Art,craft,and the ontology of archaeological things

Abstract

Tim Ingold's ‘science of correspondence’ describes a kind of epistemological intimacy in the practices of art, science, and anthropology. Archaeology would benefit from cultivating correspondence as a way to understand its research process. Ingold's model, however, appears to elide art and craft. Though both are necessary, I argue they should be kept separate for analytical purposes. Correspondence as pre-conceptual practice provides a way to understand that the form of archaeological objects is the outcome of processes of growth rather than design. Artworks as non-conceptual outcomes of practice provide insight into the nature of archaeological things beyond what can be understood under the general terms of correspondence. Artworks and archaeological things share the ontological problem of how to make something new out of materials. Artists work on materials to generate sensations never before experienced. Archaeologists work on a more circumscribed body of material to produce a past not thought of or experienced before. Unlike artworks, archaeological things carry both sensation and the residue of concepts with them. An archaeological sensibility can help archaeologists resurrect not the original concepts themselves but the conceptual potential immanent to the specific arrangements of materials and the forms they, however temporarily, take on.