Unfortunately, I am unable in the limited available space to do justice to the perceptive and thoughtful critiques offered by the four commentators. There is too much ground to cover and there are too many venues to negotiate. While I wish to defend my position, I also wish to use this opportunity to keep this discussion going. It would be unfortunate if the exchange of views presented here led each position towards entrenchment and mutual exclusion. Thus, instead of providing a counterreaction to the objections raised, I will try to use these objections as leverage to pry deeper into the matters at stake. I do so with the hope that this will contribute to further discussion on matters that we all hold dear.
Because Edgeworth and I are in broad agreement on most of the key issues, I will set his commentary aside and focus on those offered by Lucas, Witmore and Harris, which pose significant challenges to my line of thinking. With the hope that I am not doing them too great an injustice, I will attempt to focus on what I take to be their principal objection to my arguments and then proceed to ponder briefly the nature of the difference between our views. After doing so, I will articulate the three basic arguments in support of my proposition.
I will begin with Witmore. For despite appearances, I think we are not as far apart as our rhetoric suggests. Witmore's response is largely a defence of individual things, self-contained entities and their specificity in the face of my promotion of a large-scale environmental object – the archaeological. He feels that I deny smaller objects their autonomy, render them derivative and reduce them to the settings in which they are incorporated. I do not think, however, that this is so. The individual entities Witmore is concerned with precede the social/archaeological distinction, and far from being reduced by this distinction, they are expanded. The matter at hand is one of part–whole relations and the capacity of multiple elements to assemble into a larger comprehensive entity, which is not reducible to its parts (Polanyi Reference Polanyi1966; DeLanda Reference DeLanda2006). To argue that the archaeological/social distinction reduces the objects involved is like arguing that life functions studied by biologists reduce chemical reactions and physical forces. We are speaking here of different levels of reality. Life functions can be studied by exploring the chemical and physical processes they contain, but chemistry and physics can never grasp life. Similarly, we can study the archaeological and the social by exploring the individual self-contained objects incorporated in them, but neither the social nor the archaeological will emerge from these analyses when all we see are individual entities.
It seems, therefore, that Witmore and I differ primarily in the scale of our principal object of enquiry. While Witmore prefers to focus on specifiable entities, appreciating their self-contained being, autonomy, impact and relations, I prefer to focus on the large-scale comprehensive entities that they form collectively. The archaeological and social are two basic kinds of way in which such entities converge. I do not think, therefore, that the archaeological/social distinction undermines in any way Witmore's and others’ attempt to appreciate things; if anything, it adds to it.
These comments, I think, also go some way to appease Harris, who felt that my preoccupation with the archaeological denies relationality and process. It seems inevitable to me that one will move between objects and relations. For to study an object is to explore its relations; to study relations is to explore the objects that participate in them (Fowler and Harris Reference Fowler and Harris2015). And indeed, a close look at the object of concern – the archaeological – will show that its constitution is relational: once through its opposition to the social and once through the numerous elements that compose it.
However, relationality need not be processual, and Harris is correct that my approach is largely atemporal and, therefore, object-oriented. Does this mean that I deny that objects are historical or that the world is contingent and plastic (McDonald Reference McDonald2012)? No. Despite appearances, I am not concerned with allocating ontological priority to objects over processes. Whether we begin with one or the other depends on what it is we are after; and indeed, an object-oriented approach is already implied in the question posed at the beginning of the paper: what is the archaeological object? Moreover, as Edgeworth's response illustrates, the archaeological can be studied processually: how it forms, expands, transforms and exerts an influence on other parts of the world, etc. But for this we must already have an idea of the archaeological. We can explore in great detail how various objects assemble and disassemble, but if we are to appreciate this process we also need to be able to say what they assemble into and what they disassemble from.
Thus, insofar as I read Witmore's and Harris's principal concerns correctly, I do not think our differences are irreconcilable. Lucas's objection, however, is a different matter. For Lucas it makes no sense to divorce the archaeological from the social, because the archaeological is social, which is, of course, the exact opposite of what I claim. As he put it elsewhere, ‘we clearly cannot even talk about the archaeological record without presupposing some kind of privileging of the human; the presence of humans is what defines the archaeological and separates it from, say, the geological or palaeontological record’ (Lucas Reference Lucas2012, 260). I agree, and this is why I continued using the concept of culture, pointing to a necessary human element. Could we be talking about the same thing? I think the answer is yes and no. Yes, because Lucas uses the notion of ‘social’ in a very broad sense, which I believe is similar to what I have in mind when I speak of ‘culture’, namely all human-related objects, patterns and phenomena. No, because I endorse a distinction that Lucas denies.
At bottom, as Lucas also observed, we are responding to a similar concern, but we do so in opposed ways. It can be formulated as follows. Archaeology engages empirically with objects, entities and settings that are on many accounts concrete consequences of human action, but are nevertheless non-human and often completely divorced from active social settings. For Lucas, I think, to understand this means to keep an eye on the remaining irreducible, even if indirect, human presence, to emphasize the link; for me, on the other hand, it means to keep them apart. We are responding to different aspects of the same thing.
I will try to illustrate this with reference to waste disposal and landfills. Some time ago Lucas suggested that rubbish, especially those items consigned to bins and landfills, are deconstituted material culture; whatever individuality and social identity specific objects had, they are lost once turned into rubbish, collected in a designated facility and removed from the social system (Lucas Reference Lucas2002). For me, however, the designation ‘rubbish’ is itself a particular social constitution that harbours a demand for removal or disposal; it is still part of the functioning social system. These objects and materials become socially deconstituted when also the concept of rubbish no longer applies, when the imperative of exclusion/removal that is encapsulated in this designation has been satisfied. A landfill, therefore, is a consequence of materials being designated ‘waste’ or ‘rubbish’. But once removed and buried, they are something else, something for which none of our social designations apply. It is this alterity that is captured by the archaeological. Thus, while Lucas retains the link with the social via negation (deconstitution), I prefer to emphasize detachment via affirmation (the archaeological).
It seems to me that while this difference is irreconcilable, it is also complementary. We simply give priority to different aspects of the same condition. This is a wonderful example of what Goodman (Reference Goodman1978) calls worldmaking, demonstrating contrasting aspects of reality. As humanists we may revel in the plurality that emerges from this discussion; we should celebrate the manner in which the archaeological gaze multiplies the world like optical illusion paintings that produce incommensurable images on a single canvas. But this is the luxury of suspended reflection. If we are to do archaeology, we will have to make a choice. Like a spectator of an optical illusion painting, we can only shift our attention from one image to another; we will not perceive all at the same time. We will have to choose the one image we feel most strongly about and explore it in greater detail, while relinquishing others (or allowing them to recede into the background). Thus, if I am to realize my goal of understanding the archaeological, other realities will have to be set aside: processes, social meanings, single entities, etc. The question at hand, therefore, is not in the realm of right or wrong, truth or falseness. Rather it is in the realm of purposes, ends and goals: what is it that we hope to accomplish? Or, to put it more blatantly, which of these is likely to offer us the greatest (scholarly) returns and gains?
There are a number of points that support my argument. First, it is the road not taken. Notwithstanding its transformations and development, archaeology always conceived its object socially, in the broad sense of the term. The possibility that the numerous processes and objects involved constitute something different and distinct is severely underexplored. In fact, it points to a considerable epistemological void. For even if we agreed that the archaeological is real and distinct, which we clearly do not, we still have very few terms and concepts to describe what it is and to indicate its principal qualities. Is not recognizing such conceptual lacunae and working to fill them among our professional obligations?
Second, it is likely to contribute to archaeology on scientific and disciplinary grounds. Contrary to Witmore's reading, I am not promoting science as opposed to or divorced from the humanities, nor as something hard as opposed to soft. Rather, science is an attitude and an enterprise that is founded on the humanities, the only field of scholarship capable of formulating the relevant goals and standards. Indeed, science presupposes metaphysics, and metaphysics is the business of the humanities. Also unlike Harris's impression, I do not view science as equivalent to positivism or empiricism in any strict sense. Science is evoked as a standard and an ideal, as a principle to direct and guide our practice. By science I mean the aspiration to achieve solid, valid and certified knowledge; science that observes, engages and manipulates the world in order to understand it better. Good science, to my mind, is also one that knows its limits, that can tell where it can and cannot go, acknowledging the point when it moves from solid and responsible conjectures to educated guesswork. Unlike the past or a broad concept of society that cannot react directly to what we say about them, the archaeological is sufficiently present and concrete to resist our claims and formulations; this, I think, is key. On the disciplinary side, I think that capitalizing on the archaeological in the way I propose also carries the capacity to better define and claim our standing among other fields. Being distinct is not the same as being insular; it only means that our capital and authority are well delineated, and this does much to define the contribution we offer. A scholarly field is also constituted and appreciated by the place it carves out for itself.
Last is the issue of the service we provide the wider public. It is important to recognize that in many respects the academic and public spheres are incommensurable; they have different loyalties, principles and objectives. The public sphere entails matters of citizenship, human rights, equality and social regulations; the academic sphere is dedicated to the production of certified knowledge, comprehension and clear thought. While it is a tenuous relationship, academia serves the public – clarifying complex matters, complicating oversimplified ones, offering new concepts and ideas – and the public supports academia, financially but also morally. Thus for this relationship to work properly academia must remain autonomous and distinct, withholding its own unique professional standards: freedom of enquiry, universalism, organized scepticism, etc. (Merton Reference Merton1942; Ziman Reference Ziman2000). As scholarly practice becomes informed by public discourse, however good the intentions may be, the mutual benefits are compromised in the long run. Universalism gives way to particularism, clarity gives way to interested thought, curiosity gives way to utilitarianism. Consequently, the public recieves poorer service, which eventually results in lack of faith and reluctance to support academia. This is a slippery slope and I suspect we may be farther down it than we think.
The rise of the concept of ‘post-truth’ is a glaring warning sign. It denotes the recession of careful and balanced reasoning (that is supposed to be) exemplified by academia in favour of more emotionally charged, confused and short-sighted thinking. It is a sign of mistrust in academic institutions and scholarly thought, a mistrust I suspect we rightfully earned. If this condition is to be rectified, the scientific community must demonstrate that it can generate valuable ideas and concepts without throwing in the mix ideological positions, however justified, that belong in the public sphere. ‘Post-truth’ is a challenge thrown at academia and one to which I think it is crucial we respond. My argument is, therefore, not for the depoliticization of science, but for engagement in a particular form of political action that takes the scientific ethos seriously and insists on the productive role of scholarship in a liberal democratic society. I am less concerned here about how politicians and interested groups may use the past and other archaeological claims; I am principally worried about our capacity and justification to resist them, to pull away the mask of scientific validity that they adorn themselves with.
I will stop here. There is a great deal that is left unanswered and much more to be said. But I hope the somewhat provisional remarks offered here will help keep this discussion going. I am grateful for the excellent and provocative comments offered; they certainly got me thinking in many interesting ways. I hope the readers of this discussion will benefit from it as well.
