TAG 2017 SESSION PROPOSAL FORM

Session Title CHE FAMO?

Organiser(s) and affiliation(s): Francesco Orlandi Barbano (Department of
Archaeology, University of Exeter) Silvia Truini
(Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University
of Exeter – Department of Humanities,
Archaeology, University of Southampton. Arts
And Humanities Research Council of the United
Kingdom)
Email address of principal organiser st500@exeter.ac.uk
Session Abstract (up to 300 words)
Archaeology as ‘undisciplined’ practice (Haber 2012; Hamilakis 2013) emerged from the
acknowledgement of its disciplinary entanglements with the philosophical and
epistemological tenets of Western modernity and necessarily also with its “darker side”,
which, as Mignolo (2011) writes, is the irreducible colonial character of the knowledge its
produces. With the recent “ontological turn” in theory, archaeological materials emerge
as multi-temporal, vibrant components of material-sensorial assemblages: but is that
enough to counteract the coloniality of (archaeological) knowledge?

In this session, we wish to expand the conversation on decoloniality, modernity and

archaeology from the realm of materiality to that of time, focussing on the many “others”
of archaeology: non-professional local communities — beyond the boundaries of the
political category of “indigenous”— but also the materials themselves. If “the self-
determination of the Other is the other-determination of the Self” (Holbraad et al. 2014),
we seek to explore the ways in which archaeologists translate these self-determined
temporalities into archaeological knowledge, and how their practice is reshaped in the
doing.
We hope to promote a dialogue between case-studies from different regional contexts
where alternative voices emerge in the face of dominant archival productions, exceeding
their limits and shaping creative ways of being in relation.

To this end, we invite contributions — papers, performances, films and photography—

around the following topics:

• The place and the role of archaeology —as praxis in fieldwork, but also as
discipline that retains archival power over the past and as part and parcel of the work of
statutory and intra-governmental agencies for heritage conservation— in the production
of time and temporalities;
• The practices of negotiation with the past of the Others and their translation into
academic knowledge.
• The legacies of colonialism/imperialism in the production of archaeological
knowledge and new avenues for the creation of emancipatory, counter-modern and
alter/native archives.
• Memory, materiality and multi-temporal encounters in and around archaeological
sites.
 References:

Haber, A. (2012) “Un-Disciplining Archaeology”. Archaeologies: Journal of the World

Archaeological Congress, 8(1): 55-66.

Hamilakis, Y. (2013) Archaeology and the Senses. Human experience, memory, and affect.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Holbraad, M., Pedersen, M. A., Viveiros de Castro, E. (2014) "The Politics of Ontology:
Anthropological Positions." Theorizing the Contemporary, Cultural Anthropology website,
January 13, 2014. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/462-the-politics-of-ontology-
anthropological-positions

Mignolo, W. (2011) The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial
Options. Duke University Press, Durham.

Please send your completed form to TAG2017@cardiff.ac.uk by 20th April 2017