Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T08:15:43.406Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Do you follow? Rethinking causality in archaeology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 June 2019

Eloise Govier
Eloise Govier*
Affiliation:
University of WalesTrinity Saint David, UK
*
Email: e.govier@uwtsd.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Philosopher and physicist Karen Barad (2003; 2007; 2012) has brought a new understanding of causality to the academic discourse (agential realism theory). Inspired by this new take on causality, I problematize the argument that archaeologists ‘follow’ materials. I begin by challenging the act of ‘following’ on two counts (causality and universalism), and then consider the work of Malafouris (2008a) – a thinker whose ideas have the potential to remediate this issue through his examination of the ‘in-between’ humans and matter. I argue that, despite offering an inspirational approach to mind–matter relationships, the dialectical relationship he evokes remains problematic from a Baradian perspective as it is still rooted in ‘following’. I suggest that Barad’s agential realism offers a valuable conceptual framework for researchers who are weary of ‘unilateral’ linear causality and keen to move beyond dialectical thinking (Barad 2007, 214).

Keywords

Causalityagential realismphenomenafollowingdialecticsNew Materialisms
Type
Provocation
Information
Archaeological Dialogues , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , June 2019 , pp. 51 - 55
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

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

References

Anderson, B., and Harrison, P., 2012: The promise of non-representational theories, in Anderson, B. and Harrison, P. (eds), Taking-place. Non-representational theories and geography, Farnham, 1–36.Google Scholar
Attala, L., 2017: ‘The edibility approach’. Using edibility to explore relationships, plant agency and the porosity of species’ boundaries, Advances in anthropology 7(3), 125–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Attala, L., and Steel, L., 2019: Introduction, in Attala, L. and Steel, L. (eds), Body matters. Exploring the materiality of the human body, Cardiff.Google Scholar
Barad, K., 2000: Reconceiving scientific literacy as agential literacy, or learning how to intra-act responsibly within the world, in Traweek, S. and Reid, R. (eds), Doing science + culture. New York, 221–58.Google Scholar
Barad, K., 2003: Posthumanist performativity. Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter, Signs. Journal of women in culture and society 28(3), 801–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barad, K., 2007: Meeting the universe halfway. Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning, Durham, NC.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barad, K., 2012: Matter feels, converses, suffers, desires, yearns and remembers, in Dolphijn, R. and Tuin, I. (eds), New Materialism. Interviews & cartographies, Ann Arbor, 48–70.Google Scholar
Bennett, J., 2010: Vibrant matter. A political ecology of things, Durham, NC.Google Scholar
Coole, D., and Frost, S., 2010: Introduction, in Coole, D. and Frost, S. (eds), New Materialisms. Ontology, agency, and politics, Durham, NC and London, 1–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeLanda, M., 2006: A new philosophy of society. Assemblage theory and social complexity, London and New York.Google Scholar
Deleuze, G., and Guattari, F., 2005 (1980): A thousand plateaus. Minneapolis.Google Scholar
Edgeworth, M., 2012: Follow the cut, follow the rhythm, follow the material, Norwegian archaeological review 45(1), 76–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gell, A., 1998: Art and agency. An anthropological theory, Oxford.Google Scholar
Govier, E., 2016: The Cartesian cut? Exhibition catalogue, at https://issuu.com/eloisegovier/docs/cartesian_cut__exhibition_catalogue, accessed 9 September 2018.Google Scholar
Govier, E., 2017: Creative practice. How communities were made at Çatalhöyük, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Wales.Google Scholar
Govier, E., 2019a: Bodies that co-create. The residues and intimacies of vital materials, in Attala, L. and Steel, L. (eds), Body matters. Exploring the materiality of the human body, Cardiff.Google Scholar
Govier, E., 2019b: The coal beds of Generations X, Y, and Z. Syncing, learning and propagating in the age of the posthuman, Journal of posthuman studies. Philosophy, technology, media 2(2), 147–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingold, T., 2007: Lines. A brief history, Oxon.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingold, T., 2013: Making. Anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture, Oxon.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingold, T., 2017a: Correspondences, at https://knowingfromtheinside.org/files/correspondences.pdf, accessed 29 January 2019.Google Scholar
Ingold, T., 2017b: On human correspondence, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 23(1), 9–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kersel, M.M., and Chesson, M.S., n.d.: Follow the Pots Project, available at http://followthepotsproject.org, accessed 19 January 2019.Google Scholar
Kolb, D. 2015. Experiential learning. Experience as the source of learning and development, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.Google Scholar
Malafouris, L., 2008a: At the potter’s wheel. An argument for material agency, in Knappett, C. and Malafouris, L. (eds), Material agency. Towards a non-anthropocentric perspective, New York, 19–36.Google Scholar
Malafouris, L., 2008b: Beads for a plastic mind. The ‘blind man’s stick’ (BMS) hypothesis and the active nature of material culture, Cambridge archaeological journal 18(3), 401–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malafouris, L., 2008c: Is it ‘me’ or is it ‘mine’? The Mycenaean sword as a body-part, in Robb, J. and Boric, D. (eds), Past bodies, Oxford, available at http://cogprints.org/6432/1/Malafouris.ch12.PastBodies.pdf, accessed 13 January 2017.Google Scholar
Malafouris, L., 2013: How things shape the mind. A theory of material engagement, Cambridge, MA.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malafouris, L., 2014: Creative thinging. The feeling of and for clay, Pragmatics & cognition 22(1), 140–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marquardt, W.H., 1992: Dialectical archaeology, Archaeological method and theory 4, 101–40.Google Scholar
Marshall, Y., and Alberti, B., 2014: A matter of difference. Karen Barad, ontology, and archaeological bodies, Cambridge archaeological journal 24(1), 19–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maybee, J.E., 2016: Hegel’s dialectics, in Zalta, E.N. (ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, Winter 2016 edn, at https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/hegel-dialectics, accessed 31 October 2018.Google Scholar
Oxford Dictionaries, 2018: English Oxford living dictionaries, Oxford, available at https://en.oxforddictionaries.com, accessed 12 December 2018.Google Scholar
Webmoor, T., and Witmore, C.L., 2008: Things are us! A commentary on human/things relations under the banner of a ‘social’ archaeology, Norwegian archaeological review 41(1), 53–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weismantel, M., and Meskell, L., 2014: Substances. ‘Following the material’ through two prehistoric cases, Journal of material culture 19(3), 233–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Witmore, C., 2014: Archaeology and the New Materialisms, Journal of contemporary archaeology 1(2), 203–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar