Archaeological Ambulations: Integrative Approaches to Movement

Saturday, May 1st
2:30-6:00 pm

Session Organizers: Bradley Sekedat (Brown University) and Oscar Aldred (University of Iceland)

Session Abstract: Questions of movement have started to pervade many of archaeology's discourses: on place, space, time, agency, identity and diaspora, society and the social. Attempts to address movement have heretofore been unsuccessful in their implicit acceptance of structural dichotomies such as people/thing, body/mind, movement/pause, permanence/impermanence, etc. Movement for us, however, transcends these dichotomies, and is not only situated in the body, but in the world around; like the body, it continues to transform and age - it is constantly on the move. As such, movement implies both space and time - both wandering and transformation. In this session we seek to fully explore movement through an understanding that the flows of movement not only cross these boundaries but integrate them. We invite papers that aim to 'keep the ball rolling' by exploring the spatial, temporal, human and non-human dimensions of movement in the patterning, timing and causation of co-presence in its materialized traces.

2:30: Bradley Sekedat (Brown University) and Oscar Aldred (University of Iceland): Introductory remarks
2:40: John W. Stephenson (Appalachian State University): Processional Spaces and Theatrical Effects in the Late Roman Villa
3:00: Noach Vander Beken (University of Heidelberg (Germany)): Walk and Perform to Understand the Minoan Palaces as Theatres for Social Interaction
3:20: Sarah Craft (Brown University): Being on the Road: Paths as Places, Journeys as Events
3:40: Christine N. Reiser (Brown University): Routes of Connection: Archaeological Perspectives on Community, Place, and Movement
4:00: Coffee break
4:30: Oscar Aldred (University of Iceland): Archaeology and the Illusions of Mobility
4:50: Bradley M. Sekedat (Brown University): Mines without Borders: Movement, Material and Diffuse Boundaries of Place
5:15: Kevin McHugh (Arizona State University): Discussion

Abstracts and Participants:

Archaeology and the Illusions of Mobility

Oscar Aldred (Department of Archaeology, University of Iceland)

This paper is about the movements that take place with respect to archaeology: a collective term for all things archaeological, for example as practice, theory, materials (objects and things), and its relationalities. By focusing on a practical landscape archaeology study of one area in Iceland (Vatnsfjör•ur, north west Iceland) and its six hundred or so cairns (multi-functional sites, including waymarkers), I reveal some of the illusory states of the ‘archaeological reality’ that are created in establishing tired and old dichotomies, and offer some thoughts with respect to movement and mobility; not only in terms of Bergson’s absolute movement as a change of place, or relative movement in relation to other things less mobile, but also his real movement which is having real cause to move in a force of motion. In retracing the mobile practices along paths of significance and observation, I will examine the types of absolute, relative, and real movements that take place during fieldwork, indicating movement’s important relationship with both practice and theory in the production of archaeological interpretations. As such, a major consideration in this paper is the enveloping of space-time-movement in the call for a relational, or at the very least, a ‘flat’ ontology in which the evidence of our study is fully immersed in the interpretations we make. This addresses three concerns: the affordances relating to what is left from materialised movements; the way in which archaeologists attend to these as movement materialising; and the way in which relations define these sets of conditions and situations.

Being on the Road: Paths as Places, Journeys as Events

Sarah Craft (Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, Brown University)

If movement means not staying in one place, then how does movement fit into a discussion of place? This paper will explore the role of movement along roads as a constitutive event in itself, moving forward (!) from a perspective of movement along roads, whether short- or long-term, as simply a time-consuming, necessary evil in reaching a ‘final’ location. I will argue that both cognition and locomotion play important roles in every person’s understanding of place, present and past, and in doing so attempt to reveal the ways in which they can enhance our understanding of how people experience their movements along paths in the landscape. Drawing upon a case study from the Avkat Archaeological Project in north-central Turkey, using the results from both intensive and extensive archaeological survey, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analysis, I will explore how an understanding of roads, and the movement along them, is an important facet of investigation of the historical particularities of a place and the people who moved to, from and within it.

Routes of Connection: Archaeological Perspectives on Community, Place, and Movement

Christine N. Reiser (Department of Anthropology, Brown University)

Phenomenological treatments of community and identity have emphasized how being-in-the-world attachments to place and landscape are critical elements in sustaining social relations through time. Consequently, there has been a considerable tendency “to assume that a rooted, familiar sense of place requires staying put,” as Barbara Bender points out. In New England, this has been particularly manifest in the bias of U.S. Federal courts toward recognizing viable Native „communities‟ as only those in which individuals reside together. Expressing ties to place and landscape, however, does not demand that a person or group be bound by locality, or by being „in place.‟ As we seek to better understand how growing numbers of “people on the move” maintain connections to one another and to place, archaeological insights into material-spatial practices of movement and connection offer important contributions.

This paper considers how movement figured centrally in sustaining community ties and attachments to place among New England Native communities in the 18th and 19th centuries. It focuses on the patterns of connection among Native communities distributed widely over space in Connecticut, exploring the ways that movements of people, objects, ideas, and place attachments facilitated a continuing sense of community. Rather than upholding that communities were fractured when ties to place were disrupted, this paper explores how grouphood was maintained through practices built simultaneously around rootedness and movement. Attention to movement in this context adds to adds to archaeological interests in understanding place and placelessness, rootedness and dislocation, and the effects of mobility on social configurations over space-time.

Mines Without Borders: Movement, Material and Diffuse Boundaries of Place

Bradley M. Sekedat (Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, Brown University)

This paper deals with movement as it pertains to the equally fluid concept of ‘place’. Much scholarship on place regards it as location specific, with stories and shared experiences grounding them with a sense of what and where they are. The result is a world filled with interconnected locations, each with determinable limits. Places, however, are never static, often witnessing people, materials and animals come and go at different speeds. Where something is, then, always changes in conjunction with the movement that weaves through it. From this perspective, place comprises movement and, moreover, defies simple characterization.

This paper presents a critical examination of the application of archaeological site types to past landscapes, arguing that the movement inherent in place causes the boundaries between places and practices to become diffuse. By examining a series of mines on southern Attica, Greece, that were operational throughout classical antiquity, this paper will demonstrate how the character of place begins with movement. An analysis of how the mine’s materials moved through and beyond the site, as well as how the laborers who procured this material commuted from nearby towns, will demonstrate how places are not limited to their immediate sense of dwelling, but rather continually move in conjunction with the movement of materials and the flow of time.

Processional Spaces and Theatrical Effects in the Late Roman Villa

John W. Stephenson (Appalachian State University)

A series of innovations appear in late Roman villas that serve to engage the senses of the walking visitor. Corridors are more fully enclosed, lighting and views are restricted, additional thresholds and steps are introduced, and passages tend to meander extensively. These features served to activate the haptic sense of the body in ambulatory movement, and encouraged a delight and mystery in feeling temporarily lost. In the Spanish villa of Almenara de Adaja, a visitor would take nine turns and cover nearly 400 feet of dimly lit corridors before arriving at the principle dining hall. An inclined approach through the house from the entry ensured that the visitor would experience the approach in their own leg muscles, as a sort of ascending pilgrimage. Drawing from an approach to ritual space proposed by Lindsay Jones, I argue that the late Roman villa operated in a ‘theatrical mode,’ creating settings that enlist participants into a processionary movement, where the option of passivity is removed and onlookers become performers in a kinesthetic experience. Because the late Roman villa was increasingly the site of coercive interactions between patrons and clients, I argue that these design features intentionally stage the visitor’s perambulation as an architecturally abetted ritual meandering, one that produces a heightened state of receptivity before engagement in the focused rituals of the villa halls.

Walk and Perform to Understand The Minoan Palaces as Theatres for Social Interaction

Noach Vander Beken (University of Heidelberg (Germany))

In sociology there is a growing body of literature concerning boundaries, performance, and visibility. “Looking” to the Minoan Palaces through these concepts makes it possible to move away from a formalized approach to the Minoan built-environment and create a more sensible approach in that it lets us focus on two crucial aspects, namely the bodily movement in the form of processions and the visual experience of people. The function of images and built spaces was to create a meaningful environment that set the required structures for social interaction and communicated the ideologies underlying the reproduction of social reality and order. They strongly affected the lived-in world experiences and influenced every form of social interaction. This paper argues based on a case study of Knossos that the specific nature of the Palatial setting created a unique environment which was conductive to the production of asymmetric power relations and embodied normative notions of social power and authority. The use of the building in terms of regulating interaction and communication in the sense of crossing boundaries resulted in a conceptual understanding between ‘us’ and ‘them’. The presented evidence pleads for the acceptance that architecture and iconography are expressive media, whereby the builders exploit the layers of facade, interior and structure, as a medium for expression. Relying on this, the task of the Minoan archaeologist is to reverse the construction process and to re-construct – on the basis of an integrative approach – the social concepts of reality from Minoan architectural and pictorial artifacts.

Discussant: Kevin McHugh (Arizona State University)