Ontological challenges: the value of situatedness and the ontology of the Other

The possibility of exploring alternative ontologies is undoubtedly an attractive task for any archaeologist. However, there are some aspects to consider. As Alberti (Reference Alberti2016b) points out, when addressing the Other's ontology, our research can be mundanely ontological or critically ontological. The first approach implies an attempt to understand non-Western (or non-contemporary) ontologies, while accepting that we are ‘condemned’ to use our own categories in order to understand alterity. The critically ontological approach, for its part, states that it is possible to understand other ontologies and at the same time use this very research process as a way of decolonizing our own. This would lead to a more egalitarian engagement with the Other's ontology, although with the limitation of the ‘ontological violence’ that we exert when simplifying other ontologies in our attempt to understand them.

None of these options necessarily implies a complete rejection of Western ontologies. While we agree on the need to deconstruct and decolonize our own ontology, we believe that this task can only be partially achieved, as we cannot deny the fact that our intellectual enterprise as archaeologists is deeply embedded within our own cultural background (see also Preucel, this volume). Traditionally, archaeology has believed that situatedness and subjectivity only have corrosive effects on research processes; therefore, the only thing that one could do was to acknowledge them as a sort of honest contextualization that could help others understand biases and how they might affect research. However, multiple authors are pointing out how situatedness, when facing alterity and failing to comprehend it, can become a powerful heuristic tool. In this sense, Alberti (Reference Alberti2016a, 143) has explored the role of ‘wonder’, while ‘awkwardness’ has also been popular in anthropology as a mechanism to realize that something is ‘out of place’ and requires further exploration (Callan Reference Callan2014; Hume & Mulcock Reference Hume and Mulcock2004). Both ‘wonder’ and ‘awkwardness’ can only come into play if we accept that our ‘modern constitution’ à la Latour (Reference Latour1993) is framing our understanding of the world.

Posthumanist approaches propose the rejection of the ontologies characterizing this ‘modern constitution’, arguing instead for the use of new ontological frameworks that can challenge conventional Western metaphysics (Holbraad & Pedersen Reference Holbraad and Pedersen2017, 35; Olsen et al. Reference Olsen, Shanks, Webmoor and Witmore2012). Nevertheless, with some exceptions (e.g. Cipolla Reference Cipolla2019 and this volume; Marshall, this volume), many new materialist approaches, as well as most symmetrical ones, draw their ‘new’ frameworks from other Western thinkers, or thinkers working within the intellectual framework of Western academic power structures and discourses (Alberti Reference Alberti2016a, 141; see also Van Dyke, this volume).

One of the core premises of the Ontological Turn, the notion of ‘taking people seriously’ (Henare et al. Reference Henare, Holbraad and Wastell2007; Holbraad Reference Holbraad2012; Holbraad & Pedersen Reference Holbraad and Pedersen2017), can also prove problematic. As noted by some anthropologists, taking the narratives of Indigenous peoples literally often implies denying them the symbolic and metaphoric capacity that Western anthropologists grant themselves (Astuti Reference Astuti2017). Anthropology has a long tradition of being an extractivist practice (Burman Reference Burman2018), and some applications within the Ontological Turn are dangerously close to ‘vampirizing’ Indigenous ontologies from the Global South, while at the same time maintaining the dynamics of power that place discourses from academics working at Western institutions on the top of the knowledge pyramid (Todd Reference Todd2016). Thus, instead of listening to other voices and fostering debate, there is a risk that the ethnographer (or archaeologist) turns into a creator of worlds, while maintaining that the reality of those worlds cannot be discussed. This movement has been criticised as being potentially theoretically intolerant (Graeber Reference Graeber2015).

On agency, ethics and effectancy

The attribution of agency to non-human entities and the very meaning of the concept have been one of the main areas of dispute between some Posthumanism representatives and their critics (e.g. Lindstrøm Reference Lindstrøm2015; Olsen & Witmore Reference Olsen and Witmore2015; Ribeiro Reference Ribeiro2016a; Reference Ribeiro2019; Sørensen Reference Sørensen2016; Van Dyke Reference Van Dyke, Acuto and Franco Salvi2015a). It is true that the debate has often been oversimplified, that there are notable variations within posthumanist approaches and that some scholars are now explicitly arguing for a move ‘beyond agency’ in favour of other notions such as affect (Crellin & Harris, this volume). However, discussions around object agency and its implications are still playing a significant role in current archaeological thinking. To take the example of recent debates on the Roman world, Versluys has urged colleagues to follow the ‘object turn’ or ‘material-cultural turn’ in order to make ‘material culture, with its stylistic and material properties (and thus agency […]), central to our understanding of the Roman world’ (Versluys Reference Versluys2014, 16), and to ‘rewrite history as a particular relationship between objects and people with things as the agents provocateurs of (historical) change’ (Versluys Reference Versluys, van Oyen and Pitts2017, 192). The shortcomings of this and similar object-agency-focused approaches become evident when analysing the military-led expansion of the Roman state, which was frequently associated with episodes of mass violence, enslavement and sometimes even genocide (Fernández-Götz et al. Reference Fernández-Götz, Maschek and Roymans2020). Thus, Versluys's (Reference Versluys2014, 19) proposal that ‘Romanization is about understanding objects in motion’ risks obscuring or forgetting not only the human suffering caused by the military campaigns and their aftermath, but also the ethical responsibility of political leaders and the marked social inequalities existent within Roman society.

When criticizing how some posthumanist scholars are diluting notions of responsibility, Ribeiro (Reference Ribeiro2016a, 232) states that ‘underlying this trend is a deflation of linear causation as represented by the natural sciences and of teleological reasons as represented by the human sciences’. In that sense, it could be argued that social responsibility stops having its locus in the human agent, to be transferred into a sort of amalgam of networks/assemblages (Lindstrøm Reference Lindstrøm2015, 211), a movement that has received important criticisms outside archaeology due to its potential political consequences (Choat Reference Choat2018). For example, Malm (Reference Malm2018), a human geographer, has argued that the exclusion of intentionality from agency makes it impossible to conceive the collective action required to stop climate change, while at the same time it denies the possibility of accusing those who are consciously causing the problem.

Lindstrøm (Reference Lindstrøm2015, 221) has drawn attention to how the ‘one-size-fits-all’ notion of agency applied, among others, by many symmetrical archaeologists can lead to confusing effects and acts, as well as effectants and actants. The main difference between both notions is the existence of intentionality, self-reactiveness and self-reflectiveness (Bandura Reference Bandura2006), which would qualify certain effects/effectants to become acts/actants. Without intentionality, it seems impossible to distinguish between effects and acts. Intentionality does not preclude unintended consequences, but it carries with it responsibility. As Ribeiro (Reference Ribeiro2016a, 231 and this volume) points out, this implies the agent's capacity to act (or not), and thus it is not only about producing an impact, but also about being able to understand that there might be consequences.

Following Robb (Reference Robb2015), we could consider that things have a type of agency in the sense that they act back on people, but this would be different from human agency. Humans have the agency of ‘why’ with intentional acts and effects, while things have the agency of ‘how’, as they provide channelled means for people to act through (Robb Reference Robb2015, 168). To what extent this type of things ‘agency’ should still be labelled as such is open to debate. A terminological alternative is provided by Stockhammer's (Reference Stockhammer, Abu-Er-Rub, Brosius, Meurer, Panagiotopoulos and Richter2019) concept of the effectancy of things, which can serve as a useful counter-notion to human agency while at the same time avoiding the risk of anthropomorphizing things.

Object fetishism and power structures

Among the main claims of symmetrical approaches (and some authors within New Materialism) is that archaeology needs to go back to ‘things-in-themselves’ (Olsen Reference Olsen2010; Witmore Reference Witmore2007; Reference Witmore2014). According to this view, archaeology has become too anthropocentric, ignoring the materiality of things and their value in themselves, analysing them only in relation to people. Although it can be argued that attending to things-in-themselves also places us in a better position to understand people-in-themselves, as they are mutually constitutive (Fowles Reference Fowles, Bille, Hastrup and Sørensen2010, 24), the issue arises when this tendency is taken to the extreme (Preucel Reference Preucel2016). After all, it is the presence of humans which defines the limits of archaeology (Lucas Reference Lucas2012, 259–60), distinguishing it from other disciplines such as palaeontology. The application of ‘things-in-themselves’ within archaeology has also been criticized on more fundamental grounds: in philosophy, where it originated, it has been argued that the concept lies beyond the reach of empirical science (Nielsen Reference Nielsen2019).

The argument that things have not received enough attention or that archaeology has been too anthropocentric is also highly disputable. In fact, we would claim the opposite: for most of its history as a discipline, archaeology has not focused enough on humans (see also Gardner, this volume), while objects and their analysis have consistently received more consideration. This is exemplified within the culture-historical paradigm and in some processual approaches. The former (still very influential in many countries) is characterized by a widespread interest in artefact catalogues, object typologies and chronologies, often seen as the main goal in themselves within narratives that leave very little or no space for humans. Processual archaeology approaches from the 1960s–80s, for their part, were the subject of critiques by early postprocessualists who accused them of often falling into the trap of producing a ‘dehumanized’ past in which individuals played a rather minor role compared to statistics, systems and environmental factors.

Although coming from a very different angle than culture-historical archaeology, there is a clear risk that some posthumanist views—particularly those within the so-called ‘second-wave of symmetrical archaeology’ and advocating Object-Oriented Ontologies (Witmore, this volume; see also analysis in Crellin & Harris, this volume)—might lead to a new type of object fetishism or ‘antiquarianism’ (Barrett Reference Barrett2016). Characteristic of these perspectives is a shift in attention from individuals and communities to non-human entities, sometimes even without human presence. There can be no doubt that contemporary society has facilitated the creation of networks of relationships between humans, animals and objects that are denser than ever before (Hodder Reference Hodder2012). But this phenomenon has not come into existence out of nowhere: it has been connected with the influence that computer science is having in philosophy (Berry Reference Berry2014, 103), but also, and more concerning, with the philosophical embodiment of capitalist realism (Galloway Reference Galloway2013, 364).

The ‘defense of things’ (Olsen Reference Olsen2010) has also adopted an ethically questionable direction in the works of some symmetrical authors. This is epitomized in Olsen's (Reference Olsen2003, 100) statement that ‘Archaeologists should unite in a defence of things, a defence of those subaltern members of the collective that have been silenced and “othered” by the imperialist social and humanist discourses’. The issues of equating things and people as ‘subalterns’ have been pointed out by several authors (e.g. Fowles Reference Fowles2016; González-Ruibal Reference González-Ruibal2006, 123; McGuire, this volume), including from within posthumanist perspectives (Cipolla Reference Cipolla and Cipolla2017, 226).

The overemphasis on ‘things’ (or non-human beings in general) can be potentially dangerous, as it limits archaeology's scope for social analysis and critique at a time where it is more needed than ever before in light of growing inequalities and reactionary populism (González-Ruibal et al. Reference González-Ruibal, González and Criado-Boado2018; Popa Reference Popa2019). As pointed out by Van Dyke (Reference Van Dyke and Van Dyke2015b), the privileged position of archaeology for political engagement seems to be ‘problematic’ in the eyes of some posthumanist thinkers. Thus, authors within this wider framework have frequently focused on what González-Ruibal (Reference González-Ruibal2019) labels as ‘soft politics’ or ‘political agnosticism’, with narratives that pay little attention to issues such as class differences, power inequalities, oppression and violence. This does not necessarily need to be the case, and there are several exceptions, particularly coming from posthuman feminism (see, for example, Fredengren, this volume) and from those applying non-Western perspectives (Cipolla Reference Cipolla2019). However, so far hard power structures and the darkest aspects of social life have received rather little attention by a large proportion of posthumanist archaeologists, especially within symmetrical approaches (Hodder Reference Hodder2014). This is, perhaps, one of the main tasks ahead. The necessity of paying greater attention to power asymmetries, even by authors in favour of object-centred perspectives, has been rightly summarized by Jiménez (Reference Jiménez2020, 1644) in her reflection on the Roman world: ‘Objects did not move in a transnational free market […] Ignoring the power imbalance is not conducive to better insights to build artefact-driven historical narratives, and in some cases may even be misleading’.

Where are we heading? Posthumanism, New Humanism and Post-posthumanism

We believe that a complete rejection of Humanism is unproductive and potentially dangerous. To start with, critics of Humanism should acknowledge that this term does not designate a homogeneous concept. Fassin (Reference Fassin2019), for example, distinguishes three major lineages in its genealogy, which he designates as Humanism I, II and III. As Posthumanism is an umbrella term that encompasses multiple approaches, so too is Humanism: neither of them should be oversimplified or disregarded in their entirety. Although the complete rejection of core elements of the Western world (e.g. Humanism, Modernity) might sound appealing in an academic world that often fetishizes theoretical ‘newness’ (Ribeiro Reference Ribeiro2016b), novel reflexive critiques could often benefit from integrating elements of Modernity's legacy of knowledge and experience (Criado-Boado Reference Criado-Boado2016, 157; Preucel, this volume).

It is worth keeping in mind that posthumanist perspectives are reflecting wider trends in society that are inextricably linked to the rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) and biotechnology, which are in the course of diluting the boundaries between humans and non-humans in ways that we can still not fully comprehend (Barrat Reference Barrat2013; Lanier Reference Lanier2014; Wolff Reference Wolff2017). Moreover, the rise of Posthumanism is taking place at the same time that the Humanities are increasingly under attack on a global scale, with dramatic cuts in funding and reduced social appreciation, which poses a direct threat to critical thinking and, ultimately, democracy (Nussbaum Reference Nussbaum2010; Trepanier Reference Trepanier2018). While heading into an unknown future, perhaps we should keep in mind some of the core values of Humanism in a philosophical and ethical sense (e.g. Wolff Reference Wolff2010; Reference Wolff2017; Zuboff Reference Zuboff2019).

Thus, instead of rejecting Humanism altogether and throwing the baby out with the bathwater, it is worth reflecting on the call for a New Humanism that has recently been proposed in philosophical anthropology by authors such as Wentzer and Mattingly (Reference Wentzer and Mattingly2018) and Simonsen (Reference Simonsen2012). According to their perspective, this would imply an approach that

Viewed from this angle, New Humanism is both a critique of some of the dangers of traditional Humanism, and also a call for caring about humans in a world increasingly facing dehumanization (Porpora Reference Porpora2017), while at the same time committing to global sustainability (Bokova Reference Bokova2010; D'Orville Reference D'Orville2015).

In what concerns archaeology, we argue for an approach that is focused on the study of the human past, not in order to reinforce obsolete notions of ‘superiority’ or ‘progress’, but to understand the non-linear, multivocal and multifaceted diversity of human experiences in time and space and its interrelatedness with non-human entities. We consider that the presence of the human is an imperative if we are doing archaeology, but we understand that humanness is constituted and performed differently through time and space, thus including a diverse and changing array of non-human entities and relationships. Archaeology, from this perspective, is not the ‘discipline of things’, but rather the study of humans through things and in relation to things.

Grasping the complexity and diversity of the past requires a variety of theoretical approaches and viewpoints, and most archaeologists already employ a range of perspectives to achieve this. Fluid approaches that allow for different theoretical elements to be assembled seem more inclusive and fruitful than establishing rigid divides between pro- and anti-humanist approaches. Thus, some posthumanist perspectives can be incorporated by authors who, as we do, see value in maintaining the centrality of humans within archaeological studies. Perhaps, as Fassin (Reference Fassin2019, 37) suggests, a post-post-humanism will develop in the near future, which