archaeography

Birr Castle
Co. Offaly, Ireland
July 2004

I pose a question: Is Lefebvre useful for the archaeologist? I think his focus on the body is helpful for the archaeologist attempting to understand space. I think that reading Lefebvre is also useful understanding the body itself, not because of his own concept of the body but because of the contradiction between the ways he conceives of the body and space. Despite the fact that the body seems to be tangible whereas space for him is abstract, he should decide that either both are real through discourse or that neither is real. The archaeologist has four choices: to accept that everything is discursive and move on to explore those discourses; to accept that if there is anything beyond discourse that it is out of our grasp, and to move on to explore those discourses; to wonder if there might be something beyond discourse and reject studying those discourses in favor of finding that thing beyond discourse; to insist that there is something beyond discourse and state what it is. Whether or not discourse is essentially real, it is how we understand the world, and the things we create through discourse are our realities.