Hannah Cobb (University of Manchester, UK), Oliver Harris (University of Cambridge, UK), Cara Jones (CFA Archaeology) and Phil Richardson

This paper seeks to address a central issue at the heart of how archaeologists produce knowledge about the past: the subject and object dichotomy. Philosophical thought (e.g. Heidegger 1962) and ethnography (e.g. Ingold 2000; Viveiros de Castro 1998) shows clearly that this bifurcation does not prefigure but rather is produced through our worldly experience. We cannot in any way presume, therefore, that this dichotomy would be understood in the same way by the varieties of humanity we explore in past contexts. Nevertheless, as Danny Miller (2005) points out, this in no way deals with its centrality to the multiple and varied forms of modernity of which archaeological practice is but one small part. We are left, therefore, with a
conundrum. There is no form of archaeological methodology that makes sense outwith the subject/object dichotomy, yet we need the potential to escape this if we are to understand the past. We suggest that this issue whilst perhaps irresolvable nevertheless demands out attention, if we are to produce convincing archaeologies. If we pretend that theory can simply overcome our inherently dichotomous approaches we merely disguise the archaeological nature of our endeavor and replace it with social fantasies.

Using examples of particular field surveys as archaeological methodologies we
explore how whilst our fieldwork produces one kind of ontology - one rooted in the subject object dichotomy - our interpretive obligations, at least as we see them, require us to produce very different kinds of narrative about the past. These tensions are challenging, but also potentially productive, and in recognizing and engaging with them we can produce perhaps for the first time truly archaeological ontologies.

Heidegger, M. 1962 (translation; J. MacQuarrie and E. Robinson) Being and Time. Oxford. Blackwell

Ingold, T. 2000. Perceptions of the environment: essays in livelihood, dwelling and skill. London: Routledge.

Miller, D. 2005. Materiality: an introduction. In D. Miller (ed.) Materiality, 1-50.London: Duke University Press.

Viveiros De Castro, E. 1998. Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 4: 469-488.