-----------------------------------------------------
THEORETICAL ARCHAEOLOGY GROUP MEETING (TAG99 Cardiff)
(14th - 16th  December, 1999)
Department of History and Archaeology, Cardiff, Wales


Dear Colleague, 

You are invited to offer a 20 minute paper in the session entitled
"Views Beyond a Nature Culture Antithesis" at the meeting of the
Theoretical Archaeology Group in Cardiff, Wales (TAG-99 Cardiff)
14th -16th December, 1999. 
     If you are interested in participating in the session, please
send us a title and abstract (of no more than 300 words).  Feel
free to write per e-mail.  Our postal and e-mail addresses are
listed below.  If you have any questions, it would be our pleasure
to provide more information. 

With best regards, the session organizers
                                                                 
Views Beyond a Nature-Culture Antithesis

Session organizers: 
Robert Johnston, University of Newcastle, U.K
Stephanie Koerner, University of Pittsburgh, U.S.A.
Joshua Pollard, University of Newcastle, U.K.

Outline of Session 

The notion that a conceptual dichotomy between nature and culture
(the realms of the 'unsocialized' and the humanly modified world)
might stand as a human universal has been recognized as problematic
for a number of years. The realization that the framework of modern
Western reasoning, which sets in place categorical opposition
between nature and society, and the concomitant categories of body
and mind, represents but one (and maybe unique way) of
understanding the world has been subject of much debate (cf.
MacCormack and Strathern 1980, Ingold 1995, Descola and P5lssen
1996).  It developed in relation to the wider deconstruction of
fundamental building blocks of Enlightenment reasoning by post-
structuralist and post-modern critics. However, whether the
rejection of the nature-culture dualism is seen as a 'post-
modernity' fad (cf. Descola and P5lssen 1996), or a liberating
insight into non-western ways of living-in and understanding the
world, it should encourage a more critical awareness of the way in
which we construct interpretations of the past.

Throughout its brief history, archaeology has certainly contributed
towards the legitimation of the nature-culture dualism. The natural
world, posited as 'environment' or 'resource' has been viewed as
both a determinant - a force that constrains and constructs human
culture - and, alternatively, as something which is culturally
determined and exists through symbolic representation. Both
approaches share a view of the natural world (the environment in
its widest sense) as externalized, rather than inextricably
embedded in the process of 'Being in the world'. To some extent the
dichotomy is now being eroded by the adoption of more 'body
centered' phenomenological approaches in archaeology, but can we go
further? 

This session intends to explore archaeology's contribution to the
nature-culture debate. It will be structured around two themes. 
The first will deal explicitly with representation: critically
exploring the way that archaeology has formulated and reproduced
particular ways of viewing past communities' relationship to the
world they lived in.  Within this we hope to have historiographical
accounts of the development of an archaeological agenda that
hierarchically privileged culture, and the way the subject came to
define itself as divergent from the natural sciences. We are also
interested in the implicit assumptions and value judgements that
condition our approach to elements of the natural world in
archaeological practice - seen in excavation, in analysis and
reporting, and in writing accounts of the past. (Take, for example,
the disciplinary fragmentation which leads to a separation of
environmental and ecofactual evidence from that of artifacts and
constructed features).

The second theme concerns the relationship between people in the
past and their surroundings - the connection or nature of
embeddedness, which places the individual in the world.  Questions
that could be asked are whether it is possible to produce accounts
of social ecologies from archaeological data; whether archaeologies
of landscape can be formulated in a way that does not perpetuate a
nature:culture dualism; if the social order can be seen as distinct
from the natural order; and related to the latter, how natural
metaphors might have created and acted upon human understandings of
the world. 

References

Descola, P. and P5lssen, G. (eds.) 1996. Nature and Society.
Anthropological Perspectives. London: Routledge.

Ingold, T. 1995. Building, Dwelling, Living: How Animals and People
Make Themselves at Home in the World. In M. Strathern (ed.)
Shifting Contexts: Transformations in Anthropological Knowledge,
London: Routledge.

MacCormack, C. and M. Strathern (eds.) 1980. Nature, Culture and
Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 
                                                                
Session organizers' addresses:

Robert Johnston; University of Newcastle; Department of
Archaeology; Newcastle upon Tyne; NE1 7RU, U.K.; E-mail: 
<[log in to unmask]>.

Stephanie Koerner; Department of Anthropology; University of
Pittsburgh; Pittsburgh PA 15213; U.S.A.; E-mail:
<[log in to unmask]>.

Joshua Pollard; University of Newcastle; Department of Archaeology;
Newcastle upon Tyne; NE1 7RU, U.K.; E-mail:
<[log in to unmask]>.Views Beyond a Nature-Culture Antithesis

Session organizers: 
Robert Johnston, University of Newcastle, U.K
Stephanie Koerner, University of Pittsburgh, U.S.A.
Joshua Pollard, University of Newcastle, U.K.











%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%