on the

Materiality of
Society and culture
 Six eSSayS on the
Materiality of Society
and culture

Edited by
Håkon Glørstad and Lotte Hedeager

Bricoleur Press
2008
 Published with support from

he Norwegian Research Council

Six eSSayS on the Materiality of Society and culture

Edited by Håkon Glørstad and Lotte Hedeager

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 Contents

Preface ............................................................................................... 7

Håkon Glørstad and Lotte Hedeager

On the Materiality of Society and Culture.......................................... 9

Ole Grøn, Michail Turov and Torunn Klokkernes

Spiritual and material aspects of everyday ritual negotiation
Ethnoarchaeological data from the Evenk, Siberia ............................ 33

Knut Odner †
Saami Sacriices. Materiality and Biography of hings ...................... 59

Michelle Tisdel Flikke

hree Interpretations of Materiality and Society
Afro-Cuban Heritage and the Cuban Slave Route Museum .............. 87

Fredrik Fahlander
Diferences that matter
Materialities, material culture and social practice .............................127

Knut Rio
he scale of materiality
Objects between the social and the material ....................................155

Håkon Glørstad
Celebrating Materiality – he Antarctic Lesson ...............................173

Contributors...................................................................................213
 Diferences that matter
Materialities, material culture and social
practice
Fredrik Fahlander

IV
Abstract

he present text concerns the social implications of the material world, focusing
on the sociality of materialities rather than their possible meaning and symbolism.
It is argued that the interpretative approach only permit things and objects to be
active within a conscious human discourse. It is suggested that archaeology would
beneit from approaching materialities from a less humanocentric perspective and
acknowledge a greater variety of ways in which materialities are involved in the
structurating process of society. his, however, does not imply that the material
world is equal to the human in terms of agency, nor does it suggest a symmetrical
relationship between the living and the material. What is socially signiicant in the
material context, and to which degree, is something that needs to be considered in
each given case. A second issue concerned is the construction of models or ictions
that we employ in our analysis of socio-material worlds. Given the great importance
of such ictions for the outcome of our studies they need to be thoroughly discussed,
and, considering that we might expect to encounter practices and ways of thinking
that is no longer represented in contemporary societies, a creative element is also
called for.

Introduction
he past worlds, like our own, are material worlds. We all need food,
shelter, tools and things to talk about. he material constitution
of the local milieu is also important as it tends to constrain some
practices while encouraging others. Despite this, the human has
traditionally been the main subject of study and the material
12 Fahlander: Diferences that matter ...

objects s/he constructs or modiies (i.e., material culture) have

consequently been examined from a human point of view. In recent
social science this humanocentric perspective has been criticised for
neglecting the potential social roles of materialities in the creation
of social relations and development. It is argued by many post-
humanocentric proponents, as well as others, that the human and
the non-human dichotomy is misleading and that social studies
should to a greater degree also consider the social driving forces of
the material world. hese studies range from determinist techno-
fetishism to less radical notions of the importance of the non-human
in social studies. Despite that material traces are the primary source
of information, archaeology has always been humanocentric in
general, especially the post-processual, interpretative archaeologies.
Of course, intentional and unintentional material traces of action,
artefacts and other features are the primary data for archaeological
analysis, but the social signiicance of the material world and its efect
on past social relations and practice seldom go beyond questions of
meaning, symbol/metaphor, status, identity and ethnicity. hings
can, however, work in much more varied ways: hey may simply be
‘good to think through’ as Lévi-Strauss argued (1966), or function
as metaphors or vehicles for the mind (cf. Tilley 1999). he
material milieu may have an almost determining efect on people.
A person can be constrained or triggered by objects and features,
consciously or unconsciously. Objects and other stuf may be
produced or appropriated with speciic intentions, and yet inluence
future actions in an unpredictable way. Indeed, some objects are
indispensable for a typical way of social life. hings and features
also constitute nodes, and direct appropriate or necessary movement
within a site or landscape. Such concentration of movement to a
limited array of paths certainly afects the numbers and forms of
social encounters and by that will have an agglomerating efect
by making contact surfaces smaller in number and smaller in size.
he built-up environment is as much an active generator of social
behaviour as it is constituted by it. Houses, buildings and the local
setting of a hamlet or a small village function on diferent scales as
nodes for repetitive action, owing to their inertness and resistance
to change (cf. Sartre 1991, Østerberg 1998:29f ).
 Six Essays on the Materiality of Society and Culture 129

Material culture against materiality

Material culture is indeed a central key-concept in archaeology, but

what the term actually signiies is surprisingly little discussed. Who
coined the term is uncertain (Buchli 2002:2; Andrén 1997:135),
but this is of less importance, as the contents of the term vary
between diferent research traditions as well as historically (Andrén
1997:151; Attield 2000:35-41). In the dictionaries we ind that
material culture is generally deined as objects manipulated or
manufactured by humans. Some, but not all, deinitions also include
features, biofacts and manufacts. Without getting lost in details it
seems quite safe to say that the concept of material culture comprise
the results or leftovers from intentional and unintentional human
practice that can be interpreted contextually. he idea is that material
culture ‘contains’ culture which can be ‘read of’ through contextual
analysis (Gibson 2006:172). It is thus generally a humanocentric,
one-way relationship: material culture is created by humans, which
hence are employed for inferening human practice and thought.
In recent years the term materiality has become increasingly
popular in archaeology and tends, at least in Anglo-Saxon
archaeology, to replace the term material culture (e.g., DeMarrais,
Gosden & Renfrew 2004; Fahlander & Oestigaard (eds) 2004. Tilley
2004; Miller 2005; Meskell 2005, Tilley et al 2006, Hodder 2006,
Soefar 2007). his apparent change of terminology is, however,
problematic. he term materiality implicates a rather diferent view
of the social importance of the material world quite diferent from
traditional interpretative frameworks. Basically, the term materiality
is deined in the Oxford English Dictionary as: ‘the quality of
being composed of matter; material existence; solidity; material or
physical aspect or character’. Such deinitions may suice for the
word materiality, but the social study of materialities goes beyond
such lexical deinitions. In a similar sense that ‘ethnicity’ is not a
synonym for ‘culture’, materiality is not necessarily synonymous
with material culture.
Archaeologists have, however, so far generally confused the terms,
which have led to somewhat strange discussions. For instance, in
the introduction of the recently published volume, Handbook of
material culture, materialities is deined as:
130 Fahlander: Diferences that matter ...

the leshy, corporeal and physical, as opposed to spiritual, ideal and value-
laden aspects of human existence. Materiality can also be taken to refer
to individual things, or collections of things, rather than to persons or
societies (Tilley et al 2006:3).

Tilleys’ own recent book, he materiality of stone, (2004) does not,

despite the title, contain any reference to the concept of materiality
at all, rather he continues in the same phenomenological path as he
has explored in earlier books, perhaps with a greater concern for the
material properties of stones (surface, shape and colour). his theme,
materials and material properties, are also the issue in Tim Ingold’s
recent discussion article on materiality in the journal Archaeological
Dialogues (Ingold 2007). Another recent anthology, Materialities,
edited by Daniel Miller (2005), also struggles with a deinition of
the main subject. On one hand, Miller argues, materiality refers in
a basic sense to artefacts, but may also encompass:

…the ephemeral, the imaginary, the biological, and the theoretical; all that
which would have been external to the simple deinition of an artefact”
(Miller 2005:4).

his is indeed a vague and pointless deinition that doesn’t seem to

difer much from the concept of material culture. In the conference
report, Rethinking materiality, (2004), edited by DeMarrais Gosden
& Renfrew, materiality is mainly contrasted with the concept of
materialisation. he latter concept normally focuses on the ways
that power and authority develop through control over material
and symbolic resources, labour, or knowledge, which normally
have little in common with the study of the social signiicance of
materialities. Materiality studies are described as:

…concern not only the study of the characteristics of objects, but also the
more general notion that humans engage with the things of the world
as conscious agents and are themselves shaped by those experiences”
(DeMarrais, Gosden & Renfrew 2004:2).

his statement has been made many times before regarding artefacts
and material culture in general and do not add anything new that
justiies a change of terminology. It is perhaps not too surprising
 Six Essays on the Materiality of Society and Culture 131

that these volumes contain (although with a few exceptions)

rather traditional material culture studies of ethnographical and
archaeological cases.
here is nothing new or strange about certain terms that become
popular in archaeological texts (during the 1990s it was almost
impossible to ind a paper that did not contain the terms ‘meaning’,
‘text’ or ‘context’), but in this framework the terminology is important.
For instance, most post-humanocentric work written on materialities
in the social sciences is not compatible with hermeneutic and
interpretative perspectives. It may thus be problematic to employ
the concept of materiality as a variation or synonym of material
culture. Most things that can be classiied as material culture are
often materialities, but the latter concept embraces a far greater
variety of material things and substances. What is at stake here is
that the material can be social in other ways than as symbols loaded
with meaning. he social world is not simply a matter of diferently
empowered individuals that interact with things and each other;
diferent kinds of materialities (things, natural features, animals,
substances such as rain and snow etc.) often play crucial, although
often sublime, roles in social development by just being there.

Do things have agency? Humanocentrism vs.

techno-fetishism
Traditionally, social scientists tend to displace the material world
in favour of elaborate analysis of human behaviour, psyche, and
biology on one hand, and collective representations and structure
on the other (Fahlander 2001:57f; 2003:34f). For instance,
Durkheim writes:

hings do afect quite much of the social development, whose speed and,
as a matter of fact, direction varies according to their properties, but they
lack prerequisites to actually make things happen. hey are the physical
materials that the vital forces of society utilise, but they do not release that
power by themselves. he only remaining active factor is hence found in
the human milieu (Durkheim 1895:93, 12).

Durkheim’s account of this matter is clear and precise. A similar

132 Fahlander: Diferences that matter ...

conception is to be found in the work of Talcott Parsons, to whom

cultural objects are parts of the individual’s personality, but only
‘indirectly relevant’ (Parsons 1951:89, 4). Also contemporary
sociology seems to neglect the social importance of materialities. For
instance, Anthony Giddens (1987) briely discusses the importance
of ‘cultural objects’, which includes artefacts. he artefacts are,
however, in Giddens’ framework of minor importance in relation
to his principal types: written texts and electronic communication.
Cultural objects (i.e. texts), Giddens argues, are distinct from
artefacts in general, because they are durable media of transmission
across contexts, means of storage and of retrieval (1987:209, 216).
his rather negligent attitude to the material world in the social
sciences is, of course, something that we need to bear in mind when
we employ social theory in studies of material contexts.
In more recent social studies of materiality, however, the focus
is rather set on the social signiicance of objects and other material
matter in the constitution of social structuration. In later decades
we have seen an increasing interest in the ‘socialness of things’, that
is, the social dimension of materialities (e.g. Latour 1991, 1999,
2005, Riggins 1994, Gumbrecht & Pfeifer 1994, Gottdiener 1995,
Komter 1998, Dant 1999, 2005, Chilton 1999, Schifer 1999, Preda
1999, Attield 2000, Graves-Brown 2000, Harré 2002, Buchli 2002,
Brown 2004, Knappet 2005). hese attempts to emphasise things,
artefacts and aspects of the environment in the social process, range
from symbolic to functional, aesthetic and technical perspectives.
he multidisciplinary nature of these studies and their varying subject
matters constrain a clear deinition of the what materiality studies
actually is about (Barck 1994:258; Pfeifer 1994:7), but in general,
the above scholars agree that material objects and other luid or solid
matter often are more important in the formation, interaction and
structuration of social situations than is normally recognised.
Bruno Latour, one of the initiators of this discussion, has in
a number of texts criticised the social sciences for neglecting the
objects (or in his terms, actants) in social interaction studies. He
argues that:

…in order to understand domination [power relations] we have to turn

away from an exclusive concern with social relations and weave them into a
 Six Essays on the Materiality of Society and Culture 133

fabric that includes non-human actants, actants that ofer the possibility of
holding society together as a durable whole (Latour 1991:103).

Latour rejects the distinctions between material infrastructure and

social superstructure as well as sociologism and technologism. On
the contrary, he stresses that social relations are made up from
chain links between humans and non-human actants (vehicles
for action). hese chains form networks which operate in various
ways; actants may function as a prolonged arm of a human being,
replacing the human subject, or to facilitate, or constrain, certain
tasks. For instance, how barbed wire can ‘replace’ a shepherd and a
dog, or how speed bumps are used as a means to protect children,
but actually relies on the concern of the driver who slows down
mainly to protect the car from damage (1999, 2005). Other actants
are not compatible, as in the case of traic light sensors that do not
respond to bicycles made of plastic, or a door that by its mode of
construction may prevent some individuals (e.g., disabled people or
small children) to use it (Latour 1992:234).
One of many examples that Latour uses to illustrate these
intricate links between the human and non-human is the heavy
lump of metal that one often inds attached to keys in European
hotels. he obvious purpose of these clumsy dead weights is to
force the customer to leave the key at the reception when leaving
the hotel. A plead to leave the key is often verbally expressed in
information brochures, on signs at the reception and on the key
itself. However, Latour notes, it is not the verbal or literal request
that actually makes people leave their keys, it is the uncomfortable
weight attached to them. In a sense, the printed pleads only serve
to explain why the key is so heavy; they do not necessary play any
signiicant part in the process. Latour’s example is mundane and
borders on the naive, but it nevertheless indicates that materialities
more often than we like to believe interact in social situations, not
only through symbolism or semiotic messages, but also as plain
material objects/substances. Latour’s critique of the negligent
attitude towards the socialness of the material world in the social
sciences is refreshing, but he does unfortunately not present any
explicit theory that can be employed in archaeology. Also, by
focusing mainly on technology, Latour has been criticised for his
rather stif and functionalist view of social action as he tends to
134 Fahlander: Diferences that matter ...

neglect intentional variability among human agents and overrate

the socialness of things. For instance, Harry Collins and Martin
Kusch (1998) have pointed out how human intentions difer from
the pseudo-agency of materialities (cf. Vandenberghe 2002). hey
make a distinction between mimeographic agency (mechanical,
routine actions), and polymorph agency (all other actions), which
encompass an enormous variation in the ways they can be initiated
and performed. It may thus be questionable, in a general sense
beyond the single situation, to view the actor-actant relations as a
network, especially as a total symmetry as Latour proclaim. here
need not to be a direct relation between chains of action at one time
with another - despite the fact that both chains involve the same
actants. For instance, materialities may act on a distance in space
and time, as a lagged or delayed efect (cf. Bhaskar 1993:140-141).
Notwithstanding the criticism, Latour is basically correct in
that it is questionable to do social analysis without considering the
material context proper. Any given case of social study, global or
local, always contains material components of varying signiicance.
For instance, a soccer game without a football would be quite
pointless and a weapon in the hand of one party can radically alter
the outcome of a dispute. In the latter case, the National Rile
Association argues in their slogan that “Guns don’t kill people,
people do” (a humanocentric perspective). he statistic on fatal
accidents is, however, telling on this matter. An irate person with
a gun in hand may in an instant become a murderer, who without
a weapon might have ‘settled’ the dispute with verbal and physical
abuse (not to mention all unintended accidents with weapons).
he main question is not whether if materialities are involved
in the social structuration process, but rather to what degree. For
instance, are the NRA right, that only people kill people, or can it
be claimed that a gun also possesses some sort of agency? It must
be clear that materialities only have a potential in some situations
to be social in the sense of stimulating, prompting or determining
social action. his property of certain things has by Gell (1998)
been termed ‘secondary agency’ and by Knappet (2002) as ‘pseudo-
agency’. To designate a general active property of all materialities,
would, however, be unfortunate, not only because it sustains the
dichotomy of the human and the non-human, but also because
agency is a complex issue from a philosophical point of view. Indeed,
 Six Essays on the Materiality of Society and Culture 135

it would be questionable to assume that every human possesses

‘primary agency’. Latour summarizes the argument elegantly:

purposeful action and intentionality may not be properties of objects, but

they are not properties of humans either. hey are properties of institutions
[collectives of humans and non-humans], apparatuses, or what Foucault
called dispositifs” (1999:192).

Just to pick one example to illustrate Latour’s point. In History

of Madness (2006), Foucault implies that the very existence of
leprosarias in the early 16th century Europe played a part in the
process of discern the mad as a social category. After the leprosarias
became obsolete they, if not precisely ewoke, perhaps at any rate
stimulated that process by just being there, ready to embrace a new
category of ‘mad’ individuals (2006:5f ). Similarly, in Discipline
and punish (1975), Foucault addresses the structure of prisons,
schools and factories as a material manifestation of the modern
discourse of increasing surveillance and discipline of bodies. It
may, of course, also be that the obsolete leprosarias just become
handy in an already ongoing process and the structuration of
oicial buildings might likewise only be a non-dialectical material
manifestation of an already established discourse. But it must be
clear that materialities are not just the intentional or unintentional
result of human action, but that material objects and stuf always
are involved, and in varying respect, inluence the structuration of
the social world. his means that there are no clear-cut boundaries
between so-called natural objects and culturally modiied objects.
Materialities with potential social driving force can involve a great
variety of things, from artefacts, landscape, layout and material of
buildings and settlements, trees and vegetation, to animals, bodies
and less evident material matters such as rain, ice and snow.1 What
1
One special category of materialities that may suice to clarify the distinction
between the two concepts is the human body. he majority of scholars would
probably not include the body in the concept of material culture, but the body is
nonetheless often a social materiality that has great efect on the outcome of social
practice. he corporeal body as materiality has very little to do with the individual
or person, but emphasizes the appearance and bodily constitution in the process
of subjectivation and categorization as well as in practical ways of getting certain
tasks done. Corporeal aspects such as body posture, sex, age and variations in hair
and skin colour are well documented aspects that certainly have great efect for
136 Fahlander: Diferences that matter ...

is socially signiicant, and to which degree, is thus something that

needs to be concerned in each given case.
he examples of Latour and Foucault highlight an aspect of the
material not usually recognised in archaeological studies of material
culture. Archaeologists generally agree that material culture is
active. It is active because it is ‘meaningfully constituted’ and carries
meaning and symbolism (e.g., Hodder 1982:75; 1992:15). he
examples of Latour and Foucault above thus difer quite a lot from
interpretative (humanocentric) material culture studies because they
also recognise the potential socialness of the materialities themselves
– both outside and within the human mind – which is something
quite diferent from just being ‘meaningfully constituted’. here is
thus a paradox involved in this newfound interest in the socialness
of things. he turn to things is at the same time a turn away from
objects and artefacts. As the human subject often becomes decentred
and deprived of its ego and personality in social studies, the artefact
becomes a materiality together with other less impressing material
traces and objects. he new turn to things is not so much about the
aesthetic and symbolic dimensions of great artefacts, but more of a
recognition that materialities are involved in social action and that
some even have a potential of being socially important by initiating,
conserving or rendering possible practices and processes that is not
always recognised by the agents involved.

Working with materialities: he microarchaeology of

social practice
To work with human-material contexts as outlined above, there is a
need for theoretical and methodological development on two levels.
First, we need general social theories that really include both human
interaction and the material context in a more integrated way. Second,
we need to develop operative methods for analysing various social
contexts that employ material evidence in its full potential. here
are already a few theories and methods at hand, but it is nonetheless
important that we continue to develop others and more complex

the individuals’ possibilities to do things and also as to how they are valued and
apprehended by others (Fahlander 2006).
 Six Essays on the Materiality of Society and Culture 137

ones to better suit our speciic questions and contexts.

In archaeology, some sort of sociocultural unit has always been
regarded as a natural and logical point of departure for archaeological
analysis even though the analysed data may be particular. Working
in this tradition implies using information from spatially separate
areas to reconstruct the cosmology and typical practice of a social
group during a certain time-span (i.e., culture). he main idea is
thus to combine fragmented and incomplete material evidence
from diferent regions to reconstruct virtual social entities like a
great jig-saw puzzle. his tradition is represented in both processual
and post-processual archaeology. Processual archaeologists have
tried to establish functional traits that deine each type of social
form, whereas post-processual, or interpretative archaeologists,
have been more interested in the cosmology or symbolic schemes
working from a hermeneutic framework. In contrast to much
processual archaeology, the postprocessualist stresses the plural and
multivocal understanding of meaning and claims that sociocultural
systems are open and populated by knowledgeable heterogeneous
agents (e.g., Shanks & Tilley 1987, Hodder 1992). Still, many
archaeologists seem to presuppose that individuals within given
social entities share a common interpretative horizon, in which
social action has meaning and can be understood. his hermeneutic
standpoint contradicts, however, the image of open systems, and
this fundamental problem cannot be solved by ad hoc arguments.
he aim of much interpretative archaeology to actually understand
meaning and thoughts of past peoples is not only humanocentric,
but also perhaps a bit too optimistic.
In order to facilitate an approach that recognises both general
heterogeneity and multivocality of any society and also the
possibility that people do not fully correspond to known ways of
reasoning and practice it may be better to abandon hermeneutics in
favour of a less humanocentric perspective. One such approach is
the microarchaeological framework (Fahlander 2003). he theoretical
basis of the approach is neither processual nor post-processual in
character, but seeks to combine strands of thought, methodology and
practice, independently of their origin. he most notable sources of
inspiration are Sartre’s theory of serial collectivity (1991), Foucault’s
‘archaeology’ (1972), Žižek’s (1989) awry reading of Marx and Lacan,
and the structuration theory of Giddens (1984). In a combination of
13 Fahlander: Diferences that matter ...

these works, the bulk of social life, including ideologies, is argued to

operate at a semi-conscious level. Jean-Paul Sartre made an important
point concerning this issue in his concept of seriality (1991). In short,
he argued that much daily life results in momentary, but repeated,
series of individuals whose ‘intentional’ actions tend to centre on
materialities and the inert fabric of the local and general context.
Indeed, much social practice is repetetive, performed collectively, and
in close relation to the social and material mileau. Individual agency
seems not to be that unique and varied as it may be experienced,
but can rather can be described as related, connected, attached
and associated with general structures which pours in and out of
the local context (cf. Latour 2005:176f, Alcorn 1994). he idea of
repeated social practice as mediating the particular and the general
is the basic point of study of microarchaeology and the approach
obviously share some common notions with other practice theories,
such as Bourdieu and Giddens. However, by combining Foucault
and Sartre with Žižek, we nonetheless end up with a distinct theory
and methodology speciically designed to suit prehistoric conditions
(for extended discussion, see Fahlander 2003:13-48).
he methodology of microarchaeology is quite basic and does
not difer much from normal archaeological procedure. he key
point is to seek patterns and regularities of materialities in time and
space, which can be ‘translated’ to practice, or bundles of related
practice (ig. 1). From a traditional point of view, the ‘normal’ way
to approach a locale or time period is to discuss how the place in
question relates to other contemporary locales with similar attributes.

Fig. 1. A schematic
illustration of
the mediating
aspects of repeated,
reoccurring social
practice.
 Six Essays on the Materiality of Society and Culture 139

From a microarchaeological standpoint, however, the critical

question is rather to determine the relations between practices
performed at the locale itself. Only at a later stage when a number of
independent studies have been carried out, can we start to relate the
similarities and diferences of identiied practices in order to reach
a larger frame; a iction (ig. 2). he term iction refers to ‘our’ etic
understanding of ‘their’ emic ideologies, an important distinction
that often is confused in the concept of culture. he substitution
of the term culture, or pre-understanding, by ‘iction’ is thus not
just a semantic twist, but seeks to emphasise the necessity to keep
our general understanding of an area or time period luid, actually
allowing it to be modiied by new data. he microarchaeological
perspective thus emphasises the need to get better at recognising
‘intra-cultural’ change and variability within locales. A irst step in
the small-scale studies is therefore to establish relations between
events in order to understand the internal development of each site.
We need to ind some sort of relational chronology of practices, or
bundles of practices, in order to grasp social variability, including
the queer and strange. By doing this, we can trace changes and
internal variation on a much more detailed scale than by traditional
approach.
Even though microarchaeology advocates a local, bottom-up

Fig. 2. A schematic illustration of the traditional top-down perspective and the

microarchaeological approach. Left: he dotted arrows refer to the lesser impact
of individual sites on the general idea of a culture, time period or region. Right:
new and old information from individual sites are equally important for the
continuous reconstruction of a general iction (i.e., image, idea or preconception)
of a time-space section.
140 Fahlander: Diferences that matter ...

perspective, it must not be confused with particularistic studies

of places or locales. It is rather a way of discussing regularities in
practice without the need to conine the study within a cultural
context. he preix micro should therefore not be mistaken for
simply referring to a limited scope of analysis. he aim is not only
to deine speciicity, but rather to employ small-scale analysis in
order to get at large-scale patterns and processes. he point of
departure is the relation between chains of actions and repetitive
events analysed in terms of relations between the particular and the
general as previously discussed.
To illustrate the relation between local practices and more
general social elements we can employ the metaphors of ibres and
threads. hreads are spun by twisting ibre on ibre. he point is
that the strength or the essence of the thread does not reside in one
ibre running through its whole length, but in the overlapping of
many ibres. he only thing running through the whole thread is
the continuous overlapping of the ibres. he metaphor of ibres
and threads gives an illustration of repeated practice and how they
are related, and how individuals, groups and larger collectives are
interrelated over time and space. he key point is that threads are
made up out of ibres of diferent lengths. he ibres are momentarily
woven together but do not remain so forever. If some ibres
suddenly cease to correspond, the thread may either dissolve or take
on another form by comprising other ibres. he metaphor of the
thread is, however, not to be taken literally. he relations between
social practices (ibres) do not form a closed, coherent system; it
is perhaps more relevant to speak of clusters of ibres, more in the
shape of ‘dust balls’ than a straight, consistent thread. Such clusters
are not absolutely determining, never-changing, structural elements
in the traditional sense. hey are composed of clusters of repeated
practices and are usually sensitive to change in one or more practices.
Microarchaeology is thus a way of discussing regularities in practice
without the need to conine the study within a cultural context.
Instead, we ind clusters of interwoven ibres, that is, practices or
material patterns, of varying extent in time and space that may
coincide with an ethnic group, but we should not be surprised if
this way of looking at social practice turns out as something that
crisscross assumed cultural units, regions or ethnicities.
Perhaps the best way of pointing out the possibilities of
 Six Essays on the Materiality of Society and Culture 141

microarchaeology is by addressing a particular case study. Up to

date, microarchaeological analysis has mainly been carried out in
the ield of burial analysis (Fahlander 2003, 2008; cf. Gramsch
2007). But the general methodology is, of course, applicable on
other areas as well, as sugested by a couple of cases of household
analyses in the Mediterranean (Streifert-Eikeland 2006, Fahlander
ms.). here is, however, little room to recount any of these studies
here, but the following modern case study from the Americas will
suice to illustrate the general points made.

Ideology and air-conditioners in America

William Whyte’s (1954) study of how the ‘word of mouth’ works is
one interesting example of how a seemingly random, spatial pattern
of materialities can be related to both individual agency, material
setting and structural elements. Whyte’s example is well selected;
a neighbourhood consisting of similar, 12.000-dollar houses,
inhabited by fairly homogeneous, white-collar couples at the age of
twenty-ive and forty who earn between 5 to 7 thousand dollars per

Fig. 3. he picture shows a residential area of Philadelphia during the 1950s.

he houses that have air-conditioners installed are marked with a white X (from
Whyte 1954).
142 Fahlander: Diferences that matter ...

year. he white X’s on some of the roofs in the photo (ig. 3) indicate
houses with air-conditioning installed, a new commodity that was
not as common then as it is today. Despite the homogeneity of the
neighbourhood and its inhabitants, we ind that the conditioners
are unevenly spread and clustered. Whytes’ explanation of this
pattern is that the word of mouth, the social contact between the
families, is primarily spread between next-door neighbours and
across the backyards but not across the streets. he reasons for this
clustering depend on the given material conditions of the area, the
outline of the houses and the neighbourhood, but also on the social
practices of the members of the households and ideology in general.
When Whyte interviewed some of the couples, he found that one
reason for the stronger backyard connection was that social contact
between the families was initiated by their children, who played
with each other primarily in the backyards of their houses.
here are, of course, webs of complex relations that are involved
in this speciic case, but Whyte’s example nonetheless illustrates the
relation between individual agency, ideology and materialities. he
houses were built for, and used by, typical, western, nuclear families,
normally with the wife working at home, responsible for the care
of the children. In another setting, let us say one in which nannies,
instead of the housewife, look after the children, the backyard
contacts would probably be less frequent between the individuals
who have interest in and power to afect the equipment of the house.
We would certainly not ind the same patterns. Social action is thus
not simply a matter of individual intentions but is always related to
a larger frame of reference. his relation between the general and
the particular makes it possible to move from detailed studies of
particular material contexts to the general aspects of social life. We
may thus view social practices of a particular situation as mediating
the particular and the general, or in other terms, between agency
and structure. he tradition of having the wife stay at home and
tend the children is a typical example of a thread, and the practices
she performs at the house can be seen as repetitive practices, or
ibres. he example illustrates how social practice is in varying
aspects a result of the social and material properties of the particular
situation, but these cannot be seen as necessarily unique, as they
also include traditions, institutionalised power relations and other
aspects of the ‘outside’ world.
 Six Essays on the Materiality of Society and Culture 143

Although, this example mainly concerns the recursive relation

between local agency and the general frame of ideology, it also
exempliies how materialities (nota bene, not only material culture)
are consciously and deliberately involved in the social process
and their unintended and non expected consequences. he main
materials involved here are not the air-conditioners themselves
and their possible relation to status etc., but the materiality of
the houses, i.e., the layout of the suburb. It is interesting that the
roads (designed for communication) actually inhibit some social
communication. he example is thus a good illustration of how the
material constitution of the local setting in some way can initiate
human agency (and thus the distribution of materialities) in non
predicted ways. In archaeology, we often encounter similar, seemingly
random, patterns and clustering of features and materialities. It is
easy to imagine that a traditional analysis of a similar pattern on an
archaeological site (with the X’s indicating houses with inds of a
special pottery or artefacts) would probably look for connections
between all X-marked houses in the whole area (c.f., Hodder 2006:55,
178). hese non-related households are likely to be interpreted as
signifying a status, a profession or a social/ethnic category, that is,
simply by re-assigning a material pattern to a social category. In
this case, we ‘know’ the answers beforehand. We already know a
great deal about the typical ideology of the USA during the 1950s
and Whyte could interview the human agents involved. It would,
however, not be impossible to reach a similar conclusion without
living informants, for instance, by carefully searching for patterns
in other materialities than the air conditioners. All taken together,
it ought to be possible to ind clusters of practices that hint at a
gender division and ideology typical of America during the 50s.
As this example seeks to demonstrate, modern day examples of
materialities and social practice can often be good to think through.
New perspectives often make old questions irrelevant while open up
doors to new ways of looking at things. he most important aspects
of archaeology are not found in theory, technique or methodology,
but in the frame of reference we employ to make sense of the
things we dig up. In prehistoric cases we face a special problem of
uncertainty and a lack of proper frames of reference. Sociologists
and historians often have more solid platforms from which they
can relate one situation to another, and some sort of notion of the
144 Fahlander: Diferences that matter ...

general way of thinking during the time and place they investigate.
Archaeology has no such irm notions to depart from; much of the
practices and cosmologies of the past is, on the contrary, more or less
unknown to us. hey only survive in fragments and bits and pieces
of material traces of action, which raises complicated questions on
what kind of frame of references and comparisons that are valid.
he fact that we always operate from some sort of images, or as I
prefer to term them, ictions of the past, is evident, but how this
process works and how we choose between the ictions is something
that we need to adhere to in greater detail.

Chasing the leopard’s tail: Fictions and models in

archaeology
In all attempts of analysing something abstruse and obscure we
always have to concider how our models and data relate to each
other and discern random anomalies from signiicant variation.
Models are indeed essential and unavoidable for any study of the
past but this relation is nonetheless seldom explicitly discussed in
recent years. As Taylor points out in the quotation below, models
and concepts always run the risk of being transformed into the
actual object of analysis, and non-normative material evidence thus
tends to be squashed, manipulated or neglected to it the types of
the model.

Philosophers of science recognize the ‘interpretive dilemma’ in all attempts

at archaeological explanation: in order to interpret something, I must have
decided that there is something to interpret. Inevitably, by focusing on
that something, I will have already formed some idea of what it is. I say I
want to investigate the meaning of this or that burial, but I have already
decided the most signiicant thing about it when I called it a ‘burial’. he
possibility of understanding anything new and surprising is dramatically
lessened (Taylor 2003:37).

Social models encompass a great variety of general, implicit or

explicit notions of human action, from the mythological savage to
the ‘economic man’ or social types like hunter-gatherers and settled
agriculturalists. Also concepts like male-female oppositions are still,
 Six Essays on the Materiality of Society and Culture 145

despite decades of feminist critique, commonly assumed to be

all-time, valid types of social categories. It does not seem to matter
that these issues have been largely debated, deconstructed and
demonstrated as heterogeneous and varied; mainstream archaeology
has still not come to terms with the possible otherness of the diferent
pasts. One recent example is Ian Hodders book he Leopard’s tale
(2006). In his synthesis of the exacavations at Çatalhöyük, one
of the most fascinating, complex and well documented excavated
sites, he falls back to a contradictory argument of the need of
anthropological analogies in order to “make
make sense of the strangeness
and ‘otherness’ of our deep-time destination” (2006:32). Although
he stresses that analogies needs to be handled carefully, critically and
with caution, he chooses Raymond Firth’s (1936) study of the small
and remote island of Tikopia as a main illustration of a ‘similar
type of small-scale society’. So much for his previous emphasis on
the importance of choosing relevant analogies (1982). he most
curious aspect in his analysis is, however, the conventional way in
which he treats such a great and complex material with so much
potential. From a general perspective, he treats the whole site as a
cultural whole, largely dismissing social variability and development
over time, because of what he considers to be a “remarkable degree
of continuity” in some elements (2006:163f ). he complex and
fascinating burials in the houses are simply discussed in terms of
age, sex and status, despite the fact that nothing in them suggests
that these were relevant social categories (2006:191-218). Instead,
Hodder is concerned with questions such as why there are so few
domestic attributes in the graves: He is especially curious as to
why clay-balls, which are found in the houses and associated with
cooking, never made it into the burials (2006:50f). Now, why
should they? hey seem more likely to be a kind of everyday items
that survives through time, but probably never was of any greater
concern of the inhabitants. Why should they put them in the graves?
One cannot compare apples to oranges, or clay-balls to elaborated
obsidian knives as Hodder does. His concluding thoughts of social
life at Çatalhöyük are also coloured by his choice of iction. He
bluntly argues that the social structure in Çatalhöyük was centered
on kinship and descent, a general anthropological cliché with little
support in the excavated data. Commencing from this assumption
he concludes that:
146 Fahlander: Diferences that matter ...

People were probably closely allied to family, lineage and to the materiality of
the house. heir lifecycles and those of the houses were closely tied. Identity
was closely tied to ancestors and to social memory (Hodder 2006:108, 228).

Hodder’s book on Çatalhöyük may be popular in style, but it

nonetheless illuminates the problems of working from ictions
derived from colonial anthropology.
In order to analyse the past in less stereotype ways, we need
to elaborate ictions of the various ways in which people interact
with each other and their material worlds. Such ictions can be
derived from studies of contemporary small scale societies, from
historical sources, or from modern-day examples as in the case of
the air-conditioners. Ever since the formative period of archaeology
as a discipline, it has obviously seemed natural for archaeologists
to seek illustrations and comparative cases in anthropology and
ethnography.. here can, of course, be no doubt about the necessity
and importance for an archaeologist to have a wide frame of
reference of the variety of human practices in small scale societies.
Our images of the past would certainly have been very diferent
and probably dafter without the aid of anthropological accounts,
theories and models, but it is nonetheless important to acknowledge
the backsides of this disciplinary relationship. he many fallacies in
employing anthropological examples in archaeology are well known
and I shall not go in to detail here on that matter (but see Fahlander
2001, 2004). It may suice to say that anthropological accounts
need to be scrutinized with similar source criticism as do historical
texts. he problem as I see it, is that archaeologists often treat
anthropological theory and data in a too sloppy manner, which tend
to restrain the development of more advanced, detailed and creative
analysis of archaeological data. It is too easy to classify material traces
of a prehistoric social aggregate as a hunter-gatherer group with
a typical way of life, relation to biotope and a general cosmology.
It has also been more or less praxis to take the old Saxe-Binford
approach to burials for granted, that is, by only seeking patterns in
relation to age, sex and status (like the case of Çatalhöyük). Instead,
we need to fully acknowledge that contemporary societies generally
are more varied, complex and often contradictory than we normally
expect. his problematic has been discussed in anthropology for
a long time. Cliford Geertz (2000:104) is one anthropologist
 Six Essays on the Materiality of Society and Culture 147

that recently has expressed confusion on this matter. He wonders,

“What are we to make of cultural practices that seem to us odd and
illogical? How odd are they? How illogical? In what precisely does
reason lie?” As Geertz stresses, we cannot satisfactorily distinguish
‘strange’ from ‘normal’ practices. he same problem is apparent in
the so called contemporary analogies in history (Andrén 1997).
Many historians have accentuated the heterogeneity and hybrid
processes of social practices and collectives which imply that we
ind very few straightforward origins and developments of certain
seemingly similar practices even during short time-spans (cf.
Ginsburg 2002:63f). In prehistoric cases, the time-frames span
over several generations and over large geographical areas. his fact
alone suggests that we need to be extra careful in applying regional
or ‘culture-speciic’ comparisons. Most important, however, is that
we obviously will encounter social relations, ways of thinking and
social practices that no longer are present in the contemporary
scene. he big question is then, how do we interpret traces of the
possibly unfamiliar and unknown? As an exempliication, let us
consider the following quotation from Saul Kripke on the existence
of unicorns:

...even if archaeologists and geologists were to discover tomorrow some

fossils conclusively showing the existence of animals in the past, satisfying
everything we know about unicorns from the myth of the unicorn, that
would not show that there were unicorns (Kripke 1980:24).

What Kripke is getting at is, if data are discovered that it the

description of unicorns, they may suggest that there once were
horses with horns, but that they are not necessarily the same as
the mythical igure of unicorns. Translated to a more relevant
archaeological context, Kripke is hinting that, even if we discover
attributes that satisfy everything that we know about, let us say a
typical hunter-gatherer group, it does not mean that this is the same
thing as a contemporary one. It may thus be appropriate to speak
about ictions rather than models as a way of acknowledging their
virtual character. It goes without saying that archaeological ictions
will probably turn out to be most favourable if they are based on
the given sociohistorical conditions, that is, the material traces of
action. As Leach once argued concerning ethnographic analysis:
14 Fahlander: Diferences that matter ...

“Our concern is with what the signiicant social categories are; not
with what they ought to be” (Leach 1961:27). Hodder’s discussion
on the obsidian ‘mirrors’ found in Çatalhöyük is telling on this
matter.. Although he admits that they may have been used as regular
mirrors he also suggests that they “may have been used to ‘see’ and
‘divine’ the spirit world” (2006:229). Here the anthropological
basis for his iction is clear and visible. he ritual interpretation
of the relecting obsidian items is clearly inspired by the exotism
and the colonial igure of the ritually driven savage which once was
a popular theme in pre WWII anthropology (such as Firth). he
excavated data, however, do not support such an interpretation;
on the contrary, it would be more rational to assume that people
who were so keen on elaborate decoration of their houses also cared
about their appearance. It might be argued that Hodder at least
is honest about where he found inspiration for his iction of life
at Çatalhöyük, but does that make his choice of Firths study of
Tikopia acceptable? Would one not expect scholars to consult more
elaborate contemporary anthropology? hink about it, how would
we react if someone outside our discipline made interpretations of
the past solely based on the work of archaeologists such as O.S.G.
Crawford or Gustaf Kossinna?
Perhaps a bit surprisingly, one of the clearest formulations
of the ‘fact and iction’ dilemma is not found in social theory
but in an old episode of the TV series “he X-iles”. In he Sixth
Extinction (episode 7x03), the debris of a spaceship are discovered
buried in the sand on an African shore which contained disturbing
information on human genetics and quotations from the Bible.
he material remains are clearly very old, much older than the
discovery of genetics and the period when the Bible was compiled.
One of the characters, special agent Dana Scully, is a train scientist
who always seeks rational explanations for the unnatural things she
encounters in the ield. She is constantly struggling to make sense
of what she is trained to believe as a scientist which seldom suices
to explain strange facts such as the spaceship in question. In a
particular monologue she complains: “What is this discovery I’ve
made? How can I reconcile what I see with what I know?” Dana’s
frame of reference is clearly not suicient to explain the data she
is excavating. he question: How can I reconcile what I see with
what I know, is perhaps something that we as archaeologist ought
 Six Essays on the Materiality of Society and Culture 149

to ask ourselves every now and then, whether we are excavating

or reading texts.
It has been an often repeated mantra that we cannot analyse the
past without analogies with the present (a generalising statement
that to some scholars seem to excuse the most far reaching
comparisons). I ind it only partly true; why should we not be
able to create plausible ictions that to some degree transcend our
frames of reference? Fiction writers have done that for a long time,
as well as certain scientists. One example is the interpretation of
dinosaur fossils in the early 19th century. he idea of big dinosaurs
that ruled the earth long before humans appeared was more or less
unthinkable at the time. he contemporary religious discourse
of the Bible refuted Earth such a long history and there were no
living counterparts to the great dinosaurs with which to compare
the scattered fossils (Cadbury 2000). Despite that, that is, against
the common thought style and lack of a relevant frame of reference,
the growing numbers of data led to the acceptance of an era of great
dinosaurs on Earth. It should be possible to study past material
traces of action on their own terms and sociohistorical setting. his
simple and perhaps naïve diference is to me what actually deines
archaeology as something other that anthropology and sociology.
And furthermore, this diference is actually the prime object for us
to analyse: It is a diference that matters.

Does it really matter? Concluding remarks

here can be little doubt that social worlds are material worlds.
Without things and matter there would not be any social constellations
for us to discuss and analyse. he material traces of the past do not,
however, speak for themselves, neither through regional comparisons
nor through analogies with the present. In order to analyse the past
properly, we need elaborated ictions of the various ways in which
people interact with each other and their material worlds. Such ictions
can be derived from studies of contemporary small scale societies or
from historical sources, but we must also expect to encounter ways of
doing things and ideologies in the past that are no longer represented
in the contemporary world. To work with the unfamiliar and trying
to put aside common-sense explanations is often diicult, but in
150 Fahlander: Diferences that matter ...

order to make archaeology something more than simply mirroring

the ethnographical record, it is a necessary exercise which can deliver
more exiting and interesting ictions about the past.We thus need a
creative element in our ictions as a way of expanding our frames of
reference beyond simple and traditional social models and categories.
After all, it is the uncertainty of prehistory that makes our discipline
exciting and meaningful.
But is it possible to address social analysis if we discard any
concept implying the existence of social or cultural units? In this
paper, I have discussed the possibilities of such an approach that
departs from a ‘bottom-up’ perspective where one or several locales
are independently analysed in detail while minimising the impact
of general ’knowledge’ of the time and region in question. It is
probably true that studies of materiality are easier to carry out on
contemporary materials and more diicult to apply on prehistoric
data. he obvious reason for this is found in the nature of the data,
but also because of the mainly unknown social setting in prehistoric
cases. he archaeological record does, however, often contain more
information than we generally use. To ind new and improved
ways of extracting social information from such materialities is a
continuing prominent task for archaeology.
Archaeology is by tradition a humanist science and thus to a
certain degree humanocentric. It is important to point out that
emphasising the social signiicance of the material world does not
necessarily imply that we should abandon the human subject and
human worlds as an area of study. Some scholars argue that we need
to ‘turn the tables’ and focus on the non-human on the expense
of the human (e.g., Olsen 2003, Knappet 2002). Others, like
Latour, argue for a balanced symmetry. I believe, however, that it
is important not to respond to the previous neglect of the material
by dismissing or marginalise the human element. It must be clear
that materialities do not have agency (secondary or pseudo) per
se. heir possible social signiicancies in given situations need to
be analysed on a case to case basis. herefore we need a lexible
integrated theoretical and methodological framework that can be
applied in diferent situations and on diferent scale. he concept of
materialities (as employed in the social sciences) and the theoretical
and methodological framework of microarchaeology as outlined
here is but one platform from which we can analyse past and present
 Six Essays on the Materiality of Society and Culture 151

socio-material worlds. We may loose something when abandoning

hermeneutics and placing the human beside the pedestal instead
of on top of it. But perhaps that loss is nothing more than the
faint remaining echo of a culture historical legacy? However,
acknowledging social complexity and inter-social variation and
development is a greater challenge, and who can resist that?

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