In his work ‘Humanness as performance’, John C. Barrett criticizes the old but yet influential perspectives in archaeological practice in which the materials of the past are viewed as a fossilized record of past human behaviour (e.g. Binford 1962; 1981; Childe 1956) or even as text to be read (referring particularly to Saussurean semiotics; e.g. Hodder 1986; Patrik 1985; Tilley 1990). This is due to the active role of human agency being ignored or hardly considered in these perspectives, despite an active role of individuals and of how material culture has been, and remains to be, emphasized in post-processual archaeology (e.g. Hodder 1992), in which Saussurean semiotics was adopted in its early phase.

Barrett also notes that, although symmetrical archaeology or flat ontology, which becomes influenced by actor–network theory (ANT), stresses the importance of symmetrical relations between humans and materials (e.g. Alberti 2016; Harman 2018; Holbraad 2009; Olsen 2003, 2010; Olsen and Witmore 2015; Olsen et al. 2012; Witmore 2007; 2014), it fails to explore these relations in any depth in archaeological practice and to care about how it would be possible, should it be the case. Notably, the argument of symmetrical archaeology is that archaeological interpretation hitherto seems ‘too anthropocentric’ and that material itself is paid relatively less attention. Thus, archaeology needs to be seen as a discipline of things. There is a need for archaeology to focus more on the ‘things’ and to examine how objects construct the subject, and vice versa.

Hodder, in 2014, made four observations regarding symmetrical archaeology, noting (1) that it tends to simplify the dynamic and dialectic relations between humans and things (i.e. dependence on food); (2) that these relationships can change over the time, for instance, between positive relationships and negative relationships with things; (3) that the flatness of the concept of network could distract our attention from social inequality; and (4) that the social network has a dimension of depth.

To compare Barrett’s critique with Hodder’s more theoretical critique, Barrett seems more focused on examining the main claims of symmetrical archaeology in terms of archaeological practice. His core argument is that archaeology is a discipline of traces of the conditions of possibilities, rather than a discipline of things, that aims to better understand how humans have existed as they lived amongst those things. He notes that symmetrical archaeology considers humanness as a single form of life or entity and that it endangers the archaeologist’s pursuit of this objective. He argues that it is crucially important to explore humanity or humanness in archaeological practice; this was historically created by its performance within relations between people, plants, animals and things, in which humanity or humanness was able to become identified and lived.

Barrett defines humanness as a variable kind of agency and performance as behaviour amongst things that was observed by others, and it is noteworthy that he uses humanity or humanness rather than agency, person (or personhood) and subject. It is assumable that he uses this concept intentionally and considerately for a few reasons: first, to incorporate agency, person, identity and subject into one concept to describe various aspects of human practice and, second, to avoid unnecessary misunderstandings provoked by the use of one concept or another or the inevitably limited definitions or meanings inherent to each concept. Humanness, according to Barrett, is the result of the particular enactment of life as it is lived, and it thus gains an understanding from its engagement with its environment. Also, it is through the body’s entanglements within these changing environments that different realities become disclosed. In particular, even the political (power) can be defined as being the force that constrained the movements of the individual’s body.

Barrett moreover points out that humans have lived according to the ways in which they have interpreted their entangled world. The material conditions which those bodies once inhabited are glimpsed by us today by means of the archaeology of their remains. He also argues that distinctions between people were constructed by being performed with reference to the form of the material and by their bodies’ locations amongst that material. Most simply, the distinctions between participants (of any event such as mortuary practice) could have been achieved by the orientation of their bodies relative to some resources, but the significance of those orientations had to be learnt. Finally, he asserts that there is a need for archaeology to build an understanding of how the relationships that once existed between human bodies and things have given rise to the historical conditions of humanness.

I agree with his arguments against the old doctrines, in which material is viewed as a fossilized record or text maintained by culture-historical, processual and early post-processual approaches and the relatively brand-new symmetrical archaeology. I also agree with the alternatives he suggests, such as Peircean semiotics and relational approaches between humanness and material, with emphasis that the human body is historically structuring, and structured by, material constraints (a view partly influenced by some phenomenological works such as Merleau-Ponty). I am also convinced of his views in that there is no space for any individual agent to get involved between the signifier and the signified. Saussure emphasized langue rather than parole, and that there is an arbitrary relation between the signifier and the signified (Saussure 1916 (1998)). This arbitrary relation could be accepted in word/text but not materials, as has been pointed out by Hodder (1992). In Peircian semiotics, however, the role of an interpretant is so important between representamen and object (Crossland 2014; Crossland and Bauer 2017; Peirce 1991).

The importance of ‘relation’ or ‘relational’ in our understanding of the world traces a long history, especially in the discipline of Philosophy. Although not drawing on archaeological materials, Wittgenstein argued that ‘the world is everything that is the case’ and ‘the world is a totality of the facts, not a thing’ (Wittgenstein 1922 (2001)). Saussure also mentioned that linguistic value is determined by its relation with other similar values (Saussure 1916 (1998), 117). As Heidegger argued (1978), a bridge is a manifestation of the fourfold which is at the base of all dwelling, and it collects and unites all aspects of the fourfold – earth, sky, mortals and divinities – into a thing. In this respect, Barrett’s claim on the emphasis on humanity (or humanness) and ‘relation’ and ‘relational’ between human body and material constraints, to me, is very persuasive and, thus, agreeable.

However, I would like to ask a few questions regarding Barrett’s ideas and arguments. First and foremost, I doubt if humanness itself can be originally separated from material or material constraints. This question also applies to symmetrical archaeology, in which, I sense, any actant (or actor) tends to exist as a bounded and thus, independent entity. Conversely, I believe that being human or becoming human cannot be separated from material constraints from the beginning. This is to say, although Barrett emphasizes humanness in relation to material constraints, I think that humans themselves cannot exist without material. There are two good cases regarding this: (1) philosophy of technology and (2) human subjectification. According to Kapp, a German philosopher who conceived the concept of philosophy of technology for the first time, tools and instruments can be regarded as different forms of (unconscious) organ projections of the human body, as in between the piano and the organ of Corti (i.e. an organ located in the inner ear). Thus, a technological object can be seen as an imitation of a human organ and its expression (Kapp 1877 (2015)). Heidegger’s well-known concepts, such as Dasein and ready-to-hand, can be also understood as describing an inseparable relation between humans (or humanness) and materials (Heidegger 1962).

Subject and subjectification have a long history of research in numerous disciplines. According to research on subject and subjectification based upon linguistic anthropology (e.g. Kockelman 2012), (1) the subject is defined as the spatial home of the body, which is situated, as composed of and by a federation of different discourses/persona, united and orchestrated by narrative, and as registered through a whole series of senses or an unstable, relational position of experience; (2) a place from which interpretations about the world are made; (3) subjectivity is considered as a representational capacity: say, the holding of intentional states such as belief and desire. It is noted that in Kockelman’s approach, agency is a causal capacity, selfhood is a reflexive capacity and personhood is a sociopolitical capacity. In my view, all individuals have ‘intention’ and the ‘power’ to subjectify themselves, which is mediated and accelerated by material constraints as well as discourse and narrative (of course, the latter would be mediated by the former in many cases), and human subjectification also occurs in the imaginary as well as the symbolic through body movement and body ornamentation as well as discourse based upon habitus, stock of knowledge and power. This would indicate that human subjectification is enabled over material constraints and also discourse and narratives, composed of material constraints. Such cases, in my opinion, tell us that humanity and humanness itself could be possible on the material constraints, and therefore, there is a need to gain a wider understanding of ways (or possibilities) of making humanness within a material environment and also to seek diverse ways (or possibilities) of forming humanness over/through material or of forming even our world through material rather than within the material given.

Barrett convincingly suggests that it is a matter of necessity to treat the residue as traces of the material constraints that had acted on the individual bodies during their engagements with, and reference to, other people and things to pursue humanity and humanness, which is historically created by its performances as behaviour amongst things that was observed by others. However, I ask here whether it would be possible to explore the humanity and humanness of the past by means of observing performance on the material constraints. It is certainly true that such a detailed and delicate observation/examination on performance with relation to material constraints would contribute to a better understanding of humanity and humanness. However, I feel that other factors – such as habitus incarnated into body or structural properties in memory or even stock of knowledge – which are inherited by memory and its negotiation between generation and which also become grounds for (historical) intersubjectivity and we-relation (Schutz and Luckmann 1973, 1983), are important. It is questionable whether the observation on performance within material constraints could be harmonized, conflicted and compromised with habitus, structural properties and stock of knowledge, and whether we can interpret the relations between those factors in archaeological practice.

Barrett also suggests a ‘bottom up’ approach rather than a ‘top down’ one, saying that history has always been made by diverse practices that are lived both temporally and spatially and also that history is a process that was created from the bottom up and from the accumulation of local performance. His approach, to me, seems so enlightened and feasible since most of archaeological interpretation on the past society so far tends to emphasize the centre, core, elite, ritual, etc., rather than the periphery, boundary, the commoner, daily life, etc. Moreover, as Barrett points out, it cannot be denied that numerous past societies have been categorized by simple and few criteria (as mentioned above) into several types of societies. I believe that it is so important to look closely into how power could be activated and exercised in actual situations in which the material would condition and/or enable human performance and, at the same time, humans would perform or leave the trace of possibilities of performance within those material constraints in various ways. However, I think his interest in humanness and performance does not necessarily mean that he would ignore ‘traditional issues’ in social archaeology. It is still important to understand the process of growing centrality, concentration of population, long distance exchange or trading systems to trigger the evolution of a past society and to maintain this. I feel that Barrett’s ‘bottom up’ approach could/should be pondered in archaeological practice and interpretation. However, this does not necessarily mean that history is only composed of this ‘micro-history’ or ‘bottom up’ approach. Therefore, it would be ideal if we could find more ways and routes to interlink these two different approaches harmoniously or even sometimes contradictorily.