ABSTRACT
When archaeologists say they are taking a relational approach, what does that actually mean? What are these relations, and what role do they play in our interpretations and explorations of the past? Since the 1990s, archaeologists have increasingly emphasized the importance of relations, yet these central questions often remain underexplored. In this chapter, I explore archaeological approaches to relations, and argue these can be divided into three broad categories: relations as epistemology; relations as methodology; and relations as metaphysics. In turn, the argument is developed that we need to do more to describe and characterize the relations, and to do so we need to define a new vocabulary emphasizing the intensive, differential, and affective qualities of relations. Drawing primarily on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, but also on thinkers like Brian Massumi and Charles Sanders Peirce, the chapter sets out a more specific account of what relations are in archaeology, and explores them briefly through a case study of the Swordle Bay Viking boat burial.
