Oscar Aldred, Department of Archaeology, University of Iceland

Abstract

In this paper I will explore the types of relations that exist in the practices of transhumance and pastoralism to and from the upland pastures in Iceland. I will assess what this tells us about the archaeologies of movement that are materialised and embodied in the bonds that are forged between animals – environments - humans. Although these movements are based on the repetitive seasonal practices that are 'traditional', this tradition is reinforced both by its innovations (a retrogressive placement of historical change that shrinks) and its improvisations (as a forward looking practice that is rhizomic and grows). In view of these perspectives, I will offer a temporality that is ‘flattened’ which neither privileges a backward or forwards perspective, but rather exists in durations. This entails a complex and ongoing alignment of observation with an active world, one in which movement which is generative, relational, temporal and the way things are done. Movement then in this sense is both an amplification and reduction, but also aleatory through the paths that collectivities work with and against the perceived hegemonic and subjugated relations of humans - animals - seasonal cycles of environmental change.

Paper

1) My specific research area is on an archaeology of movement in Iceland. In this project I am exploring movement as a heuristic device to connect and interpret landscape entities worked on by archaeologists. In following this theme, in this paper, I want to examine movement as a fundamental matter of concern for archaeology (after Latour, B 2005 From realpolitik to Dingpolitik. Or how to make things public). What I mean is to consider a form of mobility which is not constrained, framed or bounded, or composed of objects that mimic repetitions of previous movements –uses, in which the outcome is perceived as inevitable. But rather, I want to consider a mobility which is a bringing of things together – a gathering - in the production of something other, and not yet determined. Such thinking suggests that a gathering as a renegotiation of previous movements and a wholly new creation. This is an activation that takes place on the move allied, in a becoming perspective, rather than being localised and fixed in place, in being.

I have several propositions. Firstly, that improvisation and history have equal footing in the production of material practices. Secondly, that mobility is an essential quality of what a thing is. Thirdly, that in this mobility process and structure are mutually constitutive and can not be separated; and lastly that the bonds created between humans and non-humans are gatherings in themselves.

2) Preparing

There is a tension between place and non-place. Place considers things that are static, fixed, like material anchors that structure and influence. And non-place considers things that are on the move and fluid, like flowing water with its eddies and turbulence. But such a dichotomy is not entirely without its problems because all things are mobile in one way or another, even the seemingly immobile like a building. It depends on one’s perspective. Things move at different speeds. What I want to ask is a specific question of what this mobility does that calls in the issue of fixity or fluidity. To explore this I want to examine the movements in a seasonal practice in Iceland that has a 900 year history, which is a gathering of sheep from the grazing uplands to the farmland below. I want to examine this practice as a creative working while going along which is as it happens, and a renegotiation in remembering. Working and renegotiation in this context are historically contingent, but what is gathered and made from the entities is also about other possible outcomes. These are paths that are traced anew (temporally as well as spatially), but have already been trodden (have historicity). In this vain, the gathering of sheep from the uplands grazing areas are embroiled in an improvisation which is a working with entities converging or gathering that are not fixed and in place, but are conversant in movement . In this respect the gathering and moving of the assemblages of humans and non-humans are generative, relational, temporal concern and the way things work. Fundamentally, it is an improvisation that is an anticipation in relation to a set of contingencies or occurrences as they happen.

Relationality is a major issue to consider here. Relation implies that such gatherings are located – in relation to something else. But often such thinking spatially places relationality but does so on distinct temporal horizons: either a past, present and future, or through giving dates 1200, 1500, 1800. This type of relationality is contrary to the idea of mobility because it is fixed to a particular existence: an ontology which makes reference to the different thingness temporalities. For instance, the connections between the two roads, one Roman and the other Medieval, are connected temporally – between one time and another – but are conceptually joined spatially. What I want to argue is not the authenticity of this, but when this separation of things occurs, ordered to distinctive horizons, it reduces them to an immobile state. However, a tension exists because everything has its place – its locale – within which it is situated in order to be or to become in becoming relational. But its place or locale is often thought about as layered. This relationality therefore is reduced to a series of nodes or points, which, in the road example, the temporal disjuncture is resolved by connecting them spatially not temporally. Or to put it another way, the relationality manifest themselves into temporal and spatial accumulations like a palimpsest, in which layers only touch at specific points.

In this paper, rather than considering such accumulations – or gatherings - as a static and linear relationality, I want to weave a path that removes the layering, and instead brings the presence of things as they gather. This is in relation of multiplicity, to the material things themselves not in terms of a fixity but in terms of their mobility. This is a consideration with things not made, but things in the making (Bergson; H 1912 An introduction to metaphysics). This challenges my concern with horizons and layers by addressing a temporal mobility which Bergson calls duration. Gatherings in this sense are both an active force in relations that are mobile, but also an active gathering things in processes – mobile things that have contingency but also are of the moment. So in  this paper, I want to present an unfolding narrative in which I am ‘retracing a path through the world that others, recursively picking up the threads of past lives, can follow in the process of spinning their own’ (Ingold, T 2008 Lines: 90).

[3] Setting out

It is September 1878. There have already been previous movements into the upland areas. In fact, the first in that year was the reverse of this gathering in movement: it was a dispersal. Sheep do not wander into the uplands themselves, although perhaps they could, they are rather taken there and left. In general terms, the same paths were taken as before. But under what conditions were these movements to and from the upland the same as previous ones? The same categories of entities circulate, but these entities were fundamentally different than before: they are older, wiser perhaps, and a different combination. The same organisational principles existed, but perhaps under a new committee and with new farmers, all with differing experiences and modes of operating. At any rate, change, small or large, will have altered the eventual configuration and outcome of this gathering process. However, change in organisation is not enough, the creative forces are activated in gathering – its potential was not revealed until movement occurred. Such ruptures and disjunctions produce different gathering paths, so much so that even though this particular gathering was a mirroring of the dispersal (leaving the sheep in the uplands) in terms of its route and sequences, and had a repeatable history, it was and will always be different each time it is performed. But what happens at one moment, is also always contingent on what occurred before it. The gathering therefore is a recurrent project as it draws in the past through repetition, while at the sametime constructing something new through the alignment of new combinations of entities in movement.

Each gathering performance is new and afresh on its ‘environmental’ stage and formed under renewed, or activated conditions and contingencies. Whilst repeatable and familiar to its practitioners (human and non-human alike) it is a wholly new production through a mobility that is activated in gatherings. This mobility is the essential quality in making it different: without movement there would be no gathering. Therefore, even though the paths have already been traced out and indexed to previous gatherings in the place-names, camp and grazing sites that constitute the path ‘map’; in Icelandic they are called leiðir (literally meaning ways or routes) they are reworked and made afresh in a multiplicity of possible becomings. The paper now takes four of these paths or leið-ir into the uplands, in a series of gatherings of humans and non-humans.

[4] The first leið

‘If Marey was so frustrated not to be able to picture in a successive series of freeze-fames the flight of a gull, how irritating it is for us not to be able to picture, as one continuous movement, the project flow that makes up a building’ (Latour, B and Yaneva, A 2008 “Give me a gun and I will make all buildings move”: An ANT’s view of architecture, in Networks?, in Geiser, R (ed.) Explorations in Architecture: Teaching, Design, Research: 80-81).

Gathering sheep is a multiplicity: a spatial and temporal project which is arranged and sieved around a mobility of humans and non-humans. It involves systems of organisation and control based on an involved community, one that retains the continuity of its practice through maintenance and tradition. This continuity resonates through the collective experiences of pervious gatherings, all of which are mediated by the ‘king of the mountain’, and, selectively, by the other gatherers; experiences that have been handed down between generations. Therefore, the ‘king’s’ collective experience is filtered and a highly historicised, shaped and sorted practice through an active participation and experiential processes.

[5] The ‘king’s’ skill in the present gathering comes by controlling the movement of people and animals, which depends on his or her ability to mediate by mobilising a traceable series of animated projects. It is very much a project that moves through a controversial data-scape navigated by the ‘king’, in which the outcomes are flows and distributions of actors giving composition (and a textual richness) to a productive force in time-space. These iterations and reiterations tack backwards and forwards according to what is experienced as the gathering moves and gains momentum along the leið. The ‘king’ has constructed his or her knowledge in such a way that it is firmly embedded into the landscape, and is only revealed or aligned through the practical utilisation of that knowledge in the field – by remembering the way. But it is also an anticipation which is learnt and mediated by the current project as the path goes along.

[6] The second leið

‘It would seem that mythological worlds have been built up, only to be shattered again, and that new worlds were built from the fragments’ (Boas, F 1898 Introduction, in Teit, J Traditions of the Thompson River Indians of British Columbia.: 18).

As the gathers along the first leið turn and begin their return journey after coming to the end of the grazing area, another group of riders on horseback set off from the farmland, moving to another part of the communal grazing area. This path does not take as long to complete as the first, lasting perhaps only a few days. It is though synchronised and timed in order to meet up with the gatherers from the first leið at a specific place. Although a repetitive practice, it is a multiplicity in practice, just as the first leið; free from the strictures of repetition in the way that it bends and conforms to the multiple encounters with other riders, the environment and animals that go along as they are gathered. Although the foundation elements of the gathering system are present, such as the ‘king’, the riders, the camping spots and animals, the structure of the movements that abide through that system produce several types of subversions that distinguish it from previous ones. These are not so much inventions, but rather improvisations that attend to the current conditions. The gatherers may be the same as the previous year, but there will always be something different brought into the collective that makes other outcomes possible.

[7] The first two leiðir bring in and ‘flatten’ time. What I mean is that they do not separate the two events of starting into different temporal horizons. The temporality of the gatherings are relational to one another in a simultaneity that is a duration, outstripping the past but at the same time eroding the present. The start of each leiðir is different, but always done in relation to something else – it co-exists with the other. As such, the temporality of the path is a gathering and a production that simultaneously transforms and ages as a weaving of things to hand. This is a paradox concerned with the directionality of time: on the one hand pointing towards the future (a transformation) while on the other pointing to the past (an ageing). In this thinking matter and memory construct a palimpsest derived from an accumulation of time which coalesces in the present. It is a productive bricolage that uses both of the old and the new in the making of something other (cf Rabinow, P 1975 Reflections on fieldwork in Morocco). In the bricolage things do not only accumulate and sediment in layers like a palimpsest, but rather they become themselves entangled and woven into the gathering practice like a patchwork, in which the stitching acts as a adhesive joining spatial and temporal horizons. And furthermore, what becomes broken or worn through replication and modification is replaced, which in doing so removes previous workings; in doing so creating something new, something other. The gathering of sheep from the upland is like this patchwork, but a movement and temporality that is activated in practice through stories, places and the gathering of familiar friends and companion species. These assemblages transform each other into something other from previous gatherings, but at the same time through use become aged and worn.

[8] The third leið

‘Just as humans have a history of their relations with animals, so also animals have a history of their relations with humans. Only humans, however, construct narratives of this history’ (Ingold, T 1994: Fom trust to domination. An alternative history of human-animal relations, in Aubrey Manning, J (ed.) Animals and human society: changing perspectives: 1).

On 4th June, 1703 and 31st August, 1712 the community of Skutustaðarhreppur had 1,662 and 1,624 sheep (excluding lambs) respectively. One of its farms Hofstaðir in 1712 was divided between two brothers, Þorlákur and Marteinn, who lived and worked on the same farm. They had 38 and 51 sheep each. As the lambs are born, they were marked as commodities but also given names which expressed their personalities.

[9] The clip to one ear with the farm mark and on the other the owner, distinguishes the ownership from other farms in the district, to allow them to be divided at the community sheep fold (Isl. Rétt). This violence to sheep is not only a representation of human control, but it is also a formation of a social bond, one in which numerous personalities meet through a social violence. The controlling of the sheep in marking and in naming creates a relationship between humans and animals that is not only about their commoditisation and ownership. The absence between humans and sheep between June and September are reanimated and forged again during the gathering, in the story tellings at camp sites and in the names given to landmarks, and more specifically during the sorting of sheep into specific farms. These relations are not rare commodities but are mobile sites of attachment that are both elided and animated through the gatherings.

In thinking about the pragmatogonies (as a symmetrical action of things) we reveal a better understanding of how things are mediated (Olsen 2007; Latour 1994: 794, 801). Sheep have a fundamental and symmetrical role and position not only in the gathering, but in what it is to survive in Iceland. Their relegated state as animals needs to be rethought, and in doing so take on an elevated status in relation to other animals (humans and non-humans). Sheep provide a central place in what it is to survive: for clothing, tools, food and ritual, and from the body of wool and the flesh of the living organs. But in these terms their importance is relational to what it is to be human, but also to what it is to be sheep: both need each other. Importantly, we need to consider that sheep are not alone in their incarceration, as Netz reminds us, following Hegel’s master and slave: a species that incarcerates another forges its own chains. (2004 Barbed wire. An ecology of modernity).

[10] The fourth leið

‘Productive practices in Iceland are closely tied to time or season’ (Hastrup, K 1998 A place apart. An anthropological study of the Icelandic world: 152).

In Myvatn, in the north east of Iceland, the first leið, Norðurfjöll, requires 10-12 days where as the second, Útbrunnagöngur, requires 4-6 days. As I have suggested the timing of different leiðir are synchronised so that the two groups combine at a predefined place. This arrangement also needs to coincide with the rest of the community, so that they can gather at the sheep fold – rétt - for the sorting. Therefore, timings in relation to the first leið, are essential in mobilising and coordinating the whole community.

[11] This is a time that is choreographed in relation to a set of relations which are primarily seasonal: a community ordering that moves and references with the weather and the light. These modes of operating which run along lines of tactics and strategies of the everyday are modes of temporal ordering that connect the farm and communities with the seasonality and the practices that constitute the everyday farm working tasks (de Certeau, M 1984 The practice of everyday). But there is a false reliance on the externalisation of this seasonality, as the relations between farmers and sheep actually dictate the temporal ordering of seasons. Seasonality is entirely entangled in the ways of operating, and fully incorporated into everyday life, not simply as a backdrop to other social activities and relations. This ordering is not so much dictating the sequence of seasonal events but is constituted and ordered as much by the relations between sheep and humans: the seasons are named and produced in accordance to the practices of tending and working with farm tasks. In this conceptualisation of seasonality it is not so much ordered externally, but is made internally to it in the relations and tasks performed by entangled humans and non-humans.

[12] Tracing a path: folding sheep, folding humans, folding ecologies

The gathering assemblage eventually comes upon the sheep fold (rétt): a place to sort sheep that becomes a centre for the whole community, entailed by yet other gatherings and bringing together of others into the collective. These are a nested series of animated gatherings. Sheep folds are markers of movement in the sense they are places that there is a gravity of movement towards. They are in this sense like Heidegger’s building that gathers! But they are also makers of movement, through flows that occur through the monuments; in the transfer of transactions; and the renegotiation of relations that takes place between humans and humans (as a community focus) and between humans and animals (outside those who have been gathering). These monuments are like filters that mediate the gatherings and movements in such a way that they move the informal sets of relations made between select members of the community to a formal set in which the community orders and structures its own sets of relations. The outcomes of which are expressed in a freedom and expansion (in a dispersal) and an incarceration and contraction (in a gathering).

The sheep folds facilitate movement in several ways: as a fixed place, by which movement gravitates towards and eventually culminates in the sheep’s transformation from a free animal to one that is ‘chained’, but also a reactivation of human – animal bonds. Also in the design of the monument which allows specific movements through the funnel-like spaces from the outer enclosure to the central sorting area. However, in facilitating movement they also constrain, so that sheep can be sorted and divided into their respective farms – into the farm chambers - dilkur.

The expression of separating sheep by farms is also a movement that reconnects and re-establishes the attachments between humans and sheep, through embodied proximities in dragging the sheep to the farm chamber (dilkur) and through a need to restrain the sheep from moving by violent physical force. These violent actions reaffirm and tighten the connections in a separation and detachment that is also an outcome of being free and incarcerated (for humans and sheep): violence is a catalyst for a greater socialness, more than that was created during the gathering from the pasture areas. In following the paths there is a dynamic in the assemblage that is not only materially present or absent, but a matter of concern over the bonds that are gained and lost in a continuous negotiation within varying contexts. The dynamic is an outcome which takes several different guises, but ones that are always referential and relational to an expansion or a contraction, a loss or gain, between one set or another.

Back to the farm again: remembering the way and beginning again

The transition between the gathering and sorting do not only represent significantly different mobilities but they also trace and transform other types of connections. The struggles in movement are not only about forgetting what has gone on before (Serres, M with Latour, B 1995 Conversations on science, culture and time: 53). They are also about loss. Both sheep and humans are losers in the struggles that take place, not only in terms of the ‘chains forged’ but also in overcoming the bifurcations that exist between order and disorder, or put it another way: between freedom and incarceration. The requirements of (dis)ordering necessitate a process of fractal attractors (such as place in a sedentary philosophy) under which the aleatory is defined not by the disorder but by an ordering that is observed as a linear process. This is a decidedly different perspective from the nomadic philosophy whereby flows and erratic movement make a mixture, which is non-linear: folded and twisted movements: interrupted there, vertical here, mobile and unexpected.

Gathering sheep from the uplands is an assemblage of interstitial performances along established paths, along which humans and non-humans trace and tack back and forth between the past and the present in which beginnings and endings are not important: only the conjunctives that renegotiate the past and improvise the present in the production of becomings. The in-between spaces are not fixed nor are they attached to places, but are trace-presences that furthermore belong in the bonds and connections of attachment as they are made on the move: in the activities that close in and speed up around and within the gathered assemblage of humans and non-humans, and then slow down when they depart and disperse. This is not a consideration of performances as a series of connectors reducing paths and flows to a series of linear iterations, like an ordered network or to distinctive ontologies. But it is a fuzzy meshwork of recurring but unique performances, incorporating the old in the production of the new, producing both expanded and contracted presences by going along and remembering the way. It is not a practice sorted year on year, punctuated by stoppages and starts, but a continual process of movement, in one form or another, in which bonds in an ensemble of animals, people and environments are not just forged and broken, but are in the making. During the gathering destinations and organisation are set and established, but are contested and reworked by the lines along which paths are taken that make connections and embroil destinies, which are open-ended both to renegotiation and replete in a multiplicity of possibilities. The perspective in this paper foregrounds a making which is given focus through a gathering that is a movement which is a decentring away from the fixed towards the fluid.