Dimitrij Mlekuz Vrhovnik

Mleko je izhodišče raziskovanja intenzivnih sonastajanj različnih teles, vrst in stvari; tega, kar običajno imenujejo udomačitev. Mleko je del skupka, ki povezuje živali, hormone, encime, bakterije, hrano, gene, tehnologije in materialno kulturo. Ta kompleksna sonastajanja producirajo nove, nepričakovane rezultate in učinke ter spreminjajo vse komponente v skupku udomačitve.

It was Sigmund Freud who recognised the significance of the concept of prehistory as a radical change in framework. No longer is the history entire past; beneath this discursive past lays, buried in the earth, a vast physical memory bearing witness to a different, alien, strange past that had, for the most part, escaped our historical conscience. And all this stuff, the stuff of which prehistory is made, is obscure; it is dark. It is like taking a look at something that can never be fully seized, that can never be brought to the clarity and light of understanding.

Landscapes are not given but constituted. Things are brought together or assembled to give shape to a landscape with its own coherence and identity. They provide the context for social interactions, a material world where people, animals, and plants were born into; they fix the way people, animals, and plants interact; they reduce the number of possible outcomes of face-to-face interactions. Matter, by definition, is durable. People can delegate some of their skills to durable, material things and extend their presence even when they are not physically present in the social interaction. The nature of social interaction is stabilized by the use of durable, material resources and symbols. Material things-employed in the process of social complication-enable more durable social relations between humans and other things. Together, they amount to a certain custom, habit, or symbolic order which defines the behaviour of components in a landscape. Based on a case study from the prehistory of the Karst, the limestone landscape in western Slovenia, I want to explore how engagement with the landscape 'petrified', stabilized, and structured specfic social relations and created new landscapes of prehistoric Karst.

The landscape is full of force, energy and process. These qualities come especially into being in places such as caves. Caves are places where landscape is folded into itself and where innards are exposed. Caves are places in a landscape where people can come into direct contact with alien, inhuman nature, and where the weirdness, power and horror of nature can be felt. Caves are places where non-human meaning bubbles forth in chaotic affective atmospheres that can best be described as spectral and haunting. Caves are places where this excess of non-human meaning must be brought under control. It is dangerous; it comes too close; it can break, dissolve or negate existing concepts, representations and ideas. It can shatter the symbolic order. It requires significant effort to contain. But if we are successful, it is an unlimited source of creativity, vitality and power; it offers all sorts of alien wisdom, insight and imagination. Human interaction with caves can be seen as attempts at domestication of this alien power. This relationship between caves and landscape is explored using a case study from the Škocjan Caves, Slovenia.

The high-resolution aerial datasets acquired using aerial and satellite platforms have been expanding exponentially both in volume, velocity and variety. This brings complex challenges to aerial archaeology. Massive, variable and complex datasets challenge traditional ways of doing aerial archaeology, this includes historically established practices of managing, processing, analysing and interpreting data. How to manage, process and analyse this huge loads of data? But even more critical, what potential new insights can this massive quantity of data provide? What new quality can emerge from the sheer quantity of data? What new conceptual frameworks do we need to accommodate Big Data? The paper addresses the challenge of Big Data in aerial archaeology data and argues that it opens a way towards new understandings of landscapes, archaeology and history.

Taking milk as a point of departure, we set out on a journey to explore the ‘mutual becomings’ of different bodies, species, and things. We argue that milk should be understood as a component in an assemblage that connects animals, humans, hormones, enzymes, bacteria, food, genes, technologies and material culture. These complex entanglements produced new, unexpected results and effects. Since they form part of this assemblage, all its components are profoundly changed.  Focusing on this diversity of relations between humans, other creatures, things and substances is a key to an archaeology that does not radically separate humans and non humans.

One of the most significant contributions of archaeology to the studies of human-animal relations is the concept of the “domestication” of non-human animals. Domestication is often seen as a specific human-animal relation that explains the ways people and animals interact. However, I argue, that “domestication” does not explain anything but has to be explained or “reassembled” by focusing on the many historically specific ways human and animals live together. Thus, the paper tackles the emergence of a “herd”, an assembly of animals, humans and things that appeared in the Neolithic, by following the ways the different agencies—human, animal, material and composite—are involved in the creation of new sociality. Living with animals is always already a material practice. It includes material culture, bodies, gestures, actions, habits, and body skills. It requires new practices and skills of flocking, herding, closing, observing, separating, amassing, and forming a queue; skills to be learned and employed by the participants. However, numerous resistances and translations are encountered and employed along the way, changing everybody in the process. In this way new bodies and persons—human and animal—are created, ultimately leading to the “herd”, a new way of association of animals, people, and things. From this perspective the agency and power is distributed and not confined to one species or group. There is no single locus of power and agency and no hegemony or “domination” but power and resistance that works from everywhere. Living with animals is not a matter of management, control or domination, but it is about making hybrid society work, a matter of politics, for all the parties involved.

This paper is concerned with the way in which the rhythmic temporality of the seasonal course was woven into the way European Neolithic people lived, experienced, and transformed their worlds. It focuses on Neolithic gardens as chronotopes, places where the seasonal temporality of the agrarian year is woven into the material fabric of the garden, making it clearly visible and palapable. Chronotope mediates the transfer of meanings and creates temporal relationships between routine seasonal practices of attending the gardens, and the life-courses of people and objects. But this rhythm of seasonal tasks has a breaking point—carnival, which implies a change from stability to new possibilities. It is a time when substances acquire new forms and where carnivalesque forces of laughter and parody provide the potential for renewal, new growth, and change.

By practice of landscape archaeology we are also involved in the making of landscape. Our practices are intertwined with the practices of past people that left traces in the landscape. Thus practice of landscape archaeology is necessary a messy job. We are not dealing with discrete features, but a landscapes, a continuum of the traces. And there is no chronological succession, but a mess of temporaries. Landscapes are not palimpsest, but messy, and we should change our practice and politics in order to deal with the mess. That is the real challenge.

The paper tackles the spatio-temporal patterns of Neolithic and Copper Age settlement dynamics in the Western Carpathian Basin and Eastern Alps with spatially-explicit use of radiocarbon dates. It focuses on the spatial process of spread, movement, aggregation and segregation in the time frame between 8500 and 5000 cal BP. The distribution of Neolithic and Copper Age sites in the study area is clustered and patchy. The first Neolithic settlements appear as isolated islands or enclaves which then slowly expand to fill neighbouring regions. After 6300 cal BP the study area experienced a significant reduction in the extent of settlement systems associated with the Late Neolithic
to  Copper Age transition.

Caves are not only unique sedimentary environments with good preservation of archaeological material, but as archaeological record from caves testify – also special places where distinct activities were performed. What makes caves special? What makes them different from open air locales? How do caves act back on humans? How do humans and caves mutually constitute each other and create a sense of self and belonging in the world? This chapter touches these themes using examples from the archaeological record of the Karst in northeast Italy and western Slovenia. By exploring the ‘affordances’ that caves provide we can focus on the social and contextual role they played in the practical tasks of past people. Caves are not passive backdrops for the activities that people perform, they are not natural places, and they do not satisfy the generic needs of people such as ‘shelter’. We can understand caves as material culture where dwelling occurs. And, by focusing on the process of dwelling that they enable through the affordances they provide, they help us to challenge the dichotomies of the natural and built environment, or of the mundane and the sacred.

LiDAR—like photography and other visual technologies—not only produces pictures but extends our power to detect, record, and imagine landscapes. It allows very precise three-dimensional mapping of the surface of the earth, generating as it does high-resolution topographic data even where surface is obscured by forest and vegetation. Interpretation of LiDAR data poses much more than just technical challenges. What makes LiDAR different from other topographic techniques is absence of selectiveness: data are typically gathered across complete landscape blocks recording landscape in an indiscriminate way. This allows us to address complex sites as integral parts of landscapes and as landscapes in themselves. In this way we can analyze complex sites as palimpsests, created through processes and practices that accumulated and inscribed new traces or erased old ones. Study of complex sites is thus part of the study of landscapes, landscape archaeology.

This paper discuses ways in which bodies – human and animal – were produced in the Neolithic of the Karst. Bodies are seen as cumulative processes shaped by forces of encounters with the material world, rather than as biological givens. Thus, the paper focuses on the process of embo- diment mediated with other bodies and landscape, especially important places such as caves. It ex- plores the unique ways in which caves affect bodies, and how these affected bodies created new socie- ties. In the Neolithic Karst, everyday contacts and interactions between humans, animals, the land- scape and caves and rock shelters profoundly changed all the participants. A new hybrid society emerged, consisting of human and non-human bodies.

Ne le da stroji gledajo drugače kot ljudje, sam akt gledanja se distribuira po omrežju tehnološke infrastrukture, podatkov in algoritmov; gledanje ni več utelešeno, temveč se razpotegne vzdolž računskih transformacij podatkovnega toka. Podobe, ki jih na koncu ugledamo, so pogledi drugega, tj. senzorja; se producirajo drugje, skozi algoritmične transformacije podatkov iz senzorja in so popolnoma sintetične.

Paper discusses the ways in which rhythmic temporality of yearly course was woven into the way people lived, experienced and transformed their life in the Balkans Neolithic. It exam- ines how routine social and material practices on gardens that were structured within a year extend their duration to the lifecourse of people, objects, generations and historical change. By attending the garden during the year, people not only observe the process of growth, but actively participate in it. The generative and regenerative powers of gardens are maintained through work and accumulation of substances, which originate from elsewhere, house, midden, animal pens. This flow of substances is not only way of linking houses, gardens, animals and people in a web of relations, but also creates the history of the particular plot. Through the agency of gardens, the substances of humans, plants, animals and ancestors become intertwined and feed into each other. IZVLE!EK - !lanek se ukvarja z ritmi letn...

We argue that time geography can offer conceptual and methodological framework for conducting accessibility constraint analyses that can be implemented within GIS. We present the use of cost-surfaces to implement the time geo- graphical concepts, especially the time-space prism and its derivates, cumulative potential path areas and potential path fields. The tools should not be understood as mere descriptive devices, but means for deeper understanding of social processes in a material world.

The main motivation behind this article is to encourage new ways of approaching landscapes (i.e. 'listening to' instead of just 'looking at' them). This article challenges the privileged status of vision in modern humanistic-oriented GIS studies and thereby stresses the importance of multisensuous approaches within the study of past landscapes.

The article is divided into three parts. Firstly, it offers some theoretical perspectives on the perception of sound and its role in social life, and reviews some conceptual problems concerning modelling perception within GIS.

Secondly, it guides the reader through the process of constructing a digital soundscape model. The main goal of this article is to develop tools and approaches to understand past soundscapes. The process of creating a soundscape model is illustrated using an example from the late medieval soundscape of church bells in Polhograjsko hribovje, Slovenia.

Thirdly, the article offers some technical and mathematical background to the model and presents the use of the software package which is freely available with the paper.

The model presented is still in its infancy and much discussion and further development need to be undertaken. Its rationale and potential are addressed here.

People, animals, things, substances, and many other entities exhibit flowing patterns of behaviour, leaving traces in the archaeological record. World is full of material features that channel and are made by these flows. Paths, hollow-ways,  roads, processional routes, streets all channel material flows of one kind or another, one of these flows being the movement of archaeologists themselves. People, things, substances …  move into new positional and relational contexts with other things, and create new material encounters, allowing new and different flows to emerge.  Thus movement is continuously generative, and if we want to understand it archaeologically, we need to develop approaches that can cope with the fluid conditions of generative practices. Movement cannot be pinned down because it is liquid, it is constantly shaping itself, stretching and extending in surprising ways.  In GIS,  movement is  usually represented in static form, as image, and is usually limited to the map...

Karstic landscape is a specific heritage, where surface and underground are part of single landscape. Where underground (caves, shafts...) played an important role in the development of surface. Landscape where natural an anthropogenic processes worked hand in hand. Caves were often treated as being separate from the outside landscape, recorded in isolation form landscape which they are part of. However, this complex heritage requires integrative methodologies, that would integrate cave record with the landscape.

The paper presents reading of the description of Cyclopes from Odyssey 9 as an ethnographic text. It addresses the relationship between “ethnographic” account of Cyclopes and archaeological record of pastoral groups from east Adriatic coast and Dinarides.

In this article, we discuss the role of pottery in food-related practices at the Resnikov prekop site on Ljubljansko barje (Ljubljana Marshes). We integrate chemical analyses of organic food residues with typological, technological and functional analyses of pottery. The vessels from Resnikov prekop reveal a broad range of sizes, forms and fabrics, as demonstrated by our analyses. The lipid residue analysis demonstrate that vessels from Resnikov prekop were mostly used for storing and serving different foods derived from terrestrial animals, mostly ruminants.

Archaeological heritage is constructed. It is constructed through cycles of accumulation, driven by the research arch  within development led archaeology. Archaeological heritage is constructed using inscription devices, such as remote sensing sensors and geophysical equipment. Cycles of accumulation are managed through centres of calculation where knowledge is multiplied. We established  centre of calculation in the form of information system of archeological traces, where on one place all data on archaeological traces is stored in a standardised way. Centre of calculation is multiplier of knowledge about archaeological heritage. Enormous quantity of archaeological traces is transformed into new quality. Instead of number of isolated sites we are dealing with landscape, a continuum of traces covering the whole of Slovenia. All those traces cannot be protected as isolated entities using restrictions. They can be protected only as a part of the landscape, by management of landscape change. Archaeological traces become heritage when they are evaluated, assigned value and meaning. Only in this way they can be represented in landscape change management. Well constructed heritage will protect itself (within the functional system of norms)

Despite relatively intensive research of cave sites in the
Slovenian Karst, no radiocarbon dates were available until
2005. As a part of my PhD thesis we dated bones of domesticated (and wild) animals from the Neolithic layers of four
cave sites (the rock shelters Podmol pri Kastelcu and Acijev
spodmol; Trhlovca and Mala Triglavca), which produced 21
AMS radiocarbon dates.

In this paper we present the results of the radiocarbon dating of organic sediments from palaeochannels we have mapped by LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) imagery on the I∫ica floodplain. We point out that the palaeochannels and the settlement structures at Maharski prekop site are contemporaneous. We hypothesise that the episodes in past river behaviour on the Ljubljana Marshes correspond with climate anomalies in European palaeoclimate records in the Holocene.

Airborne lidar (Light Detection And Ranging), ALS or ALSM (Airborne Laser Scanning, Airborne Laser Swath Mapping) is an active remote sensing technique , which records the surface of the earth using laser scanning. ALS allows very precise three-dimensional mapping of the surface of the earth, producing high-resolution topographic data, even where surface is obscured by forest and vegetation. The level of detail on digital surface and terrain models produced from high resolution ALS topographic data helps us enormously in identification of past events, which reworked and modified the surface of the earth. However , interpretation of ALS data poses much more than technical challenges. ALS does not provide only a layer of data, but offers a different view of landscape. What kind of landscapes do we see with ALS?

V času prve svetovne vojne je bilo na ozemlju današnje Republike Slovenije po dosedanjih ocenah približno 20.000 do 30.000 ruskih 1 vojnih ujetnikov. Pregled omenjene tematike je bil do sedaj podan le v nekaj študijah. 2 V pričujoči študiji se v interpretacijo problematike ruskih vojnih ujetnikov pri nas sicer ne bomo spuščali, podajamo pa nov pogled na tematiko, nekaj novih podatkov in predvsem drugačen meto-dološki pristop. S sprejetjem ZVKD-1 se pojem arheološke dedišči-ne širi tudi na področje konfliktov 20. stoletja, ki so močno zaznamovali slovensko zgodovino ter pustili množico materialnih ostankov in sledov.

Daljinsko zaznavanje je nabor metod, s katerimi lahko od daleč-običajno iz zraka-opazujemo površje Zemlje. Sem uvrščamo aerofotografijo, satelitske posnetke, lasersko snemanje, termično snemanje … Daljinsko zaznavanje se je rodilo v kaosu prve svetovne vojne, ko je izpopolnitev letal in fotografske tehnike omogočala spremljanje sovražnika od daleč in pomembno spre-menila način bojevanja. A piloti, fotografi in interpreti posnetkov so opazili, da se na zračnih posnetkih vidi še mnogo več od strelskih jarkov, bunkerjev in kraterjev. Iznajdba aerofotografije že od konca prve svetovne vojne pomembno prispeva k odkrivanju novih arheoloških najdišč in razumevanju časovne globine krajine.

Archaeological airborne lidar survey of the Karst plateau revealed numerous new sites and traces of past land use. This allows us to broaden the focus away from individual sites to address complete landscapes from the prehistory to the modern era. One of the more interesting traces we have encountered are long straight walls that ignore topograph of the landscape and run perpendicular to each other. They form a regular network with module around 710 m. We argue that thee are remnants of the Roman land division (centuriation) of the territory of the town Tergeste (Trieste). We discuss the evidence and tackle some implication of discover for the understanding of the Roman occupation of Karst and formation of Karst landscapes.

Cultural landscape of a prehistoric hillfort: Tabor pri Vrabčah – The landscape of the Karst hillforts has been studied almost exclusively from the perspective of the hillforts themselves, treat- ing them as isolated points in an empty space. Airborne laser scanning surveys revealed a very well-preserved prehistoric landscape in the settlement niche of the Tabor pri Vrabčah hillfort. It is composed of the settlement, a large enclosure, and brickwork fields, preserved as a network of low walls and terraces. The brickwork fields are crossed by a walled track which connects the settlement with the pastures and fields. At the outer edges of the area some irregular fields and carnfields can be recognized. This mapping proves a vivid example that prehistoric landscapes were not empty spaces between settlements, but full of features and evidence of daily activities.

A vast majority of archaeological sites in Slovenia are located on in river valleys, lowlands and on terraces and lowlands. The long history of land use has modified the surface of these areas and in many cases destroyed surface traces of archaeological sites. However, they might still be buried under the surface. We have assessed the application and range of hyperspectral imagery for detecting archaeological traces in heavily modified landscapes. Hyperspectral imagery, despite some drawbacks, allows detection of buried archaeological traces. The study also demonstrated that the ​majority of archaeological traces in such landscapes might already be destroyed.

Archaeology accesses the past itself through material traces which have survived into the present. Archaeology establishes a relationship between an event that no longer exists in its complete form and the trace in the present. My point of departure is that these inquiries are acts of memory, while traces themselves comprise a material, non-human memory of the past. The concept of memory connects archaeology with another paradigmatic discipline based on a similar mode of inquiry, psychoanalysis. Both disciplines recognise the past in the present; they explore the multitemporal nature of the present. Working with material memory means that archaeology is a practice of archiving. The archive serves as an apparatus, a set of practices, bodies of knowledge, measures, and institutions that aim to manage, govern, control, and orient — in a specific way — the inquiry and discourse of archaeology. Last but not least, the archive also offers a way to think of the big data as the monstrous, uncanny transformation of the archive.

The paper approaches the embodied and material dimensions of human subjectivity through exploring the human encounters with caves through concepts of affect, emotion, body, materiality, performance and practice. This approach explores how through pre-personal relations between material bodies, things and places combine to form affective fields. These visceral engagements constitute a background within which the cave is apprehended. But there is always an excess. This affective atmosphere in the cave can be described as “haunting”. Haunting is something attached to a place, it speaks of the sense of uneasiness. This unease can be described in different ways, using interrelated concepts of uncanny, sublime or abject. All revolve around the theme of boundary-blurring, destabilisation breakdown and destruction of boundaries and concepts, make the world intelligible and meaningful. The subject, constructed in a process of creating the meaning of the world, through representations, is constantly faced by abjection. Abject refers to the the raw vitality of material, to the powers of the earth, the meaningless chaotic nature, sublime non-human powers, the meaningless otherness which haunts caves and threatens the symbolic order and culture. Performances and representations emerge as ways of approaching the experience of ultimate alterity, erosion of certainty. Notions of sacred, numinous are ways of approaching the uncanny, sublime or abject. The subject is born out of a traumatic event of an encounter with the haunted, that makes it yearn for a return to someplace before entering into the symbolic order. Human subjectivity is something that emerges as the effect of the symbolic order, constituting a break from the immediate encounter with the ultimate other. In the end, can archaeology contribute to the questions of subjectivity? How can be located within the current landscape dominated by neuroscience on one hand and psychoanalysis on the other?

Technical engagement with the world is structured like a language. It is a language, a system of differences between operations. Things, objects, artefacts made through a chain of operations are encrusted with that language and recognised as such within a discourse. This, on the one hand, makes the archaeology of speaking beings possible; on the other hand, it decenters humans; it shifts the agency away from the individual persons to transindividual discourse inscribed in things.

Contemporary identity politics refers to political stances rooted in experiences of injustice shared by excluded social groups. It is marked by multiplication of overlapping identities and their use in fighting various forms of oppression. This seems to be a relatively novel phenomenon. How to frame past identities?

I will approach past identities using the Lacanian psychoanalysis.

Identities can be framed within two registers. The first is the “imaginary axis”; this is the domain of inter-subjectivity that functions to support and consolidate the images subjects use to substantiate themselves. This is the register of identity politics and it is usually invoked when we approach past identities (individual identity, visible through personal adornment and ornaments). This kind of identity is most fluid and prone to change.

The second register of identity occurs along the “symbolic axis”. This axis provides the subject with a symbolic framework, and it ties them into a variety of roles and social contracts. Importantly, it entails the radical alterity of what Lacan refers to as ‘the big Other’, as an amassed collection of social conventions and laws, an embodiment of authority and truth. It has a kind of supra-agency, of language, of the norms and rules – which speak through subjects and determine their position. This is what we usually refer to as a “culture” and appears to be static and rigid, yet, as Žižek insists, it exists only insofar as we act as if it exists.

What was the relationship between both registers in the past, especially as critics of identity politics insist that particular struggles effectively cover up the universal oppression embodied in the big Other? What is the role of material culture in negotiating to mean, both in intersubjective and trans-subjective (big Other) exchanges?

This is a highly speculative take on the relation between embodied mind and material culture, by juxtaposing the structuralist reading of Leroi-Gourhan’s chaîne opératoire with Lacanian theory of language.
Leroi-Gourhan puts chaîne opératoire as the nexus of interaction between body, mind, social and material world. The gesture cannot be understood in isolation but rather as part of a chain of operations, a dynamic process that refers to the rules guiding the manufacturing process. These rules should be understood as a syntax, as rules about relationships that define the time-spatial organization of production.
In this way, it is isomorphic with language, which is defined by structural linguistics define as a structure composed of differential elements. Language is understood as “chain of signifiers”, a stream of signifiers combined following the laws of grammar.
The gesture is at once individual and collective, concrete and abstract. Leroi-Gourhan emphasizes the collective knowledge that stands behind individual human action.
This is another similarity it shares with language. Lacan uses the term "discourse" is to emphasize the trans individual nature of language. This is the “big Other” where a system of determining relationships between signifiers is put into place. The big Other is the structure that symbolically institutes the subject’s place in an established order with signifiers that pre-existed him.
Is there a material “big Other”? The individuals are born in a world transformed by a deep history of technological operations. Operational sequences are embodied in the material world, changed by previous gestures. Tools, artefacts, material culture, plays a role of technical big Other. The moment the subject begins to engage with the world enters into a relationship of dependency vis-à-vis this material big Other. This makes a relationship between technical and cognitive a recursive one, and structurally different from the language, with several interesting consequences.

This paper is a story about  special object, a two and a half millennia old bucket called the Vače situla. What powers does it possess? How does it work, how does it shape people? What is its role in the development of the Slovenian state? Why is a bronze bucket from the Iron Age on Slovenian passports and identity cards? Who is the lord of the buckets?

Airborne lidar survey of the Karst plateau revealed numerous new sites and traces of past land use. This allows us to broaden the focus away from individual sites to address complete landscapes – from the prehistory to modern era. One of the more interesting traces we have encountered are long straight walls that ignore topography of the landscape and run perpendicular to each other. They form a regular network with module around 720 m. We argue that they are remnants of the Roman land division (centuriation) of the territory of the town Tergeste (Trieste). We discuss the evidence and tackle some implication of discovery for the understanding of the Roman occupation of Karst and formation of Karst landscapes.

The landscape of the Karst hillforts has been studied almost exclusively from the perspective of hillforts, treating them as isolated points in an empty space. Airborne laser scanning survey revealed a very well preserved prehistoric landscape in the settlement niche of the Tabor pri Vrabčah hillfort. It is composed of settlement, large enclosure, brickwork fields, preserved as a network of low walls and terraces. Brickwork fields are crossed by walled track, which connect the settlement with the pastures and outfields. On the edges we can recognise some irregular fields and cairnfields. This example proves a vivid example that prehistoric landscapes were not empty spaces between settlements, but full of features and traces of daily activities.

OGS Crawford suggested that history is like a carpet whose pattern can only be discerned from a distance. The reason why historians in the past had been unsuccessful in discerning the pattern of history was due to inadequate data: “You cannot see the pattern of a carpet when only a minute portion is uncovered, and you cannot discern the pattern of history until large portions of it are available for examination.”
The high-resolution aerial datasets acquired using aerial and satellite platforms has been expanding exponentially both in volume, velocity and variety. This scalar stress is providing new opportunities but also complex challenges to aerial archaeology. Massive, variable and complex datasets challenge traditional ways of doing aerial archaeology, this includes historically established practices of managing, processing, analyzing and interpreting data.  How to manage, process and analyze this huge loads of data? But even more critical, what potential new insights can this massive quantities of data provide? What new quality can emerge from the sheer quantity of data?  What new conceptual frameworks we need to accommodate massive data?  Paper addresses the challenge of scalar stress proved with big data and argues that it opens a way towards new understandings of landscapes/archaeology/history.  What is this carpet OGS Crawford was talking about?

The paper discusses the relationships beetween the Neolithic "core area" in Carpathian basin and the historical processes in South Eastern Alps in the fifth millenium BC. Early Neolithic expansion into the Carpathian basin halted when it reached the Alpine foothills. This resulted in a stable frontier, with little evidence of interaction with local foraging groups.Around 4700 BC there is a pronounced change in the settlement systems in the Carpathian basin with the appearance of stratified tell sites, large nucleated settlements and extensive cemetery grounds. This process is very well documented on sites like Alsónyék-Bátaszék in southwest Hungary, where the settlement experiences sudden large-scale expansion around. It is just one of several substantial Lengyel culture sites in the neighbourhood which include both cemeteries and settlements. These settlements became a large aggregations of people. However, those aggregation stayed in place for only one generation, followed by an equally fast dispersal. This process coincides with the rapid Neolithic expansion into the SE Alps, especially area of modern Slovenia, which reached its peak around 4700 BC. It is marked by fast expansion along Sava river, establishment of settlements in the river valleys and plains. This is followed by the expansion along Drava and Mur river valleys deep into the Alps. Same pattern of breach of long standing frontiers is visible also elsewhere in the Eastern Alps. The transition from Late Neolithic to Copper Age inthe Carpathian basin is marked by a change from nucleated to a dispersed settlement pattern. Previous nucleated sites were replaced by smaller, flat settlements, largely characterised by shallow single-layer occupation deposits. In the SE Alps this process can be also detected, however it takes the form of an expansion from lowlands into the drier Karst hinterland and formation of enclosed upland sites and hillforts.

Space syntax is a method of investigating spatial complexity to identify its particular structure that resides at the level of the entire configuration. Space syntax has developed techniques that allow the environment to be considered as an independent variable.

Space syntax is helpful in describing and analyzing the configuration at both the building and the urban level. It is thus concerned with various spatial problems such as: how can we measure the configurational properties of spatial systems? What is the role of configuration in movement, co-presence and higher-order social phenomena? What is the nature of the relationship between social organization and spatial configuration?
This paper is an attempt to apply the space syntax concepts for the study of larger spatial scales entire landscapes. Although traditionally developed and used on a building or urban scale, I argue that the same conceptual apparate and tools can be applied on a landscape scale in order to understand the landscape as a spatial configuration and measure its topological properties. I argue that tools developed by space syntax can help us to better understand the cognitive import of physical properties of the landscape like complexity, visibility, legibility, and intelligibility.
The case study is focused on the Iron Gates Mesolithic-Neolithic transition as the specific character of the material culture and is often attributed to the particular geomorphological, ecological and spatial features of the Iron Gates gorge. I explore the role of landscape configuration in the understanding of complex social processes during the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in the region, discussing the visual connectivity, legibility of the landscape and the role of spatial configuration in aggregation patterns and movement during the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition.

V prispevku modeliramo dolgoročno demografsko in poselitveno dinamike območja Slovenije zadnjih 12.000 let na podlagi podatkovnih vrst radiokarbonskih datumov in arheoloških najdišč. Z razvojem AMS datiranja in povečanjem količine datacij lahko radiokarbonske datacije uporabljamo ne zgolj za določanje starosti posameznih vzorcev, temveč kot podatkovje, ki omogoča odkrivanje prej neopaženih trendov in vzorcev. Pristop temelji na kombiniranju verjetnostih porazdelitev radiokarbonskih datacij s arheoloških najdišč. Glavna predpostavka pristopa je, da zgostitev števila datacij v prostoru in času kaže na povečano intenzivnost poselitve, saj se večje število ljudi in najdišč pomeni tudi večjo aktivnost, ki se odraža v količini radiokarbonskih datacij. Druga pristop uporablja aoristično analizo časovnoprostorske dinamike korpusa arheoloških najdišč na območju Slovenije. Aoristična analiza temelji na seštevanju verjetnosti, da so arheološka najdišče bila poseljena v določenemobdobju; pridovoljvelikemštevilunajdiščlahkoprepoznamočasovnoprostorskezgostitve, vzorce in trende. V modelu soočamo oba pristopa in analiziramo prostorski vidik dinamike. Model primerjamo s historičnimi rekonstrukcijami za zadnjih 2000 let.

The paper approaches the embodied and material dimensions of human subjectivity through exploring the human encounters with caves through concepts of affect, emotion, body, materiality, performance and practice.  This approach explores how through pre-personal relations between material bodies, things and places combine to form affective fields.  These visceral engagements constitute a background within which the cave is apprehended. But there is always an excess.  This affective atmosphere in the cave can be described as “haunting”. Haunting is something attached to a place, it speaks of the sense of uneasiness. This unease can be described in different ways, using interrelated concepts of uncanny, sublime or abject. All revolve around the theme of boundary-blurring, destabilisation breakdown and destruction of boundaries and concepts, make the world intelligible and meaningful.

The subject, constructed in a process of creating the meaning of the world, through representations, is constantly faced by abjection.  Abject refers to the the raw vitality of material, to the powers of the earth, the meaningless chaotic nature, sublime non-human powers, the meaningless otherness which haunts caves and threatens the symbolic order and culture. Performances and representations emerge as ways of approaching the experience of ultimate alterity, erosion of certainty. Notions of sacred, numinous are ways of approaching the uncanny, sublime or abject. The subject is born out of a traumatic event of an encounter with the haunted, that makes it yearn for a return to someplace before entering into the symbolic order.  Human subjectivity is something that emerges as the effect of the symbolic order, constituting a break from the immediate encounter with the ultimate other.   

In the end, can archaeology contribute to the questions of subjectivity?  How can be located within the current landscape dominated by neuroscience on one hand and psychoanalysis on the other?

Paper tackles spatio-temporal patterns of Neolithic and Copper Age
settlement dynamics in the Western Carpathian Basin and Eastern Alps
using spatial explicit use of radiocarbon dates. It focuses on the
spatial process of spread, movement, aggregation and segregation in
the time frame between 8500 and 5000 cal BP.
The settlement dynamics proxies that revealed these changes are based
on the temporal frequencies of radiocarbon-dated archaeological sites,
which are represented as summed probability densities (SPDs). The
underlying assumption is that the number and distribution of radiocarbon
dates in time and space indicate the existence of settlement systems
and reflects demography, as more people, more settlements results in
more activity and more radiocarbon dates. This is an explorative
study. Its goal and focus is to identify large spatio-temporal
patterns and changes in the process of Neolithic settlement in the
area around E Alps and not to test mono-causal explanations for
dynamic processes of cultural change. In this way, it is an open-ended
study without definite explanations.

Relations between landscape and society are recursive -- we are born in landscape made by our ancestors, but we immediately begin rearranging it. I want to explore how permanent, stable landscapes emerge through the process of life in the landscape.
My point of departure is Strum and Latour’s difference between complex and complicated societies. Complexity in this context mean that society is performed only through bodies, using social skills and social strategies. Society is performed ex nihilo at every social encounter, every face-to-face interaction. The society can disappear if not performed. Nothing fixes and stabilizes it. Stable society emerge only when additional, material, resources are mobilized. Material resources can be used to reinforce a particular form of society. They permit the shift of social life away from complexity to what Strum and Latour call “complication”, i.e. social life made out of succession of simple operations. Individuals continue to perform society, but on much more durable and less complex scale.
I want to explore how the landscape is used to simplify task of ascertaining and negotiating the nature of social order. Nature of social interaction is stabilized by the use of durable material resources. Based on a case study from prehistory of Karst, carstic stony landscape in in western Slovenia, I want to explore how the use of landscape features, use of stone, manipulation of landscape texture and building of landscape structures has “petrified”, stabilised and structured specific social relations. I will explore the relations between landscape and social order, focus on questions of inertia and long term stability, but also change, resistance and creative improvisation in such landscapes.

Dear Mr.Dimitrij Mlekuž,
You have submitted the following paper:
Paper title Archaeological carpentry. Doing theory with your hands
Author Dr. Mlekuž, Dimitrij, University of Ljubljana, Institute for the protection of Cultural heritage of , Ljubljana, Slovenia (Presenting author)
Topic Theoretical and methodological perspectives in archaeology
Keywords TH3-13
theory
carpentry
art
Presentation Preference Oral
Abstract text
In the introduction to his book “Alien Phenomenology” (2012) Ian Bogost suggests that philosophers ought not just write philosophy, at least not without practicing, doing, or making. He urges engagement in carpentry: constructing artifacts that do philosophy. This is more than artistic practice, carpentry is a perspective on creative work that asks philosophical questions. Or put in another way, carpentry is what you call it when things (including art) are used or made for philosophical use. I want do explore the use of carpnetry as a new forms of creative practice in archaeology, playful practice, that can help us to develop and archaeologival concepts.

I want to explore the use of “philosophical carpentry” using an example from my own work on archaeology of milk (Mlekuz 2015). I explore the notion of milk as an assembage or ecology, using crafted objects. Exploring the relational nature of milk assemblage, I focus on the idea that nothing exists in and of itself, things exists only in assemblages. Things exist and take the form that they do by participating in an emergent web of materially heterogeneous relations. Use of miniatures (of bacteria, enzymes, cows, strainers, lactose, guts, calfs, genes, fat, cheese …), all made on the same scale, instead of using words or cencepts, allows playful exploration of connections between objects through their material and sensous qualities. Open-ended practice associating and realting objects creates surprising new assemblages, ecologies and associations and opens ways to new, creative understandings of milk assemblage.

Archaeological airborne lidar survey of the Karst plateau revealed numerous new sites and traces of past land use. This allows us to broaden the focus away from individual sites to address complete landscapes – from the prehistory to modern era. One of the more interesting traces we have ebcountered are long straight walls that ignore topography of the landscape and run pependicualr to each other. They form a regular network with module around 720 m. We argue that they are remnants of the Roman land division (centuriation) of the toritory of the town Tergeste (Trieste). We discuss the evidence and tackle some implication of discovery for thre understanding of the Roman occupation of Karst and formation of Karst landscapes.

"People relate to landscapes through tactile and visual experience of surfaces around them, beneath their feet and in their hands.

Textures are most immediate and close physical contact with the landscape. Ploughing, grazing, clearance – create distinctive textures of surface, some of them deliberately created for the properties of the texture itself. Textures incorporate time; they are result of a slow but constant change of the very texture of surface. Mundane practices which might have a minimum impact on the surface can in a long term combine to form a distinctive textures. Aerial photographs and  high resolution topographic data is full of textures. We tend to ignore them and focus solely on "features", traces.  What can we do with textures? How can they be harnessed for deciphering the biography of surfaces and the way people interacted with the land in close physical contact?"

As people create, modify and move through landscape, the mediation between spatial experience and perception creates, legitimates and reinforces social relations and ideas. Mortuary rituals are events where memorisation as well as selective forgetting takes place. Construction of memory is often a material practice, leaving traces in a landscape. Erection of barrows creates powerful visual remainders or material memory. Barrows link ancestors to the living and create places in the landscape, related to other places in different ways, through inter-visibility, connectedness or proximity. In this perspective landscapes, places but also bodies and identities emerge as products of practices, trajectories, interrelations and flows realised through movement. These relations can be weaved together in complex narratives.

In the paper we combine remote sensing data and a series of GIS analyses to explore how the relations between movement, visibility, proximity and connectedness of places, meaning and memory intertwine and create a “sense of place” in landscape around the Iron Age Poštela hillfort near Maribor in North-eastern Slovenia. The landscape around Poštela was used to express first of all the idea of group identity, but also of competing, fluid identities within the community, playing an active role in identity politics.

How assemblages come to be? What do they do? Paper tackles the concept of agency from the post-humanist perspective, based on a idea that agentic capacity is distributed (in assemblages) rather than situated in a hegemonic subject-object relationship. Paper focuses on movement as a prime generator of all these emergent wholes. It explores how a assemblages are being made from material "stuff", brought together by movement, being assembled and reassembled in changing configurations. But matter has its own morphogenetic capacities and does not need to be directed into generating form alone. The assemblages have their own agency. The effects, agency, of the assemblage are emergent properties. Thus assemblage is never a solid block but an open-ended collective, a "non totalizable sum". An assemblage does not only have a distinctive history of formation but also a finite life span. Assemblage is always already a becoming. The results, actions are distinct from the force of each materiality considered separately. The assemblages, since they lack organisation, can incorporate any number of disparate elements. Assemblage can contain assemblages within itself or enter into new assemblages.

Since lidar has opened the view of the forest floor, the holloways have became a prominent and ubiquitous element of Slovenian landscape.  How to approach them?  Instead of nice,  planned connections between nodes in the landscape they are rather swarms of merging, branching, diverging and re-uniting trackways. They are not simply layered, accumulated one upon another, but a result of duration of movement, created through repetition and improvisation, a truly morphogenetic figures forged in time and space. Instead of fragments of transport networks connecting points in the landscape, they are rather a complex ("messy") landscapes of movement, a interwoven "meshwork" of different scrapes and traces of movement,  almost "biological" shapes, "organic" entanglement of lines that emerges from growth and differentiation. Paper thus offers an approach to interpretation of these  curious features, not as forms, given in advance but as becomings, created through a continuous, active dynamic process of differentiation and evolution.

Our view of agency is overdetermined by an Enlightenment model of rational choice and conscious decisionmaking. As such it is acknowledged in humans and denied to others: animals, plants, things … But there are other kinds of agencies, a whole "spectrum" of "agentic capabilities", housed sometimes  in individual persons, sometimes in unconscious psychological processes or motor intentionality or sometimes arising from intersubjective  networks of action and causation.  It is often hard to grasp the sources of agency and that ungraspability might be an essential aspect of agency.  As such it is not the hallmark of humans only. This paper addresses agency as an effect arising from networks of action and causation in heterogenous assemblages of actants, rather than a simple product of individual (human) choice. The productive that produced an effect will turn out to be  a heterogenous assemblage of human and non-human animal bodies, stuff, smells, sounds, smells and other foreign materialities that emerged during the process of "domestication", explore the  emergent effect of relations  between members themselves as they undergo internal alteration by forming new sets of allies and relations.  The agency of assemblages is not the strong autonomous kind of agency, but more porous, tenuous and indirect.

High resolution lidar data  offers oportunity to study the landscapes as a verb, process, arrested in moment when laser beam reflected from the ground. With high resolution topographic data we actualy observe  the “land”, a material surface at the interface of  lifeword and earth. Land is the where  the where  practices leave their scrapes and traces and  where those traces and scrapes also structure future practices. The land has the temporality of practices inscribed on its surface.

"Land@ as we see it on lidar offers the potential not to study only the landscape,  but also practices and  bodies. High resolution lidar data thus enables  understandings of living in the thick  landscapes that are not only ours but shared with other agencies: animal, tool, machine, and land agencies. 

The present-day landscape is not just  a series of fragments of different periods, each surviving to varying degrees,  according to their age. The landscape is not just  a palimpsest of scrapes, features, but a palimpsest of multiple temporalities.

There are no discrete features but a continuum of them, there is no chronological succesion but a mess of temporalies.

Filtering the airborne laser scanning data is a key step in producing suitable digital terrain models (DTMs) for archaeological interpretation. We want digital terrain models to accurately represent archaeological features, while at the same time we want to get rid of all the landscape clutter. This is challenging task, especially for areas with complex relief or hybrid geographic features. There are many interconnected and non-intuitive parameters to choose from. Therefore we either stick with default parameters or use some predefined parameters that seem to work good enough.

The castellieri landscapes have been studied almost exclusively from the perspective of hillforts, treating them as as isolated points in an empty space. However, recent surveys using remote sensing techniques (especially Airborne Laser Scanning, ALS) have revealed a host of different traces in a landscape, such as settlements, trackways, burial mounds, enclosures... One of the most surprising discoveries are traces of prehistoric fields divisions.
Most common traces of prehistoric field divisions are cairnfields, scattered heaps of stones, result of surface clearance. Cairinfields are sometimes associated with unenclosed elements, such as low stone walls and short flights of lynchets (cultivation terraces). In some cases irregular accreted field systems can be identified, defined largely by low, curving earthworks, that delineate small irregular conjoined field plots. Frequently, traces of field division are related to other features; they cluster around open settlements or hillforts, incorporate trackways and are associated with linear boundary earthworks.
Traces of prehistoric field divisions are truncated by medieval ridge and furrow fields or overlaid by low stone walls that demarcate modern field division.
Study of land divisions opens new questions related to castellieri landscapes such as land tenure, interactions between land use, kinship and community as well as day-to-day agricultural practice. Creation of material traces through daily practices of agriculture and clearance reinforced bounded places, imposed ideas of social order and, materialised social relations in the texture of the land.

Traditional landscapes, a result of millennia of human engagement with environment are under threat. A precondition for integrated landscape protection is knowledge. Without knowledge and understanding of the landscape, its time-depth
and features that constitute it, all protection is useless. Centre for Preventive Archaeology at the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Slovenia (CPA ZVKDS) uses a range of methods for the detection and study of archaeological traces. Preventive archaeology, as part of the public service, integrates archaeological research in the process of development planning. Preliminary archaeological research recognises and evaluates archaeological traces before spatial interventions and thus integrates archaeology into spatial planning. Using remote sensing techniques (including laser scaning ), we discover and precisely document a mass of traces of human activities in the past. A large quantity of traces brings a new quality to our understanding of these traces. If the number of traces is sufficiently large, we begin to understand the landscape as a whole, no longer as the sum of a relatively few, well-delimited sites in empty space. The landscape thus becomes a whole in which uninterrupted traces of human activity in the past appear.
Škocjan park is one of the most interesting and complex landscapes in Slovenia. Here, traces of past human activities from different periods are preserved. It turns out that nowhere is the landscape empty; everywhere it is full of traces of practices and activities that have been materialised in the landscape. These scars and traces range from “ordinary” archaeological sites such as castles, settlements, mounds, etc. to traces of human activities such as clearance cairns, field boundaries, lime kilns,, ridge and furrow, and so on. For the most part these traces are not ordinary archaeological sites. Often they are part of the modern, “living” landscape and are still in use today.
Our work is to make forgotten, lost, concealed and erased traces in the landscape active again; forgotten traces once again become part of the living landscape. In this way they can intertwine with the interests, work and life of the people and other creatures in the landscape. Only in landscapes of this kind can everyone find his or her place, interest, identity, work, opportunities for development. In the long term, the most sustainable and productive method of protecting landscapes is education and familiarising people with their complexity and time depth. This is our contribution to the at the centenary of the organised cultural heritage protection in Slovenia.

A new focus on scientific methods, quantitative modelling, and Big Data, which characterise the third scientific revolution in archaeology, has expanded the boundaries of what we humans can ever know about the past. However, aDNA analyses, Big Data, and evolutionary models reduce humans to either genes, numbers, or simply another animal species. What makes humans specific and archaeology a unique discipline (rather than, say, palaeontology) is a certain excess, a surplus that we humans have and cannot be studied by scientific methods.

That is the space for psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis can be approached as a framework and practice that confronts individuals with the most radical dimensions of human existence. Psychoanalysis does not reveal some deeply buried traumatic truths, instead is a way to explain how dimensions of truth emerge in human reality and how something as "reality" constitutes itself in the first place,

Human integration into a culture requires negotiating a certain distance towards what Jacques Lacan calls the "big Other", a (nonexistent) locus of symbol rules and prohibitions. For Jacques Lacan, the Other is the organising principle of the symbolic order (culture, language, the law), and for subjects who have been castrated by the symbolic, there is no way to really escape the reach of the Other.

We are never at home in culture as such. Sigmund Freud's notion of the "uneasiness in culture" explores this notion. There is nothing normal in culture. What appears as normal involves a whole series of pathological cuts and distortions. Culture, as such, has to be interpreted.

This session aims to bring together the cultural criticism, psychoanalytic and especially Lacanian approaches to studying past cultures. We are interested in how Lacanian/Žižekian/cultural studies approaches can identify and address the "surplus" of being human that escapes archaeology.

3D dokumentiranje postaja uveljavljen postopek v naboru arheoloških orodij. Na voljo je veliko različnih tehnologij, ki omogočajo trodimenzionalno dokumentiranje v vseh merilih, od artefaktov do celotnih krajin. Zdi pa se, da potenciali 3D dokumentiranja še niso povsem izkoriščeni.
Kako ubežati čaru osupljivih podob in 3D dokumentiranje
smiselno umestiti v proces arheološkega dela?
Kje so še neizkoriščeni potenciali 3D dokumentiranja?
Kakšni so učinkoviti postopki 3D dokumentiranja?
Kakšne so kreativne rabe 3D dokumentiranja za
razreševanje arheoloških vprašanj in problemov?
Dvodnevni posvet je namenjen refleksiji obstoječih praks, predstavitvi kreativnih rešitev in odpiranju novih polj 3D dokumentiranja v arheologiji. Posvet bo potekal v organizaciji Centra za preventivno arheologijo ZVKDS, 17. in 18. oktobra 2019.
Naslove in kratke povzetke pričakujemo do 31. junija 2019 na naslovu [email protected]
Organizacijski odbor: Dimitrij Mlekuž Barbara Nadbath Tadeja Mulh Maja Janežič

Ljubljana 28th-29th October 2016

Preventive archaeology is a new way of protecting archaeological heritage, where archaeological research becomes constitutive part of spatial planning process. Key innovation is the phase of archaeological potential assessment, which shifts focus of research from known sites to the landscapes a whole. But what exactly is " archaeological potential " ? What is its relation to the archaeological traces and sites in the landscape? Archaeological potential obviously says something about the capacity of an area, that archaeological traces could be discovered, but it also introduces new ways of thinking and working with archaeological heritage. The workshop aims to address these issues, ranging from the theoretical discussion on archaeological potential to the practices and experiences of archaeological potential assessment. We welcome wide range of contributions, from theoretical perspectives, methodological issues and innovations in archaeological potential evaluation to the application and uses of archaeological potential in heritage practice and its legislative aspects. One day workshop will be held on Friday, 28th October 2016 in Ljubljana. On the next day, you are invited to an archaeological excursion to the Slovenian Karst. Please submit provisional title, an abstract and contact details by submission deadline of 31th June, 2016. All submissions and enquiries should be addressed to the organisational committee at [email protected].

Veliki jezikovni modeli (VJM) nam jezik radikalno razkrijejo kot avtonomno strukturo, ki deluje popolnoma avtomatsko; avtonomen sistem, ki ne potrebuje zavesti, da ga vodi, da govori. Še več, ta govor je poln artikuliranega in akumuliranega znanja; a to je nikogaršnje znanje; ni nekaj kar nekdo ve, ampak nekaj kar se ve. Zanje, za katerega ni nihče odgovoren; znanje, ki ne potrebuje subjekta. Jacques Lacan, inspiriran z razvojem kibernetike v štiridesetih in petdesetih letih 20 stoletjem je jezik razumel kot stroj, kot računski sistem, kot algoritem s svojim lastnimi pravili, voljo in življenjem. Jezik ni orodje za sporazumevanje, temveč tuja, zunanja struktura, ki nas kolonizira.

Kulturno dediščino ogrožajo ekstremni vremenski dogodki, katastrofe, kot so bili nedavne poplave in plazovi. Analizirali smo ogroženost nepremične kulturne dediščine, in sicer tako, da smo prekrili register nepremične kulturne dediščine z opozorilno karto poplav, ki so jo izdelali na okoljski agenciji, s karto verjetnosti pojavljanja plazov, ki jo je izdelal Geološki zavod Slovenije.

Ogenj je neumen. Ogenj je indiferenten, ognju je vseeno. Ogenj je zgolj eksotermni kemični proces oksidacije; ko se bo vžgal, bo gorel; dokler je le dovolj visoka temperatura, dovolj goriva in vetra. V tej svoji premočrtni, neumni logiki je presenetljivo učinkovit.

Gnezda v drevesih so nam omogočila, da smo se iz Afrike razširili iz
Afrike po planetu. Še pred uporabo ognja so bila gnezda glavna
zavetišča, ki so nam omogočila, da smo (stisnjeni se v gručo) prespali
noč, previharili nevihto, preživeli zimo. Naši predniki niso bili jamski
ljudje, naši predniki so bili drevesni ljudje. Ljudje, ki so gradili gnezda.

Svet okoli nas je poln lukenj. Luknje se zdijo samoumevne. Luknje se zdijo del sveta, prav tako kot oprijemljive stvari; prodniki, copati, železovi opilki, protoni in sponke za papir. Luknje zlahka prepoznamo; zanje imamo imena; poznamo vdolbine, jame, luknje, odprtine, skožnje, kaverne, predrtine, perforacije. Že triletni otroci znajo prepoznati luknje. Opišejo jih in štejejo prav tako kot štejejo stvari. Luknje uporabljamo, da z njimi opisujemo obliko stvari (slovenska potica ima luknjo v sredini); z luknjami razlagamo, kako svet deluje (zračnica na kolesu je prazna, ker sem jo preluknjal). Ampak luknje so čudne.

Srečamo tujca. To srečanje je vedno travmatično. Srečanja so nepredvidljiva; srečanja so negotova. Srečanja zahtevajo improvizacije; srečanja prinašajo nepričakovane izide, srečanja imajo dolgoročne posledice. Lahko se končajo z nasiljem, smrtjo, lahko z ljubeznijo. Srečanje prasketa od potenciala, od odprtih možnosti; komaj čaka, da se razreši, da dobi pomen. Kdo bo prvi reagiral? Kakšen bo odziv? Kaj se bo zgodilo? Jaz in tujec, oba, se morava posvetiti situaciji.

Poletje 2018 je bilo eno najbolj sušnih v zahodni Evropi. Na poljih, travnikih in njivah so se izrisale lise rumenih, suhih in ožganih rastlin lise rumenih, suhih in ožganih rastlin. Ti, na tleh naključni vzorci, so na zračnih posnetkih postali črte, krogi, vzorci, ki jih je moč prepoznati kot sledove cest, zemljiške razdelitve, naselbin.

Vesolje je ogromno. Vesolje je čudno. Ogromnost in čudnost vesolja nosita potencial, da je nekje v vesolju radikalno drugi; radikalno drugačno življenje, radikalno drugačna narava, radikalno drugačna bitja, radikalno drugačno kultura, radikalno drugačna subjektivnost. Srečanje z radikalno drugačnostjo bo presenečenje. Presenečenje zaznamuje negotovost, ki izhaja iz rušenja ontoloških koordinat. Srečanje z radikalno drugim; že sama možnost srečanja odpira krizo kategorij. Če želimo radikalno drugega sploh prepoznati kot takega, potem se moramo povprašati o lastnih ontoloških koordinatah.

Prihod pošasti vedno označuje krizo kategorij. Pošasti so hibridi, katerih nekonsistentna pošastna telesa zavračajo vse poskuse klasifikacije. Kje se konča  zgodovina in kje začne geologija? Kje je meja med naravo in kulturo? Je to, kar se zdi domače v resnici tuje, nenavadno, nedomače?  Vse, kar se je zdelo trdno,  se razblinja. Ob soočanju s pošastjo ljudje postajam popolnoma nestabilna kategorija, ki se lahko v trenutku spremeni v nekaj drugega.; kdo smo, subjekti ali zgolj telesa?  Pošast antropocena, naš otrok, stoji pred nami kot svarilo, kot grožnja in kot vprašanje.

Vsak strah ima svoj kraj. Prikazni se vedno prikazujejo nekje. Uklete hiše, mesta duhov, zapuščeni gradovi, ruševine samostana, prerasle z bršljanom, zapuščena pokopališča s nagnjenimi nagrobniki, votline, ki zijajo z praznim pogledom, so kraji, kjer lahko srečamo prikazen.

Mediteran je propadel leta 1610. Leto 1610 je leto, ko v atmosferi upade delež ogljikovega dioksida. Ta udrtina geološkemu zapisu je posledica globalnega zmanjšanja populacije; okoli 50 milijonov ljudi je takrat umrlo le v obeh Amerikah; zaradi bolezni, lakote, vojn in garanja v rudnikih srebra in zlata; njihove polja in pašnike je preraslo grmovje in gozd. Rastline in živali so začele potovati preko oceanov; Zemlja je postala majhna. Zato je leto 1610 je eden izmed kandidatov za uradni začetek antropocena. Antropocen je geološko obdobje, človeštvo postane globalna geološka sila; obdobje, ko se meja med geologijo in zgodovino zabriše.

Učlovečil nas je jezik, civilizirala so nas mesta. Mesta so največja
in najzapletenejša stvar, kar smo jih zgradili ljudje. Mesta ljudi
zgostijo in postavljajo v nove situacije; nas prisilijo, da iznajdemo
nove načine sobivanja, da postanemo politična bitja. Mesta
omogočajo nove užitke intenzivnega družbenega življenja.

Angleški arheolog O. G. S. Crawford je v začetku dvajsetega stoletja zgodovino primerjal s preprogo, katere vzorce lahko prepoznamo le stoje, od zgoraj; za mačko, ki se sprehodi preko nje, preprogo sestavljajo le naključne barvne lise. Preproge zgodovine ne vidimo v celoti, zato ker nimamo dovolj empiričnih podatkov in pravega gledišča, ki bi zaobjel njeno totalnost.

Eno najbolj natančnih definicij ljudi je prispeval Mao Cetung; opredelil nas je kot želodec, na katerega sta pritrjeni dve roki. Roki so torej tisto, kar nas loči od živali, katerih shema je zgolj želodec - seveda mobilen želodec, opremljen z vso infrastrukturo, ki mu omogoča gibanje, iskanje hrane in razmnoževanje.

Varovanje dediščine ni ukvarjanje s preteklostjo, temveč s prihodnostjo. A ne obeta se nam svetla prihodnost. Klimatska kriza radikalno spreminja svet, kot ga poznamo. Klimatska kriza bo do temeljev spremenila gabarite tistega, kar se nam zdi normalno.

Ljudje smo govoreča bitja. V nas gori močan plamen kulture. Ta ogenj je prižgalo revolucijonarno dejanje kolektivne solidarnosti. Ogenj nam je omogočil, da smo iz izoliranih toplotni strojev, samih v brezupnem boju s entropijo, postali del skupnosti, povezane s družbenim paktom, del nečesa večjega od nas. Dokler bomo ostali govoreča bitja, dokler bo v nas gorel plamen jezika, se ta pakt ne bo pretrgal.

Zemlja je krogla. Vendar je za nas, njene prebivalce, pred-vsem zemlja. Zemlja je naš svet; zemlja so tla pod nogami, je bogato teksturirano površje, po katerem hodimo in ki daje oporo stvarem, rastlinam, živalim; tla, na katerih se odvija življenje na Zemlji. Vendar tla niso le površina, morda celo najpomembnejša površina na svetu, tla so volumen. Tla so akumuliran ostanek razpada kamnin, mineralnih drobcev in prebavljenih organskih odpadkov. Ta volumen je razslojen v množico horizontov, od tankega, z organskimi snovmi bogatega humusa na površju do skalne podlage na dnu. Tla so nakopičen ostanek razpadanja in razkrajanja stvari, ki so nekoč bile. Tla so ostanek preteklosti, ki pod-pira sedanjost. Ta volumen ni inertna masa. Prst je prepustna opna med mineralno negibnostjo planeta in zračnostjo atmosfere. Zemlja diha skozi tla. Bakterije v tleh vežejo dušik iz ozračja. Rastline ta dušik vključijo v svoja telesa, ko poganjajo iz tal; ko rasejo, lovijo sonce in spajajo ogljik iz zraka in minerale iz tal. Ti procesi spajanja zemlje in neba so hrana živalim. In ko te odmrejo, postanejo del tal, kjer jih glive in bakte-rije razgradijo v minerale. Ljudje, živali in rastline smo le posebej zanimivi začasni skupki organizirane vlažne prsti. Tla opravljajo ključno delo življenja, delo razpadanja, prebavljanja, razkrajanja, fermentacije; delo, ki ga v mraku opravlja množica nevidnih, »nečloveških« delavcev, katerih habitat in medij je zemlja. Tla so stabilen in trden rezultat dela razpada, trohnenja in gnitja. Tla so živa. Prepoznamo lahko življenje-poganjke, kore-nine, koreninske laske, gliste, praživali, členonožce, strige, deževnike, nevidno množico mikroorganizmov in micelijev gliv. Tla so skupek, kolektiv bitij in stvari. Življenje na planetu je prepleteno v zapletena omrežja prehranjevanja, prehranjevalne verige, skozi katere kro-žijo stvari in snovi. Hrana je tista, ki nas postavlja v svet in na zemljo. Prehranjevanje vzpostavlja odnose med organizmi ter med organizmi in svetom; vzpostavlja ekologije. Ekologija je torej način, na katerega se stvari medsebojno zapletamo v skupke, v kolektive. Zdi se, da je jedenje relacija moči-nekdo, močnejši in hitrejši, nekoga ali nekaj poje; a v Tla, zemlja, prst Napisal: Dimitrij Mlekuž Vrhovnik resnici je jedenje egalitarno. Tudi o tem priča prst. Vsi, tudi jedci, bomo nekoč hrana. Tudi tiste na vrhu prehra-njevalne verige bodo pojedle bakterije in glive. Vsi bomo nekoč končali kot prst. Prst je vitalna, živa substanca, ki nastaja, živi, zori in se stara, morda propade, umre, izgine. Vsi delavci v prsti ne le živijo in jo ustvarjajo, temveč ji vdihnejo tudi vitalnost in identiteto. Ta identiteta je lokalna, vezana na geološke, kli-matske pogoje, lokalne mikrobne kulture, lokalne ekologije. Prst je zadnji ostanek vseh ostankov. Vse, kar propade, umre, razpade, se razkroji in zgnije, pristane v zemlji. Prst je materialni spomin Zemlje, je zakladnica, arhiv in smetišče hkrati. Poznamo lahko vse njene parametre, globino, barvo, strukturo, teksturo, kislost, vsebnost organskih snovi in hranil, pa je še ne bomo opisali. Ker prst ima zgodovino, prst je kompostirana zgodovina. Prst kot substanca je mlada. Preden so kopno zavzele rastline, pred kakšnimi 460 milijoni let, je bila Zemlja zgolj blatna in prašna. Kamnine so se drobile in razpadale; drob-ne ostanke, melj in glino, so reke spirale v morje in je veter razpihoval naokoli. Voda se obdrži v porah med delci, pre-prosta sestava zgodnje zemlje pa ni omogočala, da bi dobro zadrževala vodo in hranila. Zemlja je obstajala bodisi kot blato ali kot prah. Tudi reke so bile zato drugačne, prepleti korit, iz dneva v dan so spreminjale tok in hitro spirale blato v morje. Ko so se na kopno splazile prve rastline-najprej mahovi in lišaji-so blato in prah udomačile v prst. Lišaji so razkrajali skale, sproščali hranila; alge so v prst dodajale ogljik, bakterije so vezale dušik. Glive so v prst vezale vodo in razkrajale odmrle organske snovi. V sto-tih milijonih let se je količina prsti povečala za desetkrat. Spremenile so se tudi reke. Rastline so utrdile bregove, reke so dobile meandrirajoča korita, ki so počasi vijugala po dolinah. Blato, ki so ga reke prinesle ob poplavah, se je akumuliralo na poplavnih ravnicah in postajalo prst, tla, iz katerih so rasle rastline. Prst je postala izziv tudi za živali, kot so strige in črvi. Razviti so morali telesa za gibanje v blatu, za kopanje rovov in premikanje z ritmičnim krčenjem in raztezanjem. Nevretenčarji jedo prst, iz nje dobijo hranila in jo-pre-bavljeno-izločajo. Bakterije v njihovih opravilih opravijo delo; izločena prst postane bolj drobna, bolj bogata. Kopanje rovov spreminja razporeditev blata, prst prezrači. Deževniki delajo prst, ob tem so zemljo udomačili zase. Ljudje smo udomačili zemljo v neolitiku, ko smo začeli gojiti žita in stročnice. Naša prva udomačena prst so bili vrtički, koščki razkopane zemlje v bližini hiš, sredi majhnih posek v gozdu. V vrtičkih smo ustvarjali pogoje za rast rastlin, prinesenih s t. i. rodovitnega polmeseca, te pa so omogočale rast ljudi. Vrtički so bili deli zemlje, za katere so ljudje intenzivno skrbeli, pazili nanje in na njih delali. Prepuščene samim sebi jih je hitro prerasel plevel ali gozd. Ljudje so nanje nosili odpad iz gospodinjstev, ta je postal del prsti. Prst je postala temnejša, bolj mastna, bolj organska, rodovitna. Vrt pa je postajal sedimentiran ostanek življenja. Življenja ljudi so postala del vrta, se vtisnila v prst. Na te sledove so nale-teli med delom; kost, črepinja, ki je prišla na površje med kopanjem, je pričala o delovanju prednikov, o zgodovini in časovni globini vrta, o tem, da je že generacije vsako leto zrasel pridelek enozrnice, ječmena in čičerike. Z udomačitvijo živali in iznajdbo pluga je skoraj vsa zem-lja postala vrt. Ljudje smo posekali in požgali gozdove in jih preorali v njive. Obširna polja so zahtevala drugačno skrb za zemljo. Srednjeveški orač je predvsem obračal tla, leto za letom, v aprilu za jaro in oktobra za ozimno žito. Plug, težek kovinski plug na kolesih, ki ga je vlekel par volov, je obračal prst; dvigoval s hranili bogato zemljo na površje in pokopal zemljo, izčrpano od zadnje žetve, skupaj s strniš-čem in plevelom. Ritem obračanja tal in kolobarjenja je omogočal, da je zemlja rodila, se obnavljala-oranje za oranjem, leto za letom. Ne z dodajanjem novih plasti, temveč z obračanjem tal in nevidnim delom »neljudi« v mraku prsti. Moderna ideja narave je zrasla iz te fevdalne kmečke idile. Naravo smo razumeli kot periodično obnavljanje sveta, ki ga pooseblja menjavanje letnih časov, varno ozadje, ki je tu za nas in na katero se lahko zanesemo, da bo takšno, kot je. Dokler se ne moremo več. Tla so infrastruktura življenja. Infrastruktura je skrita, deluje v ozadju in omogoča življenje. Prst v vsakdanjem življenju opazimo predvsem kot odpadek, ostanek, ki ga je veter ali dež spral v razpoke na asfaltu. Tudi tam, kjer prst je-na poljih, v parkih, v gozdovih-ni prst tisto, kar opazimo. Opazimo pridelek, drevesa, trato, ne pa tega, kar pridelek, drevesa, trato … omogoča. Prst kot infrastruktura govori o nevidnem, mračnem ozadju, ki opravlja ključno delo, a ga opravlja v senci, v temi; tako omogoča in osmišlja delo drugih, delo, ki je vidno, delo rastlin, ljudi in živali. Ta skupna infrastruktura, ki si jo delimo z vsemi bitji na planetu, je v kapitalističnem načinu proizvodnje postala vir, lastnina, produkcijsko sredstvo. Kot je Marx zapisal v Kapitalu, kapitalistično poljedelstvo ne temelji le na ropanju mezdnega kmeta, dninarja, temveč predvsem na ropanju zemlje same, njenega nevidnega dela; vsi poskusi izboljša-nja ali ohranjanja rodovitnosti služijo le proizvodnji blaga, ropanju tal, zato bodo pripeljali do končnega izčrpanja in uničenja prsti. Kemik Fritz Haber je leta 1918 dobil Nobelovo nagrado za sintezo amonijaka iz dušika v zraku, kar je omogočilo začetek izdelave umetnih gnojil. V času, ko je kapitalistično kmetijstvo že skoraj izčrpalo tla, je Haber »iz zraka potegnil kruh«. A Haber je iz zraka potegnil tudi eksplozive in bojne pline, ki so med prvo svetovno vojno pomorili na milijone ljudi. In ko ga je na stara leta mučila slaba vest, ga ni zaradi zaplinjenih vojakov, temveč zato, ker je verjel, da je njegova metoda luščenja dušika iz atmosfere tako spremenila rav-notežje planeta, da prihodnost ne pripada ljudem, temveč rastlinam. Kruh, ki ga je Haber potegnil iz zraka, je milijone ljudi rešil lakote, a zakisal prst, zmanjšal biotsko raznovrstnost tal, umazal zrak in vodo in segrel ozračje. Infrastrukturo običajno opazimo šele, ko ne opravlja več svojih nalog. Kljub temu da jo prekrivamo z betonom in asfaltom, zemlja postaja čedalje bolj vidna; opazimo jo, ko postane blato, ki ga je neurje spralo z njiv na ulice mesta, ali prah, ki ga odpihne veter z izsušenih polj. Ampak zem-lja je svoje delo vedno opravljala v mraku in senci, njena nenadna vidnost kaže, da se naše razmerje do nje radikalno spreminja. Kaj se zgodi, ko tisto, kar je nevidno, mračno in temačno, nenadoma vdre v naše vidno polje? Prst odkriva, da se v temačnem jedru življenja skriva raz-pad, razkroj, iz katerega brbota kaotična vitalnost življenja. Tla so polna promiskuitetne in obscene vitalnosti, kaotično kreativna in destruktivna hkrati. Tu ljudje nismo suvereni. To ni fevdalna Mati Narava, porok stabilnemu, urejenemu svetu, za dežjem posije sonce, za nočjo vzide jutro, za zimo pride pomlad. V tej gnili naravi ni izjemnih niti izjem. V tej gnili nara-vi vsi končamo kot hrana za nekoga drugega. Ta gnila, nepopolna narava, kompost preteklosti, je le kolektiv bitij in entitet, ki jih kaotično, obsceno brbotanje vitalnosti rojeva in požira. In to mora biti izhodišče za novo, neantropocentrično politiko do narave, za iskanje drugačnih načinov sobivanja z drugimi. Prst razkriva, da smo le bitja med bitji in stvar med stvarmi.

Goblincore je estetika tistega, kar je grdo, umazano in temno. Goblincore je estetika spregledanega. Goblincore je estetika mračnega, čudnega in skritega. Kajti čudno je stvar estetike in je stvar neintuitivnih povezav.
Goblincore je estetika substrata življenja. Goblincore je estetika organskega odpada, komposta in humusa. Gopblincore je estetika trohnobe, razpada in fermentacije.

Svet se zdi vztrajen, trden in nespremenljiv. Sestavljen iz množice trdnih stvari, materialov, ki mu dajejo trdnost in trajnost. A tudi ti materiali niso od vedno. Material se mešajo, spajajo, koagulirajo, strdijo, sesirijo, zdrobijo, razpršijo, hlapijo. Nastajajo novi. Oblike, iz katerih se svet zdi sestavljen, so le začasne skorje, ki skrepenijo na materialih. Meje med materiali erodirajo, materiali se drobijo, osipajo, pretvarjajo v nekaj novega. Svet je tok materialov. Nekateri materiali so družbeni. Družbeni zato, ker se okoli njih se zbiramo, okoli njih organiziramo delo. Ljudje jih kopljemo, sejemo, prebiramo, drobimo, premikamo, žgemo, mešamo, ulivamo, oblikujemo, režemo in klešemo. Nekateri materiali so rezultat našega dela. Materiali ponujajo podstat in okvir za naše (družbeno) življenje. In na koncu materiali razpokajo, okrušijo, razpadejo, zgnijejo in razpadejo. Ostanejo zgolj okruški, fragmenti, ruševine. Zgodovina sveta je zgodovina materialov. Beton je eden takih materialov.

Stari kostanj pred Dramo bodo posekali. Tam bo zazijala luknja; praznina, ki bo ostala za kostanjem, bo omogočila obnovo Drame. Vsi se strinjamo, da Drama potrebuje prenovo. Vsi, ki smo kdaj čakali na avtobus v kostanjevi senci, pa se tudi vemo, da bo padec starega kostanja travmatično dejanje nasilja, ne le nad starim kostanjem, temveč vsemi, ki smo z njim spletli odnose.

Prazgodovinsko Ljubljansko barje je krajina ritmov. Je krajina ki je nastala iz vzajemnih delovanj in prepletanj ritmov, njihov resonanc, palpitacij, aritmij, zastojev in sprememb. Tu je najprej počasen ritem geološkega časa, dolgega počasnega posedanja blokov kamnite podlage; krčev, zdrsov in potresov na prelomih skladov apnenca in dolomita; na prelomih, ki tečejo v dinarski smeri, od jugovzhoda proti severozahodu in Viškega preloma, ki teče počez. Ta ritem lovi ritem akumulacije sedimentov, ki jih reke in potoki spirajo z okoliških hribov in gričev. A ta ritem, utrip erozije in akumulacije, v dolgem času poganja ritem menjavanja toplih in hladnih obdobij, ledenih dob, glacialov in interglacialov. V zadnjega pol milijona leta se je zvrstilo vsaj štirinajst daljših menjav in množica krajših nihanj. Ta ritem vodi kolebanje zemljine osi, ki ga duši inercija ozračja in oceanov. V hladnih obdobjih je bilo zaledje Barja golo; ledeniki, dolge, mrzle zime in kratka, vroča poletja so drobili skalno podlago; pomladna odtajanja pa so ta pesek in prod spirale po dolinah. Ko so stopile na ravnico, so ta material odložile. V toplih obdobjih je okolico preraščal gozd; erozija se je umirila, reke so le občasno odlagale grob material, v jezerih in močvirjih se je usedal drobnozrnate usedline, melj ali glina. Ples teh ritmov je uravnal dno Ljubljanskega barja; Barje je zapolnjeno z debelimi plastmi zasipov; ti zasipi so materialni spomin teh ritmov. Osamelci, ki štrlijo z ravnice, pa kažejo na njegov skalni izvor, na globoke doline in apnenčaste vrhe, pokopane pod temi sedimenti. Ta ritem teče že vsaj kakega pol milijona let. Ob koncu zadnje ledene dobe, pred kakšnimi dvanajst tisoč leti, je na Barju nastalo jezero; najverjetneje zato, ker je Sava, ko je spirala material alpskih ledenikov, z zasipi zajezila Ljubljanico. Nastalo je globoko, čisto jezero, ki je pokrivalo skoraj vse Ljubljansko barje. Še danes lahko v površju, na lidarskih posnetkih, prepoznamo sledove jezera; delte, kjer so se potoki zlivali vanj in zaporedje obalnih sipin na bregovih jezera. Jezera živijo svoje življenje. Jezera imajo svoje biografije, svoje ritme. Jezera so kot živa bitja, živijo le, dokler skoznje teče voda; in njihov obstoj je stalno lovljenja ravnotežja z vodo, ki priteče in tisto, ki odteče ali izhlapi. Jezero je povezano s svojim porečjem, ki ga hrani. Vse kar se dogaja v porečju, premene klime, vzorci vegetacije, dejavnosti ljudi in živali, vpliva na življenje jezera. Barje ima ogromno porečje, območje, od koder se Barje hrani z vodo. Večina porečja je kraška, kar pomeni, da voda, preden se pojavi na Barju, ponikne v podzemlje, se pretaka po votlinah in duplinah, izvira in zopet ponikne. Kraške vode potrebujejo precej časa, da se skozi škraplje in razpoke, skozi jame in sifone, skozi kraška polja in ponore, prebijejo do Barja. Ko tu izvirajo, so čistejše in toplejše od voda, ki jo prinesejo površinske reke in potoki. Kraške vode pritečejo šele, ko Barje že poplavijo površinske vode; počasi pritekajo in držijo visoko gladino še tedne po dežju. Kraške vode Barju dajejo inercijo.

Ljudje se premikamo predvsem s hojo, stopanjem, korakanjem, tekom, poskakovanjem; gibamo se na dveh nogah. Bipedalizem, hoja po dveh okončinah, izhaja iz evolucijskih pritiskov in preteklih okolij, usedlih v konfiguraciji naših teles. Naša telesa so oblikovale pretekle situacije daljnih prednikov; morda čedalje bolj redek gozd, ki je zahteval tek med drevesi; morda brodenje po močvirjih in potokih. Toda način, kako hodimo, je tudi odziv na današnjo pokrajino, na okolje, na druge stvari, ki jo naseljujejo poleg nas.

Industrija izkorišča delavce, kmetijstvo tla. Delo se koncentrira v kapitalu; a delavci potrebujejo hrano; hranilne snovi iz zemlje, se kot kruh stekajo v mesta, za hrano delavcev; končajo kot drek v kanalizaciji. To je metabolna razpoka, vrzel med družbenim in naravnim metabolizmom, ki ga ustvarja kapitalizem.