Assemblage Thought and Archaeology

196 Pages·2018·3.91 MB·English

by  Ben Jervis

ASSEMBLAGE THOUGHT AND
ARCHAEOLOGY
From examinations of prehistoric burial to understanding post-industrial spaces
and heritage practices, the writing of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari is gaining
increasing importance within archaeological thought. Their concept of ‘assem-
blages’ allows us to explore the past in new ways, by placing an emphasis on
difference rather than similarity, on fluidity rather stasis and unpredictability rather
than reproduceable models.
Assemblage Thought and Archaeology applies the notion of assemblage to specific
archaeological case studies, ranging from early urbanism in Mesopotamia to 19th
century military fortifications. It introduces the concept of assemblage within the
context of the wider ‘material turn’ in the social sciences, examines its implications
for studying materials and urban settlements, and explores its consequences for the
practice of archaeological research and heritage management.
This innovative book will be of particular interest to postgraduate students of
archaeological theory and researchers looking to understand this latest trend in
archaeological thought, although the case studies will also have appeal to those
whose work focusses on material culture, settlement archaeology and archaeologi-
cal practice.
Ben Jervis is lecturer in medieval archaeology at Cardiff University, UK. He is
currently co-investigator (with Dr Chris Briggs) on the Leverhulme Trust project
Living Standards and Material Culture in English Rural Households: 1300–1600.
He is the author of Pottery and Social Life: Towards a Relational Approach, 2014,
and co-editor of several books including Objects, Environment, and Everyday Life
in Medieval Europe (2016), and Archaeologies of Rules and Regulation: Between Text
and Practice (2018). He has also published in journals including World Archaeology,
Medieval Archaeology, The Norwegian Archaeological Review and Archaeological Dialogues.
Themes in Archaeology
The Archaeology of Art: An Ontology of the Archaeological Image, Andrew
Cochrane and Andrew Jones
The Archaeology of Time, Gavin Lucas
The Archaeology of Personhood: An Anthropological Approach, Chris Fowler
Archaeology, Ritual, Religion, Timothy Insoll
ASSEMBLAGE THOUGHT
AND ARCHAEOLOGY
Ben Jervis
First published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
 2019 Ben Jervis
The right of Ben Jervis to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
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or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Jervis, Ben, author.
Title: Assemblage thought and archaeology / Ben Jervis.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2018. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018031337| ISBN 9781138067493 (hardback:
alk. paper) | ISBN 9781138067509 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN
9781351657020 (mobi/kindle) | ISBN 9781351657044 (web
pdf) | ISBN 9781315158594 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Archaeology—Philosophy.
Classification: LCC CC72 .J47 2018 | DDC 930.1—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018031337
ISBN: 9781138067493 (hbk)
ISBN: 9781138067509 (pbk)
ISBN: 9781315158594 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK
CONTENTS
List of figures vi
List of key concept boxes vii
Acknowledgements viii
1 Assemblage, ontology and archaeology 1
2 From archaeological assemblage to vibrant assemblage 35
3 Material and form 73
4 Assemblage urbanism 108
5 Doing assemblage archaeology 145
Bibliography 163
Index 181
FIGURES
1.1 Fragment of a Terra Sigillata (Samian) bowl 20
1.2 Chumash rock art – Polychrome transmorphic design known as
Blue Boy at Three Springs, California 27
1.3 Anglo-Saxon cremation urns from Spong Hill, Norfolk and
Cleatham, Lincolnshire 28
1.4 Modern replica of the antler frontlets from Star Carr, produced
by Ian Dennis, Cardiff University 29
2.1 Florentine maiolica jug from Upper Bugle Street, Southampton 42
2.2 Grave 20 from Great Chesterford 49
2.3 Diagrammatic representation of smooth and striated space 55
2.4 West Kennet long barrow, Wiltshire 63
3.1 Roman brooch of Hod Hill type, dating to 1st century CE.
Recovered by a metal detectorist in Boynton, East Yorkshire 75
3.2 A: Ramey Incised Jar. B: Diagrammatic representation of the
cosmos as depicted on a Ramey Incised Jar 85
3.3 A pile of unsorted pottery 87
3.4 Plan relief of the town of Satin-Omer, Pas-de-Calais, France 95
3.5 The western end of the Hilsea Lines, Portsmouth, showing the
site as a managed landscape 104
3.6 The eastern end of the Hilsea Lines, Portsmouth, showing a
ruinous and feral landscape 104
4.1 1838 map of Boston engraved for S.N. Dickinson’s Boston Almanac.
The future site of Back Bay is situated to the west of the public garden 113
4.2 Map of Mesopotamia showing the location of sites mentioned in the text 121
4.3 Map of Britain showing the location of sites mentioned in the text 132
5.1 Example of an archaeological context sheet 151
KEY CONCEPT BOXES
Key concept 1: Territorialisation, deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation 38
Key concept 2: Coding, de-coding and over-coding 38
Key concept 3: The Body without Organs 39
Key concept 4: Desire 40
Key concept 5: Stratification and de-stratification 41
Key concept 6: Smooth and striated space 41
Key concept 7: Capacities and affect 43
Key concept 8: Virtual and actual 57
Key concept 9: Tracing and mapping 67
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My interest in assemblage approaches in archaeology was first stimulated by
attendance at a conference session organised by Yannis Hamilakis and Andrew
M. Jones at the 2014 TAG Conference in Manchester and I am grateful to them
and the speakers in the session for introducing its potential to me. I would like to
thank Tim Pauketat, Gavin Lucas and Andrew M. Jones for their useful feedback
at the proposal stage and Rachel Crellin and Oliver Harris for their critical feed-
back on the draft text. Rachel, Oliver, Marta Diaz-Guardamino Uribe and Chris
Fowler have, at various times, been valuable sounding boards for ideas. I would
also like to thank Howard Williams, Ian Dennis, David Robinson and Duncan
Brown for their assistance with obtaining images.
The work presented in Chapter 3 derives in part from the Living Standards and
Material Culture in English Rural Households project, funded by the Leverhulme
Trust, The Economic History Society and The Newton Trust and undertaken in col-
laboration with Chris Briggs, Alice Forward, Matt Tompkins and Tomasz Gromelski.
This section has also benefitted from valuable insights from Sarah Semple.
Finally, I would like to thank Matthew Gibbons at Routledge for commis-
sioning the book and Molly Marler for her assistance in seeing it through to
production.
1
ASSEMBLAGE, ONTOLOGY AND
ARCHAEOLOGY
Introducing assemblage thought
It may, at first, seem odd to turn to a collaboration between a renegade philosopher
and former school teacher (Gilles Deleuze) who rejected the mainstream canon
of philosophical writing and a psychoanalyst and Marxist political activist (Felix
Guattari) to build a framework for understanding the past. In their collabora-
tive writing, however, we find tools and ideas which can be used to challenge
orthodoxy and structure, to enable us to engage with the past in alternative, and
potentially fruitful, ways. These tools, known collectively as assemblage thought,
are concerned with understanding the ways in which orders emerge, how they
hold together and how they fall apart and, crucially, their implications for shaping
the world as affective processes.
Importantly, we should not see assemblage thought as originating with Deleuze
and Guattari, as this would contradict their very approach to research, which is
less concerned with origins than middles, with ongoing processes; Deleuze and
Guattari’s writing emerged from a range of influences, philosophical, artistic, polit-
ical and historical, and has gone on to flow through a scholarship in a range of
disciplines; as a body of thought it is never complete, but always being worked on,
adapting and changing as it is applied. As a body of thought it acts as the very ideas
which underpin it; immanence, emergence and difference. ‘Assemblage theory’
was not a term used by Deleuze and Guattari, having been coined by the philoso-
pher Manuel DeLanda (2006; 2016) in his re-imagining of their writing. It is best
understood not as a unified theory, but as a set of ideas and tools which can be
used to build a radical view of an immanent world, in which core themes which
have dominated archaeological theory in recent decades; structure, individuality
and identity, representation and power, are critiqued and re-conceptualised. The
result is that they are not frames for understanding action, but emerge from, and are