Abstract:

This volume celebrates the academic life of prof. Raymond Corbey. It gathers contributions by diverse scholars and professionals from both science and society to engage with a range of key topics Raymond has grappled with at different stages of his capricious career. The volume not only provides an opinionated portrait of Raymond as an academic persona and sometimes controversial scholarly figure, unpacking key tropes of his intellectual journey such as “sitting on the fence” or the “embedded philosopher” and academic “jester”, it also illustrates the wide-ranging and inspirational nature of his work. As a “boundary-worker” seeking to re-negotiate the limits, opportunities and contributions of various disciplines, the volume reflects Raymond’s critical but always provocative engagement with issues such as theory-building, alien civilizations and cosmic evolution, nonhuman sentience, the politics of species, Darwinism, the Maussian gift, human nature, hand axes, the mark of the intentional, diamonds, the structure of the European Mousterian, the relation between cultural anthropology and archaeology, liminality and the marginal, ritual and religion, cats, primates, language, heritage and the many legacies of Western thinking and acting in the world. Taken together, these individual contributions showcase the immense scope – temporal, geographic and topical – that defines Raymond’s unique scholarly venture which continues to animate many of his friends, colleagues and former students.

The volume will be of interest for a broad readership in academia and beyond, and for the first time brings poignant essays from philosophy to archaeology into conversation, which comment on, continue, or critique the scholarship Raymond embodies. This scholarship defies the contemporary tendency of hyper-specialization, and sometimes scholasticism, and inspires us to transcend the self-erected boundaries of academic and public cathedrals in our thinking and acting alike.

Contents

Raymond Corbey: A philosophical thorn in the side of archaeologists and much more
Gerrit L. Dusseldorp & Shumon T. Hussain

Towards an archaeology of an epistemologist’s epistemology
Wil Roebroeks

Raymond Corbey, the embedded philosopher sitting on the fence: making sense of a unique academic pursuit
Shumon T. Hussain

Better divergent than aligning: An argument in favour of the ‘shaken-bookcase syndrome’ in archaeological theory-building
Alex Geurds

Why, throughout the universe, reason and ‘civilization’ are more the exception than the rule
Pouwel Slurink

Psychic plants: A critique on Helmut Plessner’s plant-animal boundary
Norbert Peeters

Challenging the human-nonhuman boundary: biological and cultural diversity
Annette Lanjouw

Epistemology on Acid: Is Darwinism really such a dangerous idea?
Angus Mol

Homo sapiens, the four elements and the Anthropocene
Corrie Bakels

‘Intentions do not fossilize’ – Unpacking persistent but problematic domain-assumptions in Pleistocene lithic studies
Shumon T. Hussain

Hand Axes as Hyena Jaws
Jan Kolen

Bone hammers: Efficient but rare
Thijs van Kolfschoten

Diamonds are an early 20th century archaeologist’s best friend – On the interactions between diamond mining and Acheulean archaeology
Gerrit L. Dusseldorp

On Mousterian, Micoquian, and the origin of new Neanderthals in Western Europe ~70,000 years ago
Philip van Peer

Religious sacrifice in the Ice Age? Ritual finger amputation and the Gravettian hand images with incomplete fingers
Mark Collard & Brea McCauley

Three for playing, three for straying and three for staying. Exploring the changing role of cats in Pleistocene and Holocene Europe
Luc Amkreutz

Rediscovering the archaeological terrain
Dimitri DeLoecker & Jan Kolen

Locating and analysing the Marginal in Archaeology
John Bintliff

Is there a Western telos and is it in danger? A rationalist critique of some recent challenges to the social sciences and humanities
Jon Abbink

What Language Are We Speaking Here? Λογος in a Post-Humanist Climate
Joep Leerssen