Professor of Archaeology Christopher Witmore | |
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Occupation | Archaeologist |
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Christopher Witmore is an academic and Professor of Archaeology and Classics at Texas Tech University. [1] His research focuses on landscapes in Greece over the long term,archaeological theory,thing studies;contemporary archaeology and the Anthropocene;and the relationships between humans,technology,and the environment. [2] [3]
Witmore earned his BA in archaeology,classics,and geography from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1996,a MA in Landscape Archaeology at the University of Sheffield in 1998,and a PhD from Stanford University in 2005.
Witmore is co-editor of the Routledge Archaeological Orientations series and sits on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Contemporary Archaeology . [4] [5] From 2006 to 2009,he was a postdoctoral research fellow with the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University. [6] In 2009 he joined the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Texas Tech University where he is the President's Excellence in Research Professor of archaeology and the head of classics.
Witmore also held a research fellowship at the National Humanities Center from 2014 to 2015. [7] In 2017 he was a Senior Research Fellow with the Centre for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. [8] [9]
He teaches at Texas Tech University courses on archaeology,Classics,the history of technology,and the theory and philosophy of archaeology. [10]
Witmore is "known for blending in-depth engagements alongside objects with longstanding and pressing questions of human and nonhuman existence. Witmore is among a few influential archaeologists who have been instrumental in reorienting the field from an exclusive focus on a distant past,to a field of interventions into the present,past,and future." [11] He has written over 80 articles on the philosophy of archaeology,new materialisms,archaeological theory,landscape archaeology,classical archaeology,and contemporary archaeology. [8] He has published four books on these topics including Old Lands:A Chorography of the Eastern Peloponnese,which seeks to renew and transform the ancient genre of chorography. [12] [13] Old Lands,according to the American Philosopher Levi Bryant is a book that "defies categorization,it is part history,part travel diary,part reflection on the present,and part theoretical reflection on archaeology and how archaeology ought to be conducted." [14] Witmore also co-authored the 2012 book Archaeology:The Discipline of Things along with Bjørnar Olsen and Michael Shanks (archaeologist),which according to Michael Brian Schiffer "exhorts the reader to embrace the materiality of archaeology by recognizing how every step in the discipline's scientific processes involves interaction with myriad physical artifacts,ranging from the camel-hair brush to profile drawings to virtual reality imaging." [15] More recently,Witmore co-authored Objects Untimely:Object-Oriented Philosophy and Archaeology with the object-oriented philosopher Graham Harman. [16] According to the philosopher Jon Cogburn,"Objects Untimely develops a radical object-oriented theory of archaeology while simultaneously providing a novel account of time's dependence upon objects." [17]
Witmore is also known for writing "the founding manifesto of symmetrical archaeology." [18] [19] [20] Symmetrical archaeology recasts "archaeology as the study of things and not the study of the past or past peoples." [21] As Witmore puts it,"archaeology is the study of things with an aim to understand pasts and their relevance for life." [22]
Ontology is the philosophical study of being. It is traditionally understood as the subdiscipline of metaphysics focused on the most general features of reality. As one of the most fundamental concepts,being encompasses all of reality and every entity within it. To articulate the basic structure of being,ontology examines what all things have in common. It also investigates how they can be grouped into basic types,such as the categories of particulars and universals. Particulars are unique,non-repeatable entities,like the person Socrates. Universals are general,repeatable entities,like the color green. Another contrast is between concrete objects existing in space and time,like a tree,and abstract objects existing outside space and time,like the number 7. Systems of categories aim to provide a comprehensive inventory of reality,employing categories such as substance,property,relation,state of affairs,and event.
An ogive is the roundly tapered end of a two- or three-dimensional object. Ogive curves and surfaces are used in engineering,architecture,woodworking,and ballistics.
Michael Shanks is a British archaeologist specialising in classical archaeology and archaeological theory. He received his BA,MA and PhD from Cambridge University,and was a lecturer at the University of Wales,Lampeter before moving to the U.S. in 1999 to take up a Chair in Classics at Stanford University.
Landscape archaeology,previously known as total archaeology is a sub-discipline of archaeology and archaeological theory. It studies the ways in which people in the past constructed and used the environment around them. It is also known as archaeogeography. Landscape archaeology is inherently multidisciplinary in its approach to the study of culture,and is used by pre-historical,classic,and historic archaeologists. The key feature that distinguishes landscape archaeology from other archaeological approaches to sites is that there is an explicit emphasis on the sites' relationships between material culture,human alteration of land/cultural modifications to landscape,and the natural environment. The study of landscape archaeology has evolved to include how landscapes were used to create and reinforce social inequality and to announce one's social status to the community at large. The field includes with the dynamics of geohistorical objects,such as roads,walls,boundaries,trees,and land divisions.
Chris Y. Tilley (1955–2024) was a British archaeologist known for his contributions to post-processual archaeological theory. He retired as emeritus Professor of Anthropology and Archaeology at University College London in 2022.
William Martin LeakeFRS was an English soldier,spy,topographer,diplomat,antiquarian,writer,and Fellow of the Royal Society. He served in the British Army,spending much of his career in the Mediterranean seaports. He developed an interest in geography and culture of the regions visited,and authored a number of works,mainly about Greece.
Archaeological theory refers to the various intellectual frameworks through which archaeologists interpret archaeological data. Archaeological theory functions as the application of philosophy of science to archaeology,and is occasionally referred to as philosophy of archaeology. There is no one singular theory of archaeology,but many,with different archaeologists believing that information should be interpreted in different ways. Throughout the history of the discipline,various trends of support for certain archaeological theories have emerged,peaked,and in some cases died out. Different archaeological theories differ on what the goals of the discipline are and how they can be achieved.
The Sværholt Peninsula is a peninsula in Finnmark county,Norway. The peninsula lies between the Porsangerfjorden and Laksefjorden in the municipalities of Nordkapp,Lebesby,and Porsanger. The 70-kilometre (43 mi) peninsula has some settlements,mostly on the inner part of the peninsula. The villages of Veidnes and Brenna are two of the larger settlements on the Sværholt Peninsula. The lake Kjæsvannet lies in the central part of the peninsula. The Sværholtklubben Nature Reserve lies at the northern tip of the peninsula.
Chorography is the art of describing or mapping a region or district,and by extension such a description or map. This term derives from the writings of the ancient geographer Pomponius Mela and Ptolemy,where it meant the geographical description of regions. However,its resonances of meaning have varied at different times. Richard Helgerson states that "chorography defines itself by opposition to chronicle. It is the genre devoted to place,and chronicle is the genre devoted to time". Darrell Rohl prefers a broad definition of "the representation of space or place".
Contemporary archaeology is a field of archaeological research that focuses on the most recent past,and also increasingly explores the application of archaeological thinking to the contemporary world. It has also been referred to as the archaeology of the 'contemporary past'. The use of this term in the United Kingdom is particularly associated with the Contemporary and Historical Archaeology in Theory (CHAT) conference group. The field forms part of historical archaeology,or the archaeology of the modern period. Unlike ethnoarchaeology,contemporary archaeology studies the recent and contemporary past in its own right,rather than to develop models that can inform the study of the more distant past.
Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts,architecture,biofacts or ecofacts,sites,and cultural landscapes. Archaeology can be considered both a social science and a branch of the humanities. It is usually considered an independent academic discipline,but may also be classified as part of anthropology,history or geography.
Julian Stewart Thomas is a British archaeologist,publishing on the Neolithic and Bronze Age prehistory of Britain and north-west Europe. Thomas has been vice president of the Royal Anthropological Institute since 2007. He has been Professor of Archaeology at the University of Manchester since 2000,and is former secretary of the World Archaeological Congress. Thomas is perhaps best known as the author of the academic publication Understanding the Neolithic in particular,and for his work with the Stonehenge Riverside Project.
Auxiliarysciences of history are scholarly disciplines which help evaluate and use historical sources and are seen as auxiliary for historical research. Many of these areas of study,classification and analysis were originally developed between the 16th and 19th centuries by antiquaries,and would then have been regarded as falling under the broad heading of antiquarianism. "History" was at that time regarded as a largely literary skill. However,with the spread of the principles of empirical source-based history championed by the Göttingen school of history in the late 18th century and later by Leopold von Ranke from the mid-19th century onwards,they have been increasingly regarded as falling within the skill-set of the trained historian.
Lucas D. Introna is Professor of Organisation,Technology and Ethics at the Lancaster University Management School. He is a scholar within the Social Study of Information Systems field. His research is focused on the phenomenon of technology. Within the area of technology studies he has made significant contributions to our understanding of the ethical and political implications of technology for society.
Graham Harman is an American philosopher. He is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles. His work on the metaphysics of objects led to the development of object-oriented ontology. He is a central figure in the speculative realism trend in contemporary philosophy.
In metaphysics,object-oriented ontology (OOO) is a 21st-century Heidegger-influenced school of thought that rejects the privileging of human existence over the existence of nonhuman objects. This is in contrast to post-Kantian philosophy's tendency to refuse "speak[ing] of the world without humans or humans without the world". Object-oriented ontology maintains that objects exist independently of human perception and are not ontologically exhausted by their relations with humans or other objects. For object-oriented ontologists,all relations,including those between nonhumans,distort their related objects in the same basic manner as human consciousness and exist on an equal ontological footing with one another.
The Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World is an interdisciplinary center at Brown University focused on research and teaching of archaeology,with an emphasis on the archaeology and art of the ancient Mediterranean,Egypt,and the Near East. Brown's undergraduate and graduate programs in archeology are organized through the institute.
Bjørnar Julius Olsen is professor at UiT - The Arctic University of Norway. He is a Norwegian archaeologist who specializes in archaeological theory,material culture,museology,northern/Arctic archaeology,and contemporary archaeology. Olsen is a prominent figure in the turn to things in humanities and social sciences,including symmetrical archaeology.
Performance archaeology is a subset of archaeological theory. Developers of this theory include Michael Shanks,Mike Pearson and Julian Thomas who in the 1990s at University of Wales,Lampeter began formulating concepts which view the social aspect of performance along with the artistic nature of theatre together through an interdisciplinary lens as "an integrated approach to recording,writing and illustrating the material past" thereby marrying the academic with the artistic. Performance archaeology has further expanded in the last decade upon the theories of presence. Geoff Bailey states that "because we believe that the present is known or knowable better than the past,we must seek our inspiration in studies of present phenomena and our concepts and theories from authorities on the present." Michael Shanks along with Ian Hodder,Christopher Witmore,Gabriella Giannachi and Nick Kaye have recently expanded the theory further by calling for cooperation within the humanities and studying transdisciplinary research from archaeologists who are encouraged to become storytellers in order to more diversely analyze the engagement of the actor,the audience,the things and the space in which they perform by using an 'ecology of practices'. The theory of performance archaeology aims to give researchers a multi temporal link to the antiquated through studying the processual nature of "performance of presence" which is entangled within the 'multipleness' of time. Echoing theories posited by Martin Heidegger,the processual and temporal natures of performance are phenomenologically entwined with the experiences of the performers and audience. Stories are preserved by memory through performance. These performances can be seen both in the archaeological record as well in modern enactments or rituals. The landscape itself is an integral portion of performance memory. Performance archaeology sets itself apart from performance history by directing focus not toward the past itself but instead toward what has become of the past by taking an ethnoarchaeological approach of analyzing the 'archaeology of present' cultures which allows for a richer interpretation of past performance. Performance archaeology takes a cross-disciplinary approach with 'social archaeology' to studying the things,narratives or artifacts,that remain of ancient theatre,music,dance,art history and oral tradition in order to 'model the past'.
Sværholtklubben (Norwegian) or Spierta (Northern Sami) is a mountain and bird cliff located at the tip of the Sværholt peninsula,situated between Porsangerfjorden and Laksefjorden in Nordkapp Municipality and Lebesby Municipality in Finnmark county,Norway. Rising approximately 170 metres (560 ft) high,Sværholtklubben has steep and precipitous sides.