Sunteți pe pagina 1din 8

DISCUSSIONNorwegian Archaeological Review, Vol. 38, No.

2, 2005

Comments on Christopher Tilley: The Materiality of


Stone: Explorations in Landscape Phenomenology.
Oxford: Berg, 2004.
TIM INGOLD

LANDSCAPE LIVES, BUT to the contexts of our primary perceptual


ARCHAEOLOGY TURNS TO STONE engagement with the world – cuts us adrift
from it entirely.
Archaeology is an outdoor science. In the In his new book, The Materiality of Stone:
field its practitioners face the same elements Explorations in Landscape Phenomenology
that, through the ages, have battered, eroded (2004), Christopher Tilley writes against this
and smothered the monuments to past tendency. Indeed the book could be read as a
activity they seek to recover. Yet almost manifesto for a genuinely outdoor archae-
invariably, when it comes to the analysis and ology. Tilley complains, with good reason,
interpretation of their results, they retreat that most writing on landscapes of prehistory
indoors to the safety and seclusion of the is not only set down on paper but also
laboratory, library or study. The deskbound derived from paper (p.27). Real landscapes
body, as it thinks and writes, is no longer however, unlike paper ones, cannot be read
bathed in the light of the open air, infused by like texts or viewed like pictures. To get to
its scents, blown by its currents or immersed know them, they have to be inhabited. Only
in its pulses of sound. The multisensory by spending time in them, and becoming
experience of being out in the open is accustomed to the sights, sounds, odours and
something that fieldworkers may strive, with feelings they afford, under varying condi-
difficulty, to write about, but it is not tions of illumination and weather, can they
something they write in. In effect, the move properly ‘sink in’. And to appreciate their
indoors converts such experience into an features you have to explore them on foot (or
object of discourse that is endlessly recycled if need be, on all fours), getting a sense of
as it is passed, in writing, from one analyst to how they look and feel from different
another. Buried in their texts, analysts angles and in different directions. As
compete to craft the most subtle, nuanced your thoughts begin to take shape you
or elaborate literary expressions of feelings need to write them down, since the slow
long since forgotten in the flesh, or that they and deliberate concentration entailed in
can conjure up only in faraway recesses of the act of writing sharpens your own
the imagination. Beguiled by the thought perception. At least half of this book, Tilley
that such bookish pursuits amount to tells us, was written not at a desk but in situ.
exercises in ‘theory’, they have produced a That, in itself, is an impressive statistic, and
literature that can only reconstruct the attests to a serious attempt by the author and
immediacy of sensory experience in the his assistant, Wayne Bennett, to practise
image of its representations, in a kind of what they preach. Among writers of a
double inversion that – far from returning us phenomenological bent, notorious for their

Tim Ingold, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK. E-mail: tim.ingold@abdn.ac.uk

DOI: 10.1080/00293650500359078 # 2005 Taylor & Francis


Comments on: The Materiality of Stone 123

abstruse and recondite prose, the attempt holding off on whatever beliefs people might
may be almost unique. have entertained about it. In practice, how-
It is, however, an attempt shot through ever, he does exactly the opposite. When not
with paradox and contradiction. Apart from expounding on the actuality of the world,
a general theoretical introduction and a short Tilley is eagerly speculating on what people
concluding chapter, the book comprises might have believed it all meant! To take just
three substantial case studies, each focusing one example, the solution basins created by
on ancient monuments of massive stone or erosion on a standing-stone ‘were perhaps
rock. The first study is of the neolithic regarded as carvings created by the ancestors’
menhirs or standing stones of Brittany; the (p.51). Perhaps they were; perhaps they were
second is the temple architecture of neolithic not. Tilley has a penchant for wheeling in the
Malta, and the third is of Bronze Age ancestors, whenever needed, to lend an air of
carvings in southern Sweden. These make ethnographic authenticity to his conjectures.
for a nice set of comparisons and contrasts: But if his concern is really with experience,
for example between landmarks and enclo- why do these conjectures deal so exclusively
sures, and between rocks that have been put with what people might have believed?
in place and bedrock that has been inscribed. Part of the problem seems to be that in
In each case, Tilley takes us on his peram- pursuit of his phenomenological project,
bulations around and within the various Tilley remains encumbered by the philoso-
sites, offering meticulous description and phical baggage of a tradition of material
commentary along the way. This is where culture studies that treats the physical world
the first paradox arises. Introducing his as a pool of metaphorical resources for the
project, Tilley argues that to grasp the expression of social or cosmological princi-
experience of a place or monument, we need ples. In this tradition, material objects stand
to avoid a ‘deadened and deadening litera- in for cultural concepts. There are many
lism’ (p.28), and to use a language that is examples of such reasoning in this book.
richly evocative and suffused with poetic Maltese temples, for example, are interpreted
metaphor. Fortunately, perhaps, Tilley does as ‘embodiments of ideas, material meta-
not write like that at all. His descriptions are phors through which the island world and
resolutely matter-of-fact; his writing lucid that beyond became known’ (p.144). Again,
and literal rather than ambiguous and whereas the menhirs of Finistère, with their
metaphorical. The language is that of an sinuous profiles, suggest fertility and growth,
excellent guide-book, which does not even those of Bas-Léon, shaped like axe-blades
pretend to convey the richness of immediate struck into the ground, suggest human
experience but provides readers with precise mastery over the land. Thus, ‘a metaphor
directions so that, on site and book in hand, of organic growth of stones from the soil was
they may relive the experience for them- replaced by a metaphor of wilful transforma-
selves. tion and dominance over ‘‘nature’’ and
Interspersed with descriptive sections are ‘‘natural’’ forces’ (p.86). And the schematic
more speculative passages, pondering what depictions of boats in the inscribed rocks of
the monuments may have meant for people in southern Sweden signified ‘both social
the prehistoric past. Here is the second groups and the structuring principles in
paradox. The opening line of the book terms of which these groups were organised
equates, under the rubric of epoché, the in relation to each other’ (p.195).
suspension of belief with the bracketing of In these examples, the sheer materiality of
experience. But these are not the same. Indeed stone stands to its ideological significance as
Tilley’s expressed aim is to reveal the world of nature to culture. These are, as Tilley himself
experience, not to bracket it, precisely by suggests, ‘two sides of a coin’. On one side
124 Tim Ingold & Chris Tilley

are the physical features of the landscape presence, taking the form of a block,
(whether or not shaped by human hands), on boulder, protuberance or outcrop organi-
the other the symbolic meanings encoded cally embedded in the solid earth below and
into them. Together they constitute a ‘com- immersed in currents of water or air above.
plex system of signification’ (p.220). Yet These enveloping media afford perception,
following his phenomenological bent, Tilley and it is thanks to their fluctuations and
is keen to refute any opposition between the transformations that components of the
material and the ideal. His approach, he landscape present themselves in the ways
declares, transcends any distinction between they do. Thus, as Tilley notes (p.11), the
‘nature’ and ‘culture’. But how can the qualities of a stone will vary depending,
distinction be transcended if they are to among other things, on the light and the
remain as two sides of a coin? The sides may direction from which it shines. And on a
indeed be inseparable, but they are opposite misty day the entire landscape in which it sits
nonetheless. This is the third paradox, and it may look quite different, compared with a
is written into the very title of the book. It is clear day. From this example, however, he
one thing to consider stone as material; quite draws a strange conclusion, namely that the
another to consider the materiality of stone. difference is due to the point of view of the
Tilley devotes a great deal of attention to the person who perceives it.
former, and in this he makes a major This is the fourth paradox in Tilley’s
contribution, above all in his recognition account. On the one hand he accepts that
that the character of stone – its ‘stoniness’ if landscapes of perception, for all their appar-
you will – is not some fixed essence but ent solidity, are never the same from one
endlessly variable in relation, for example, to moment to the next. For example the
light or shade, wetness or dryness, and the Maltese temples, constructed of massive
position, posture or movement of the obser- stone blocks, are like pivots around which
ver. Thus the stoniness of stone does not revolves an oceanic cosmos described by the
reside in its ‘nature’ – that is, in its movements of wind and waves, the arrivals
materiality – but rather in the manifold ways and departures of migratory birds, the
in which it is engaged in the currents of the celestial cycles of the sun and moon, and
lifeworld. It has to do with the properties the growth cycles of plants (p.135). Yet on
and qualities of materials, not with the the other hand, in a world where ‘persons
materiality of objects. make things and things make persons’
Exactly the same problem arises when we (p.217), no space remains for such generative
turn from stones to the people, both pre- movements. To suppose that persons and
historic and contemporary, who are sup- things, and their mutually constitutive inter-
posed to engage with them. Within the space actions, are all there is, is a bit like saying
of a single page, Tilley both espouses a that a river is constituted by interactions
radical materialism, asserting that it is between eddies and banks, forgetting that
precisely because people are physical objects there would be neither eddies nor banks were
that they are able to perceive the world, and it not for the flow of the river itself. Likewise,
then denies any such thing, insisting that the there would be neither persons nor land-
body-person is not ‘an object among other scapes were it not for those atmospheric
objects in the world’ but rather ‘a particular fluxes that normally go by the name of
way of inhabiting the world, of being weather. It is astonishing that Tilley’s out-
present in it, sensing it’ (pp.2–3). But if door archaeology, with its exclusive focus on
people are not objects among objects, then persons and things, cannot begin to compre-
nor, strictly speaking, are stones. A stone in hend the weather. That is why, for example,
the landscape is not so much an object as a he ends up attributing the difference between
Comments on: The Materiality of Stone 125

mistiness and clarity to the constitutive recognises that life entails movement, and is
intervention of persons in the landscape, lived not in places but around them, and
rather than to fluctuations in the medium along the paths that lead to and from places
that enshrouds both. elsewhere. Thus, far from human experience
It is also why he rushes to endow stones, being bound in places, places are bound in
along with trees, places and the entire land- the flows of human movement (p.26). It is
scape with ‘agency’ (pp.18, 31, 217, 222). In along paths, not in places, that humans
this topsy-turvy world, rivers flow because of experience the world. Or in short, experience
the interacting agency of eddies and banks. is place-making but not place-bound. Places
Tilley advocates a return to an ontology of are like vortices, anchorages or resting points
animism, and I sympathise. But animism is in currents of movement. In his resolute
not about imputing life and agency to things. attempt to have it both ways, Tilley succeeds
It is rather a matter of restoring those things in confusing the ‘stickiness’ of place with the
to the circulatory currents of life and activity very fluidity of the movement within which it
within which they are generated and take on is generated. For having asserted that places
the forms they do, each in relation to the are things with which people interact, he
other. The much vaunted ‘problem of promptly declares that place should not be
agency’ is of our own creation, and has its understood ‘as a fixed and definite thing but
source in an inverted view of reality that rather as something fluid and flowing’
represents the dynamic potential of the (p.220). But if places are flows of movement,
lifeworld to bring forth forms of manifold then how can people move from place to
kinds as an interior property that is carved place?
up and distributed among the forms them- Even more peculiar is Tilley’s admission,
selves, whence it is supposed to set the world in a postscript to the introductory chapter,
in motion. Thus Tilley asks us to imagine a that the embodied experience of place is part
painter and a tree. But in his account the of a bedrock of universal humanity that is
visuo-manual movement of the painter as he given prior to the particularities of culture.
paints the tree is rendered as an effect of the Human bodies, he tells us, ‘carry specific
tree’s agency as it moves the painter (p.18). knowledges and traditions, meanings and
This is the fifth paradox of the account, and symbols (culture) into places and articulate
it stems from the impossible attempt to them there’ (p.31). So where does this culture
marry an animistic ontology, according to come from? Does Tilley really believe that
which all things are suspended in currents there exists some ethereal domain of sym-
of life and activity, with a philosophy of bolic meaning, floating above the plane of
substance that seeks the wellsprings of life material existence, from which culture is
and activity in a world that already consists siphoned into the heads of people who then
of things-in-themselves. import it with them into the contexts of their
This same paradox reappears in Tilley’s engagement in the lifeworld? True, there are
frequent allusions to the relations between many besides Tilley who have argued thus,
persons and place. On the one hand, he but it is a view that flies in the face of his own
asserts (p.25) that all human experience is argument that knowledge, identity and
fundamentally place-bound. Places are meaning have their generative source in the
‘kinds of things’ to which living bodies lived experience of body-persons in a land-
belong from the very moment of their scape.
coming into the world. They have an agency Out of this welter of paradox, what
of their own (p.31), and shape the identities conclusions can we reach? Can anything be
of their inhabitants just as the latter shape said with any certainty? Tilley clearly thinks
them. Yet on the other hand, Tilley so, since many of his speculations concerning
126 Tim Ingold & Chris Tilley

the experience and meanings of massive It does not matter to Tilley that none of
stone for prehistoric people are prefaced his conclusions can be deduced from the
with words like ‘certainly’, ‘obviously’ and ‘facts’. For he is not a detective but a
‘undoubtedly’. Of other things he is appar- conjurer. Indeed he is a master of the art.
ently less sure, as indicated by his frequent No one can surpass his ability to pull entire
use of phrases like ‘in all probability’, ‘it is as social orders or cosmologies from a footprint
if’, ‘could have been’ or simply ‘perhaps’. or a scratch in the rock. Every exercise in
Some statements are simply left as open hyper-interpretation is like balancing an
questions. But in reality these variations elephant on a pinhead; it supports so much
along the continuum from doubt to certainty on so little. We should not however begrudge
are invoked merely for rhetorical effect. him this. Surely some informed ideas about
There is no reason why any of his pro- the meanings of prehistoric stone monu-
nouncements should be considered more or ments are better than none, and if we don’t
less reliable than any other. What is reliably like the stories Tilley tells, it is up to us to do
true, in Tilley’s account, is trivially true: better. He has placed the ball firmly in his
because the terms in which it is expressed are readers’ court. As for the appearance of the
so vague and all-encompassing that they book itself, I have only one complaint.
could be said of almost anything sufficiently Though it includes plenty of photographs,
impressive. Thus when Tilley concludes that there are only a few drawings of rather poor
Maltese temples ‘are fundamentally to do quality. This is strange, in view of Tilley’s
with the manipulation and transformation of own argument (p.223) that photography
human experience’ (p.138), or that in their affords no more than the passive apprecia-
depictions of boats, Bronze Age people in tion of a site. Only in situ writing, he argues,
southern Sweden were ‘making fundamental takes us in, allowing us to perceive actively,
statements about themselves to themselves and to make connections. But drawing does
this too, albeit in different ways, and in many
and about the principles of social and
parts of this book I felt it could have done
political and cosmological order’ (p.201),
the job better than words. I wonder why
we learn at once both everything and nothing
Tilley only writes his conclusions, and does
about them.
not draw them.

Reply to Comment

CHRIS TILLEY
BODY THOUGHTS doesn’t give much of the plot away here at
I appreciate very much Tim Ingold’s all so if the reader is really interested in
thoughtful and polemical discussion of my finding out what the book has to say they’ll
recent book. This is so much more interest- have to read it themselves!
ing than the normal type of review, attempt- Ingold’s central claim is that the book is
ing some form of dry summary. Ingold apparently ‘shot through with paradox and

Chris Tilley, Department of Anthropology, University College London, UK. E-mail: c.tilley@ucl.ac.uk
Comments on: The Materiality of Stone 127

contradiction’. Enough to chuck it into the the argument in Tilley 1999). Ingold’s para-
academic dustbin, then, but he apparently dox is not one I share. To encounter some
likes it anyway. There is a fair amount of excellent examples of deadening archaeo-
paradox and contradiction, of course, in logical ‘literalism’ I suggest he reads a few
Ingold’s own discussion, from my point of excavation reports.
view. Do we simply ‘identify’ these contra- I could describe the approach to writing
dictions in an objective and ‘rational’ man- adopted as being in some ways akin to a
ner? Are they to be taken in some way as documentary film with slow panning shots
absolutes, somehow independent of our own when I discuss the stones themselves, then
particular point of view, or do we create cutting and moving on to something much
them as part of a particular intellectual more theatrical when the imagined people
debating strategy of reading and analysis? come in and enter the experiential stage, then
Most scholars have their own particular axe cutting and moving back to the rocks once
to grind and Ingold is no exception, as he more, and so on.
makes clear in numerous places. Paradox two: I advocate the bracketing of
Paradox one: I advocate a metaphorical experience while eagerly ‘speculating about’
style of writing but in fact do the reverse. The what people might have believed. Apparently
text is ‘lucid’ and ‘literal’ instead, which for I should have not have attempted to provide
Ingold is probably preferable. All writing is such an interpretation. To clarify: the brack-
metaphorical in the sense that metaphor is eting of experience is a phenomenological
part and parcel of language. We can’t express strategy to remove the theoretical presuppo-
ourselves adequately in literal terms. To sitions or prejudices that some things are
describe my text as ‘lucid’ is to deploy a more important than others to study. The
metaphor! So Ingold thinks that there is a entire reason for doing this is to permit a
clear demarcation line between literal and different interpretation of experience. No
metaphorical language when none really paradox there. Then Ingold sets up a strange
exist. In fact the ‘problem’ appears to be distinction between ‘experience’ and ‘belief’:
not the presence or absence of metaphors in ‘If his concern is really with experience, why
the book, but I clearly haven’t been ‘poetic’ do these conjectures deal so exclusively with
enough for him, and if I had, you can be sure what people might have believed?’ Simply
that I’d be criticised for that. I described because experience does not determine belief
Breton menhirs as giant axes and sprouting or action in any simple manner, it offers
rhizomes, the rocks at Simrishamn as look- differing possibilities and alternatives, or
ing like old ice, as containing petrified waves, ‘affordances’.
the Maltese islands as ‘islands of honey, Paradox three: I deny the ‘nature/culture’
floating on the sea’: ‘lucid and literal’ or distinction while in fact maintaining it. I
‘metaphorical descriptions’? Cannot meta- declare that nature and culture are like two
phorical descriptions be more ‘lucid’ than sides of the same coin, i.e. that they are
‘literal’ ones anyway? In the book I generally inseparable. However, for Ingold the impor-
try to describe landscape, and evoke the tant point here is that because they are
material qualities of stone, in what might be on different sides of the coin, they still
described as a ‘realist’ style – which does not remain opposite. Well, I can appreciate
mean the absence of metaphor – and where I the metaphorical point he is making!
felt it appropriate more striking ‘poetic’ However, the coin can’t be cut in half
metaphors were employed as part and parcel without destroying it. In other words ‘nature’
of the interpretative strategy, for that to me is in ‘culture’ and vice versa. They form part
is why metaphors and metaphorical language of each other, constitute each other. Paradox
are so important in the social sciences (see resolved?
128 Tim Ingold & Chris Tilley

Paradox four: I claim landscapes and developed. My regret is that I did not pay
stones and people are always changing, sufficient attention to the phenomenal effects
infinitely variable yet also apparently main- of weather in the book.
taining that they stay the same. The argu- Ingold doesn’t apparently like the ‘philo-
ments Ingold advances to establish the sophical baggage of a tradition of material
‘reality’ of this paradox are somewhat culture studies that treats the physical world
involuted and lack the usual standard of as a pool of metaphorical resources for the
decisive ‘lucidity’ we are accustomed to find expression of social or cosmological princi-
in his writing! I describe stone as infinitely ples’. Well, that’s his problem and because he
variable and not having a fixed essence. This denies this fundamental link he finds para-
leads Ingold to argue strangely that ‘the doxes that don’t exist. He doesn’t like the
stoniness of stone does not reside in its claim that persons make things and things
‘nature’ – that is, in its materiality – but make persons. I think my definition of a
rather in the manifold ways in which it is ‘thing’ is probably far broader and more
engaged in the currents of the lifeworld’. It inclusive that Ingold’s. He appears to think
appears then, for Ingold, that for stone to that wind and waves, cycles of the sun and
have the property of materiality it has to moon, migrating birds, and the weather are
have a fixed essence somehow independent not ‘things’ at all, but something else. To me
of the lifeworld. It can then be labelled these are all material culture, ‘things’. Of
natural. Since I do not accept stone has a course they are not static things but flows
fixed essence it cannot be ‘nature’ as opposed and processes. So, because the moon moves,
to ‘culture’ – the ‘nature’ of stone is in its I suppose that Ingold would not wish to
‘culture’. This is an important property of its categorize it as a thing, a material medium,
very materiality as a medium relating to but as something else. However, Ingold has
social practice, and why it can be experienced no name for such an entity that exists
and understood in many different ways. alongside persons and things in the world.
Ingold points out that I claim both that Paradox five: this apparently arises
people are physical objects and yet at the because of the ‘impossible attempt to marry
same time they are not. I do not think this an animistic ontology ... with a philosophy of
amounts to a contradiction at all – not in substance in which the world already consists
Ingold’s presumably perjurative use of that of things-in-themselves’. Such a paradox is of
term. It is simply to assert that people are Ingold’s own creation, since while agreeing
both physical objects in the same sense as that animism is important he appears to
stones are objects but they are also cultural regard this to simply arise from flows and
subjects: an existential fact. I apparently circulations in the lifeworld. It is just there
have difficulty in comprehending the weather and everywhere, ‘naturally’ arising, I sup-
‘attributing the difference between mistiness pose. I attribute agency to things, which
and clarity to the constitutive intervention of according to him, is a false attribution. The
persons in the landscape’. This is a striking reason why I attribute agency to things is
obfuscation of my position, which is that because I don’t draw a clear distinction
weather alters landscapes so people perceive between persons and things. Things can be
these landscapes differently. There is, there- like persons and vice versa. Thus things can
fore, no stable landscape to perceive. Ingold have agency or effects on persons, a theme
regards weather as ‘fluctuations in the running throughout the book. What Ingold’s
medium that enshrouds both persons and position is on this is quite impossible to work
things’. I agree entirely and I think indeed out.
that an entire archaeology and anthropology Paradox six: I associate places with both
of the materiality of weather could be ‘stasis’ and ‘movement’. How terrible!
Comments on: The Materiality of Stone 129

Landscape to me, in the most abstract sense, he clearly wants distinctions to be drawn
is a relational nexus of places and paths of between what might be ‘reliably known’
movement. The former have both the prop- about the past and what is instead ‘specula-
erties of stasis and change over time and tion’. He states that no conclusions that I
there is really no paradox there at all except draw can be deduced from the facts. So,
in Ingold’s mind. Places are ‘sticky’ nodes in rather than being a trustworthy detective,
the flows of movement and movement flows I’m a conjurer, a master of illusion and
in places. Ingold thinks it strange that I trickery, who simply sets out to seduce and
should regard experience of place as a human beguile the reader into believing the veracity
universal prior to the particularities of of what I have to say on no basis whatsoever!
culture and yet maintain that people have Here Ingold draws, quite clearly, that old
culture which they articulate in particular and tired distinction between fact and value,
places which is different. This prompts him objective knowledge and subjective know-
to ask where this culture comes from and ledge, which is so clearly a hallmark of the
how it ‘lands’ in a place: something that entire empiricist tradition debunked and
people pluck out of the air? This apparently abandoned long ago throughout the social
‘flies in the face’ of my argument that sciences. Yet curiously, he does not begrudge
identities are created out of places. I see no my ‘speculation’ at all, whereas surely it
problem whatsoever in regarding ‘platial’ should be utterly condemned! If Ingold really
experience as a universal, i.e. as an ontolo- is so interested in facts, and their deduction,
gical part of that which it is to be human, he’s clearly in the wrong discipline – anthro-
while still arguing that people’s particular pology – altogether! But as he himself is
experiences in particular places create their continuing to produce anthropological ‘spec-
particular identities. ulations’ (i.e. interpretations) of the greatest
Why Ingold finds so many paradoxes, interest he probably doesn’t believe in facts
apart from the fact that this was obviously a at all, or indeed have a great deal of faith in
pleasing intellectual exercise, appears to be the paradoxes and contradictions he has so
that in the manner of an analytical philoso- deftly created in my book either.
pher of the logical positivist tradition he I would love to sketch my conclusions to
wants clear-cut and conceptually closed this reply but unfortunately lack the artistic
categories, so place and movement, nature skill and brilliance that would be required to
and culture, persons and things, all need to do so. So the rest of the page will have to
be opposites that share nothing in common. remain as a paradox, or a contradiction, in
This is precisely the kind of surreal attitude the white.
to the world that a phenomenological posi-
tion debunks, and demonstrates to be itself
REFERENCE
highly paradoxical and contradictory.
We quite clearly see this demand for closed Tilley, C. 1999. Metaphor and Material Culture.
categories – better closed thinking – when Blackwell, Oxford.

S-ar putea să vă placă și