On the object of archaeology

Abstract

The paper ponders the object of archaeology, called here ‘the archaeological’. It argues that the existence of such an object is a necessary premise of the field and that ultimately it is on this object that the validity of all claims and arguments must rest. The paper suggests that the archaeological be conceived as a cultural phenomenon that consists in being disengaged from the social, an understanding that positions archaeology as a counterpart to the social sciences and the humanities, rather than a member in the same milieu. The first part of the paper focuses on the position of the archaeological with reference to the concepts of ‘Nature’ and ‘Culture’, which eventually leads us to a confrontation between archaeological statics and the dynamics of the world. Efforts to justify and understand archaeological statics consequently lead to the recognition of a constitutive distinction between buried and non-buried conditions, upon which the differentiation of the archaeological from the social is established.

Introduction

Archaeology's first and necessary premise is, undoubtedly, that there is a range of phenomena in the world that are archaeological, not simply because they are of interest to archaeologists, but because they possess a particular quality that is captured by this term. Indeed, it is the existence of such phenomena that justifies the field in the first place. Otherwise, it would be redundant, or worse, illusory and deceptive. But as is often the case with such presuppositions, it is not only a premise, it is also a claim. Specifically, it is a claim that, among other things, the world possesses a specifiable and distinguishable component that is principally the object of archaeology. Let us call this component of the world the archaeological.

Although tacit, this claim is implicated every time the qualification ‘archaeological’ is put to use. Whenever this occurs, a reference is invoked, pointing towards a certain quality or condition that is related to the object in question, contributing in the process to the interminable classificatory effort that works to distinguish that which belongs to the discipline of archaeology and that which does not (see Bowker and Star 1999). Ultimately, this is probably the most foundational and consistent of archaeologists’ efforts, repeatedly conjuring the archaeological through the humdrum procedures of classification.

The discipline's argument for the existence of the archaeological is nothing less than a statement about the constitution of the world. It is probably as significant and profound as our statements can get. The constitution of the archaeological is not only imperative for the justification of archaeology as a scholarly field, but it also says a great deal about its position and role within the academic landscape, as a science and a project.

However, notwithstanding important contributions that discuss foundational features like statics and dynamics, residuality, temporality and formation processes (Bailey 2007; Binford 1975; Lucas 2012; Schiffer 1987; Shanks 2001; Shanks, Platt and Rathje 2004), it is questionable whether archaeology is truly able to offer a definition of its object, and therefore to assert its reality and insist on its significance. At bottom, the archaeological is regularly perceived in instrumental terms, and most of the discussions mentioned above seek to improve our ability to mobilize the archaeological in order to gain better access to other matters (the past, society, human behaviour, etc.): the archaeological and its constitution are of interest insofar as they respond to these concerns.

Indeed, this disjuncture between the object of analysis – the archaeological – and the object of interest precludes any possibility that the former will be considered something worthy of attention in itself. It is surely for this reason that the archaeological, despite its foundational standing and its unparalleled significance, remains elusive. We capitalize on it, we claim authority over it, and we use it as a point of entry through which early cultures may be discerned and discussed. But we have only the slightest idea what it is. Paraphrasing Lyotard (1991, 78–80), that we have it does not mean that we know it.

One could possibly argue that understanding the archaeological is not the business of archaeology; that archaeology is about studying the past through the archaeological, not studying the archaeological itself. However, this would amount to denying the foundation on which all accounts must stand. Quite simply, it only makes sense that we be closely acquainted with the conditions and materials with which we work. Otherwise it is likely that the structures founded on them would be unstable. By the same token, if archaeologists proceed to reconstruct past events or social structures without fully appreciating the quality of access available to them, these reconstructions are likely to suffer from poor grounding and questionable validity.

Perhaps more importantly, archaeology should concern itself with the archaeological because it is its responsibility as a science. Indeed, it is something of a curiosity that a scientific field might constitute an aspect of the world as an object of research, and claim authority over it, but not persist in its efforts to produce an understanding of it and its implications. Insofar as science is about striving towards a better understanding of the world, the archaeological is without doubt an aspect or feature worthy of attention. Archaeology, the field that defines and constitutes it, is the only one with the means to properly appreciate it. It is in archaeology's interest to put the archaeological on the table and to insist that it be taken seriously.

The present paper wishes, then, to encourage a concern with the archaeological proper; and it hopes to whet the reader's interest by engaging a seemingly simple question: what place does the archaeological occupy in the world? If the archaeological is real, its relationships with other parts of the world can be articulated; it can be contextualized. In doing so, we may expect to gain not only an improved and more lucid understanding of the archaeological, but also a clearer appreciation of its constitutive impact on the world. As the discussion below illustrates, engaging in this attempt demands of us not only to work towards a comprehensible understanding of our object, but also to reconsider how we understand the world as a totality. Accordingly, discussion works its way towards a formulation of the interrelationship between the object (the archaeological) and its context (the world), neither of which is fully given. Consequently, the matter at hand is about mutual adjustments: the world must be shown to accommodate the archaeological, and the archaeological must be shown to have its rightful place.

The concepts ‘Nature’ and ‘Culture’ will be drawn upon as preliminary means with which to capture the world and to contextualize the archaeological. The discussion's point of departure is the Nature/Culture divide and the ambiguity of the archaeological within this framework. It will then proceed to consider the criticism directed towards this binary logic, ultimately leading towards a shift from a representational outlook to a performative/dynamic one. This, it will be noted, is incommensurable with the principally static understanding of the archaeological. It will be argued that the archaeological is indeed dynamic and that it is constituted as static through fieldwork and other procedures. Yet it will also be argued that statics are justified and necessary, as an inevitable transposition of the condition of burial and disengagement into other media.

Based on these, it is suggested that statics testifies to the pivotal significance of burial for the constitution of the archaeological; that the archaeological emerges from this analysis as a cultural phenomenon, consisting in being disengaged from the social; and therefore that the archaeological is not so much an aspect of the social, as it is its counterpart, a mode of cultural being that belongs to the subsurface. Accordingly, archaeology crystallizes as a counterpart to the social sciences and the humanities. The archaeological is a component of the world that has gone largely unnoticed and archaeology becomes, within this framework, a pivotal field of study capable of contributing directly to matters far beyond its disciplinary boundaries.

The final part of the paper attempts to situate this discussion within the context of developments in academia in general over the past several decades, developments that appear to pose a significant threat to the integrity of scientific thought. It is suggested that the present paper could be read as a much-needed reappraisal of the scientific attitude in general and of archaeology in particular.

Nature/Culture

The question at hand is this: how are we to understand the position of the archaeological in the world? The answer we provide to this question depends not only on our ability to differentiate the archaeological from all other phenomena, but also on our capacity to grasp the world. This is not to say that we must comprehend the totality, which is impossible, but only that we need to have at our disposal a means with which to orient ourselves and find our way, a sort of ‘grid’ that can be superimposed on the world. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), the range of possibilities is fairly limited. I can think of only one that is truly suitable for the matter at hand: Nature/Culture.

This is not to ignore the problems that accompany the Nature/Culture dualism; much of the following discussion will ponder their implications. Rather it is to acknowledge that despite all efforts to break away from problematic oppositions of this sort, they still retain a grasp on our thinking (cf. Rheinberger 1997, 15–19). Thus, although crude and quaint, even fallacious, I choose to provisionally begin with the Nature/Culture divide, reflecting on the position of the archaeological according to this vision of the world. I do so under the premise that it will provide the starting point needed, for which revisions can then be considered.

Insofar as the Nature/Culture divide is taken at face value, it quickly becomes evident that the archaeological does not fit on either side. When approached from the side of Nature, epitomized by disciplines like physics, chemistry and biology, all things traditionally designated cultural – deriving from or tied with human practice and intentionality – remain unaccounted for. Relying on the principle of uniformitarianism (Gould 1965) and presupposing the applicability of natural laws, most features commonly engaged by archaeologists remain beyond the natural purview. Significantly, however, many features of the archaeological remain unaccounted for also when approached from the cultural side, primarily various matters of deposition and post-deposition attributed to mechanical, chemical and zoological agencies. But from the point of view of Culture, epitomized by fields like sociology, anthropology and history, there is also a great deal that the archaeological is found to be lacking: humans, movement, institutions, discursive voices, action, etc.

Thus the archaeological constitutes a particular kind of convergence of Nature and Culture. It is a natural phenomenon in which products of human action have been incorporated. The ‘price’ of this fusion rests, however, primarily on the cultural side. From the point of view of Nature the archaeological appears to incorporate new properties; from the cultural perspective, however, it seems to have lost its most definitive features. One could even say that it is a reduced cultural phenomenon (lacking people and movement) and an expanded natural one (including elements that are not its own). Under these conditions, the archaeological can only be said to reside somewhere between the two terms, in the distance or gap that constitutes them as a binary opposition. It can be approached from either side, but neither can truly capture it.

This has significant implications that resonate across archaeological discourse and practice. Schiffer's (1972) distinction between systemic and archaeological contexts is a case in point. More pertinent, however, is archaeology's strong inclination towards multidisciplinary conduct. Against the backdrop of the still prevailing three academic cultures of the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities (cf. Kagan 2009), archaeology constitutes a genuinely ambiguous field. For its object – the archaeological – cannot be fully captured by any one of them. Confronted by such an elusive phenomenon, archaeologists are forced to shift their perspectives, at one time approaching it from the side of Nature, at another time from the side of Culture (for some relevant discussions see Hodder 2011; Jones 2004; Kristiansen 2014). This was the condition from the field's very beginning, having one foot firmly planted in the natural sciences – particularly geology and palaeontology – and the other in the humanities and social sciences, particularly history and anthropology (cf. Gosden 1999; Trigger 1990). Ultimately, archaeological interdisciplinarity was never a matter of choice, but a demand set by the ambiguity of its object, an ambiguity produced by the binary vision of the world.

Nature/Culture undone

Although the ambiguity of the archaeological (as well as many other phenomena) is a problem, a condition at odds with the scientific aspiration for clarity and lucidity, and although it testifies to the limitations of the conceptual framework that contextualizes it, the stability of the Nature/Culture divide was not truly challenged until recently. Much of the divide's resilience could be attributed to the exceptional rhetoric and conceptual power of binary oppositions. Such oppositions consist of two mutually exclusive terms that together denote a totality, a complete system (cf. Leach 1970; Lévi-Strauss 1963; O'Sullivan et al. 1994, 30–33). It is this structural simplicity and economy that provide them with so much logical force. Each term is defined according to what the other is not, while in conjunction they constitute a logically self-contained whole. Thus Nature and Culture are taken to be mutually exclusive and the totality they denote is the world.

Binary oppositions, however, like many other rigid conceptual divisions, invite and produce ambiguities, phenomena that do not fit all that well into the established categories. Logically speaking, this is a problem that must be managed and controlled, for they threaten the integrity of the conceptual order. In anthropological settings, this was often tied together with matters of ritual, pollution and repression, understood as societies’ response to ambiguities of this sort that threaten the integrity of their ideological structures (Douglas 1966; Turner 1969; Van Gennep 1960).

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that much of the criticism directed towards binary logic, in general, and towards the Nature/Culture divide, in particular, focuses on the demand for mutual exclusiveness of the terms involved (e.g. Franklin 2003; Haila 2000; Goodman, Heath and Lindee 2003). After all, it is a weakness that this line of reasoning exposed of its own accord. In a powerful critique, Latour argued that the Nature/Culture distinction is a modern trope, established and maintained through the (retrospectively) immense project of purification that sought to distil from a confused reality that which belongs to humanity from that which belongs to Nature. Thus, in a fairly typical passage, he states (Latour 1993, 50),

Perhaps the modern framework could have held up a little while longer if its very development had not established a short circuit between Nature on the one hand and human masses on the other. So long as Nature was remote and under control, it still vaguely resembled the constitutional pole of [the modern] tradition, and science could still be seen as a mere intermediary to uncover it . . . But where are we to classify the ozone hole story, or global warming or deforestation? Where are we to put these hybrids? Are they human? Human because they are our work. Are they natural? Natural because they are not our doing. Are they local or global? Both. As for the human masses that have been made to multiply as a result of the virtues and vices of medicine and economics, they are no easier to situate. In what world are these multitudes to be housed? Are we in the realm of biology, sociology, natural history, ethics, sociobiology? This is our own doing, yet the laws of demography and economics are infinitely beyond us. Is the demographic time bomb local or global? Both. Thus, the two constitutional guarantees of the moderns – the universal laws of things, and the inalienable rights of subjects – can no longer be recognized either on the side of Nature or on the side of the Social. The destiny of the starving multitudes and the fate of our poor planet are connected by the same Gordian knot that no Alexander will ever again manage to sever.

Under these circumstances, purification could only fail; and the ambiguity of the archaeological is but one case among a multitude of others. The world consists of too many hybrids, in which the human and non-human, the cultural and the natural, are inseparably intertwined, for the distinction to continue holding. This is certainly the case for the human that never existed independently of nature, and is becoming increasingly so for Nature that resembles more and more an artefact, as human impact on the environment can no longer be ignored; so much so that a new geological epoch had to be introduced – the Anthropocene (cf. Edgeworth 2014a; Latour 2014; Solli 2011).

One could say that the Nature/Culture dualism was crushed under the weight of the ambiguities it produced, reaching a point where they could no longer be managed or repressed (see Braun 2004). Yet, as Kuhn (1970, 77) observes, the sense of crisis and the acknowledgement of a theory's failures do not necessarily lead to its rejection: ‘once it has achieved the status of paradigm, a scientific theory is declared invalid only if an alternate candidate is available to take its place’. And such alternatives have only quite recently come to the fore, resolving to a greater or lesser extent many of the ambiguities produced by binary logic.

This receives a concrete expression in the explosion of scholarly efforts that refuse to operate within conceptual binary constructs and seek to redefine their fields in terms of practice, movement and interplay of all observable components (e.g. Brown 2001; Latour 2005; Rheinberger 1997; Thrift 2008; Henare, Holbraad and Wastell 2007b). This movement, broadly characterized by its concern with ontology, has acquired numerous labels. Among them, one finds ‘New Realism’, ‘posthumanism’, ‘New Materialism’, ‘speculative realism’, ‘object-oriented ontology’ and others (e.g. Ferraris 2014; Bryant, Srnicek and Harman 2011; Witmore 2014; Wolfe 2010). Among its more widespread tenets, this movement rejects mechanical explanations and endorses a view that life and mind evolve out of non-life; matter is not inert and passive, but invested with energy and vitality that have an impact and make a difference; and emphasis is made on the dynamic and temporal character of things (for a brief review see Connolly 2013).

Taken to the extreme, the criticism of the Nature/Culture dualism causes both terms to disappear, displaced by a flat ontology that views everything as assemblages and networks that shift and fluctuate. Consequently, the binary structure is overturned entirely, as the gap, or divide, that kept the two realms apart is filled up to the brim with mixed and hybrid entities. We now face a continuous and poorly differentiated, but vibrant and shifting, space. Does this guarantee that we now have at our disposal a conceptual structure of the world, in which the archaeological can be adequately contextualized?

The archaeological undone

Following the disintegration of the Nature/Culture divide and the emergence in its place of performative theories of entanglements and networks, the world is no longer as it was. Nor is the archaeological, the ambiguity of which has been naturalized; all cultural phenomena, it turns out, are just like the archaeological has always been. It is no different to the innumerable phenomena studied by historians, anthropologists, geographers and economists. The natural and non-human are prevalent everywhere and the archaeological is not an exception, but another example of the rule. Consequently, many feel that ‘the current situation actually constitutes a rare archaeological moment; for the first time since the late 19th century the intellectual currents are in favour of us’ (Olsen 2012, 20, emphasis in original).

This newly found kinship between archaeological and other phenomena (and consequently also fields) encourages archaeologists to explore new areas of interest and application, much in concert with developments elsewhere (Thomas 2015). Some of the more striking efforts include Hodder's (2012; 2014) formulation of human–thing relations in terms of entanglement and entrapment; symmetrical archaeology's call to return to things, positioning them on a par with humans (Olsen 2010; Olsen et al. 2012; Webmoor and Witmore 2008; Witmore 2007); and Olivier's (2011; 2013) proposition that the field's concern should be with the formation and nature of material memory. While differing on various accounts, they share an emphasis on ontology; they view all things as active and effective, and subscribe to an evolving and dynamic understanding of their objects of enquiry, whether past events, present processes or the formation of memory. Many archaeologists also feel that the discipline enjoys a unique position to contribute to and engage directly in the philosophical and theoretical discourses that have hitherto been beyond its reach (Edgeworth 2016; Fowler and Harris 2015; Olsen et al. 2012).

However, an important implication of this turn to ontology is the erosion of distinctions. Whatever sets the archaeological apart from other cultural phenomena is now perceived as a matter of degree. Thus, for example, the absence of active human agents is but a variation in the composition of networks and entanglements. Consequently, the very existence of the archaeological as a specifiable feature of the world – archaeology's principal premise – is put into question. Lines of division between phenomena are no longer absolute and given; the exclusivity of the archaeological is no longer apparent. Does this mean that the archaeological collapses into the poorly differentiated and unbound range of networks and entanglements? That it cannot be distinguished from others? Could the ontological turn be denying archaeology its object?

In many respects, the all-encompassing term ‘thing’ that gained traction in archaeological discourse, as well as elsewhere, epitomizes this (e.g. Olsen 2010; Pétursdóttir 2013; Witmore 2015). It denotes ‘very basic aspects of entities – that they exist as contained and definable. Words, thoughts, institutions, events and materials have in common that . . . they exist as contained entities defined in a certain way’ (Hodder 2012, 7). It follows that the object of archaeology does not differ from the objects of other fields. At most, there is a difference in point of departure, which is itself due to historical and epistemological conventions. While I suspect this is not the intention of the scholars promoting the ontological turn in archaeology, the logical conclusion, nevertheless, seems to be that the field of archaeology should be dissipated along with its object. After all, it is the existence of this object that justifies the discipline in the first place.

If, however, we insist on the validity and importance of archaeology, we must also be able to demonstrate the reality of the archaeological; that it is not one thing among others or a relational composite of things, but that it is a domain of reality that is distinguishable and articulable. Doing so is somewhat at variance with the ontological impulse. For it begins with a concept (the archaeological), the ontological validity of which is then explored. Rather than seek the archaeological in relations among specifiable entities, as a phenomenon that emerges from the seemingly undifferentiated reality, I will take a somewhat different route. I will try to explore archaeological statics, a seeming peculiarity of archaeology that is at variance with the relational–performative ontological approaches that allowed us to overcome the limitations of the Nature/Culture divide and other binary constructs. By taking this line of reasoning, I hope to demonstrate how archaeology may resist current dissipative forces and defend its integrity.

Static phenomena in a dynamic world

Unlike Latour's networks (2005), Hodder's entanglements (2012; 2016) or Pickering's mangle (1995) that consist of innumerable entities (human and non-human, animate and inanimate), constantly engaged with each other, the archaeological is regularly treated as fixed and stationary, as something that simply is. Much of what archaeologists do, especially in the field, but also in laboratories and excavation reports, asserts this. Field notes, photographs, plans, section drawings, grids, triangulations and numerous other means are mobilized to (re)constitute the site in various media while deconstituting it in the field (Lucas 2012, 231–44; Webmoor 2007, 572). They seek to preserve things as they were, to maintain their stability and fixity. Being static, in this respect, is not about a capacity in reserve to act. It is a particular mode of being, in which relations are neither causal, nor historical, nor teleological. Rather they are associative, in the sense that entities belong together. This is, after all, what archaeological records have to say about the finds and features they document.

This understanding of the archaeological is clearly incommensurable with the understanding of the world that is all about motion and effect. Insofar as it is constantly on the move, always assembling and disassembling, interacting, becoming and transforming it has no room for stationary phenomena; they simply do not (or cannot) exist. For the reality of a thing is argued through the demonstration of its effects, that there is no difference that does not make a difference (Bryant 2011, 263). On the one hand, this impasse may be more apparent than real, for there is no difficulty in perceiving fixity as a mode of dynamics, and disengagement as a mode of engagement; the terms need not be mutually exclusive. But, on the other hand, archaeological statics are principally about logical structures and part–whole relations, much less than they are about causality and affect. It is in this respect that incommensurability is most apparent.

Yet this incommensurability also resonates in archaeological reasoning proper (cf. Lucas 2012, 98–104). For archaeologists fully acknowledge that the archaeological is, in fact, dynamic and changing. The numerous discussions of site formation explicitly appreciate and recognize the complexity of processes and agencies that produce and transform archaeological phenomena (Schiffer 1987). Indeed, even when archaeological statics are invoked, they do not deny dynamics. Thus Binford (1975, 251, emphasis added) stated that the archaeological record is ‘what remains in static form of dynamics which occurred in the past as well as dynamics occurring up until present observations are made’. Thus the archaeological becomes static only once the archaeologist comes onto the scene, securing it in various media of documentation and order. Archaeological statics are an emergent property of the work of archaeology and its engagement with the archaeological (cf. Olsen et al. 2012; Witmore 2007).

If so, from where do archaeological statics originate? What are they predicated on? How are they justified? As noted, archaeological fieldwork is principally about deconstructing a site in the field while inscribing it in various media. Accordingly, the constitution of the archaeological as a static phenomenon is rooted in that which is taken apart – packages of sediment encasing artefacts and features of various kinds. A principal feature of these packages is the condition of burial, and taphonomy teaches us that burial is an agent of stabilization (Lyman 1994, 404–16). Once buried, rates of transformation slow down considerably, as many agents of degradation no longer have access to the substances located underground, and objects encapsulated in sediment tend to remain in place for very long periods of time. Thus, although not fixed and stationary in any absolute sense, the subsurface certainly does proximate it when viewed from above. The differences are so great on all accounts – the entities involved, movement in space and timescales – that compared to what transpires on the surface, much of what is below seems static. It is this approximation of fixity that archaeological statics capture; it is the condition of burial inscribed into other media while being undone by fieldwork.

But statics have another, no less important, function. They are a means with which the autonomy of the archaeological is maintained. The archaeological exists regardless of whether it is excavated. But excavation is the only way to access it, entangling it with trowels, spades, grids, field notes, cameras, archaeologists and many other things that otherwise it would have nothing to do with. The multiple modes of documentation and inscription, towards which these engagements are regularly channelled, are not only means of recording evidence, but also – primarily, even – means of reasserting the autonomy of the archaeological. The immutability of the documents and the order produced reinsert the wedge between subject and object that has been removed during (and for the sake of) fieldwork. The autonomy of the archaeological that was hitherto guaranteed by burial is now guaranteed by the records’ immutability and crystallization as a logical structure.¹

By no means is this unique for archaeology. In fact, Pickering (2011, 4–5) observed that a principal aim of all scientific practice is ‘to make the world dual’, disentangling the human and non-human and allowing the object of scientific practice to stand on its own. This is precisely what archaeological statics achieve. They insist on the autonomy of the archaeological; that it exists regardless of the intervention that inscribed it. Importantly, archaeological statics assert the autonomy of the object that it possessed prior to the intervention. Thus, contrary to arguments that ascribe primacy to the interactive effect of aesthetic experience, I find it imperative to insist on the object's autonomy. If we are to do justice to our object, it is not sufficient to engage with it directly and openly. Ultimately, we must also allow it to be free (of us) (Pétursdóttir 2012).

Rearticulating the world and placing the archaeological

Thus, although the world is undeniably dynamic, the insistence on archaeological statics is not only justified, but also indispensable. It is how the circumstance of burial and at least some of its implications are registered in archaeological records, a transposition of one condition (burial) for another (statics) across the interruption of excavation and the inevitable shift of media. Accordingly, the seeming contradiction of statics and dynamics, discussed above, is a transposition of the distinction between buried and non-buried conditions, which in turn feeds back into our understanding of the world. It corresponds to the environments produced by different phases of matter. On the surface the principal phase is that of gas, characterized by low density and easy flow. It is these properties that allow us to move quite freely, facilitating most forms of bodily experience and communication through sight and sound. Below the surface, on the other hand, the principal phase is solid. It is comparatively dense and retains its form. It hinders motion and minimizes the possibilities of interplay. It is this quality that facilitates the stabilizing effect of burial, noted above.

Thus, although established binaries like Nature and Culture or human and non-human can no longer be retained, other lines of articulation come to the fore. And the case of the archaeological stresses the distinction between the non-buried environment of gases and the buried environment of solids.² The surface of the earth thus comes to the fore as a significant line of division, distinguishing between two modes of being. Significantly, it is a concrete borderline, the crossing of which has considerable implications. Excavation is a disciplined mode of driving the surface back – or, more precisely, down – and moving items from one realm to the other (Edgeworth 2012).³ They are extracted from the stable domain of the subsurface and incorporated into the much more hectic and fickle settings above. Conversely, an object that becomes incorporated in the subsurface is removed from the shifting relations on the surface, being incorporated in the much more stable and consistent relations below. Either way, being on one side implies being disengaged from the other. Indeed, it is this disengagement from the aerated realm above the surface that is first and foremost conveyed by archaeological statics. The production of the archaeological record – the reconstitution of the site in various media – is a reassertion of the condition of disengagement through engagement. Or, to re-emphasize a point already made, prior to excavation the archaeological is disengaged by means of burial; after excavation it is disengaged by means of statics (for a similar conclusion see Edgeworth 2016, 102–4).

Yet, one finds motion and change on both sides of the surface, and both sides consist of effective entities. Moreover, just as the human and non-human are inseparably intermingled above the surface, the archaeological is always entwined with the geological, palaeontological and paedological. All culture is mixed with nature, and all culture is dynamic, but buried culture is other than non-buried culture (and buried nature is other than non-buried nature). Thus, however the terms are perceived, the Nature/Culture scheme of the world is doubled: once for the aerated realm above and once for the buried realm below. They are equivalent, but disengaged, and therefore constitute counterparts.

Somewhat ironically, after ridding ourselves of one opposition (Nature/Culture), we now find ourselves constituting another: what is below and what is above the surface are mutually exclusive, while together they constitute a totality. Thus, if the archaeological is buried culture, what should we call its counterpart? It is society, or the social, the numerous phenomena regularly studied by the social sciences, from which Nature can no longer be separated (Latour 2005; Law 2009).

The archaeological, therefore, is not merely a consequence of the social (ontologically, in any case), but its counterpart. It is a cultural mode of being that is constituted by its disengagement from society through burial. We are now, finally, beginning to do justice to the archaeological. It is no longer perceived as an ambiguity that results from the conflation of distinct terms, as in the case of the Nature/Culture divide, nor as just another example of the rule that Culture is always inextricably intermingled with Nature. It is now clear that the archaeological is an object in its own right, not just a function of other things that precede it. Further, having found the concreteness of the archaeological, we may begin to consider more closely its qualities and position, especially with regard to its relationship with the social.

(Re)production

As noted, the archaeological and the social are distinct modes of cultural being, separated by the thin but effective line of the earth's surface. Of course, the border is permeable. Things may move in either direction. Parts of the social may (and do) end up buried, and buried things may (and do) crop up to the surface. Thus the social may become archaeological and vice versa. In either case, however, something is sacrificed. Although ambiguous phenomena are not difficult to find (optic cables, sewer systems, partially buried features, etc.), it is for the most part a zero-sum condition; one is either on this side or on the other. Excavation undoes the archaeological; burial undoes the social.

Moreover, both the social and the archaeological are constantly being (re)produced. For the social, this goes practically without saying (Bourdieu 1990; Giddens 1984). For the archaeological, this may seem a triviality, but nevertheless one that receives little attention. While much has been said about formation processes that culminate in archaeological phenomena (Schiffer 1987), little has been noted about just how pervasive the formation of these phenomena is (but see Edgeworth 2016). For burial is by no means an exceptional process. Perhaps, ironically, archaeological excavations offer a particularly pertinent illustration of how the social and the archaeological are (re)produced in tandem. It was noted above that archaeological excavations are social networks that engage in the deconstruction of the archaeological in the field while reconstituting it in other media; they are a process by which the archaeological is made social. What is absent from this account, however, is that the excavation also produces a new archaeological phenomenon that is qualitatively different both from the archaeological that was the object of the excavation and from the image produced in other media. This newly produced archaeological phenomenon is the excavation's dump. Although qualitatively different, it is no less archaeological than the stratigraphic units from which it derives. Thus the fieldwork in question is a social setting that undoes one archaeological phenomenon while producing another.

Moreover, the purposeful production of the archaeological is not limited to excavations. The inhumation of the dead in cemeteries is a case in point, as is the systematic deposition of waste in landfills. In all these cases, entities are being relegated to the subsurface, disengaging them from the motions of society. This purposeful disposal of social entities by consigning them to the archaeological reinforces the significance of these realms’ mutual disengagement. Crucially, the social is always in motion; everything circulates. And it is important for circuits to remain open. An excess of entities will eventually become an impediment, accumulating along the routes of passage, obstructing circulation that may eventually even bring things to a halt. One need only consider the implications of a strike in a sanitation department, refusing to collect domestic waste, allowing it to accumulate, first on the pavements, eventually spilling onto the road, first obstructing pedestrians, and later motor vehicles. The disposal of excess matter is, therefore, a social necessity; and burial – production of the archaeological – is one way to go about it.⁴

It is for this reason that mutual disengagement is constitutive of the social no less than it is of the archaeological. One need only imagine what it would mean for society to remain engaged with the countless entities consigned to the archaeological, from the hand axes of the Lower Palaeolithic to nylon bags and paper cups of the present. The social would suffocate under the weight of its own making; it would lose its capacity of motion, and consequently also growth and change. In short, if the social is to persist, its motion must be maintained, implicating that disengagement from amassing entities is imperative. The archaeological, in this regard, is a heavy load that the social was spared by its being relegated to the subsurface. It is by ridding itself of these things that it can maintain motion and continue evolving (cf. Edgeworth 2016, 109–10).

Against these observations it is appropriate to recall the familiar argument that archaeological finds are in many respects a form of rubbish or waste (Schiffer 1987, 47; Shanks, Platt and Rathje 2004, 65; Staski and Sutro 1991, 1). The foregoing discussion does much to reinforce this understanding that contributed a great deal to the research into discard patterns and emphasized the relevance of garbology for archaeology (Rathje 2001; Rathje and Murphy 2001). However, the designation of the archaeological as rubbish also confuses it with the social, bolstering the latter and eroding the former. Waste, rubbish, dirt, refuse and the like are all social terms; they refer to the condition of matter within the social network. To apply them to the archaeological is to forget that it is precisely their withdrawal from social kinetics that renders them archaeological in the first place.

Archaeology and the archaeological

To briefly reiterate the argument above, the archaeological is an asocial cultural phenomenon. Its existence and quality hinge on its autonomy and its disengagement from the social, principally by burial. This excludes numerous finds and phenomena with which archaeologists are engaged, from great monuments like Stonehenge and the pyramids to modest surface scatters of flint and ceramics. The crux of the matter here is that archaeology – the field of practice – and the archaeological – the object of the field – must not be mutually constitutive, at least not perfectly so. If archaeology is defined as the study of the archaeological and the archaeological is defined as the object of archaeology, we end up chasing our own tail in a never-ending circular motion, rendering both terms vacuous. Arguing that the archaeological is buried culture avoids this circularity by insisting that the object of enquiry is ontologically grounded and precedes the field of enquiry; that it exists regardless of the archaeological scholarship that studies it.

Thus, while aqueducts, ruins and scatters of finds may be designated antiquities on account of their age, they are not archaeological. Whether an object is archaeological or not has nothing to do with time, but with the condition of its being. An Acheulean hand axe in a museum collection is not archaeological even though it may be a million years old and derived from excavation. On the other hand, a button that broke off my shirt the other day and ended up buried in a landfill is archaeological, although it may be only a couple of years old. The former may have been archaeological, but is now social; the latter was social, but is now archaeological.

Recently, Edgeworth (2016, 108–9) offered a telling anecdote. In 1964 a truck got jammed in the Newport Gate in Lincoln, UK. The gate has been standing in place since the 3rd century A.D. But the surface has since then risen some 2.5 metres. The collision cannot be attributed to the driver alone, Edgeworth observes, but account must also be made for the rise of the surface through repeated events of repair and deposition:

The accident took place in a split second, but there is a longer time scale involved. It was a collision of processes taking place on different temporal scales – a crash between the temporality of everyday human life (the lorry and driver travelling at speed in a horizontal direction) and much slower archaeological time (the upper surface of the archaeosphere pushing slowly skywards) (ibid., 109).

There is no controversy, I think, that the accumulated deposits between the gate's original floor level and the present one are archaeological. But can one say the same for the gate proper? Can one argue that the gate jutting above street level and the accumulated debris below the surface are in fact the same? Do they share the same condition? Surely they do not, as the incident described above demonstrates. Crucially, the damage the gate suffered is a function of its participation in the field of the social, alongside the surface, the truck and the driver. It is because of its position upon the surface that it could suffer the injury that it did. Had it been buried, it would have almost nothing to do with all of these. The line of the surface not only shifts and moves, but also marks a very real and significant threshold, and it is the differences in the conditions of being above and below this line that differentiate the archaeological from the social. Thus the Roman arch is not archaeological, while the deposits below the street, although mostly younger in age, are.⁵

Consequently, insofar as archaeology's principal preoccupation is with the past, society and cultural evolution, it neglects the archaeological that remains outside its purview. This is so regardless of how one complicates the concepts of ‘time’ and ‘past’ (Bailey 2007; Lucas 2005; Olivier 2011; Witmore 2013) or whether one begins with a care for things rather than people (Olsen 2010; Pétursdóttir 2013; Webmoor and Witmore 2008). For neither approach acknowledges the autonomy of the archaeological. When one speaks about the past, or evolutionary processes, or memory – not to mention society, power, religion, etc. – one necessarily prioritizes features that are characteristic of the social, but secondary (at best) to the archaeological mode of being. Thinking along these lines can only undo the archaeological. For it asks of it to respond in social terms. On the other hand, an interest, or care for things, which does not differentiate the social and the archaeological has the implication of obscuring the difference between the two modes of being. They become the same, collapsed into each other, in principle at least.⁶ In practice, the turn to things often takes the form of a stress on unmitigated, immediate experience and engagement. Insofar as the engagement in question entails dynamics and the involvement of humans and (other) things, it is surely a social phenomenon, and the archaeological once more disappears. If we are to understand the archaeological, we must refrain from conflating it with the social.

This does not mean, however, that archaeology should not be concerned with surface finds and ruins. But it does mean that interest in these entities is best understood as derivative and secondary. Evidently, this position is opposed to Harrison's (2011, 143) proposal that archaeology should move away ‘from the trope of archaeology-as-excavation and towards an alternative metaphor of archaeology-as-surface-survey’. To my understanding, ‘archaeology-as-surface-survey’ is a contradiction in terms, for surface survey is necessarily an engagement with the social, not the archaeological. But this does not mean that I disagree with Harrison's (and others’) critique of the conceptual linkages of excavation, stratigraphy and the past. Archaeology should retain the centrality of excavation, not because depth is equivalent to time and past, but because excavation means engagement with the archaeological, however momentary and precarious (Edgeworth 2012).

To be clear, insistence on the centrality of the archaeological does not reject archaeologies of the present and recent past. For, at bottom, it marginalizes issues of temporality and age. Indeed, because the archaeological is constantly being produced (even while being undone), there is no shortage of possibilities for engagements with recent and contemporary archaeological phenomena. Harrison's proposition, however, while provocative and interesting, seems preoccupied with the social sphere. As such, it excludes the archaeological from its purview and constitutes an extension of other (non-archaeological) fields of study. It is surely a legitimate and potentially productive angle, but it is not one in keeping with archaeology's foundational premise and claim.

It is thus becoming apparent that there is a part of the world that was always within our reach, always at our disposal, always at our mercy, in fact, but which nevertheless we failed to acknowledge as such. As the outlines of the archaeological crystallize, we are confronted with an object we know next to nothing about. This is not something to lament; it is an opportunity. There is an aspect of the world begging to be explored and understood, and its breadth and significance are probably greater than presently realized, implicating everything else. Archaeology, should it seize the moment, may find itself in the centre of a reordering of our understanding of the cultural landscape and of the world in general. This is the demand brought forth by an explicit acknowledgement of the archaeological, and archaeology is the discipline to insist on it.

But to do so archaeology itself must be willing to reconsider its priorities. As noted above, traditional matters of interest like the past, society, human behaviour and cultural evolution do not pertain to the archaeological, for these interests fail to appreciate what it is: a cultural phenomenon, constituted in its disengagement from the social through burial. The instrumental approach to the archaeological obscured it, and now that our vision begins to clear, the realization follows that we are faced with a new land, one we must make ourselves familiar with. Notions like things, materiality or material culture are unlikely to be of much help. For, as noted above, they are more likely to obscure the archaeological than to reveal it. In short, the primary means of conduct is description. I have discussed this in some detail elsewhere (Nativ 2017). Here, however, I would like to emphasize how the way we travel this landscape will have to change.

Much of archaeologists’ empirical work is directed by a concern with the past, society and attendant matters. Preservation, stratigraphy, disturbance, clean/contaminated loci, fill, floor, in situ and many other such terms, regularly employed both on- and off-excavation, are commonly mobilized to flesh out a past condition. While these terms are of much relevance for understanding archaeological phenomena, their attendant value judgements are not. They prioritize and discriminate primary and secondary, reliable and unreliable, significant and insignificant, worthy and unworthy. For the archaeological proper there is no such thing as a disturbance, or a mixed locus or poor preservation. At most, these are different manifestations of the archaeological, a form of diversity inherent to the phenomenon in question. Practices of purification that seek to remove from a given deposit things that supposedly belong to an earlier or later period can only fail to acknowledge this deposit (cf. Lucas 2015a). Similarly, attributing greater significance to contexts with complete vessels on a surface than to a deposit containing assorted fragments is to forget the archaeological. I do not want to argue that there is no place for such value judgements; it is important, however, to realize that they are secondary to the archaeological. Ultimately, if we are to understand an archaeological phenomenon, we must take it all in; the primary question being, what does it consist of? How do these things belong together?

Moreover, the observations offered above suggest that sites that archaeologists find of interest are but a fraction of the phenomena designated archaeological. If the archaeological is constantly being produced, then the range of relevant occurrences is greatly enlarged. As many have argued before, time is of little relevance. But so is the kind of occurrence. For if, as already noted, an excavation dump is no less archaeological than the deposits from which it derives, it is an equally valid object of study. If it is the archaeological that archaeology needs to understand, it must broaden its view and concerns. For the criterion for a choice of site would no longer be the quality of access it provides into a given past, but its contribution to our understanding of the range of ways in which the archaeological is manifested.

In short, the archaeological is beyond the purview of archaeology, at least as it is commonly practised. The discipline's bias towards its object – the archaeological – is noted on all levels: in the field, publication reports, analyses and goals. The archaeological is a medium and a device, but one that we have not taken the time to know and understand. If this condition is to change, a great many presuppositions and habits will have to be revised.

To claim that the archaeological exists, and that it consists in being buried below the surface, is also to claim that there is a component of the world that is cultural and yet beyond the reach of the humanities and social sciences. For the social sciences and the humanities are concerned with the social, with whatever happens (or happened) on the surface. Thus the archaeological is not a mere derivative of the social, a residue or vestige; rather it is the counterpart of the social, a mode of cultural being accounted for by archaeology alone. Far from being a handmaiden of history, or an extended arm of anthropology, archaeology presides over a cultural domain that counterbalances all phenomena treated by the social and human sciences. In short, archaeology has the potential to become a pivotal field, demonstrating the need to reformulate our understanding of the world and calling attention to an overlooked but momentous phenomenon.

Recently, Lucas (2013, 374, original emphasis) asked, ‘What new entities can archaeology propose? We already know humans exist; we already know pots and arrowheads exist. What does archaeology show us that we did not know already?’ This paper suggests that it is principally the archaeological, an entity that is cultural, yet decisively asocial. The proposition for an archaeology explicitly concerned with the archaeological admittedly entails narrowing our scope in some regards, but it also entails an expansion in others, both empirically and conceptually. Much of this has to do with an acknowledgement of the limitations posed by the archaeological, but also with its affordances: two facets of archaeology's object, upon which the field's scholarly merit and contribution rely. Ultimately, pursuing the archaeological may alter archaeology's position within the academic landscape. For it will no longer be a member of the social sciences and the humanities, but their counterpart.

Epilogue

The present paper argued for the importance of the archaeological as a necessary premise for archaeology and as an underappreciated object of study. Much of the foregoing discussion was dedicated to exploring its implications and potentials for the discipline. But nothing is formulated within a vacuum. While the argument above seeks to establish its claims on foundations of solid reasoning, it is also a reaction to slow, but persistent, processes that appear to undermine the foundations of academic science. In the space that remains, I would like to situate the arguments presented here in this context, where the call for concern with the archaeological can be read as an attempt to reaffirm archaeology's potentials and responsibilities as a science.

After several decades of deconstruction and critical theory, it is becoming increasingly evident that crushing the rigid barriers and walls of modernity, that targeting its distinctions and denying their legitimacy, did not lead to greater freedom, more connectivity or openness. Rather, ‘Deobjectification [i.e. the rejection of objectivity, reality and truth], while formulated with emancipative intentions, turns into the delegitimation of human knowledge and into the reference to a transcendent foundation’ (Ferraris 2014, 14). Indeed, the humanist pursuit of knowledge has suffered greatly over the past decades. Disarmed of its classical ideals and justifications (e.g. Merton 1942; Weber 2004), science has been gradually, but consistently, emulating standards of purpose and evaluation that originate in the marketplace and in corporate culture. Consequently, the cherished autonomy of academic scholarship is undermined as universities encourage their faculty to produce knowledge that is marketable, patentable, purposeful, usable, relevant (Kellogg 2006; Rider, Hasselberg and Waluszewski 2013; Ziman 2000).

While the most striking and disconcerting implications of this process are manifest among the natural sciences (Evans and Packham 2003; Monbiot 2003; Rider 2009; Sterckx 2011), the social sciences and humanities suffer the same basic ills. In fact, it is these fields that lose the most once truth becomes a matter of opinion; and as scholarly claims can no longer be grounded on classic standards of validity, recourse to other standards – corporate, managerial, social, public – becomes inevitable. On the one hand, this development is accompanied by a variety of benefits: popular interest, demonstrable public relevance (ideological, managerial, policy-related, etc.), financial support, among others. On the other hand, however, it sacrifices the scientific orientation towards the long-term and the unforeseeable.

Thus the reconfiguration of science along the lines of other social institutions/agencies carries with it various benefits, but also threatens its very existence. In the climate of the ‘knowledge economy’ and the rise of numerous non-academic sites of knowledge production (Gibbons et al. 1994; Hessels and Van Lente 2008), the emulation of corporate, financial or public culture tends to dissolve any distinction and justification for academia, rendering it redundant and superfluous. Academic scholarship therefore is at a crossroads:

Whether or not we like it, we must make a choice. It is a very problematic choice. Either universities, or rather the faculty of universities, start to defend their right to refrain from market adaption by political means, thus abandoning their claims to being apolitical and in practice enacting the ideal of a democratic university, or we accept present developments and let history take its course, hoping that the community of individuals exercising scientific judgement in the university, however central its position in society, will be enough to make a difference (Hasselberg, Rider and Waluszewski 2013, 213, emphasis in original).

Indeed, it is a mistake to presume that the power of science is anchored in its procedures and methods. Rather, its relevance and vigour are founded on ethical grounds: that the world is worthy of learning, not for the sake of anticipated future benefits or accomplishments, nor for solving recognized problems (however worthy), but as a pursuit valuable in itself. It is precisely because of this seeming disinterestedness in existing political, economic, social, environmental concerns that a scientific insight can demand attention. Consequently, while enjoying short-term benefits in the form of demonstrable relevance, along with funding and public esteem, forgoing its ethical stand, academic scholarship risks losing in the long term both its legitimacy and its relevance.

This is not to argue for a return to the naivety and vanity of modern science. It promised more than it could deliver and it claimed for itself stature greater than it deserved. The critiques of modern science clearly demonstrated the limits of its claims. Science cannot answer all questions, it cannot apply itself to anything, and it cannot always provide valid and well-grounded explanations. But where science can or does apply (responsibly), its observations, insights and explanations are of greater solidity than those of any other field of knowledge. Thus the scientific ethos is indispensable for academic science. Importantly, it should not be perceived as a realizable goal, but as an ideal:

An ideal is something which guides behavior by not being fully realizable in practice. In point of fact, to replace classical academic ideals with measurable outcomes and results (such as examination frequency or number of citations) is to lower our ambitions in the name of ‘excellence’ (Rider 2009, 86).

Science thus entails an ethical commitment, on account of which it demands freedoms that other vocations do not enjoy, but it does so in order to impose on itself restrictions and imperatives that others do not need to bear. The persistent trends outlined above that gnaw continuously at academic science undermine these freedoms and compromise the scholarly imperatives that allow academia to function. This should concern us all. It is not merely a matter for policy makers or budget management; it pertains to the very motivations, justifications and practices we follow. It is such a sense of crisis that prompted Merton to formulate his understanding of the scientific ethos, for, as he put it, ‘An institution under attack must reexamine its foundations, restate its objectives, seek out its rationale. Crisis invites self-appraisal’ (Merton 1942, 115).

While argumentative, the present paper can be read as such an attempt at a vocational self-appraisal. What is archaeology about? What are its irreducible foundations? What are its responsibilities? How are these to be distributed? Where do its commitments lie? What are its limits? My concern here with the object of archaeology – the archaeological – is a concern with that part of the world that the discipline takes upon itself to explore. I find this to be an imperative of the scientific attitude, for it needs an object, something to focus its efforts on and upon which to establish its insights. Whatever archaeology can say responsibly must follow from what its object affords. The flip side of this is, of course, that the object also poses restrictions: many questions cannot be answered without compromising the scientific attitude, the object, or both.

Indeed, some of the field's most nagging problems can be traced back to compromises of this sort; and the recurrent concern that archaeological accounts are ultimately projections of the present into the past is probably the most troubling of all. It has long been acknowledged that the field's practice is closely tied up with economic and political power (Brück and Stutz 2016), nationalist, colonialist, imperialist (Trigger 1984), and that ‘all archaeological stories – be they classical, biblical, nationalist, or evolutionary – can be read as narratives of the inevitability of certain lands to be conquered and the right of certain people to rule’ (Silberman 1995, 256). Much of this, I suspect, results from the obscurity of the archaeological object, from the discipline's failure to constitute it as the principal question and the principal resource upon which proposed answers must build. Questions are regularly oriented elsewhere (the past, society, subsistence, cult, etc.) and the archaeological is quickly conflated with other things: history, ethnography, economy, literature, etc.

If archaeologists were to insist that the archaeological is their principal object of concern, most of these questions would be deferred and many of the conflations would be delayed. In Israel, where I live and work, this comes to the fore in striking relief. It is common for finds and excavations to be heralded against the backdrop of the biblical narrative, legitimizing (or delegitimizing) nationalist claims on the grounds of historical precedence, supposedly proved by material remains and/or sophisticated analyses. It is also not uncommon for politicians to make use of such claims to promote their agendas. Yet, one must ask, what is it about the archaeological that affords such accounts? In what way do pottery sherds, wall segments, faunal remains and sedimentological units express themselves in terms of historical figures, wars, ethnic groups, or even names like ‘Jerusalem’? The answer is that they do not. In order for this to be possible they must be conflated with the biblical story, with ethnographic observations, social theory, contemporary perceptions of place and so on.

Whatever resistance the archaeological could have presented is aborted in advance, because at no point was it properly constituted. It was always already mixed up with antiquities that circulate in the market, with narratives of lands, empires and migrations, with place names and political geographies. As a result, many accounts and observations presented on archaeological grounds cannot be traced back to the archaeological, but only to a fusion of the archaeological with something else. This is not to say that these associations are necessarily wrong; it is to say that their scientific validity is questionable.

By no means are these issues limited to biblical archaeology or to Israel. Israeli archaeologists are not cynics, nor are they worse than others. They are influenced by the same trends, fashions, desires and ills of academic opportunism as archaeologists elsewhere (Härke 2014). It is simply that the case of biblical archaeology is a convenient example; it illustrates the rule. Namely that the obscurity of the archaeological is conducive to its premature conflation with others, which in turn impairs the scientific attitude and produces claims that cannot be properly substantiated. In short, in the absence of a clear object, archaeological insights are at risk of becoming vacuous and insubstantial.

Thus, if archaeology cherishes academic science and regards itself as a member of a scholarly community that values the pursuit of knowledge, it needs to draw its object out of obscurity and claim it as clearly and explicitly as possible. The prices to pay for this are considerable, but so are the benefits. As I have tried to demonstrate, insisting on the archaeological as the necessary focus and anchor for archaeology not only is expected to result in better scientific validity, but also is likely to open before us an underappreciated and largely ignored field of research that may amount to a redefinition of the field's position within the social sciences and the humanities: no longer a participant, but a counterpart.