An Archaeology of Affect: Art, Ontology and the Carved Stone Balls of Neolithic Britain
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An Archaeology of Affect: Art, Ontology and the Carved Stone Balls of Neolithic Britain Andrew Meirion Jones 1 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract This paper aims to shift debate in the study of archaeological art away from epistemological questions of definition towards ontological approaches. To this aim, the paper proposes a non-representational study of archaeological art based on the twin concepts of affect and agential intra-action. As an example of this approach, the paper examines the carved stone balls of Neolithic Scotland. The analysis of carved stone balls focuses on their making and on their inter-regional circulation and exchange as a way of approaching the affective character of these artefacts. The paper finishes with a detailed consideration of the concepts of affect and intra-action and advocates their use in the archaeology of art. Keywords Affect . Carved stone ball . Intra-action . Neolithic
This paper examines an unusual group of artefacts from Neolithic Britain: the carved stone balls of Scotland. These small stone spheres are often three-dimensionally sculpted and intensely carved. Extensively circulated on the nineteenth century antiquities market, carved stone balls have long intrigued antiquarians and archaeologists. Carved stone balls might be regarded as stone technologies, yet their intense carving suggests otherwise. Does it make any sense to define these artefacts as examples of “Neolithic art”? Several recent authors have discussed the definition of art in archaeology. John Robb (2017) surveys the literature on “art” in archaeology and anthropology and proposes that “art” objects be instead considered as “powerful objects”; this proposition raises almost as many objections as the problematic definitions of archaeological “art”: what is “power” and how are we to archaeologically legislate on whether an artefact is “powerful” or not? Ylva Sjöstrand (2017) argues for the applicability of the term “art”
* Andrew Meirion Jones [email protected]
1
Archaeology, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BF, UK
Jones
in archaeology. Ingeniously, Sjöstrand argues for art as a particular function of particular kinds of artefact. Unfortunately, this proposal appears to reassert a kind of constructivist position in which art is a representational property added to objects. It is fair to say that definitions of art are slippery. Art is difficult to define in a contemporary context and even more so in a prehistoric setting. Art historian Carolyn Dean (2006) very effectively discusses the problems associated with importing the concept of art to the study of non-Western cultures: a colonial move that renders nonWestern cultures as similar to the West. “The recognition of “art” can be seen as an attempt to reconstruct other visual cultures in the image of the colonizing West, different only in ways that render them insufficient” (Dean 2006, 27). All too often, the study of non-Western visual culture is rendered in the language of art history. Consider, fo
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