Benjamin Alberti
Biographic Data
| ID | 130900 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Benjamin Alberti |
| GIVEN NAMES | Benjamin |
| FAMILY NAME | Alberti |
| SIGNATURE | ALBERTI B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Framingham State University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 532 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Epilogue: What Can Archaeology Do?
Artiplaces: Ecological and ontological entanglements of ancient artworks
This special issue of World Art encourages greater archaeological reflection on the relationships between art and place. Do artworks – often made ‘of’ a place, not just in it – throw into relief certain qualities and experiences concretely associated with a place? Conversely, can it be said that artworks create their own places, serving as portals that transform the here-and-now, transcending the dimensionality of their media? The issue contribut…
Surface Revelations: Ecologies And Epistemologies Of Rock Art
For archaeologists, it is difficult to have a conversation about art without feeling the Paleolithic tug at us from somewhere deep in our subconscious. We may be having a perfectly nice time strolling around the Guggenheim with our partner, but our minds will never be entirely present. Somewhere, off in a private corner of our thoughts, we will be saying to ourselves, “Yes, but what about all those lions arid rhinoceroses in Chauvet Cave?” or “Co…
Morteros en rocas y otras superficies de ausencias en tiempos pre-coloniales en las Sierras de Córdoba, Argentina
Las rocas con cavidades, morteros o cúpulas son una constante en el paisaje arqueológico de los ríos y arroyos serranos de Córdoba, Argentina, sobre las cuales se han planteado diversas interpretaciones que ponen de manifiesto múltiples dimensiones y posibilidades de esta clase de objetos. Nos centramos en el caso particular de dos grandes rocas con 46 y 44 cavidades respectivamente, que se destacan en el tramo superior del río Soto, NO de Córdob…
Epílogo. Tras la interpretación: Otros materialismos y ontologías en arqueologías argentinas actuales
El autor, invitado como comentarista del dossier Tras la interpretación: otros materialismos y ontologías en las arqueologías argentinas actuales presenta comentarios y reflexiones a partir de la lectura de los artículos desde el punto de vista del papel que juegan los materiales en su propia interpretación. El analiza en cada trabajo las principales propuestas teóricas desde esa perspectiva, la relación con los materiales y las cuestiones claves…
Gender, Feminist, and Queer Archaeologies: USA Perspective
Habitando espacios vacíos. Cuerpos, paisajes y ontologías en el poblamiento inicial del centro de Argentina
Los modelos de poblamiento inicial de territorios desconocidos implícitamente ponen en juego ontologías del cuerpo y del espacio o la naturaleza, con dos ideas fuertes: la de espacios vacíos de humanos y la de un medio desconocido, una ‘terra ignota’. Se trata siempre de un encuentro entre grupos humanos y un espacio a descubrir, a experienciar, y en cuyo recorrido las poblaciones van relacionándose activamente con materialidades particulares y c…
Ecologies of rock and art in northern New Mexico
Of the many branches of archaeological research, the study of rock art would seem to be particularly attentive to the lives of non-human species. Around the globe, most rock art traditions since the end of the Pleistocene have repeatedly returned to the theme of the animal, and this has led rock art researchers to repeatedly inquire into the nature of human-animal relations. Ancient representations of, say, a deer on the wall of a cave or on the …
Art, craft, and the ontology of archaeological things
Tim Ingold's ‘science of correspondence’ describes a kind of epistemological intimacy in the practices of art, science, and anthropology. Archaeology would benefit from cultivating correspondence as a way to understand its research process. Ingold's model, however, appears to elide art and craft. Though both are necessary, I argue they should be kept separate for analytical purposes. Correspondence as pre-conceptual practice provides a way to und…
Archaeology after Interpretation: Returning Materials to Archaeological Theory
Archaeologies of Ontology
Bruno Latour and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro provided the initial impetus for explicitly ontological research in archaeology. Their impact on archaeologists, however, has been quite different. What I call the "metaphysical archaeologists" trace their genealogy from Latour, though they are now equally influenced by "new materialism" and the "new ontological realism" ( Gabriel 2015 ). They have introduced an alternative metaphysical orthodoxy to arc…
Archaeologies of risk and wonder
In this statement, I argue that one way for archaeology to realize the potential of its materials to tell us something different about the past is to confront the question of alterity, understood as the ontological difference that lies at the roots of much archaeological material. If we accept alterity as a starting point of analysis then we stand a chance of challenging the strictures of interpretive frameworks that foreclose the possibility of …
Introdução. Arqueología del cuerpo en el Mundo Moderno
Con el propósito de responder qué puede aportar una arqueología del cuerpoen la modernidad, necesitamos efectuar un breve recorrido por la historia dela arqueología del cuerpo como campo de estudio. Esta historia puede explicar,al menos, dos rasgos particulares sobre el estudio de los cuerpos modernos enarqueología: su relativa ausencia, y la relación entre teoría del cuerpo y modernidad. La propia noción de mundo moderno puede producir una confu…
Gender, Feminist, and Queer Archaeologies: USA Perspective
A Matter of Difference: Karen Barad, Ontology and Archaeological Bodies
This article explores the implications of adopting Karen Barad's agential realist approach in archaeology. We argue that the location of Barad's work in quantum physics and feminism means it is uniquely placed to inform the ontological turn currently gaining favour for understanding the materiality of bodies. We outline Barad's approach using a comparative reading of Sofaer's book The Body as Material Culture and Barad's Meeting the Universe Half…
Queer Prehistory: Bodies, Performativity, and Matter
Worlds Otherwise: Archaeology, Anthropology, and Ontological Difference
The debate concerning ontology is heating up in the social sciences. How is this impacting anthropology and archaeology? What contributions can these disciplines make? Following a session at the 2010 Theoretical Archaeology Group conference at Brown University ("'Worlds Otherwise': Archaeology, Theory, and Ontological Difference," convened by Ben Alberti and Yvonne Marshall), a group of archaeologists and anthropologists have continued to discuss…
Animating Archaeology: Local Theories and Conceptually Open-ended Methodologies
Animists' theories of matter must be given equivalence at the level of theory if we are to understand adequately the nature of ontological difference in the past. The current model is of a natural ontological continuum that connects all cultures, grounding our culturally relativist worldviews in a common world. Indigenous peoples' worlds are thought of as fascinating but ultimately mistaken ways of knowing the world. We demonstrate how ontologica…
Archaeology in Latin America
This pioneering and comprehensive survey is the first overview of current themes in Latin American archaeology written solely by academics native to the region, and it makes their collected expertise available to an English-speaking audience for the first time. The contributors cover the most significant issues in the archaeology of Latin America, such as the domestication of camelids, the emergence of urban society in Mesoamerica, the frontier o…
Faience goddesses and ivory bull-leapers: The aesthetics of sexual difference at Late Bronze Age Knossos
In the figurative art of Late Bronze Age Knossos one recognizes a singular form to the human body which cuts across all other distinctions. Contrary to popular and academic interpretations, sexed differences are not marked in a clearly binary fashion. Drawing on this observation, the current paper analyses the relationship between two sets of figurines from the Bronze Age Palace site of Knossos: the faience figurines from the 'Temple Repositories…
Los cuerpos en Prehistória: Más allá de la división entre sexo/género
Worlds Otherwise: Archaeology, Anthropology, and Ontological Difference
The debate concerning ontology is heating up in the social sciences. How is this impacting anthropology and archaeology? What contributions can these disciplines make? Following a session at the 2010 Theoretical Archaeology Group conference at Brown University ("'Worlds Otherwise': Archaeology, Theory, and Ontological Difference," convened by Ben Alberti and Yvonne Marshall), a group of archaeologists and anthropologists have continued to discuss…
Archaeologies of Ontology
Bruno Latour and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro provided the initial impetus for explicitly ontological research in archaeology. Their impact on archaeologists, however, has been quite different. What I call the "metaphysical archaeologists" trace their genealogy from Latour, though they are now equally influenced by "new materialism" and the "new ontological realism" ( Gabriel 2015 ). They have introduced an alternative metaphysical orthodoxy to arc…
Animating Archaeology: Local Theories and Conceptually Open-ended Methodologies
Animists' theories of matter must be given equivalence at the level of theory if we are to understand adequately the nature of ontological difference in the past. The current model is of a natural ontological continuum that connects all cultures, grounding our culturally relativist worldviews in a common world. Indigenous peoples' worlds are thought of as fascinating but ultimately mistaken ways of knowing the world. We demonstrate how ontologica…
A Matter of Difference: Karen Barad, Ontology and Archaeological Bodies
This article explores the implications of adopting Karen Barad's agential realist approach in archaeology. We argue that the location of Barad's work in quantum physics and feminism means it is uniquely placed to inform the ontological turn currently gaining favour for understanding the materiality of bodies. We outline Barad's approach using a comparative reading of Sofaer's book The Body as Material Culture and Barad's Meeting the Universe Half…
Faience goddesses and ivory bull-leapers: The aesthetics of sexual difference at Late Bronze Age Knossos
In the figurative art of Late Bronze Age Knossos one recognizes a singular form to the human body which cuts across all other distinctions. Contrary to popular and academic interpretations, sexed differences are not marked in a clearly binary fashion. Drawing on this observation, the current paper analyses the relationship between two sets of figurines from the Bronze Age Palace site of Knossos: the faience figurines from the 'Temple Repositories…
Archaeologies of risk and wonder
In this statement, I argue that one way for archaeology to realize the potential of its materials to tell us something different about the past is to confront the question of alterity, understood as the ontological difference that lies at the roots of much archaeological material. If we accept alterity as a starting point of analysis then we stand a chance of challenging the strictures of interpretive frameworks that foreclose the possibility of …
Art, craft, and the ontology of archaeological things
Tim Ingold's ‘science of correspondence’ describes a kind of epistemological intimacy in the practices of art, science, and anthropology. Archaeology would benefit from cultivating correspondence as a way to understand its research process. Ingold's model, however, appears to elide art and craft. Though both are necessary, I argue they should be kept separate for analytical purposes. Correspondence as pre-conceptual practice provides a way to und…
Los cuerpos en Prehistória: Más allá de la división entre sexo/género
Faience goddesses and ivory bull-leapers: The aesthetics of sexual difference at Late Bronze Age Knossos
In the figurative art of Late Bronze Age Knossos one recognizes a singular form to the human body which cuts across all other distinctions. Contrary to popular and academic interpretations, sexed differences are not marked in a clearly binary fashion. Drawing on this observation, the current paper analyses the relationship between two sets of figurines from the Bronze Age Palace site of Knossos: the faience figurines from the 'Temple Repositories…
Archaeology in Latin America
This pioneering and comprehensive survey is the first overview of current themes in Latin American archaeology written solely by academics native to the region, and it makes their collected expertise available to an English-speaking audience for the first time. The contributors cover the most significant issues in the archaeology of Latin America, such as the domestication of camelids, the emergence of urban society in Mesoamerica, the frontier o…
Animating Archaeology: Local Theories and Conceptually Open-ended Methodologies
Animists' theories of matter must be given equivalence at the level of theory if we are to understand adequately the nature of ontological difference in the past. The current model is of a natural ontological continuum that connects all cultures, grounding our culturally relativist worldviews in a common world. Indigenous peoples' worlds are thought of as fascinating but ultimately mistaken ways of knowing the world. We demonstrate how ontologica…
Worlds Otherwise: Archaeology, Anthropology, and Ontological Difference
The debate concerning ontology is heating up in the social sciences. How is this impacting anthropology and archaeology? What contributions can these disciplines make? Following a session at the 2010 Theoretical Archaeology Group conference at Brown University ("'Worlds Otherwise': Archaeology, Theory, and Ontological Difference," convened by Ben Alberti and Yvonne Marshall), a group of archaeologists and anthropologists have continued to discuss…
Queer Prehistory: Bodies, Performativity, and Matter
Gender, Feminist, and Queer Archaeologies: USA Perspective
A Matter of Difference: Karen Barad, Ontology and Archaeological Bodies
This article explores the implications of adopting Karen Barad's agential realist approach in archaeology. We argue that the location of Barad's work in quantum physics and feminism means it is uniquely placed to inform the ontological turn currently gaining favour for understanding the materiality of bodies. We outline Barad's approach using a comparative reading of Sofaer's book The Body as Material Culture and Barad's Meeting the Universe Half…
Introdução. Arqueología del cuerpo en el Mundo Moderno
Con el propósito de responder qué puede aportar una arqueología del cuerpoen la modernidad, necesitamos efectuar un breve recorrido por la historia dela arqueología del cuerpo como campo de estudio. Esta historia puede explicar,al menos, dos rasgos particulares sobre el estudio de los cuerpos modernos enarqueología: su relativa ausencia, y la relación entre teoría del cuerpo y modernidad. La propia noción de mundo moderno puede producir una confu…
Archaeology after Interpretation: Returning Materials to Archaeological Theory
Archaeologies of Ontology
Bruno Latour and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro provided the initial impetus for explicitly ontological research in archaeology. Their impact on archaeologists, however, has been quite different. What I call the "metaphysical archaeologists" trace their genealogy from Latour, though they are now equally influenced by "new materialism" and the "new ontological realism" ( Gabriel 2015 ). They have introduced an alternative metaphysical orthodoxy to arc…
Archaeologies of risk and wonder
In this statement, I argue that one way for archaeology to realize the potential of its materials to tell us something different about the past is to confront the question of alterity, understood as the ontological difference that lies at the roots of much archaeological material. If we accept alterity as a starting point of analysis then we stand a chance of challenging the strictures of interpretive frameworks that foreclose the possibility of …
Ecologies of rock and art in northern New Mexico
Of the many branches of archaeological research, the study of rock art would seem to be particularly attentive to the lives of non-human species. Around the globe, most rock art traditions since the end of the Pleistocene have repeatedly returned to the theme of the animal, and this has led rock art researchers to repeatedly inquire into the nature of human-animal relations. Ancient representations of, say, a deer on the wall of a cave or on the …
Art, craft, and the ontology of archaeological things
Tim Ingold's ‘science of correspondence’ describes a kind of epistemological intimacy in the practices of art, science, and anthropology. Archaeology would benefit from cultivating correspondence as a way to understand its research process. Ingold's model, however, appears to elide art and craft. Though both are necessary, I argue they should be kept separate for analytical purposes. Correspondence as pre-conceptual practice provides a way to und…
Habitando espacios vacíos. Cuerpos, paisajes y ontologías en el poblamiento inicial del centro de Argentina
Los modelos de poblamiento inicial de territorios desconocidos implícitamente ponen en juego ontologías del cuerpo y del espacio o la naturaleza, con dos ideas fuertes: la de espacios vacíos de humanos y la de un medio desconocido, una ‘terra ignota’. Se trata siempre de un encuentro entre grupos humanos y un espacio a descubrir, a experienciar, y en cuyo recorrido las poblaciones van relacionándose activamente con materialidades particulares y c…
Gender, Feminist, and Queer Archaeologies: USA Perspective
Epílogo. Tras la interpretación: Otros materialismos y ontologías en arqueologías argentinas actuales
El autor, invitado como comentarista del dossier Tras la interpretación: otros materialismos y ontologías en las arqueologías argentinas actuales presenta comentarios y reflexiones a partir de la lectura de los artículos desde el punto de vista del papel que juegan los materiales en su propia interpretación. El analiza en cada trabajo las principales propuestas teóricas desde esa perspectiva, la relación con los materiales y las cuestiones claves…
Morteros en rocas y otras superficies de ausencias en tiempos pre-coloniales en las Sierras de Córdoba, Argentina
Las rocas con cavidades, morteros o cúpulas son una constante en el paisaje arqueológico de los ríos y arroyos serranos de Córdoba, Argentina, sobre las cuales se han planteado diversas interpretaciones que ponen de manifiesto múltiples dimensiones y posibilidades de esta clase de objetos. Nos centramos en el caso particular de dos grandes rocas con 46 y 44 cavidades respectivamente, que se destacan en el tramo superior del río Soto, NO de Córdob…
Surface Revelations: Ecologies And Epistemologies Of Rock Art
For archaeologists, it is difficult to have a conversation about art without feeling the Paleolithic tug at us from somewhere deep in our subconscious. We may be having a perfectly nice time strolling around the Guggenheim with our partner, but our minds will never be entirely present. Somewhere, off in a private corner of our thoughts, we will be saying to ourselves, “Yes, but what about all those lions arid rhinoceroses in Chauvet Cave?” or “Co…
Epilogue: What Can Archaeology Do?
Artiplaces: Ecological and ontological entanglements of ancient artworks
This special issue of World Art encourages greater archaeological reflection on the relationships between art and place. Do artworks – often made ‘of’ a place, not just in it – throw into relief certain qualities and experiences concretely associated with a place? Conversely, can it be said that artworks create their own places, serving as portals that transform the here-and-now, transcending the dimensionality of their media? The issue contribut…
Art (12 works) · Archaeology (10 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · History (6 works) · History (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Archaeology and Rock Art Studies (5 works)