5:00pm | Archaeological theory since 1984 and the politics of human displacement | Ian Hodder
This talk looks critically at the evolutionary paths of archaeological theory in the UK since 1984. There is much to applaud and celebrate but I have become concerned about the perhaps unwitting implications of some of the developments. Two long-term trends are identified – one is the transformation of materialism into materiality, and the other is the gradual decentering of the human. The focus on post-humanism occurs throughout many disciplines in many forms and it is a trend that mirrors societal concerns and debates about AI, the internet of things, cyborgs and singularities, the Matrix rather than meshworks. An argument is made that this displacement of humans parallels the displacement of humans from the work place, from community and from identity. The two trends together weaken attempts by humans to assert their rights in relation to specific material conditions of existence. ‘Archaeology in 1984’ (Antiquity 58(222), pp.25-32) was written in response to Orwell’s fantasy. 40 years later, what will be the role of archaeological theory as an Orwellian future beckons?
5:00pm | Mrs Thatcher and the privatisation of knowledge: the evolution of archaeological practice in Britain since 1990 | Gill Hey
In 1990, Mrs Thatcher’s Conservative government issued new planning guidance to local authority planning departments, setting out how archaeological remains on sites to be developed should either be preserved or recorded. Importantly, the cost of any work (mitigation) was to be borne, in the vast majority of cases, by the developer. This fell within the Conservative party’s strategy to privatise many sectors of industry and business, to cut costs and red tape and increase efficiency; gas, water and the railways are well-known examples, but consideration was also given to privatising universities. Henceforth, archaeological work in the UK would no longer be the preserve of universities, museums and local government units.
Since that time, there has been an exponential increase in the amount of money spent on archaeology, the size of projects and the number of archaeologists. What has the effect been on the acquisition and sharing of the knowledge gained? This talk will explore how the discipline has evolved, its methodologies, its relationship to theoretical concerns and the benefits (or otherwise) that have been derived.
4:30pm | The potential and limits of conducting archaeologies of the Northern Ireland Troubles and peace process: reflections over 20 years | Laura McAtackney
The question that has haunted me through my research career has been what are the potentials and limits of material culture in revealing unresolved aspects of difficult recent pasts, most specifically in the conflict and peace in the North of Ireland? It is a question I have been trying to answer for over twenty years and one that has involved engaging with various material forms that have constantly been in motion and in flux. My first inclination was to turn to an ‘icon’ of the conflict, Long Kesh / Maze prison, as a monumental and materially rich site that was largely off-limits to researchers. The politics of its inaccessible dereliction meant I had to consider it in an expansive way as a place with ‘distributed self’ (2014) that materially and psychically reached far beyond its confines and deep into communities. It was in those communities that I eventually started traversing streets and noting their ever changing configurations of murals, graffiti, and grassroots memorials creating memoryscapes alongside enduringly materialized segregation, so-called ‘peace walls’. More recently, I have thought on how my understandings of the conflict has been shaped not only by presences but also absences; a place with a desire for peace but also fear of forgetting injustices. Ultimately, my faith and despair in material answers to loaded questions has evolved in ways that I could never have foreseen at the start and so this lecture will consider what under-explored pasts have been revealed and what are the limits of the material in knowing the contemporary.
