You can't perform the same ritual twice
Minds, Materials, Automobiles, and the Emergence of Form
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5146140 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Alexander Aston (0000-0001-6760-5547, Keble College, Parks Road, Oxfordshire, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 53 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 158-172 |
| Publication date | 2021-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | World Archaeology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0043-8243 • E-ISSN: 1470-1375 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/00438243.2021.1972831 |
| OpenAlex | W3206442155 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 51 |
Following Gosden and Malafouris, this article explores why process archaeology provides a beneficial framework for understanding the emergent, self-organising dynamics of human existence. To demonstrate the potential of process archaeology for reframing discourses about humanity's nature, this article examines automotive culture from evolutionary, ecological, developmental, and socio-political perspectives. Automobiles provide a robust example of how forms emerge from and transform flows of energy-matter across multiple dynamic scales. The article concludes with a reflection on symbolism and how American automotive culture can be understood as a form of cult ritual. Archaeology's obsession with ritual stems from a Cartesian assumption that rituals are arbitrary manifestations of symbolic minds. Process archaeology understands ritual as a means of organising energetic flows of persons and things into stable forms that endure over time. This perspective supports exploring the emergence of symbolic relationships and cultural forms as a developmental entwining of cognitive and ecological processes
Aesthetics · Art · Cognitive reframing · Cult · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Humanity · Perspective (graphical · Process (computing · Sociology · Visual arts · Anthropology · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Computer Science · Geographies of human-animal interactions · History · Philosophy · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology · Psychology · Social Psychology
The archaeology of cult
Postprocessual Archaeology
Mind, Time, and Material Engagement
The Bulldozer in the Countryside
How Things Shape the Mind
More Is Different
The modularity of thought and the epidemiology of representations
Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers
The Modularity of Mind
Early Greek Philosophy
Object Concepts and Their Functional Core
On perception as the basis for object concepts
Metaplasticity and the Primacy of Material Engagement
Religion, politics, and ritual. Remarks on Geertz and Bloch
Car Country
Some Comments on Historical versus Processual Archaeology
Car culture and global environmental politics
The Bow and Arrow and Early Human Sociality
Processual Archaeology and the Radical Critique [and Comments and Reply]
How the Cycladic Islanders Found Their Marbles
The revolution that wasn't
An early bone tool industry from the Middle Stone Age at Blombos Cave, South Africa
Mark Making and Human Becoming
RECkoning with representational apriorism in evolutionary cognitive archaeology
Modernity's Machine Metaphor
Durkheim on Society, Thought and Ritual
Process archaeology (P-Arch)
The Elementary Forms of Religious Life
Masculinity, Hierarchy, and the Auto Racing Fraternity
Toward an Ecology of Materials
The Origin of Modern Human Behavior
Entangled
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,67 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2025 (3) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |