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Bjrnar Olsen: In Defense of

Things. Archaeology and the
Ontology of Objects. AltaMira Press,
Lanham, MD, 2010. 208 pp., ISBN
978-0-7591-1930-7
a
Randi Barndon
a
Department of AHKR, University of Bergen, Norway

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 REVIEWS Norwegian Archaeological Review, Vol. 44, No. 2, 2011
Bjrnar Olsen: In Defense of
Things. Archaeology and the
Ontology of Objects. AltaMira
Press, Lanham, MD, 2010.
208 pp., ISBN 978-0-7591-1930-7
RANDI BARNDON
Downloaded by [Universitetsbiblioteket i Bergen] at 02:37 15 December 2011
Bjrnar Olsen has published In Defense of Things.
Archaeology and the Ontology of Objects as a
volume in the series Archaeology in Society. The
series is edited by Ian Hodder and Robert
W. Preucel at AltaMira Press and in this choice of
publication Olsen is aiming for a wide group of
readers, not only archaeologists. In Defense of
Things consists of eight chapters over 151 pages
plus notes, references and index. Each chapter has
an informative title and relevant subtitles. The book
has numerous illustrations and photos (22 figures),
many taken by the author who is an experienced,
experimental and competent photographer.
Thematically this book exploits symmetrical
archaeology, which draws on Gottfried Leibniz,
Alfred North Whitehead and pragmatism. The
approach explores the phenomenology of Martin
Heidegger and the late Maurice Merleau-Ponty,
also Walter Benjamin and Henri Bergson, whom
Olsen discusses in particular in his book. Olsens
discussion also includes contemporary thinkers
such as Bruno Latour (2005) and Michel Serres
(1995), Donna Haraway (1991) and John Law
(Law and Hassard 1999, see also Olsen 2006b).
Olsen demonstrates, along with Latour (2005:76)
and Witmore (2007:544), that a symmetrical
approach is not about a simplistic notion of
equivalence between humans and non-humans
but focuses on the collectives and complex inter-
actions between humans and things and between
humans (see also Witmore 2007:547). Olsen
shows that within symmetrical archaeology or
with a symmetrical approach human beings
are but one of a multitude of entities. In this
way he puts forward the idea that the
Randi Barndon, Department of AHKR, University of Bergen, Norway. Email: Randi.Barndon@ahkr.uib.no
relationship between humans and things is in
need of a reconfiguration hence the title of
the book: In Defense of Things. Archaeology
and the Ontology of Objects.
According to Witmore a symmetrical archaeol-
ogy is best described as a new ecology packed with
things, together with humans and companion spe-
cies. Symmetrical archaeology therefore prioritizes
multi-temporal and multi-sensorial qualities, the
multiplicity of the material world (Olsen 2003,
2007, Witmore 2007:547, Gonzlez-Ruibal 2008,
Bjerck 2009, Bjerck et al. 2009). Olsen has pub-
lished an article in World Archaeology (2007)
where he states that the term symmetrical archae-
ology will not be needed in the future. Olsen does
not use the term in the book In Defense of Things,
although he discusses symmetry (p. 9) and a sym-
metrical approach (p. 62). The term symmetrical
archaeology is still relevant when seen as an oppo-
sition to the well-established hierarchy between
humans and objects that Olsen is trying to diminish
in this book.
In 2003 Olsen published one of his first articles
on the importance of things in archaeology in
Norwegian Archaeological Review. Here, and in
the book In Defense of Things, Olsen points out,
as he has done in numerous previous publications,
his rebellious willingness to explore new theoretical
and philosophical directions and his efforts to try to
convince his readers that this might be a new and
relevant point of departure are unquestionable and
admirable. Therefore, I believe that Olsens agenda
in the book under review is to make us aware of the
importance of things and how things are parts
of entities with other beings and phenomena.
Moreover, and perhaps even more important, he
wants to erase the hierarchical relationship between
things and humans. He therefore suggests a symme-
trical approach, a horizontal relation between
objects and humans, and argues against the com-
mon vertical relation that values humans as more
important than animals and things. Olsen explains
that, even though a focus on materiality and things
has existed for a long period of time in archaeology
(i.e. Olsen 2007, see also Olsen 2003), it is only
recently that we can speak of a fundamental onto-
logical change within our discipline as well as
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00293652.2011.629814

within the social sciences. This is best exemplified in
Olsens own words: Why is it a priori wrong to
blur the boundary between humans and things or to
ascribe personality and identity to things? What is
the ontological justification for the persistent idea
that action, influence, and power are capacities
of which only humans hold possession? (p. 98).
The book takes a twofold approach to conveying
this message. First, there is the authors eclectic
review of theoretical approaches and philosophers,
such as Martin Heidegger and late publications
by Maurice Merleau-Ponty or Walter Benjamin,
and archaeologists and anthropologists, such
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as Christopher Tilley, Daniel Miller, Arjun
Appadurai, Alfred Gell or Bruno Latour, to men-
tion a few of the writers dealt with in the book.
Then Olsen outlines empirical cases of symmetrical
archaeology, such as the fisherman and his fishing
gear and the man and the kayak, through visualiza-
tions of the vertical relations between humans and
non-humans with empirical examples from studies
within historical and contemporary archaeology.
Here Olsen depends upon his own studies of
Saami material culture, photographing at Lyngmo
farm in Arctic Norway and fieldwork carried out in
an abandoned town in Svalbard, Pyramiden, a pro-
ject carried out together with photographer Elin
Andreassen and archaeologist Hein Bjerck
(Andreassen, Bjerck and Olsen 2010).
In several of his earlier influential theoretical
works Olsen has been a strong defender of textual
archaeology, following and being inspired by
Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Michel
Foucault and Paul Ricoeur (cf. Olsen 1990). Olsen
(2006a, 2006b) has illustrated how material culture
may be readable with a post-structural approach,
that there is nothing outside context and that, even
if objects are readable, everything has multiple
meanings. In Chapter 3 Material culture as text.
Scenes from a troubled engagement Olsen elabo-
rates on the failures of post-structuralism and
admits that, although he himself at one stage was
a supporter of the approach, he realizes today that
this was an approach that had its weaknesses. But,
as demonstrated throughout the book, Olsen does
not totally reject former approaches and thinkers;
he rather suggests and demonstrates a self-defined
eclectic attitude (p. 14).
In Olsens discussions of the phenomenology of
Heidegger or the late Merleau-Ponty (Chapter 4) he
clarifies yet another weakness in post-processual
archaeology and shows how phenomenology has
Reviews 211
been wrongly popularized, to a great extent based
on second-hand readings of, for instance, Tilleys A
Phenomenology of Landscape (1994). Olsen pro-
vides us with his own readings of phenomenology
and demonstrates how we are involved with things
and especially the everyday life things that we nor-
mally do not think of as important. This is in con-
trast to previous phenomenological focuses within
archaeology upon rituals, embodied-ness and
experiencing landscapes.
These first chapters of the book (and, in fact, the
whole of the book) illustrate the authors self-
conscious selective and eclectic readings. He offers
his own interpretations and considerations on var-
ious thinkers and writers that in sum build towards
and form his independent suggested symmetrical
approach. Olsen turns away from mainstream
archaeological thinking; that we need to get at the
meaning behind things and that objects always
represent something else, i.e. an axe is a representa-
tion of a man, a carpenter or manhood, a spindle
whorl represents a woman, a textile worker or a
housewife; or even: a certain distribution of certain
objects represents a network between people in
societies, a certain society or a specific culture.
Olsen points out that he too is interested in symbols
and meaning, but he rightly thinks these aspects of
material culture studies have been given far too
much attention at the expense of other more mun-
dane, everyday implications of being in entities with
things. Olsen negotiates and demonstrates that
within archaeology we do not need social theory
from other disciplines. As such, Olsens project is
similar to recent contemporary material culture
studies and especially studies within symmetrical
archaeology, which has a theory-building value in
itself. Archaeology has matured.
In a book that so strongly defends the object, the
material, the thing, it could have been timely to ask:
what is there if anything between objects and
people? What is there beyond the material, the
humans and non-humans? Is there not an immater-
ial glue of something that makes us into organized
societies? A glue that makes us believe in things,
remember people, things and events, and associate
with, or even want, objects, hate objects, fear them
or ignore them and forget that they ever existed and
discard them?
Olsen does comment upon the immaterial and
especially in his discussion of memory in Chapter 6
Temporality and memory. How things remember.
In this section the immaterial is in focus and Olsen
 212 Reviews
draws especially upon Paul Connerton who was
very much referred to by the early contextual
archaeologists and ethno-archaeologists in the
1980s. But, as pointed out by Olsen (p. 121), the
reinstallation of the body in social discourse, as
through the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty
and the social memory of Connerton, did not neces-
sarily attest to a more material approach, at least
not the kind of material approach that is symme-
trical. Although Olsens command of the English
language is admirable, reading his book might be
challenging because the text and thoughts put for-
ward by him demand quite a bit of the reader. The
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reader should be familiar with post-structuralism
and the textual turn witnessed in archaeology in
the 1980s. To take full advantage of the book one
should be familiar with the works of philosophers
such as Foucault, Ricoeur, Barthes and Derrida.
One should also be aware of distinctions between a
Heideggerian phenomenology and other phenom-
enologies, as well as the differences between the
early versus late phenomenology of Merleau-
Ponty. A final challenge is the way Olsen introduces
aspects of the actor network theory debate (ANT),
implying again that the reader is familiar with the
variations in views seen in discussions of Latour
(2005), Law (Law and Hassard 1999) and, for
instance, Serres (1995) and Haraway (1991).
But Olsen sees these difficulties and challenges
for a reader or user of these thoughts and notes, sees
that the ontology of things or things ontology is
not something easily fleshed out in case studies
(p. 84). In the introductory chapter he makes it
clear that the book is not meant as a new cook
book for archaeologists interested in theory. On
his agenda is a wish for a new approach, a new
attitude towards how we conceive of things when
we think as archaeologists. Olsen suggests that
things appear to us not only from where we are,
but also from where they are (e.g. as stones, cars,
mountains, prisons, refuge places and so on). The
position, importance and power of things are thus
relative to our own being in the world. Our inter-
subjectivity is precisely that, inter-subjective, dis-
tributing responsibility and significance far more
evenly among humans and non-humans (p. 133).
Towards the middle of the book (p. 84) Olsen
asks in a headline: What is the relevance? What
does it all mean in terms of archaeology and mate-
rial culture studies? I must admit that I did start to
wonder myself and I was tempted, much like a
reader of a crime novel, to turn to the last page to
look for the murderer, the conclusion, a relevance.
And here Olsen has sensed a weakness in his book
it is quite repetitive, and we do get the point after
reading only half the book.
However, Olsen has more to offer. He does not
wish only for things, objects to be taken seriously.
He wants to mark the individuality of material
objects in themselves as important, but also, of
course, to see them in relation to other objects, in
collectives where things and human are co-actors.
Animals as partners in collectives are also commen-
ted upon although less than expected but with a
similar attitude: a reindeer has value and signifi-
cance in its own right, as have the herds; it should
not be offended by derogatory comments or abu-
sive attitudes, but instead cared for, respected and
honored (p. 87).
Returning to the fisherman Olsen points at the
fact that a fisherman is not just a person, a human
body equipped with a mind. Using his boat, nets
and other gear, waves, seascapes and fish are all
components of his blurred identity, and moreover
the net continue to act, to fish without his pre-
sence, as do the traps for the hunter and the fields
and herds for the farmer (p. 136). Olsen points out
that these are trivial examples, but even so tremen-
dously important because this approach forces us
to think twice and draws us closer to considering
the importance of things in themselves. Things are
everywhere and always interfere or work together
in actions with humans. Consequently, the objects
gathered as the fishermans equipment have their
independent agency (p. 135).
Things and non-humans are solid. Our objects
are there both for us to change and in themselves as
our frame for continuity. One could, of course, ask
when and why in such a solid world does change
occur? Olsen states here that history is less impor-
tant because it is a hindrance for us if we want to
focus on the objects, the things and materiality as
relevant. This legitimizes Olsens perspective and
his agenda: to speak out for the things.
Olsen does, however, consider change and con-
tinuity. In line with Benjamin, he points to the
fact that slow practice is in decline in our modern
world because change in objects, in refinements
within technology is so fast. The minor changes in
mobile phones from almost one month to the next,
Apples and Amazons technological war in terms
of developing the most sophisticated reading plat-
forms are examples of fast developments that could
make us all into Luddites. But, according to Olsen,

they do not, because these rapid technological
developments, producing new products, stand out
as a contrast to the slow changes or absence of
change, and strong solidity, that we see in other
objects and other forms of materiality. Here Olsen
draws our attention to the materiality and geogra-
phy of places, towns and cities.
Olsen argues that, even within this material
regime, things are solid and long-lived, most objects
or monuments (buildings, roads, railways) are
formed by our cultural history. When we build a
new road we avoid important cultural heritage sites
and make sure the road curves around the monu-
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ment (e.g. Stonehenge). This confirms his case but
he then turns this upside-down and asks: what if
everything changed every morning when we woke
up, how would we cope? Where would we be? How
would we be? How would we be able to operate at
all in our everyday chores, how would we manage
to eat, to work and to rest if objects were made
anew every day? This is an extreme contrast to
how easy it is for us indeed to continue our every-
day lives without any reflection if only one new
object is introduced, changes or is taken out of
circulation. This obviously is less problematic to
relate to, and, therefore, for many of us, these
minor changes occur without any interference. In
terms of Heidegger, Olsen explains how things
ready at hand are taken out of circulation, out of
use and are forgotten (p. 115) without any further
notice from us the makers and users of these
things. Olsen notes that if there is one historical
trajectory running all the way down from Olduvai
Gorge to Postmodernia, it must be one of
increased mixing: that more and more tasks are
delegated to nonhuman actors, and more and
more actions are mediated by things (p. 9, origi-
nal emphasis). Things play an immensely impor-
tant and indispensable role in making society
possible as a relational and hybrid collection
and, without things, institutions and structures
would simply not exist and in Olsens words ima-
gining a social world beyond things is just that
imagination (pp. 139140).
Immaterial structures and institutions are also,
according to Olsen, products of a continuous inter-
change and mixing between humans and non-
humans. And he continues his argument by
stressing the fact that the network assignments or
references creating links between things, and
between people and things, enable a linking (or
gathering) of different historical horizons (p. 115).
Reviews 213
Here he demonstrates the centrality of the material
and how the material, our objects work with people.
Olsen writes about memory and about ready at
hand objects and object experiences (in his discus-
sion of, for instance, Heidegger). He notes, how up
until now, we have focused on actors and struc-
tures, and people who, in their in zero-degree
positions, are naked hominids who enter into rela-
tionships with things and each other (pp. 133134),
and how we have conceived of personhood, selves
and collective identities up until now as never emer-
ging from mixtures of people and things. We have
rather looked upon things as pre-located on the
other side, as something the intentional subject
relates to, becomes engaged with or brings close,
as in the saying we are all born and will leave
this world empty-handed.
In the discussion of binary oppositions, a side-
track in a way, Olsen notifies us that the natural is
produced without considerations of the social or
human dimension, as evidenced in and reproduced
by the linguistic repertoire of binary oppositions
between nature-culture, body-soul, matter-mind
and human-machine. Olsen includes technology
and sees it as being opposed to society, while, ever
since Marcel Mauss (1979[1935]) famous publica-
tion on technology and from then onwards, the
well-known establishment of the French school of
technology, social scientists as well as archaeolo-
gists, have attempted to illustrate in detail through
ethnographic studies and archaeology exactly the
opposite, how finely interwoven society and identity,
ethnicity and mind and meaning are aspects
in technological practices (cf. Leroi-Gourhan 1964,
1965, Mitcham 1980, 1994, Pfaffenberger 1988,
1992, Lemmonier 1992, 1993, Heidegger 1993,
Dobres 2001).
Olsen questions what things are and how they
are defined. But he does not distinguish things
into artefacts and other objects or differentiate the
way that the one influences us (things in nature)
while the others, the artefacts, are ways that we
influence the world (our human-made material
culture). At what stage should one relate to an
object, a thing, symmetrically? Are things in nature
and material culture the same? What happens to a
stone when it is picked up to form part of a stone
hunting-blind (in Norwegian bogastelle) for catch-
ing reindeer or used to form part of a wall for a
house? Olsen argues that perhaps the materiality
matter in itself is a way to define materiality? Or
the fluidity of materiality a piece of bread versus the
 214 Reviews
hard rock material such as stone or iron objects?
Olsens important contribution here is the fact that
he stresses that each one of us, individual or object,
has our own embeddedness.
A symmetrical approach, or symmetrical archae-
ology, is different from material culture studies
within anthropology and post-processual archae-
ology (e.g. Miller 1987, Tilley et al. 2006). Olsen
demonstrates this again and again throughout
his book. In his discussion of Tilley (pp. 2730),
Miller (p. 26) and Gell (p. 135), we are made
aware of the fact that these advocates of the mate-
rial and material culture all proposed an approach
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that validated social and human agency as above
and guiding the material (pp. 135136). This is a
point also stressed by Webmoor (2007:568).
Obviously, this is one of Olsens major agendas
in the book he wants to blur the hierarchies
common in social theory between the material
and the social, the human and the nonhuman. In
order to achieve his goal he discusses several impor-
tant thinkers and philosophers who have been
concerned with things. Olsen outlines a theory or
rather an approach that looks at gatherings from
the past or present as entities, collectives of humans
and things.
What Olsen manages in this book is with each
subject discussed to add his personal readings or
interpretations, opinions and experiences to the
challenging topics of philosophers and his perso-
nal theoretical debates towards this new turn in
material culture studies, thus a defense of things.
Olsens agenda is first and foremost to focus on the
importance of the material in itself. He promotes
the importance of phenomenology and the central-
ity of studying material culture regardless of time
and space As such, the message in the book is to
turn away from the over-intellectualization of the
past, and return to the things, but not any kind of
things, rather the objects of everyday life. We
should not only study the prestigious gold, silver
or cloisonn-decorated objects from rich grave
finds that help us tell stories about the networks
and institutionalized hierarchies of rich queens,
chiefs and kings, but the tools and things that
surround people of any time and place, of any
rank or pride.
The Defense of Things stands out as one of
the most thought-provoking books in newer theore-
tical archaeology. This book will make an impact
upon the coming discussions within archaeology.
Read it.
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2011 Randi Barndon
Antti Lahelma, Department of Archaeology, University of Helsinki, Finland. Email: antti.lahelma@helsinki.fi
Reviews 215
David S. Whitley: Cave Paintings
and the Human Spirit. The
Origin of Creativity and Belief,
Prometheus Books, New York,
2009. 322 pp., ISBN 978-1-
59102-636-5
ANTTI LAHELMA
There is little doubt in my mind that David
S. Whitley is one of the brightest minds in contem-
porary archaeology. A director of a major contract
archaeology firm in the United States, he may not
rank among the best-known or most cited archae-
ologists of our time, but this is mainly because he
has chosen to dedicate much of his energy to rock-
art research, a field of study that remains secluded
and still sometimes completely ignored by the
mainstream. Within this sub-discipline, however,
he is a star. Even though his research centres on
the rock art of the American South-West, it is the-
oretically and methodologically ground-breaking
and therefore indispensable reading for anyone
working with rock art regardless of the region.
It has become something of a tradition for emi-
nent archaeologists to take a stand on Franco-
Cantabrian cave art, often towards the end of
their professional career. The Mind in a Cave by
David Lewis Williams (2001), in which San
Bushman ethnography and the so-called neuro-
psychological model were applied to cave art, is
the most outstanding example and an obvious
comparison to the present volume. The neuropsy-
chological model, which has won widespread
acceptance (but also invited loud criticism), views
certain geometric and representational motifs
present in cave art (as well as many other art
forms) as indicative of a trance state and hence
shamanism. Ever since it was first presented by
Lewis-Williams and Thomas Dowson in 1988,
Whitley has been a firm supporter of the model
and applied it to his own data. In view of this, I
had a rather clear idea of what to anticipate from
Whitleys take on cave art and, knowing his