Abstract
Relational approaches have gradually been changing the face of archaeology over the last decade: analytically, through formal network analysis, and interpretively, with various frameworks of human-thing relations. Their popularity has been such, however, that it threatens to undermine their relevance. If everyone agrees that we should understand past worlds by tracing relations, then ‘finding relations’ in the past becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Focusing primarily on the interpretive approaches of material culture studies, this article proposes to counter the threat of irrelevance by not just tracing human-thing relations but characterising how sets of relations were ordered. Such ordered sets are termed ‘relational constellations’. The article describes three relational constellations and their consequences based on practices of ceramic fine ware production in the Western Roman provinces (first century BC–third century AD): the fluid, the categorical and the rooted constellation. Specifying relational constellations allows reconnecting material culture to specific historical trajectories and offers scope for meaningful cross-cultural comparisons. As such, a small theoretical addition based on the existing toolbox of practice-based approaches and relational thought can impact on historical narratives and can save relational frameworks from the danger of triviality.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Appadurai, A. (1986). Introduction: Commodities and the politics of value. In A. Appadurai (Ed.), The social life of things. Commodities in cultural perspective (pp. 1–63). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large. Cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Baber, Z. (1991). Beyond the structure/agency dualism: an evaluation of Giddens’ theory of structuration. Sociological Inquiry, 61, 219–230.
Barabási, A.–. L., & Albert, R. (1999). Emergence of scaling in random networks. Science, 286(5439), 509–512.
Barabási, A.–. L., & Bonabeau, E. (2003). Scale-free networks. Scientific American, 288(5), 50–59.
Bauman, Z. (1998). Globalization. The human consequences. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bet, P., & Delor, A.(2000). La typologie de la sigillée lisse de Lezoux et de la Gaule centrale du Haut-Empire: Révision décennale. SFECAG Actes du congrès de Libourne, 461–484.
Bet, P., Delage, R., & Vernhet, A. (1994). Lezoux et Millau: Confrontation d’idées et de données. SFECAG Actes du congrès de Millau, 43–61.
Bocquet, A. (1999). La production et la distribution des céramiques fines engobées et métallescentes dans le nord de la Gaule: Approche minéralogique et géochimique. In R. Brulet, R. P. Symonds, & F. Vilvorder (Eds.), Céramiques engobées et métallescentes gallo-romaines. Actes du colloque organisé à Louvain-la-Neuve le 18 mars 1995 (Rei Cretariae Romanae Fautorum Acta Supplementum8) (pp. 129–286). Oxford: RCRF.
Bourdieu, P. (1977).Outline of a theory of practice (Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology 16) (trans: Nice, R.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1979). La distinction. Critique sociale du jugement. Paris: Minuit.
Brück, J. (2001). Monuments, power and personhood in the British Neolithic. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 7, 649–667.
Brughmans, T. (2010). Connecting the dots: towards archaeological network analysis. Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 29(3), 277–303.
Brughmans, T. (2013). Thinking through networks: a review of formal network methods in archaeology. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 20(4), 623–662.
Brulet, R., Symonds, R. P., & Vilvorder, F. (Eds.). (1999). Céramiques engobées et métallescentes gallo-romaines. Actes du colloque organisé à Louvain-la-Neuve le 18 mars 1995 (Rei Cretariae Romanae Fautorum Acta Supplementum8). Oxford: RCRF.
Brulet, R., Vilvorder, F., & Delage, R. (Eds.). (2010). La céramique romaine en Gaule du Nord. Dictionnaire des céramiques. La vaisselle à large diffusion. Turnhout: Brepols.
Butts, C. T. (2009). Revisiting the foundations of network analysis. Science, 325, 414–416.
Collar, A. C. F. (2007). Network theory and religious innovation. Mediterranean Historical Review, 22(1), 149–162.
Costin, C. L. (1991). Craft specialization: issues in defining, documenting, and explaining the organisation of production. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 3(1), 1–56.
Costin, C. L., & Hagstrum, M. (1995). Standardisation, labor investment, skill, and the organization of ceramic production in late pre-Hispanic highland Peru. American Antiquity, 60(4), 619–639.
David, P. A. (1985). Clio and the economics of QWERTY. American Economic Review, 75(2), 332–337.
de Laet, M., & Mol, A. (2000). The Zimbabwe Bush Pump: mechanics of a fluid technology. Social Studies of Science, 30(2), 225–263.
Delage, R. (1998). Première approche de la diffusion des céramiques sigillées du centre de la Gaule en occident romain. SFECAG Actes du congrès d’Istres, 271–313.
Delage, R. (2004). L’écrit en “représentation”: les marques de grand format au sein des décors sur sigillée du Centre de la Gaule. Gallia, 61, 145–152.
Dietler, M. (2010). Archaeologies of colonialism. Consumption, entanglement, and violence in ancient Mediterranean France. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Dobres, M.-A. (2000). Technology and social agency. Outlining a practice framework for archaeology. Oxford: Blackwell.
Dobres, M.-A., & Hoffman, C. R. (1994). Social agency and the dynamics of prehistoric technology. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 1(3), 211–258.
Dobres, M.-A., & Robb, J. E. (2000). Agency in archaeology: Paradigm or platitude? In M.-A. Dobres & J. E. Robb (Eds.), Agency in archaeology (pp. 3–17). London-New York: Routledge.
Dobres, M.-A., & Robb, J. E. (2005). “Doing” agency: introductory remarks on methodology. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 12(3), 159–166.
Dornan, J. L. (2002). Agency and archaeology: past, present, and future directions. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 9(4), 303–329.
Edmonds, M. (1990). Description, understanding and the chaîne opératoire. Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 9(1), 55–70.
Felski, R. (1999). The invention of everyday life. New Formations, 39, 15–31.
Foster, R. J. (2006). Tracking globalization: Commodities and value in motion. In C. Tilley et al. (Eds.), Handbook of material culture (pp. 285–302). London: SAGE.
Foucault, M. (1975). Surveiller et Punir. Naissance de la Prison. Paris: Gallimard.
Fowler, C. (2004). The archaeology of personhood. London: Routledge.
Fowler, C. (2010). From identity and material culture to personhood and materiality. In D. Hicks & M. C. Beaudry (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of material culture studies (pp. 352–385). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Freeman, L. C. (2004). The development of social network analysis. Vancouver: Empirical Press.
Gell, A. (1998). Art and agency. An anthropological theory. Oxford: Clarendon.
Gibson, J.J. (1979). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Giddens, A. (1979). Central problems in social theory. Action, structure and contradiction in social analysis. London: Macmillan.
Giddens, A. (1984). The Constitution of Society. Outline of the theory of structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press.
González-Ruibal, A. (Ed.). (2013). Reclaiming archaeology. Beyond the tropes of modernity. Oxon: Routledge.
Gosden, C. (2005). What do objects want? Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 12(3), 193–211.
Goudineau, C. (1978). La Gaule transalpine. In C. Nicolet (Ed.), Rome et la conquête du monde méditerranéen. Vol. 2: Genèse d’un empire (pp. 679–699). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Graham, S. (2006). Ex Figlinis. The network dynamics of the Tiber valley brick industry in the Hinterland of Rome (BAR International Series 1486). Oxford: John & Erica Hedges Ltd.
Harris, E. (1986). Words and meanings. ACCIPE ET VTERE FELIX. In M. Henig & A. King (Eds.), Pagan Gods and Shrines of the Roman Empire (Oxford University Committee for Archaeology Monograph 8) (pp. 105–111). Oxford: Oxford University Committee for Archaeology.
Hegmon, M. (2003). Setting theoretical egos aside: issues and theory in North American archaeology. American Antiquity, 68(2), 213–243.
Hitchner, R. B. (2008). Globalization avant la lettre: globalization and the history of the Roman empire. New Global Studies, 2, 1–12.
Hodder, I. (2011). Human-thing entanglement: towards an integrated archaeological perspective. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 17, 154–177.
Hodder, I. (2012). Entangled. An archaeology of the relationships between humans and things. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.
Hodder, I., & Hutson, S. (2003). Reading the past. Current approaches to interpretation in archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hodos, T. (2010). Globalization and colonization: a view from Iron Age Sicily. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology, 23, 81–106.
Hutson, S. R. (2010). Dwelling, identity, and the maya. Relational archaeology at Chunchucmil. Lanham: AltaMira Press.
Ingold, T. (2000). The Perception of the Environment. Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge.
Jennings, J. (2011). Globalizations and the ancient world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Knappett, C. (2005). Thinking through material culture. An interdisciplinary perspective. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Knappett, C. (2008). The neglected networks of material agency: Artefacts, pictures and texts. In C. Knappett & L. Malafouris (Eds.), Material agency. Towards a non-anthropocentric approach (pp. 139–156). New York: Springer.
Knappett, C. (2011). An archaeology of interaction. Network perspectives on material culture and society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Knappett, C. (2012). Meaning in miniature: Semiotic networks in material culture. In M. Jessen, N. Johannsen, & H. J. Jensen (Eds.), Excavating the mind (pp. 87–109). Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.
Knappett, C. (Ed.). (2013). Network analysis in archaeology. New approaches to regional interaction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Knappett, C., & Malafouris, L. (Eds.). (2008). Material agency. Towards a non-anthropocentric approach. New York: Springer.
Knox, H., Savage, M., & Harvey, P. (2006). Social networks and the study of relations: networks as method, metaphor and form. Economy and Society, 35(1), 113–140.
Kopytoff, I. (1986). The cultural biography of things: Commoditization as a process. In A. Appadurai (Ed.), The social life of things. Commodities in cultural perspective (pp. 64–91). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Krier, J. (1981). Die Treverer außerhalb ihrer Civitas. Mobilität und Aufstieg (Trierer Zeitschrift Beiheft 5). Trier: Rheinischen Landesmuseum Trier.
Künzl, S. (1997). Die Trierer Spruchbecherkeramik. Dekorierte Schwarzfirniskeramik des 3. und 4. Jahrhunderts n. Chr. (Trierer Zeitschrift Beiheft 21). Trier: Rheinischen Landesmuseums Trier.
Latour, B. (1988). The pasteurization of France. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Latour, B. (1999). Pandora’s hope. Essays on the reality of science studies. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social. An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Law, J. (1986). On the methods of long distance control: Vessels, navigation and the Portuguese route to India. In J. Law (Ed.), Power, action and belief. A new sociology of knowledge? (Sociological Review Monograph 32) (pp. 234–263). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Law, J., & Mol, A. (2001). Situating technoscience: an inquiry into spatialities. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 19, 609–621.
Law, J., & Singleton, V. (2005). Object lessons. Organization, 12(3), 331–355.
Luik, M. (2001). Römische Wirtschaftsmetropole Trier. Trierer Zeitschrift, 64, 245–282.
Martin, T. (2005). Présigillées languedociennes de Narbonne et de Bram à Bordeaux: L’apport des fouilles récentes. SFECAG Actes du congrès de Blois, 427–446.
Mills, B. J., et al. (2013). Transformations of social networks in the late pre-Hispanic US Southwest. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(15), 5785–5790.
Mintz, S. (1985). Sweetness and power. The place of sugar in modern history. New York: Viking Penguin.
Mol, A. (2002). The body multiple. Ontology in medical practice. Durham: Duke University Press.
Mol, A. (2014). The connected Caribbean. A socio-material network approach to patterns of homogeneity and diversity in the pre-colonial period. Leiden: Sidestone Press.
Mol, A., & Law, J. (1994). Regions, networks and fluids: anaemia and social topology. Social Studies of Science, 24, 641–671.
Monteil, G. (2012). The sizes of samian vessels and dining: Evidence from Roman London. In D. Bird (Ed.), Dating and intepreting the past in the Western Roman Empire. Essays in Honour of Brenda Dickinson (pp. 330–345). Oxford: Oxbow.
Naerebout, F. G. (2006–7). Global Romans? Is globalisation a concept that is going to help us understand the Roman empire?.Talanta, 38–9, 149–70.
Norman, D. A. (1998). The design of everyday things. London: The MIT Press.
Oelmann, F. (1914). Die Keramik des Kastells Niederbieber (Materialien zur römisch-germanischen Keramik 1). Frankfurt-am-Main: J. Baer.
Olsen, B. (2010). In defense of things. Archaeology and the ontology of objects. Lanham: AltaMira Press.
Olsen, B., Shanks, M., Webmoor, T., & Witmore, C. (2012). Archaeology. The discipline of things. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Passelac, M. (1986). Bram. In C. Bémont & J.-P. Jacob (Eds.), La terre sigillée gallo-romaine. Lieux de production du Haut-Empire. Implantations, produits, relations (Documents d’Archéologie Française 6) (pp. 48–51). Paris: Editions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme.
Passelac, M. (1992). Formes et techniques italiques dans les productions céramiques augustéennes du bassin de l’Aude: Mise en évidence d’un groupe d’ateliers. Rei Cretariae Romanae Fautorum Acta, 31–2, 207–229.
Passelac, M. (1996). Céramiques communes gallo-romaines en Languedoc occidental: Exemples de production et de consommation (fin Ier s. av. notre ère-IIe s. de notre ère). In M. Bats (Ed.), Les céramiques communes de Campanie et de Narbonnaise (Ier s. av. J.-C.-IIe s. ap. J.-C.). La vaisselle de cuisine et de table. Actes des journées d’étude organisées par le Centre Jean Bérard et la Soprintendenza Archeologica per le Province di Napoli e Caserta, Naples, 27-28 mai 1994 (Collection Jean Bérard 14) (pp. 361–387). Naples: Centre Jean Bérard.
Passelac, M. (2001). Deux fours de potiers augustéens du Vicus Eburomagus (Bram, Aude). In F. Laubenheimer (Ed.), 20 Ans de recherches à Sallèles d’Aude (pp. 143–162). Paris: Presses Universitaires Franc-Comtoises.
Picon, M. (1973). Introduction à l’étude technique des céramiques sigillées de Lezoux (Université de Dijon. Faculté des sciences humaines, Centre des recherches sur techniques gréco-romaines 2). Lyon: Presses de l’imprimerie universitaire.
Picon, M. (2002). Les modes de cuisson, les pâtes et les vernis de la Graufesenque: Une mise au point. In M. Genin & A. Vernhet (Eds.), Céramiques de la Graufesenque et autres productions d’époque romaine. Nouvelles recherches. Hommages à Bettina Hoffmann (Archéologie et Histoire romaine 7) (pp. 139–163). Montagnac: Monique Mergoil.
Pitts, M., & Versluys, M. J. (Eds.). (2014). Globalisation and the Roman World. World history, connectivity and material culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pollard, R. J. (1988). The Roman Pottery of Kent. Maidstone: Kent Archaeological Society.
Preucel, R. W. (2006). Archaeological semiotics. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.
Schinkel, W. (2007). Sociological discourse of the relational: the case of Bourdieu & Latour. The Sociological Review, 55(4), 707–729.
Schlanger, N. (1994). Mindful technology: Unleashing the chaîne opératoire for an archaeology of mind. In C. Renfrew & E. B. W. Zubrow (Eds.), The ancient mind. Elements of cognitive archaeology (pp. 143–151). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sindbaek, S. M. (2007). Networks and nodal points: the emergence of towns in early Viking Age Scandinavia. Antiquity, 81, 119–132.
Skibo, J. M., & Schiffer, M. B. (2008). People and things. A behavioral approach to material culture. New York: Springer.
Smith, A. T. (2001). The limitations of doxa: agency and subjectivity from an archaeological point of view. Journal of Social Archaeology, 1, 155–171.
Strathern, M. (1988). The gender of the gift. Problems with women and problems with society in Melanesia (Studies in Melanesian Anthropology 6). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Symonds, R. P. (1992). Rhenish wares. Fine dark coloured pottery from Gaul and Germany (Oxford University Committee for Archaeology 23). Oxford: Oxford University Committee for Archaeology.
Thomas, N. (1991). Entangled objects. Exchange, material culture, and colonialism in the Pacific. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Throop, C. J., & Murphy, K. M. (2002). Bourdieu and phenomenology: a critical assessment. Anthropological Theory, 2, 185–207.
Turner, B. R. G. (1999). Excavations of an Iron Age settlement and Roman religious complex at Ivy Chimneys, Witham, Essex, 1978-1983. Chelmsford: Essex County Council.
Van Oyen, A. (2013a). Towards a postcolonial artefact analysis. Archaeological Dialogues, 20(1), 79–105.
Van Oyen, A. (2013b). Rethinking Terra Sigillata. An archaeological application of actor-network theory. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation: University of Cambridge.
Van Oyen, A. (2014). Les acteurs-réseaux en archéologie: Etat de la question et perspectives futures. Les Nouvelles de l’archéologie, 135, 14–21.
Van Oyen, A. (2015). Actor-Network Theory’s take on archaeological types: becoming, material agency, and historical explanation. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 25, 63–78.
Van Oyen, A. (forthcoming). Networks or work-nets? Actor-Network Theory and multiple social topologies in the production of Roman terra sigillata. In T. Brughmans, A. Collar, & F. Coward (Eds.), The connected past. Networks in archaeology and history. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Vilvorder, F. (1999). Les productions de céramiques engobées et métallescentes dans l’Est de la France, la Rhénanie et la rive droite du Rhin. In R. Brulet, R. P. Symonds, & F. Vilvorder (Eds.), Céramiques engobées et métallescentes gallo-romaines. Actes du colloque organisé à Louvain-la-Neuve le 18 mars 1995 (Rei Cretariae Romanae Fautorum Acta Supplementum 8) (pp. 69–122). Oxford: RCRF.
Watts, D., & Strogatz, S. (1998). Collective dynamics of ‘small-world’ networks. Nature, 393, 440–442.
Webmoor, T., & Witmore, C. L. (2008). Things are us! A commentary on human/things relations under the banner of a ‘social’ archaeology. Norwegian Archaeological Review, 41(1), 53–70.
Wightman, E. M. (1970). Roman Trier and the Treveri. London: Hart–Davis.
Willis, S. (2005). Samian pottery, a resource for the study of Roman Britain and beyond. The results of the English heritage funded Samian project. An E-Monograph. Internet archaeology: http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue17/1/toc.html.
Witmore, C. L. (2007). Symmetrical archaeology: excerpts of a manifesto. World Archaeology, 39(4), 546–562.
Wylie, A. (1993). A proliferation of new archaeologies: “Beyond objectivism and relativism”. In N. Yoffee & A. Sherratt (Eds.), Archaeological theory. Who sets the agenda? (pp. 20–26). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Carl Knappett for reading and commenting on a previous draft of this article and for continued encouragement and inspiration in all matters relational. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers who pointed out crucial lacunae in the argument and made this a better paper. Research for this article was funded by a Junior Research Fellowship at Homerton College, University of Cambridge. Michel Passelac and Richard Delage kindly provided images, and Çoise Verbruggen helped with the formatting of the figures.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Van Oyen, A. Historicising Material Agency: from Relations to Relational Constellations. J Archaeol Method Theory 23, 354–378 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-015-9244-0
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-015-9244-0