Archeologia ciała

• Authors: Magdalena Domicela Matczak

Title variants

Archaeology of the Body

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

The archaeology of the body as a new sub-discipline emerged on the ground of post-processual archaeology in 90s of 20th century and it is connected with the so-called “body studies” associated with post-feminism. In this sub-discipline of archaeology the body is considered to be a research category through which an interpretations of the past social and economical processes are created. The human body as a skeletal remains, ashes or iconography is present in archaeology from its beginning as a discipline what might be observed for example in explorations of the cemeteries. In the history of archaeological thought many thesis of which the body is a topic has been published. But it was not until 90s of 20th century when the body started to play a central role in archaeological narrations. The break-thought was influenced by post-processual critique and new topics that emerged in archaeology and which were connected with agency and gender. The aim of archaeologists interested in the body is to create narration based on the concept of identity. As a sub-discipline archaeology of the body has its own research questions. First and basic is: what is the body in archaeology? Second is: what were ways of perceiving the body in the past? How archaeologists treat the body during scientific investigation? Who owns the the skeletal remains and who has rights to manage them? Who should display skeletal remains and where, for what and for whom? What should be done with skeletal remains after excavations? The archaeologists interested in the body use traditional methods to investigate the body which belong to osteological, iconographic and artefact analysis. Firstly it is necessary to consider the validity of using the word “body” in archaeology. Do archaeologists have access to the real body in their discipline? The article discuses different definitions of the body which vary in relation to the social theories applied for analysis. Alternative classification on the bodies has been presented by John Robb, Dušan Borić (2008) and Lynn Meskell (1999b). The body as a source, presented body, the body as a scene of display, shaped body, the body as a representation/embodied experience, performative body and fractal body might be distinguish of among many others. First of all, the human body is present in archaeology as a source, data or evidence as human remains, ashes, mummies, and in iconography. This means that the body has been present in archaeology since its very beginning as a scientific discipline. The different forms of the body began to be approached from the philosophical and theoretical perspective in 90’s of 20th century. As it was mentioned above, we might distinguish presented body, the body as a scene of display, shaped body, the body as a representation, performative body and fractal body (after Borić and Robb 2008; Meskell 1999b). One of the very first articles on the body in archaeology was Frameworks for an Archaeology of the Body by Tim Yates (1993). The publication is very much influenced by feminist philosophy and psychoanalysis by Jacques Lacan and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. It is a polemic with current approaches to the sex in archaeology. The author presents the ways of signifying the sex of the figures of rock art from Sweden and argues that we should speak about gender not sex. The conclusion is that the body is passive and those are scientists who signify it during interpretation process. The next interesting approach is the body as a scene of display of power or gender. The academics research topics are gesture, dresses, body ornaments and sexuality (e.g. Marcus 1993, 1996; Winter 1996; Sikora 2013). Lynn Meskell argues that the concept of the body as a scene of display is bounded in Michele’s Foucault’s theory of power and discourse. Another author, John Barrett in his book Fragments from Antiquity. An Archaeology of Social Life in Britain, 2900-1200 BC (1994) presents how the body was used in ritual practices and what was the aim of ritual practices? How bodies shaped the landscape? Barrett’s deliberations are grounded in post-structural theory of agency by Anthony Giddens and habitus theory by Pierre Bourdieu. The matter of analyses is megalithic architecture, burial customs, artefacts and households. The most ambitious approach in body studies is the body understand as a representation (Bynum 2002, 75). This approach is influenced by phenomenology by Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2001), performative theory by Judith Butler and Elizabeth Grosz (1994). In archaeology is promoted especially by Lynn Meskell (1999b, 2000a) and Rosemary Joyce (2005). In terms of interpretation of the body in archaeology very interesting is the performative theory which says that the body is a result of social practices (performance). The finest article which represents this approach is by Dušan Borić Body Metamorphosis and Animality: Volatile Bodies and Boulder Artworks from Lepenski Vir (2005) based on the ideas of Judith Butler, Anthony Giddens and Franz Kafka. The bodies are a sculptured boulders which present hybrids between human beings and fishes in Lepenski Vir in Danube River valley. The article aims to discus the neolitisation process in the region. Totally different approach to mentioned above, is presented by Chris Fowler (2008) who uses fractal concept grounded in mathematics. According to him fractals are the cultural and social patterns which are passed in generations. His proposition gives a new light to the archaeological eclectic interpretations on the body. Notwithstanding, several elements of the body which might be found in many archaeological publications are universal. First of all, the body in archaeology is a kind of metaphor. Archaeologists do not have access to the real biological body with bones, organs, skin and flesh, but to its remains: ashes, bones, sometimes skin and organs in the case of mummies. Another category is an iconography which only represents the bodies. Secondly, the body exists in biological and cultural contexts and in relation to the bodies of other people and objects (Sofaer 2006). Thus, the body is contextual and relational. It is changeable and undergoes with processes of becoming, as Chris Schilling (2011) emphasises, the body is a project. But from the other hand, the body is limited by cultural norms and expectations and also by biological materiality, so it cannot be changeable without end. The body is created by many different categories such as: sex/gender (Yates 1993), age, social status, ethnicity, which themselves might be regarded as a categories of identities, e.g. identity connected with age. Summarising, the body in archaeology is metaphorical, historical, material, contextual, relational, changeable, limited and composed from many different categories which create its holistic identity. To simplify it, it might be argued that the body in archaeology is a material metaphor. This means that the body discovered by archaeologist, is material but not in this way as our live bodies. The archaeological body is a metaphor which brings us to the real past and biological body. A big variety of theoretical approach to the body in archaeology resulted in multi concepts of the matter and difficulties in defining the body in archaeology (Borić 2005; Meskell 1999b). That is why every archaeologist has its own definition of the body. The big theorisation of the body in archaeology might be observed but the discipline lacks its own genuine concepts on the topic. Nowadays the tendency to leaving away a biological approach to the interpreting the past is visible. It is replaced by cultural understanding of the past, e.g. it is believed that the identity is created through social practices (Joyce 2005). Moreover, during last decades we might observe the change of complexity of archaeological theories which are focus on the body. At first, the theories were not so complicated (e.g. Yates 1993) in comparison to sophisticated and eclectic today’s theories which are very often inspired by literature or mathematics (e.g. Borić 2005; Fowler 2004, 2008). The creation of an archaeological definition on the body and theories belongs to the future of the discipline.

Keywords

EN

body; theories in archaeology; definitions; postprocesual archaeology

• Publisher: Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Przegląd Archeologiczny
• Year: 2013
• Volume: 61
• Pages: 51-75

Dates

published

2013

Contributors

author

Magdalena Domicela Matczak

• Instytut Prahistorii UAM Poznań

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Identifiers

ISSN

0079-7138