Subplenary Session: The Location of Theory
Session II: Territories of Difference:

Sunday, May 2nd
9:00 am-12:30 pm

Session Organizers: Omur Harmansah (Brown University) and Nick Shepherd (University of Capetown)

Session Abstract: This session intends to follow up on the debate opened at the Plenary Session on “the location of theory” in the world of archaeological practice. Through the investigation of in-depth case studies and perspectives from around the world, we hope to offer new reflections on the political economy of knowledge production in archaeology in the context of rethinking coloniality and modernity. Drawing on the text of the abstract for the plenary session, we invite papers that investigate the various ways in which archaeological theories of the center have “landed”, re-interpreted, hybridized or been generated by locally situated archeologies. What kinds of debates and theory-making have taken place in response to local priorities, interests, pressures? How do these situate themselves in relation to metropolitan theory: as resistant forms (forms of counter-theory), or as conversations with it? Studies of the involvement of archaeologists in the micro-politics of the various localities they work in can offer valuable insights into situated fieldwork practices, while attempts to see the emergent impact of located archaeologies on central disciplinary discourses are especially encouraged.

9:00: Omur Harmansah (Brown University) and Nick Shepherd (University of Capetown): Introduction
9:05: Yannis Hamilakis (University of Southampton, UK): Learning from Pre-modern Archaeologies
9:35: Stella Katsarou-Tzeveleki (Hellenic Ministry of Culture & University of the Aegean): The ‘Location of Theory’ in Greek Archaeology
10:00: Emma Libonati (Worcester College, University of Oxford): "In-between” in Ptolemaic Egypt: Considering Post-Colonial Theory and Ptolemaic and Roman Statuary from the Underwater City of Canopus, Egypt
10:30: Coffee break
11:00: Jamal Barghouth and Waleed Rimawi (Palestinian Institution for Cultural Landscape Study Almashhad): Ordering the Knowledge of Space in the Palestinian Archaeology during the Early Iron Age
11:25: Mazen Iwais (Palestinian Institution for Cultural Landscape Study): The Location of Theory in Palestinian Archaeology
11:50: Stephen H. Lekson (University of Colorado at Boulder): The Location of Theory in North American Archaeology
12:15: Discussion

1. Learning from Pre-modern Archaeologies

Yannis Hamilakis (University of Southampton, UK)

In recent years, the links between archaeology and modernity have been explored in the number of publications and debates. However interesting and fruitful this discussion may be, it is carried out within a framework that assumes both a linear, progressive and developmental/evolutionist narrative for the discipline, and a singular notion of modernity and of archaeology. In this paper, I make a distinction instead between the modernist, professional and institutionalised archaeology (which, much like modernity, can adopt diverse forms and expressions), and what I call pre-modern archaeologies: local/vernacular discourses and practices involving things from another time. Without attempting to romanticise, idealise or exoticise these practices, I will nevertheless attempt to show (based on folk tales, travel writing, and the practice of spolia) that they constitute an alternative engagement with materiality and temporality which can teach us a great deal: they can inform current thinking on the embodied and sensuous perception of matter and time, and, especially when they come into contact and often into clash with colonial and national archaeological practices, they can help us re-examine or even throw into doubt our own, long-held modernist archaeological assumptions.

2. The ‘Location of Theory’ in Greek Archaeology

Stella Katsarou-Tzeveleki (Hellenic Ministry of Culture & University of the Aegean)

Greek archaeology constitutes an interesting case-study of how a local archaeology responds to the ‘universal’ discourse on archaeological theory. Situated in an archaeologically favoured region of the world, it began to acquire scientific substance very early on, with the authoritative dynamic of self-sufficiency giving it a privileged role in the propagation of intellectual ideals in western societies. However, during the 20th century it was beginning to see its influence waning and its interventions less readily accepted, given that the aims and priorities of global archaeological discourse had for some time been set by pioneering post-classicist and post-modern Anglo-American leads. In relation to this contemporary global archaeological dialectic, Greek archaeology, as a general resultant of the diverse institutional and exo-institutional bodies that undertake academic and practical archaeological activity conducted in Greece, is, rather, going through a period of non-correspondence, the very opposite of the positive or negative correspondences to the ‘Central Theory of Archaeology’, as defined by this conference, that may appear in other local archaeologies around the world.

Greek archaeology instead prefers to operate within an autonomous framework of priorities, independent of and not engaging with the ‘central’ structure, but rather following its own agenda. This agenda is entrenched within three fundamental contexts: ethnocentrism, administrative-bureaucratic action, and the practice of a traditional, positivist, typo- and chrono-comparative study. All three have their roots in the deep past of Greek archaeology, and have fostered within it an arrogance and a false self-assurance that are so powerful that they marginalize any attempt to renew its aims, and smother any possibility of replenishment with broader alternative ideologies. As a result, Greek archaeology appears to be so static as to be fossilised, as well as hopelessly introverted, entirely absorbed with essentialist priorities and entirely remote from the contemporary ideological challenges that set social goals for the sciences: it is no accident that in Greece archaeology remains outside the society.

If, as is quite possible, Greek archaeology is not alone in following an independent course, but shares this orientation with other local ‘old-world’ archaeologies that have similar national-essentialist roots and priorities (e.g. some Mediterranean countries), this could cast doubt on the extent to which, in the end, ‘Archaeological Theory’ (in the singular) is central and sovereign, there being a parallel, dynamic multi-national trend that is not simply on its margins but ignores it completely.

This paper attempts to demonstrate the widening gap between Greek archaeology and the continuously brainstorming world of archaeological theory, the need to re-examine its unaltered, inherited priorities and to redefine its aims, not in order to deconstruct and replace its essentialist components, but to actualise them in relation to the processes of the continuous evolution and renegotiation of scientific goals that takes place within the global community. I would like, with this contribution, to add my voice to all the other individual voices that are suppressed by the majority of the conservative institutional world of Greek archaeology, in the hope of sparking a dynamic movement of debate and national dialogue that will boldly lead Greek archaeology out of the impasse of a-theoretical empiricism and hellenocentric priorities, and towards the initiation of creative anthropocentric and social roles.

3. "In-between” in Ptolemaic Egypt: Considering Post-Colonial Theory and Ptolemaic and Roman Statuary from the Underwater City of Canopus, Egypt

Emma Libonati (Worcester College, University of Oxford)

In this paper I will consider some of the prevailing ways of “reading” material culture from Ptolemaic Egypt, specifically applying Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of the ‘inbetween’ state that exists in cultural environments either impacted by outside cultural or political hegemony. Bhabha eschews political difference as a totalitarian object, and reveals negotiation as a translation: that is, an imperfect reordering of the signification system. Bhabha’s point is that teleological models for the reading of culture do not necessarily work in an environment that is constantly bending and warping influences from outsider hegemonies while still keeping aspects of its own cultural uniqueness. The co-existence of representational systems in Ptolemaic Egypt of the Egyptian hardstone statuary and the marble “Greek-style” have long been studied as a type of representational binary but can contemporary post-colonial theory show different ways to examine these statues and consider the agency involved in the choice of representational styles? Some pieces of newly excavated statuary from the underwater city of Canopus will be used to explore some of Bhabha’s concepts since they have a strong archaeologist provenance and demonstrate nuanced cultural, religious, and political negotiations between hegemonies.

4. Ordering the Knowledge of Space in the Palestinian Archaeology During the Early Iron Age

Jamal Barghouth and Waleed Rimawi (Palestinian Institution for Cultural Landscape Study (Almashhad))

This paper attempts to trace the ordering of spatial knowledge in Palestinian archaeology during the Early Iron age, by investigating the intellectual origins of archaeology in the modern Western thought and how they materialize in the production of space of Palestinian archaeology.

Between 1800 and 1917, through a combination of comparative literature and cartographic technologies, geographers attempted to restore the Biblical sacred spaces to their physical locations in Palestine. This process contributed to the production of to-scale maps of biblical archaeological sites throughout Palestine. During the period from 1917 to 1970, archaeological excavations selectively focused on Biblical layers, while conducting several archaeological surveys of urban Biblical sites in Palestine. This process reinforced the materialization of spatial knowledge in 1800-1917, since the archaeologists tried to trace archaeologically the spatial formation of settlements and the distribution of Israelite tribes during the Early Iron Age based on traditional Biblical narratives of conquest.

From 1970 onwards, the processes of ordering spatial knowledge in Palestinian archaeology are still dominated by processual archaeological theory even in the regional surveys or excavations. Furthermore both excavations and surveys are still conducted based on the regional - geographical divisions in the Bible. These surveys and excavations aimed to find solution for the interpretative problem of the conquest model for Israelite tribes during Early Iron age. Since the results of excavations at urban sites did not support the spatial/biblical narrative of conquest theory of the Israelites tribes. Actually the processually oriented regional surveys contributed further to the problem of the appearance of Israelite tribes during Early Iron Age, for their hypothetico-deductive model involving the indigenous-foreigner, the nomad-sedentary dichotomies, and displacement models, which are still based on the spatial narrative of the Bible. This trade aimed to consent and harmonize a settlement distribution of Early Iron age in Palestine within the biblical narrative .

This paper presents a landscape approach to expose the hidden space of subaltern culture during Early Iron Age in Palestine, and to explore the social construction of spatial relations in landscape. Instead of treating space as a container for biblical events according to Biblical narratives, as evident in contemporary archaeological literature, our paper points to a spatial turn in archaeology, from macro-spatial perspectives into micro-spatial perspectives.

5. The Location of Theory in Palestinian Archaeology

Mazen Iwais (Palestinian Institution for Cultural Landscape Study)

Archaeology is a distinct form of Western intellectual culture (Glock 1985: 464), non-Western contributions in ancient near East are still limited or can be described as a fundamental. Palestine does not constitute an exceptional case, most of the evolutions of archeology in Palestine derive from western scholars, for example, the results of Flinders Petrie excavations, stratigraphy, and classifications of material culture from Tell el-Hessi in southern Palestine, Kathleen Kenyon excavations in Tell el-Sultan, William F. Albright, G. Ernst Right; William Dever, etc. in addition, Western interpretation results and literature of archaeology in Palestine are considered as paradigms on both theoretical and praxis level.

This paper is an attempt to reconsider (reevaluate) the location of theory in Palestinian archaeology from Albert E. Glock until the present time, (Glock was research professor at the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem from 1970 to 1977, and director of the Institute from 1978 to 1980. Glock was appointed as professor of archaeology at Birzeit University in 1976, and he was the head of the Institute of Archaeology there until his murder in 1992. The Institute is the first program in archaeology at a Palestinian university). The argument is to investigate Glock attempts to build Palestinian institution of archaeology, and to investigate his interpretations, terms and literature in the archaeology of Palestine.

6. The Location of Theory in North American Archaeology

Stephen H. Lekson (University of Colorado at Boulder)

Archaeology is at home in many disciplines: classics, history, art history, religious studies, among others. But in the USA, North American archaeology is anthropology or-famously-it is nothing. The alliance of archaeology with anthropology has been both productive and problematic. The foundational theories of 1gth century American anthropology-specifically, Lewis Henry Morgan's-were (benignly) racist and (paternally) colonial: devaluing accomplishments of ancient Native civilizations through the pretext of normalizing (and thereby nationalizing) Midwestern "Moundbuilders" and Southwestern "Aztecs." Carried fonruard, those principals shed their overt racism; but through superposition of denser and denser layers of theory, antique theories became bedrock premises, deep below our thinking-unacknowledged and unquestioned. I argue that the theoretical basis of American anthropological archaeology is fundamentally flawed; the a prioi limits imposed by Morgan are now a "glass ceiling" hanging over the ancient civilizations of North America. Archaeology might be better served by escaping the discipline of American anthropology, and redefining itself (and the ancient societies we study) as history. I illustrate these conclusions with reference to the local research histories (and "pre-histories") of Chaco Canyon in New Mexico and Cahokia in lllinois.