Carl Knappett. An archaeology of interaction: network perspectives on material culture and society.
Brughmans, Tom
CARL KNAPPETT. An archaeology of interaction: network perspectives
on material culture and society. x+251 pages, 50 illustrations. 2011.
Oxford: Oxford University Press; 978-0-19-921545-4 hardback 60 [pounds
sterling].
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Carl Knappett has written a much-needed book that provides an
overview of existing approaches to human interaction as well as a new
networks perspective for archaeology. The key issue addressed in the
book is that theories of human interaction generally do not incorporate
materiality. The author suggests network thinking as a perspective that
succeeds in combining theoretical and methodological approaches to
interaction in a single framework and "foregrounds the relations
between objects and people more effectively" (p. 7). Knappett
argues that An archaeology of interaction is by no means relevant to the
archaeological discipline alone, but aims to illustrate the potential
that archaeology can have for understanding social interactions in
general. A number of issues are stressed repeatedly in the volume: the
incorporation of materiality, the need to consider assemblages of
objects rather than objects in isolation, and the crossing of scales of
analysis. The author's search for compatible theoretical ideas and
methodological techniques takes him on a multi-disciplinary journey
guided by a few critical issues and illustrated throughout with
archaeological examples largely from the Bronze Age Aegean. The result
is a highly readable volume that is close to exhaustive in its
description of issues and approaches, as well as focused on providing an
innovative, but above all useful, framework for understanding social
interactions.
The book has three parts subdivided into three chapters each. The
first part provides a strong argument in favour of new methods and
theories for understanding human interactions by stressing the absence
of objects in existing theories, highlighting issues in existing
relational approaches and suggesting network analysis as a formal
methodology. In the first chapter Knappett states that humans have a
drive to interact with each other as well as with objects. He suggests
network thinking as a research perspective to understand these
interactions and argues that "By combining SNA [Social Network
Analysis] with ANT [Actor-Network Theory] we can bring together people
and things both methodologically and theoretically" (p. 8). The
second chapter highlights some broad trends in scales of analysis of
relational and non-relational approaches to interaction in archaeology
and the social sciences, and stresses the need for concepts and methods
to traverse multiple scales; a networks perspective might provide an
appropriate solution. Part one of the book concludes that network
analysis (1) forces one to think through relationships, (2) is
explicitly multi-scalar, (3) can integrate social and physical space
(topology and geometry), and (4) both people and things can be included.
The author also mentions some of the potential issues the archaeological
use of formal network techniques raise. Firstly that network analysis is
by no means a unified social theory; secondly, that the advanced level
of mathematics might challenge the proficiency of many archaeologists;
and thirdly, that there is a clear tendency to be overly structuralist
and descriptive.
Throughout the second part of the volume the potential of a
multi-scalar networks perspective to interactions between people and
objects is explored, with chapters focusing on micro-, meso-, and
macro-scales of analysis. Knappett argues that existing approaches to
interaction at the micro-scale need to be elaborated. He goes on to
suggest a method aimed at mapping out hypothetical relations between
objects (e.g. pottery types) and people (e.g. potters) as affiliation
networks. Network thinking at this scale is applied through a
combination of Peircean semiotics with 'communities of
practice', an idea which is considered to have useful links with
the affiliation networks approach of chapter four. Knappett then argues
in chapter six that it is on the macro-scale that "network thinking
comes into its own" (p. 124), because it is at this level of
analysis that we can begin to see how macro-scale structure emerges from
micro-scale interactions and why, i.e. what function gives rise to a
specific structure.
The third part moves away from discussions of how to create and
explain hypothetical network structures of objects and people to ask why
it is that humans interact in the first place. Three themes are
explored: firstly the benefit of object networks is explained, secondly
Knappett discusses the tension between networks of objects and meshworks
of things, and thirdly the importance of 'biographical care'
is stressed.
The aim and scope of the book are ambitious to say the least and it
is therefore not surprising that in places the arguments are not as
convincing as they could be. The underrepresentation of method and how
theory could inform method are particularly vulnerable to this mild
criticism. Indeed, archaeologists might not always find the suggested
network methods and their archaeological examples very persuasive (as
Knappett himself admits, p. 215). They are largely limited to
visuallsing archaeological hypotheses as networks or describing general
trends in the archaeological record by using a relational vocabulary. I
believe this is a necessary evil in light of the sheer number of
approaches covered. An archaeology of interaction provides a critical
and much-needed framework, offering a range of methods and theories to
any scholar eager to explore human interaction through network goggles.
TOM BRUGHMANS
Archaeological Computing Research Group, University of Southampton,
UK (Email: t.brughmans@soton.ac.uk)
