ABSTRACT
Archaeology, as a discipline, was founded on its ability to group classes of artifacts together and to use these classifications to create notions of culture, development, and progress. This chapter explores how the archaeological obsession with typology has its roots in specific philosophical assumptions and simultaneously has helped constitute forms of thinking that also divide people into different types—for example, along lines of gender, sexuality, and race. These types tie us in knots, whether it is attempting to identify types of people in the past or wondering how types of artifacts change. Employing posthumanist and new materialist thinking about difference, and reframing it as a positive force in the world, this chapter rethinks the notion of typology. Drawing on case studies considering neurodiversity in human evolution and figurine production in Teotihuacan, the chapter highlights the potential of rethinking difference altogether. The chapter concludes by exploring how moving our typological thinking away from ideas of identity and essence towards the celebration of difference offers new ways of understanding contemporary issues in the present and future.
