MATERIALITY AND SEMIOTICS

As archaeologists we deal with the material traces left by the practices and actions of past people; we use these traces to evoke feelings, make propositions, and create narratives about the past and present. We can only know past practices through the signs we perceive inhering in the material evidence before us, and as such we need a rigorous understanding of semiotics, specifically as it plays out in relation to material culture. This extends to an understanding of the interplay of presence and absence, the relationship between linguistic and material sign, and questions of object agency. This class will consider the different ways in which people construct meaning from material remains, whether directly or indirectly experienced. We will explore how experience is mediated through objects, and the constitution of knowledge and thought in relation to the object world. In this iteration of the class we will focus especially on forensic evidence.