Dan
Hicks (University of Oxford)
Intimate Distance: three kinds of
detachment in the archaeology of the modern
As in social anthropology, archaeological thinking has since the 1980s witnessed a series of critiques of scientific and objective detachment. However, these critiques have perhaps differed from those in anthropology in that the firm distinctions between scientific/objective and social-constructivist/subjective approaches described in the conference abstract have from the outset been considerably more entangled.
Since debates over distance and proximity have been perhaps most sharply focused in the development of the archaeological study of the recent past, this paper focuses on how in this field, instead of clear narratives around connection and engagement, a number of possible forms of detachment have emerged. The paper examines two kinds of detachment in the archaeological study of the modern period, and then considers an alternative approach to proximity and distance, in order to develop an archaeological contribution to the conference theme of the analytics of disconnection.
