Christopher Witmore
Christopher Witmore is Paul Whitfield Horn Distinguished Professor of Archaeology and Classics, Head of Classics with the Department of Classical & Modern Languages & Literatures, and Affiliated Professor with the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work at Texas Tech University. He has been a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters in Oslo (2016-2017), the Donnelley Family Fellow at the National Humanities Center (2014-2015), and a Visiting Scholar in Information Science with the Jenkins Collaboratory at Duke University (2011). Before joining Texas Tech in 2009, he was a postdoctoral researcher with the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University (2006-2009) and a lecturer and postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University (2005-2006). He received his PhD in archaeology from Stanford University in 2005, with an emphasis in landscape archaeology, environmental studies, thing theory, long-term change in Mediterranean societies, and the contemporary past. He co-edits the Archaeological Orientations book series for Routledge and sits on the editorial board for the Journal of Contemporary Archaeology. Known for blending in-depth engagements alongside archaeological objects with longstanding and pressing questions of human and nonhuman existence, he is among a few practitioners who have been instrumental in reorienting archaeology from an exclusive focus on a distant past, to a diverse field of interventions into the present, past, and future. As a landscaper researcher, he has worked on projects in Greece, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Romania, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Photo Credit: Ron Jautz 2015
Address: Classical & Modern Languages & Literatures
2910 18th St
Photo Credit: Ron Jautz 2015
Address: Classical & Modern Languages & Literatures
2910 18th St
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Books by Christopher Witmore
In this book, Bjørnar Olsen and Christopher Witmore pursue these questions. Drawing on more than a decade of fieldwork at Sværholt-an abandoned fishing hamlet, Wehrmacht artillery battery, and prisoner-of-war camp in Arctic Norway-they explore what difference archaeology can make when working with objects of war routinely saturated by history. Through meticulous material investigations, novel ways of writing, and striking imagery, the authors open glimpses onto the distinctive pasts that forgotten things remember. In attending to what endures above and below the surface, they also confront central challenges of archaeological thought and interpretation, developing new conceptions of presence, patience, and waiting. The result is a bold and compelling vision of what archaeology might yet become.
En oposición a la extendida convicción contemporánea de que la realidad consiste en un flujo incesante, una visión asociada en filosofía con el nuevo materialismo, la ontología orientada a objetos afirma que los objetos de toda índole constituyen el fundamento de la realidad a partir del cual emerge el tiempo. Y, en contraste con la narrativa que concibe el tiempo como el transcurso de acontecimientos históricos, los objetos y encuentros propios de la arqueología desafían las delimitaciones temporales que definieron a esta disciplina y sus objetos desde su profesionalización en el siglo XIX.
En un estudio que abarca desde las ruinas de la Antigua Corinto, Micenas y Troya hasta los debates sobre el tiempo de Aristóteles y al-Ash'ari, pasando por Henri Bergson y Alfred North Whitehead, los autores exploran concepciones alternativas del tiempo como retroactivo, percolativo, topológico, cíclico y generacional, componiéndose de contracorrientes o de una tensión superficial entre los objetos y sus propias cualidades. Objetos intempestivos nos invita a reconsiderar la noción moderna de los objetos como materia inerte que sirve simplemente de receptáculo para las categorías humanas.
Archaeology in the Making is a unique document detailing the history of archaeology in second half of the 20th century to the present day through the words of some of its key proponents. It will be invaluable for anybody who wants to understand the theory and practice of this ever developing discipline.
Literally the “science of old things,” archaeology does not discover the past as it was but works with what remains. Such work involves the mediation of past and present, of people and their cultural fabric, for things cannot be separated from society. Things are us, just as we are part of the world of things that we may seek to understand.
This book ranges through debates in science studies, including actor network theory and object oriented ontology, process-relational philosophy, material culture and design studies, and offers case studies from prehistoric, classical and historical archaeology.
Chapters:
Introduction: Caring about Things
2. The Ambiguity of Things: Contempt and Desire
3. Engagements with Things: The Making of Archaeology
4. Digging Deep: Archaeology and Fieldwork
5. Things in Translation: Documents and Imagery
6. Futures for Things: Memory Practices and
Digital Translation
7. Timely Things: From Argos to Mycenae and Beyond
8. Making and the Design of Things: Human Being
and the Shape of History
9. Getting on with Things: A Material Metaphysics of Care
Literally the “science of old things,” archaeology does not discover the past as it was but must work with what remains. Such work involves the tangible mediation of past and present, of people and their cultural fabric, for things cannot be separated from society. Things are us. This book does not set forth a sweeping new theory. It does not seek to transform the discipline of archaeology. Rather, it aims to understand precisely what archaeologists do and to urge practitioners toward a renewed focus on and care for things."
Literally the “science of old things,” archaeology does not discover the past as it was but must work with what remains. Such work involves the tangible mediation of past and present, of people and their cultural fabric, for things cannot be separated from society. Things are us. This book does not set forth a sweeping new theory. It does not seek to transform the discipline of archaeology. Rather, it aims to understand precisely what archaeologists do and to urge practitioners toward a renewed focus on and care for things."
REVIEWS:
"It is engagingly concerned with the archaeology of the present. It has a rich and up-to-date bibliography, well versed in archaeological theory. It invites us, in an informed way, to reexamine the nature and substance of archaeology. So, despite its lapses, it stands on the side of angels."
- Colin Renfrew, University of Cambridge
"A broad, illuminating, and well-researched overview of theoretical problems pertaining to archaeology. The authors make a calm defense of the role of objects against tedious claims of 'fetishism.'"
-Graham Harman, author of The Quadruple Object
"This book exhorts the reader to embrace the materiality of archaeology by recognizing how every step in the discipline's scientific processes involves interaction with myriad physical artifacts, ranging from the camel-hair brush to profile drawings to virtual reality imaging. At the same time, the reader is taken on a phenomenological journey into various pasts, immersed in the lives of peoples from other times, compelled to engage their senses with the sights, smells, and noises of the publics and places whose remains they study. This is a refreshingly original and provocative look at the meaning of the material culture that lies at the foundation of the archaeological discipline."
-Michael Brian Schiffer, author of The Material Life of Human Beings
“This volume is a radical call to fundamentally rethink the ontology, profession, and practice of archaeology. The authors present a closely reasoned, epistemologically sound argument for why archaeology should be considered the discipline of things, rather than its more commonplace definition as the study of the human past through material traces. All scholars and students of archaeology will need to read and contemplate this thought-provoking book.”
-Wendy Ashmore, Professor of Anthropology, UC Riverside
Papers by Christopher Witmore