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TAG Conference Session: ‘Absence: perspectives from archaeology and heritage’

Session: ‘Absence: perspectives from archaeology and heritage’

Three piles of dumped car tyres in a green field with shrubs and trees behind. Several woodpigeons are grazing behind the tyres. The central pile is unstable looking and three tyres high. The scene is framed through a galvanised steel fence, limiting the field of view to a portrait [though the image is oriented landscape]
The site of a demolished chemical works in Silverknowes, Edinburgh. J. Gardner, CC-BY-NC 4.0
Gabe Moshenska (UCL Insitute of Archaeology) and I are co-organising a session at the 43rd Theoretical Archaeology Group Conference hosted by the Department of Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh (15-17 December 2023). The session will feature an introduction from myself and Gabe and is strongly related to the issues of Reimagining Waste Landscapes.

We have an amazing line up of 11 presenters covering a broad range of geographical and tmeproal subjects. Full line up and abstracts wil be on the conference website soon.

Session Abstract

Absence is a fundamental concept in both archaeology and cultural heritage studies, but one that has not received the concerted critical attention that it deserves. Our ambition for this session is to lay the groundwork for a more focused conversation about absence and absences across these two fields. This might include the role of absence in epistemologies and knowledge-making practices; typologies of material and immaterial absences; and explorations of allied concepts such as loss, destruction, forgetting, and decay.

There have been valuable contributions to the study of absence in anthropology, memory studies and related fields – within archaeology we acknowledge the work of Gavin Lucas and others who have begun to explore these significances. Some of this earlier work has focused on the often problematic notion of ‘presencing’ absence, with the material and ethical implications of this frequently left under-explored. In this session we hope to generate discussion that can progress beyond this, and to spark critical engagements with the concept of absence that can enrich practice and thought in archaeology and heritage.

Topics may include but are not limited to:

  • Material absences as archaeological category;
  • Absence as a form of heritage making and remaking;
  • The idea of proxies in archaeological and heritage research: how we rely on absence to study the past;
  • Theoretical engagements and critiques of absence concepts in archaeology and heritage from any period or region;
  • Non human/hybrid absences and/or speculations on a future absence of humans.

 

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