Forwarded message from Jim Dixon <[log in to unmask]>:
Dear list members,
I am running a session at TAG in York, UK this December. I hope that some
CHAT list members will be interested in taking part. If so, please contact
me off-list as soon as possible. It's shaping up to be a great day.
Abstract follows:
Fragmenting Archaeology, or; Taking a leaf out of Shanks and Tilley’s book?
2007 marks twenty years since the publication of the Red and Black
Books, ‘Social Theory and Archaeology’ and ‘Re-Constructing Archaeology’ by
Michael Shanks and Christopher Tilley. They function as a benchmark for
1980s archaeological thought, yet when they were published they received a
somewhat mixed reception and still have their detractors. Still, they
remain important texts and are among the first encountered by undergraduate
students and those reading in archaeology from other disciplines.
Individual copies have their own lives too, and can be found in bags,
libraries, on our shelves: bought, perhaps given, read, kept or discarded.
Do these texts play a different role in archaeology twenty years on from
that in 1987? What is their effect upon the history of archaeology,
archaeology today and archaeology in the future?
This session will examine the influence and life of these two texts and
place in the history of the discipline - through their deliberate
fragmentation. Upon agreeing to participation in the project, speakers will
be given a randomly chosen (double-sided) page torn from one of the books
upon which to base a 15 minute paper. While freedom will be given to
speakers in how they use their page as a point of departure, it is expected
that the session as a whole might address such issues as the fragmentary
nature of the archaeological record, the materiality of texts, the
linearity of archaeological discourse and the importance of disciplinary
reflexivity.
Who we are and where our thoughts come from in the historical disciplinary
sense are of great relevance to the future of our own personal
archaeologies and the wider field. In the last ten years we have seen an
increased consideration of archaeology as a cultural producer. Museums,
television programmes, ‘archaeologist’ stereotypes and, of course, books
are among the things we make. How we, as archaeologists, deal with and
understand these things, the material culture of our discipline and its
fragments, is hugely important. This session will bring together a diverse
group of speakers, both established and emerging archaeologists, those who
value these two texts and those who don’t, with the aim of considering
archaeological texts in an archaeological manner.
For any further information, please contact me at [log in to unmask]
Jim Dixon
UWE
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