the rusty marshalltown: Unfamiliar Things

Today, more archaeologists are pursuing various object-centered accounts of the past, whether trying to assign agency to things or to understand the mutual constitution of people, things, and "society.". I like a lot of this work, if only because some of it forces one to look differently at the material world and our place in it. Science and technology studies and semiotics are providing the conceptual tools for this project. Furthermore, behavioral archaeology (Schiffer style) is enjoying a return in popularity. These are different bodies of literature that suggest archaeologists look at things beyond just simple proxies for past social relations (a critique, in fact, that was not born out of "post-processual" approaches but emerged out of the debates between behavioralists and middle range theorists of the 1970s). In fact, one could argue that Schiffer's paradigm was the only one that held its course on "things," which explains the resurgence in interest (that is, the renewed popularity of behavioral archaeology is not due simply to the pursuit of theories of a distinctly archaeological sort).

Archaeologists tend to search for the familiar dimensions of often very unfamiliar things. Poets are good at expressing the unfamiliar dimensions of seemingly familiar things. I was reading some stuff by Elizabeth Bishop the other day that got me thinking of these things, especially some stanzas from her poem Objects and Apparitions: "Monuments to every moment,/refuse of every moment, used:/cages for infinity." This poem is an ode to the surrealist Joseph Cornell. Many of his works were boxes filled with strange assortments of objects removed from one context and re-contextualized via their deliberate association with other items. The juxtaposition creates a feeling both of familiarity and unfamiliarity, an ambiguity that is rich with potential meaning. They become, to steal a phrase from Mary Douglas, matter out of place.

So, these thoughts aren't entirely random musings on materiality. I am thinking them because this morning I was going over photos I took back in February 2009 in Chicago. For those of you who have never lived in Chicago, the city really only has two seasons: Autumn and spring are more or less just winter and summer battling it out. That first snow, especially the big snow, is usually pretty fun. If it causes cancellation in school, there is no better time to trek through the weather and drink some pints at a neighborhood bar. But then the snow gets yellow, brown, and black and does not really disappear until April. Back in 2009, we had a temporary respite in February, and the snow began to melt. My wife and I decided to trek around our neighborhood in Andersonville and take some photos of some of the stuff emerging from the formerly obscured surface. It was fun but also interesting. Many of these items seem rich with meaning, and this potential is largely due to the fact that they have been removed from their previous context. They almost beg to be interpreted. I have attempted to oblige them not only by photographing them but enhancing them a tad.

On another note, however, I think this material would offer a really great research project in itself, along the lines of Rathje's garbology: examining structured patterns of discard in seemingly unstructured refuse practices (i.e., littering versus institutionalized garbage).

Anyway, here are nine examples of some of the photos.

I call this first one Fallen Angel. It might be a pizza crust?? Actually, I think it is a banana peal. My wife thinks it looks like a severed penis.