Archaeological Approaches to Subjectification

This symposium explores archaeological approaches to subjectification: the practices whereby people recognize authority and recognize themselves as subjects to authority. Archaeology can offer a novel perspective on subjectification because it is uniquely positioned to document the places and things (and their attendant practices) that, over time, manifest claims to identity, underline social boundaries, or undermine a political regime's claim to authority. But even though places and things are mainstays of the archaeological analytic, few archaeologists examine the roles that these materials have played in practices of subjectification. Papers in this symposium draw on recent archaeological data to discuss the contexts in which places and things, in both ancient and modern worlds, became powerful vectors of subjectification that authorized a person's actions, positioned people within social hierarchies, or defined what it means to be a kind of person. These papers contribute an archaeological perspective to contemporary theories that describe subjectification as a continual process by which social differences between authorities and subjects are created, reproduced, or fractured in particular settings and circumstances. The symposium therefore provides theoretical and methodological insights into how archaeologists might understand the political processes, everyday practices, and moments of crisis during which objects shape subjects.