2026/01/05 by Piraye Hacıgüzeller · 1 voice
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Social Sciences · #Archaeology and ancient environmental studies #Language and cultural evolution #Archaeology and Rock Art Studies
paper · doi:10.5281/zenodo.18152352
openalex publication_date 2026/01/05 · openalex created_date 2026/01/08 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/01
In this chapter, I explore how archaeological types are performed through language acts. Drawing on Judith Butler’s theory of performativity, I emphasise that archaeologists do not merely describe or reference types, but actively materialise them through speech and writing. I highlight that, despite longstanding theoretical critique and empirical resistance encountered in archaeological practice, certain typological categories in archaeology persist with remarkable resilience – a point that has received limited attention in typology-related critique, including assemblage-based approaches. I suggest that this persistence is underpinned by definitional flexibility, which allows types to be iteratively re-enacted across diverse contexts. In the final section, I turn to language models and consider how machine-generated language acts, especially when grounded in authoritative (meta)data and thereby rendered more epistemically trustworthy, may support type persistence not through definitional flexibility, but through sheer ubiquity. I conclude that future archaeological knowledge and materialisations, increasingly mediated through machine-driven language acts, may be shaped by types that are more rigid and less open to redefinition.