Reclaiming Archaeology: Beyond the Tropes of Modernity

392 Pages·2013·9.96 MB·English

by  Alfredo González-Ruibal

Reclaiming Archaeology
Archaeology has been an important source of metaphors for some of the key intellectuals of
the twentieth century: Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, Alois Riegl and Michel Foucault,
amongst many others. However, this power has also turned against archaeology, because the
discipline has been dealt with perfunctorily as a mere provider of metaphors that other intel-
lectuals have exploited. Scholars from different fields continue to explore areas in which archae-
ologists have been working for over two centuries, with little or no reference to the discipline.
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. 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.
The time is ripe for archaeologists to address a wider audience and engage in theoretical
debates from a position of equality, not of subalternity. Reclaiming Archaeology explores how
archaeology can be useful to rethink modernity’s big issues, and more specifically late moder-
nity (broadly understood as the twentieth and twenty-first centuries). The book contains a
series of original essays, not necessarily following the conventional academic rules of archaeo-
logical writing or thinking, allowing rhetoric to have its place in disclosing the archaeological.
In each of the four sections that constitute this book (method, time, heritage and materiality),
the contributors deal with different archaeological tropes, such as excavation, surface/depth,
genealogy, ruins, fragments, repressed memories and traces. They criticize their modernist
implications and rework them in creative ways, in order to show the power of archaeology not
just to understand the past, but also the present.
Reclaiming Archaeology includes essays from a diverse array of archaeologists who have dealt in
one way or another with modernity, including scholars from non-Anglophone countries who
have approached the issue in original ways during recent years, as well as contributors from
other fields who engage in a creative dialogue with archaeology and the work of archaeologists.
Alfredo González-Ruibal was formerly Assistant Professor in the Department of Prehistory,
Complutense University of Madrid. He is now an archaeologist with the Heritage Laboratory
of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).
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Archaeological Orientations
Series Editors:
Gavin Lucas, University of Iceland, Reykjavík and
Christopher Witmore, Texas Tech University, USA.
An interdisciplinary series that engages our on-going, yet ever-changing, fascination with the
archaeological, Archaeological Orientations investigates the myriad ways material pasts are entan-
gled with communities, animals, ecologies and technologies, past, present or future. From
urgent contemporary concerns, including politics, violence, sustainability, ecology and tech-
nology, to long-standing topics of interest, including time, space, materiality, memory and
agency, Archaeological Orientations promotes bold thinking and the taking of risks in pressing
trans-disciplinary matters of concern.
Providing the comprehensive coverage expected of a companion or handbook, Archaeo­
logical Orientations aims to generate passionate, lively and engaged conversation around topics
of common interest without laying claim to new thematic territories. Archaeological Orientations
asks contributors and readers alike to take two steps back, cautiously and carefully to consider
issues from unforeseen, even surprising, angles. Archaeological Orientations embraces theoretical
provocation, cross-disciplinary debate and open discussion.
Coming soon:
Ruin Memories
Edited by Bjørnar Olsen and Þóra Pétursdóttir
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Reclaiming Archaeology
Beyond the Tropes of Modernity
Edited by Alfredo González-Ruibal
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First published 2013
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2013 Alfredo González-Ruibal for selection and editorial matter;
individual contributions, the contributors.
The right of Alfredo González-Ruibal to be identified as the author of the
editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-415-67392-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-06863-2 (ebk)
Typeset in 9.75 on 12 pt Bembo
by Phoenix Photosetting, Chatham, Kent
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Contents
List of figures viii
List of contributors x
Preface xv
1 Reclaiming archaeology 1
Alfredo González­Ruibal
I
Method 31
2 The clearing: archaeology’s way of opening the world 33
Matt Edgeworth
3 Scratching the surface: reassembling an archaeology in and of
the present 44
Rodney Harrison
4 From excavation to archaeological X-Files 56
Dawid Kobialka
5 Digging alternative archaeologies 67
Cristóbal Gnecco
6 Evestigation, nomethodology and deictics: movements in
un-disciplining archaeology 79
Alejandro Haber
7 Archaeology and photography: a pragmatology 89
Michael Shanks and Connie Svabo
8 New cultural landscapes: archaeological method as artistic practice 103
Bárbara Fluxá
v
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Contents
II
Time 115
9 The business of archaeology is the present 117
Laurent Olivier
10 Which archaeology? A question of chronopolitics 130
Christopher Witmore
11 The politics of periodization 145
Charles E. Orser, Jr
12 Change, individuality and reason, or how archaeology has legitimized a
patriarchal modernity 155
Almudena Hernando
13 Indigeneity and time: towards a decolonization of archaeological temporal
categories and tools 168
Gustavo Verdesio
14 Enacted multi-temporality: the archaeological site as a shared,
performative space 181
Yannis Hamilakis and Efthimis Theou
III
Heritage 195
15 The New Heritage and re-shapings of the past 197
Cornelius Holtorf and Graham Fairclough
16 The archaeological gaze 211
Gabriel Moshenska
17 In the shade of Frederick Douglass: the archaeology of Wye House 220
Mark P. Leone, Amanda Tang, Benjamin A. Skolnik and Elizabeth Pruitt
18 Ruin memory: a hauntology of Cape Town 233
Nick Shepherd
19 A thoroughly modern park: Mapungubwe, UNESCO and
Indigenous Heritage 244
Lynn Meskell
20 Days in Hong Kong, May 2011 258
Denis Byrne
vi
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Contents
21 The charter’d Thames 272
Sefryn Penrose
IV
Materiality 287
22 The return of what? 289
Bjørnar Olsen
23 Inside is out: an epistemology of surfaces and substances 298
Paul Graves­Brown
24 Fragments as something more: archaeological experience and reflection 311
Mats Burström
25 Bringing a place in ruins back to life 323
Gastón Gordillo
26 Cutting the earth/cutting the body 337
Douglass Bailey
27 Archaeological remains of oil-based urbanity 346
Camilo José Vergara
Concluding thoughts 353
28 Milieux de mémoire 355
Martin Hall
Index 367
vii
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List of figures
10.1 A Caterpillar 950E razes structures in Qurna, Egypt 133
10.2 Photo of a stretch of trapezoidal wall below the Apostolos Gatsos Municipal
Library in Ermioni, Greece from the north 136
10.3 A trapezoidal wall conspires with a fishing net, weights and fishing hooks, metal
ladder, water pipes, a washbasin, water dispenser, liquid soap, hand mirror
(formerly a rear-view car mirror), rubbish bin, various liquid containers, a hand
broom, a volunteer fig tree, stone tile, seven plastic storage crates, a grape vine,
rear dividing wall, a shade tree, numerous nails, an array of fasteners set in between
the joints of the blocks, metal implements, a tin-covered roof, the door jamb of
the rear door to the house 136
15.1 Uses of heritage requiring the management of change: the Roman wall of Ljubljana
(Iulia (A)emona) 200
15.2 New uses for old terraces: remains of the past embedded in everyday life-worlds
of the present, Samos 203
15.3 The New Heritage includes fictionalized heritage championed by contemporary
visitors. The image shows the final page of Ystad’s guide for fans of Inspector
Wallander 205
15.4 Everyday heritage for sale: a more inclusive narrative? 207
17.1 Poster for events surrounding the dedication of the first statue to Frederick
Douglass on Maryland’s Eastern Shore 222
17.2 Fossilized pollen like those found at Wye House, showing vegetation used in the
nineteenth century 224
17.3 Diagram showing the process used to locate a pair of slave quarters at Wye House 229
19.1 Cultural heritage guide Allie Chauke at Mapungubwe Hill 247
19.2 Apartheid era military graffiti at the Confluence site, Mapungubwe National Park 248
19.3 Workers’ housing for Samaria farms inside Mapungubwe National Park 250
19.4 Interviewing the Sematla family who still live within the park 253
19.5 Meeting with the Vhatwanamba at the Royal Kraal, near Thoyandou 254
20.1 Street scene in the Mid Levels 261
20.2 The clock at the old Bank of China 263
20.3 The old Bank of China loading dock from inside the plaza of the Hong Kong
Shanghai Bank 265
20.4 A public housing estate in Shek Kip Mei 268
20.5 Location of the telephone booth in Days of Being Wild, Conduit Road 270
21.1 Free Trade Wharf, June 2011 275
21.2 Sustrans Thames Bridge 276
viii
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Figures
21.3 The Millennium Dome partially obscured by aggregate at the Victoria Deep
Water Terminal, June 2011 278
21.4 Beckton gasworks following the assault on Huê´, 1987 280
21.5 Chinese mitten crab from the Thames 282
21.6 Container shipping at Tilbury Docks, June 2011 283
23.1 A glass hammer 303
24.1 The Laocoön and His Sons 312
24.2 Henry Fuseli, The Artist Overwhelmed by the Grandeur of Antique Ruins, 1778–1779 315
24.3 Constantin Brancusi, ‘Fragments of a Torso’, 1910 317
24.4 John Kindness, ‘Scraping the Surface’, 1990 320
25.1 Southeast Salta 325
25.2 The old plaza of Piquete de Anta, 2003 327
25.3 ‘This was what the town must have looked like.’ Piquete de Anta the day before
the procession, September 2006 330
25.4 The procession for the Lord and the Virgin of the Miracle 332
25.5 Celebrating gaucho geographies: gauchos on parade at the end of the procession 333
27.1 1418 Fallon St. Philadelphia, 2005/Broadway at Chelton St., Camden, 2003 347
27.2 Broadway and Lester Terrace, Camden, 2007/E158 St. by 3rd Ave., Bronx, 1978 348
27.3 Eagle and Westchester Aves, Bronx, 1970/interior of Rio Piedras Theater,
Broadway at Stocton, Brooklyn, 1996 349
27.4 Livernois Ave. at Joy, Detroit, 1999/South Bronx, 1970 350
27.5 St Ann’s Ave. at E161 St., South Bronx, 1994/SW corner of 8th Ave. and Addams,
Gary, Indiana, 1997 351
27.6 Taylor St. at Arthington, Chicago, 1988/view along Blake Ave. towards Junius
St., Brooklyn, 1991 352
ix
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