Concrete Matters: Towards an Archaeology of Things

Abstract

The thesis is both part of and a critical response to the turn to things or the “new materialisms” developing within the humanities and social sciences during the last two decades. Based on the archaeological exploration of two recently abandoned herring stations in Iceland’s Northwest and their rich assemblages of decaying matter, the thesis seeks to scrutinize the fate of archaeological things within this new theoretical landscape. How do these soiled, broken, useless, abandoned or discarded things respond to the predominantly positive and humanly defined imperatives (e.g. agency, mobility, personality) mobilized in the current reconstitution of things/non-humans? The thesis reflects on this and how a turn to archaeological things – or an archaeological insight – can contribute with a different and broader understanding of things, their characteristics, capacities and non-human agency. This is accomplished through the exploration of three themes; the aesthetics of waste and heritage, the materiality of memory and the significance of things, which further contribute to nuance the current efforts of turning to things by throwing light on the conditions, constraints and potentials of such a turn.