Do dualisms, such as body-mind and nature-culture,

assist or hinder our understanding of the human

past?

The dualisms of “body-mind” and “nature-culture” stem from the philosophical tradition and have
become so entrenched in modern Western thought that their influence is evident throughout academic
disciplines and in daily life. The human intellect's need to categorize is as undeniable as its desire to
define humanity, to distinguish “ourselves” the other. The body-mind and nature-culture dichotomies, or
Cartesian dualisms, work to delineate the physical/material from the ideal/mental. Archaeology is
concerned with understanding the human past by studying that which remains of the past; interpreting
and elaborating upon the past's residue. To use dualisms, the terminology of duality and the oppositional
structure of binary, to interpret the archaeological record is not only ethnocentric but greatly limiting.
Body-mind and nature-culture are modern, western ideas which bear little relation to much of the past; to
force such delineation upon any evidence is an immediately decontextualizes material culture and
devalues its potential agency. Further, the inherent hubris and detachment resulting from dualism's logic
risk forgetting that such study results in “our understanding of the past” as opposed to “uncovering” or
“discovering” an empirical narrative.
There are numerous dualisms that characterize modernist thought, including subject-object, past-
present, and meaning-referent (Webmoor 2007, 563); mind-body and culture-nature are perhaps the most
endemic. The conceptualization of mind-body and culture-nature as dualisms is attributed to Rene
Descartes in his 1641 Meditations on First Philosophy, in which he concluded that the “physical” (the
human body) and the “mental” (the human mind or soul) were fundamentally distinct and differentiated
phenomenons. Descartes believed that one could be personally certain of the mental but not the physical
as the mind, unlike physical entities, is indivisible, and the postulation of the self without body is more
conceivable than the reverse. He addresses the relationship of the two more specifically in Passions of
the Soul (Chalmers 2002, 2). While Descartes' main purposes, to empirically prove God's existence and
the immortality of the soul (Bienkowski 2006, 3), have been disregarded alongside many of his
specifications regarding the relation between mind and body, the dichotomization of physical as opposed
to ideal remains.
The dualism of mind-body, having given the human mind, once separated from its fallible body,
the capacity to rationally observe the material world, is deemed by many to the the basis of western
science. The culture-nature dualism, conceiving the environment as an object to be fought against,
dominated, utilized, and exploited by humanity, (Haila 2000, 156) is the basis for our definition of culture
as humanity's “extra-somatic adaptation” for survival (Webmoor 2008, 55). Celebration of modernity as
“the triumph of humanism, the ‘birth of man’ and the subject” (Olsen 2003, 95) neglects the “simultaneous
birth of non-humanity, of things, that is, of objects and beasts as something fundamentally different from
‘us’ and securely separated from the human and social realm” (Olsen 2003, 95) across what Latour
(1993) termed the “Great Divide”. The institutionalisation of humanity's uniqueness, although constantly
under redefinition in response to discoveries of other species; cognitive abilities, (Russell 2010, 6)
nonetheless continues to hinge upon these Cartesian dualisms, and our ongoing reference to them: “It is
because we are able to distinguish between people and things, culture and nature, that we differ from
them” (Olsen 2003, 95).
Whilst modern scientific disciplines are based upon Cartesian dualism, contemporary practicioners
have widely rejected dualism in favour of materialism (Chalmers 2002; Bienkowski 2006) – rather
ironically, the revelations of biology, psychology, neuro-immunology, and cognitive sciences, all of which
developed due to the mind-body dualism, serve now to undermine it, as does physics to culture-nature.
(Bienkowski 2006). Dualism is still a viable matter of philosophical interest, alongside various alternative
metaphysical models. Chalmers (2002) describes contemporary dualists as generally subscribing to
either interactionism or epiphenomenalism (which denies the causal role of the mental/ideal in affecting
the physical, postulating an impermeable boundary between the two in a way so as to render the two
unrelated). the alternative metaphysical models to dualism, differing both in their posited beliefs about the
existence, primacy, and relationship of the physical to the ideal, alongside the factions of dualism and
materialism; Materialism, which Bienkowski says dominated scientific discourse by the 1960s (2006, 3)
splintered into its own constituent factions. Idealism, or immaterialism, holds that only the consciousness
can be said to exist, as all physical states are experienced through the mind and reduced to simulacrums.
Panpsychism (referred to in its traditional and historic contexts as animism), is the view that a mental
element (sentience, consciousness, or something to that effect) is present in all matter. (Bienkowski 2006,
4)
It is a safe generalization that the majority of current studies of history, and most certainly,
archaeological studies, are undertaken by researchers who espouse a model other than dualism.
Although any sort of comparative valuation of these models' philosophical merit is beyond the limits or
scope of this discussion, they nonetheless deserve mention, if only because much of the post-structuralist
critiques of dualism attack grievous generalizations, anachronisms, and misinterpretations – perhaps,
carelessly. Whether the new paradigms put forth by post-structuralists depended upon the destruction of
all dualisms is also beyond this discussion; to accept, on their terms, that these dualisms are Cartesian
dualisms, as they are generally explicitly referred to, is a practical enough of a compromise, given that the
dualism influenced archaeology in its historical incarnation, as opposed to adapted contemporary forms.
Still, misunderstandings of Cartesian dualism present themselves: notably, in Julian Thomas' 1996 Time,
Culture, and Identity, a seminal lambast of the hindrance that Cartesian dualisms have posed to
archaeology, he seemingly inverts the logic by which Descartes reached his conclusion (1996, 9) and
continues to argue, albeit with the company of later authors, of the needless conflict and opposition –
aspects inferred from, rather than traceable to, Descartes – inherent in “Cartesian” dualisms. Additional
dichotomies are ascribed to the Cartesian framework: temporality (as conceived in present-past)
spatiality, and genderization. That criticisms of Cartesian dualism work outside the framework of
Cartesian dualism is, if perhaps underhanded, nonetheless reasonable; if certain associations have
arisen to an idea to the extent that that idea is now connotative of them, such associations are
ramifications (of the application and utilisation) of the original idea. “Ideas are transformed by the contexts
in which they are employed, and consequently one cannot judge their ethical impacts in the abstract”
(Thomas 1996, 7). I would argue that Cartesian dualism should be assessed beyond Descartes' original
premises, and even beyond the scope of philosophical discipline's determination. This is particularly
salient to assessing the impact of Cartesian dualism upon our understanding of the past, particularly
when it comes to archaeology, and whether these dualisms been of assistance or hindrance.
Archaeology is in an interesting and unique position to Cartesian dualism, as it is primarily and
directly concerned with mind, body, nature, and culture. The discipline is “wholly embedded in the ways of
thinking which characterize the modern West. Indeed, archaeology first emerged alongside modernity, as
an investigation into the origins and depths of human historical achievement through the medium of its
historical residue” (Thomas 1996, 6), owing its formulation to Cartesian dualisms, it also deals with the
interaction between the categories and that which transcends them: for example, how the mind deals with
the body (and vice versa) and how culture manages to nature (or how nature reacts to culture). Many
would say that material culture has often been the main focus of archaeology: if not studying it, then an
attempt to define and explain it. As Olsen (2003) rather wryly notes, archaeology began as an obsession
with “things” and, as it matured, widened its ambitions “Material culture, by definition, belongs both to the
ethereal realm of culture and to the material world... generations archaeologists have resorted to locating
material culture on ones side or the other of the divisions between mind and body, culture and nature.”
(Thomas 1996, 8) To Childe, material culture was a reflection of a community's shared norms and
tradition, internalized and re-expressed. To Binford, the materiality of the things which make up the
archaeological record which was fundamental, and their cultural significance merely secondary, cultural
meaning was an interpretation of physical elements whose existence was not dependent upon human
existence: archaeological record as an outcome or product of the functioning of culture, rather than being
cultural in itself. (Thomas 1996, 9) The long-standing debate as to whether archaeology ought to focus
on culture or material goods is one that contemporary behavioural archaeologists, among many post-
processualists schools of thought, deny entirely. While “culture... [had been] given the status of a
separate subsystem, which does not reside in the mind, or the body, or material things, or the
environment, but somehow at the interstices of all these things.” (Thomas 1996, 9) new study can be said
to focus directly upon these “interstices”. Meskell and Preucel “studies of materiality cannot simply focus
upon the characteristics of the object but most engage in the dialectic of nature and things” (in Webmoor
& Whitmore 2008, 56). People and things are equally agentic and mutually constitute each other in
indissoluble process. (Meskell & Preucel 2004, 56) Humans extend their social relations to a non-human
agents with which they have swapped properties and formed collectives.
Generally, culture is equated with all human artefact and nature with the ecological environment.
Etymologically, “nature” was originally “the essential quality or character or something” and only began to
refer to the external environment between the Elizabethan Era and 20th century (Haila 2000, 160) – or, as
dualisms became firmly institutionalized and Latour's “Great Divide” assimilated to the mainstream.
Defining “culture” is a lengthy and contested task; for this purpose, the fact that it identifies the human
(belief system, or activity: artifice and artefact) is sufficient. Haila (2000) disputes the inherency of the
nature-culture divide by questioning the existence of a boundary between the two – the categories
overlapping, interacting, and quite often reversing – noting this as yet another frustration to dualism. Even
if “pure nature” or those elements in the world that originated without human interference, is distinguished
from that which humans have “polluted”, the practical reality is that the latter is often formalized, after
time, into the former as a “secondary nature” which we treat as nature; “environment” being a mutable
term. Even ecology is a dynamic and varied system, with which different elements interact, variously, with
different elements of different human cultures. That these interactions have become of an increasingly
hostile character as Western modernization has accelerated is crucial to environmentalist advocates who
are eager to communicate the alternatives to dualism, in understanding out relationship to nature, and
forms, more affiliative and symbiotic, which it can take. Olsen, like Thomas and others, turns to
Heidegger, citing the idea of “throwness” in that “we are always-already in the world, the world is part of
our being – not something external, 'out there' to be eventually embodied.” ( 2003 97)
Further, the numerous examples given of ways in which the external environment has been
shaped and adapted by humans (thereby constituting culture) and has quite actively become involved in
cultural affairs, are of archaeological pertinence – as they are the subjects of much archaeological study.
Landscape archaeology, a growing field, is but one example. Moreover, the fact that much archaeological
data comes from the “environment” as not only artefacts removed from the land, but as landscape itself,
demonstrates this from crop-marks, irrigation, post-holes, dendrochronology, analysis of molluscs, and
more. Focus on the reality of our worldy existence – yet, the ideal nature of our experiencing that world –
and the inextricable nature of the two. “should not be conceptualized according to the ruling ontological
regime of dualities and negatives: it is a non-oppositional or relative difference facilitating collaboration,
delegation, and exchange.” (Olsen 2003, 88)
“Dualistic mode of thinking prevents us from properly understanding non-Western societies”
(Herva & Ikaheimo 2002, 95) Prehistoric “Art” is a prime example: with the realization that the embrace of
secularity and the use of iconography in purely abstract is a recent development, post-Renaissance or
post-18th century, the assumption is that all prehistoric art is religious, defined, in contrast to the modern,
as functional. Herva & Ikaheimo 2002, 96). Herva and Ikaheimo suggest that the “scholarly desire to link
Palaeolithic art to the 'big issues' of Palaeolithic life” and hope to illuminate those issues through the art
(2002, 96) is a simplification. They challenge the assumption that prehistoric art necessarily and
universally reflects the society's cosmology and a gross undervaluation of the medium and materiality of
art. Further, the very understanding of as a communicative process in which meaning can be
“deciphered” rests on a linguistic paradigm, treating material culture as stable system of signs, expecting
them to be capable of being broken down, like words. This conceptualization of art (or all material culture)
as objects awaiting the interpreter's utilisation – rather than something to be interacted with, or
alternatively, something lacking an expressive dimension altogether. (Herva & Ikaheimo 2002, 98)
Interestingly, their comment that the increasingly secularized academia may be ill-equipped to
approximate indigenous understanding, as religion, in non-Western societies, was conceived of perhaps
in the manner which we consider technology, and should thereby be treated as such (2002, 98) has a
variety of implications, far beyond rock art.
Even the matter of time is challenged as an arrogant assumption on behalf of the archaeologist,
who presumes to study the past Shanks criticizes the “radical separation” of the past (to be studied) and
contemporality (location/viewpoint) of the archaeologist (2007, 589). He builds a “symmetrical
archaeology”, which he calls an “attitude” rather than a methodology, around the explicit recognition of the
interpretive process (creativity, mediation, and distribution) of which archaeological practice consists.
Post-structuralists and current theorists have variously attempted to address the grievances of dualism
(and modern thought, in general), with a “symmetrical archaeology” (Shanks 2007; Webmoor 2007), a
“Heideggerian archaeology” (Thomas 1996), greater contextualization, appreciation of the multiplicities of
agency and mutualities of relations (Insoll 2004, 3) and very role of archaeology as an “creative, mediated
process” of interpretation through which we create, rather than uncover, the past (Shanks 2007).
“The oppositions between mind and body and culture and nature are products of Enlightenment
thought. For archaeology, the consequence has been a failure to appreciate the character of the material
world which human beings live and think in and through.” (Thomas 1996, 9) The characterization of that
which is external/physical as opposed to that which is ideal/symbolic is a dichotomy that has become
central to both academic and mundane classifications. The differentiation between the two is a
fundamental aspect of Western science. As psychological, biological, and cultural studies continue to
demonstrate, such distinctions are neither absolute nor clear; despite ones' opinion regarding whether
these are valid categories, the fact remains that the placement of phenomena into these categories is a
contested, if not utterly arbitrary, act of interpretation – rendering dualistic thought itself an unnecessary
hindrance, albeit one undeniable and traditional.

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