demonstrated to be constitutive of a reality. More importantly, however, serious challenges will have been posed to archaeological practice. Archaeology is accustomed to distinguishing between the general and the particular, and moving freely between the two – that is, between context and object. If object can be seen to explode into context, and context be merely the sum of ‘object’, then the two analytical modes collapse into one another; the fetishism of ‘object’ ceases to have a relevant place in the archaeological.
Thomas Leppard
JIAAW, October 2007
Dawkins, R.M. 1907-08. Laconia – Excavations at Sparta, 1908 § 2. The Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia. In ABSA 14: 4-29.
Dawkins, R.M. (ed) 1929. The Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia at Sparta (SPHS supplementary 5). London: SPHS
Derrida, J. 1978. Writing and Difference (translated by A. Bass). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
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Latour, B. 1993. We have never been modern (translated by C. Porter). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Olsen, B. 2005. Scenes from a troubled engagement: post-structuralism and material culture studies. In Tilley, C., Keane, W., Kuechler, S., Rowlands, M. and Spyer, P. (eds). Handbook of material culture. London: Blackwell, 85-103.
Shanks, M. 1996. Classical archaeology of Greece: experiences of the discipline. London: Routledge.
Shanks, M. 1999. Art and the early Greek state: an interpretive archaeology. Cambridge: CUP.
Webmoor, T. and Witmore, C.L. 2008 (in press). Things are us! A commentary on human/things relations under the banner of a ‘social’ archaeology. In Norwegian Archaeological Review 41.1.
Witmore, C.L. 2007a. Landscape, time, topology: an archaeological account of the southern Argolid, Greece. In Hicks, D., Fairclough, G. and McAtackney, L. (eds). Envisioning landscape: situations and standpoints in archaeology and heritage. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 194-225.
Witmore, C.L. 2007b. Symmetrical archaeology: excerpts from a manifesto. In World Archaeology 39.4: 530-546.
