The Study of Materiality, Past, Present, and Future

The Marco Symposium is the premier annual event of the Marco Institute for Medieval & Renaissance Studies at the University of Tennessee, and is held every year in March or April.

The Symposium brings leading experts in their field to the University of Tennessee for two days of talks on that year’s theme, and concludes with a roundtable discussion by all the participants. The topic of the 20th annual Marco Symposium is Local and Global Perspectives on Materiality in the Premodern World.

Andrew Gardner will give the Keynote Lecture on Friday 7 March entitled 'On Objects, People, Practices, and Power: The Study of Materiality, Past, Present, and Future.'

Andrew's paper will present an overview of the debates around materiality, particularly in archaeology, and a personal analysis of the positive contributions, as well as some of the drawbacks, of diverse recent approaches.

The genealogy of ideas about 'object agency' and other elements of what have come to be called ‘the ontological turn’ is worth exploring, as it reveals not only a logical continuation of efforts to penetrate insiders' perspectives on past societies, but also something of a reversal of attempts to move away from the tyranny of things in archaeological interpretation. Alignment of different versions of materiality theory with successive phases of posthumanism, associated with thinkers from Latour to Braidotti and beyond, have kept this movement dynamic but also introduced gaps in the apprehension of aspects of power and ideology in social life that can, sometimes, be better grasped from an outsider's perspective. They have also introduced some very 21st century anxieties.

Using examples from the archaeology of Roman imperialism, this paper will argue for perspectives on materiality which emphasise the centrality of human practices in past, present and future societies.

Andrew is co-editor (with Jeremy Tanner) of the 2024 open access volume Materialising the Roman Empire (published by UCL Press) which defines an innovative research agenda for Roman archaeology, highlighting the diverse ways in which the Empire was made materially tangible in the lives of its inhabitants. The volume explores how material culture was integral to the processes of imperialism, both as the Empire grew, and as it fragmented, and in doing so provide up-to-date overviews of major topics in Roman archaeology.

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• 20th Annual Marco Symposium