Archaeological Theory in the New Millennium is a collaboration between a British prehistorian (Oliver Harris) and an American historical archaeologist (Craig Cipolla), which aims to present current theoretical perspectives in archaeology. The authors want to challenge more traditional narratives, and the book is thus not a neutral, objective description of current themes in archaeology. It is largely a critique of dualist and anthropocentric thinking, one that favours object-oriented approaches such as symmetric, non-anthropocentric, and posthuman archaeologies. According to the book-jacket, it is intended for both students and professionals ‘wishing to reacquaint themselves with this field’.
The book consists of eleven chapters, loosely arranged in chronological order. There are frequent flashbacks to earlier chapters, connecting common themes, but it is also possible to skip chapters and focus more on others. Chapters 1 (‘An Introduction to Contemporary Archaeological Theory: Confronting Dualisms’) and 2 (‘Beyond Paradigms: A Potted History of Archaeological Thought’) set the background. The authors devote less than ten pages to the traditional narrative of culture-historical, processual, and post-processual archaeologies. Harris and Cipolla dismiss the idea of three separate paradigms and point out that, instead of being part of an evolutionary succession and development of archaeological thought, all three schools of thought are still alive and kicking in one version or the other. They argue that the archaeologies of the twentieth century share a common tendency towards dualist thinking in which nature is set against culture and human against non-human, etc. Archaeological Theory in the New Millennium, however, is characterised by a move away from such non-symmetrical anthropocentrism.
Chapter 3 (‘Between Thoughts and Things: Theorising Practice and Agency’) begins with an exposé of the concept of agency through the practice theories of Bourdieu (Reference Bourdieu1977) and Giddens (Reference Giddens1984) to clear the ground for a more inclusive concept of agency that is distributed between persons and materialities in the following chapters. Chapter 4, ‘Situating Things in Society: Identity and Personhood’, follows up by discussing relational aspects of identity and personhood. The authors build on Strathern's (Reference Strathern1988) argument that personhood and identity in Melanesia is not confined to the individual but is something that emerges out of various relationships that also include other-than-human entities. The next two chapters, ‘Secret Lives of Things: Object Agency and Biography’ (Ch. 5) and ‘Things Make People? Considering Materiality, Phenomenology, Experience, and Entanglement’ (Ch. 6), continue discussing the socialness of things and the roles of materialities in different worlds through the works of Kopytoff (Reference Kopytoff and Appadurai1986), Gell (Reference Gell1998), Tilley (Reference Tilley2004), and Hodder (Reference Hodder2012). They start by considering traditional issues such as object biography, object agency, and how things ‘make people’, and end with a critique against representationalism (the idea that, e.g. an artefact, an image, or a practice ‘stands for’ or symbolizes something else). So far, the discussion is well situated within post-processual lines of thought in which humans are the main agents.
Chapter 7 (‘Mediating the World: Archaeological Semiotics’) includes a short discussion on semiotics from Saussure (Reference Saussure, Bally, Sechehaye and Harris1983 [1916]) to Charles Sanders Peirce (Reference Peirce, Houser and Kloesel1992; Reference Peirce1998) which provides a bridge between object-oriented approaches and more radical posthuman theories. Chapter 8 (‘Finding Symmetry: Actor-Network and New Materialism’) goes in depth with Actor-Network Theory and new materialisms. While actor network theory argues for a more symmetrical perspective on how agency is distributed between humans and non-humans in rhizomatic networks (Latour, Reference Latour2005), research within new materialisms focuses on the ‘vitalism’ of materialities and the continuous coming-into-being of the world (e.g. Coole & Frost, Reference Coole and Frost2010; Witmore, Reference Witmore2014).
This chapter builds on the previous one and does a good job of outlining and explaining similarities and differences between the different object-oriented and materialist theories. New materialism, Actor-Network Theory, and posthumanism all favour a more symmetrical perspective in which other-than-humans can also incite actions and affect the course of events. According to Harris and Cipolla, any major differences between the different labels are hard to discern besides the choice of terminology, e.g. meshwork, network, or assemblage (p. 131, but see Fahlander, Reference Fahlander, Englehardt and Rieger2017: 72–73). Chapter 9, ‘Multi-species Archaeology: People, Plants, and Animals’, explores the posthumanist perspective further by emphasising the roles of animals, plants, and ‘nature’ in general as integrated parts in more-than-human archaeologies.
Chapter 10, ‘“Others”: Postcolonialism, the Ontological Turn, and Colonised Things’, is a somewhat unorthodox fusion of postcolonial theory and ontologically-oriented ethnography. It is an interesting take on the subject—there are indeed political undertows in perspectivism—but the ontological turn also comprises a general perspective on the Other. The main point of the ontological turn, to emphasise what really is there, and to go beyond modernist categories and assumptions, is also relevant to archaeology.
Because ‘theory has no conclusion’, and current perspectives are still under development, Chapter 11, ‘On Breaking Walls and Building Relations: A Conclusion’, ends the book with a general discussion and a dialogue between the two authors. In the latter, Harris and Cipolla elaborate on issues where they have divergent opinions, which to some extent echo general differences between British and American archaeology. For example, the issue of material agency and the ontological turn (pp. 202–04), which seems to stir more ethical concerns in American archaeology (e.g. Van Dyke, Reference Van Dyke2015).
The book also includes thirty-two information boxes devoted to the central researchers discussed in the work. The authors do not want to present traditional portraits, but instead use ‘images of things connecting to their ideas’ (p. 8). While I can sympathize with this idea, it works better for some researchers than others. For example, iconic maps or illustrations such as Binford's drawing of ‘“Men's” Outside Hearth Model’ (p. 21) and Childe's classic diagram of archaeological cultures (p. 17) work fine while others, primarily those of contemporary researchers, contribute less. For example, Alfred Gell is illustrated by a modern car (p. 74), Daniel Miller by a web-camera (p. 90), and Christopher Witmore by a photo of Oxford Street. I cannot help thinking that this actually tells something about the history of archaeology. Because the boxes are rather small, it would perhaps have been better to leave some images out in favour of more information.
Harris and Cipolla explicitly aim to challenge more traditional narratives and to make archaeological theories of the new millennium accessible to a broad audience. But do they succeed in that? I believe they do in both respects. The book comprises a thorough discussion of the main strands of thought in contemporary archaeology. It is a complicated affair since many issues, like object agency, are employed in post-processual, symmetrical, relational, as well as in posthuman approaches with varying degrees of anthropocentrism. There are also some ontological aspects of current theory that may be difficult to digest. Are there different worlds or just different views on the same world? Do things have agency and should non-humans be on an equal footing with humans? The authors deal with such questions elegantly and clear up many common misreading's of Bruno Latour's (Reference Latour2005) and other non-anthropocentrists’ work. In particular the summary on pp. 146–48 is concise and clarifying on many confusing and seemingly contradictory arguments. For example: agency is not a property of either objects or humans, but something that may emerge in relations; posthumanist theories are not anti-humanist; a symmetrical perspective does not mean that humans and non-humans are the same, nor that issues of power are neglected, but that any hierarchical order should not be taken for granted.
Concerning accessibility, the structure of the book makes it easy to follow, which also allows the reader to jump between issues and chapters. The language is free from unnecessary jargon, and the philosophical background is kept to a minimum. Instead, the authors focus on how the theories work in practice and what they can offer. All chapters include a specific archaeological example which helps to clarify the consequences of an approach or theory.
In a book like this, there are always different ideas about what it should or should not contain. Personally, I would have liked to see more critical discussion on the current Melanesification of the past inherent in many relational archaeologies. For example, Layton (Reference Layton2003) argues that Gell's ideas of the secondary agency of art are firmly situated within a specific Melanesian ontology which cannot automatically be assumed everywhere. Thus, the agency of imagery is often taken for granted by analogy rather than something that emerges from particular archaeological evidence. The emphasis on Amazonian ontology in perspectivism (Viveiros de Castro, Reference Viveiros de Castro1998) and the ontological turn may also be a cause for concern. There is a potential risk that the ontological discussion unintentionally swaps postmodern relativism for an ontological one when proposing multiple worlds. Be that as it may, Harris and Cipolla do an excellent job in clarifying complex ideas and theories under development, and their book constitutes an essential help for archaeologists who wish to bridge the emerging gap between interpretative and ontological archaeologies in the new millennium.
