Things in the Eye of the Beholder: A Humanistic Perspective on Archaeological Object Biographies

Abstract

The object-biographical approach is popular and well-established in archaeology, providing useful structures for conducting investigations and creating historical narratives. The approach is attractive because it encourages the consideration of many different angles like networks, embodiment and memory. It also facilitates the appreciation of objects as agents and allows for multivocality and the treatment of multiple time layers. Still, the approach suffers from a built-in risk of constructing cumulative and pre-determined narratives, describing objects rather than providing an understanding of past worlds. These problems result from an archaeological eye which is directed mainly to the objects ‘themselves’ and the bio- (life) part, while little attention is paid to the -graphy (writing). Material aspects and scientific method are often carefully considered, while humanistic theory and methodology are little reflected upon. Here it is suggested that more weight should be given to humanistic traditions, where biographical writing as such has its own theory and strategies, one example here being object biographies in the shape of ‘It-narratives’. The object-biographical field of archaeological study needs to be revitalized by renewed theoretical input, in particular with attention to the different strategies and myriad possibilities for writing object lives.

Keywords:

• Object biographies
• life histories
• material turn
• It-narratives
• hagiography
• archaeological discourse
• things
• material culture

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The research for this paper was conducted within the project ‘Hoarding the dead: precious metal hoards as biographies from the Scandinavian Late Iron Age’, funded by Stockholm University. I am grateful to Frédéric Elfver (Stockholm University) for permission to use the enlargement in Fig. 1 (first published in Elfver 2008), and to the staff of the National Library of Sweden (Manuscripts, Maps and Pictures Division) for help with Fig. 2. Thanks also to Kristin Bornholdt Collins, who revised the English. In particular, many thanks are due to Yvonne Marshall and an anonymous referee for insightful comments on a previous version of this article. Remaining shortcomings are my own.