Christopher Witmore
Paul Whitfield Horn Distinguished Professor of Archaeology and Classics
Christopher L. Witmore on ResearchGate
PhD: Stanford University 2005
MA: University of Sheffield 1999
BA: University of North Carolina at Greensboro 1996
Christopher Witmore is an archaeologist concerned with what becomes of the past and what archaeology can contribute to life in the present. Working alongside objects, ruins, and landscapes, he asks how material things carry memories, gather different times, and disclose ways of living that written histories alone cannot recover. His scholarship has helped expand archaeology beyond the reconstruction of distant societies into a field that addresses fundamental questions of time, human and nonhuman existence, ecological change, and the responsibilities of living on a damaged planet.
Witmore’s work moves between sustained field engagement and wide-ranging conversations with philosophy, classics, geography, ecology, and the history of science. His projects have taken him from ancient and modern landscapes in Greece to a German prisoner-of-war camp in Arctic Norway, Roman sites in Britain, and agrarian and industrial landscapes in North Carolina and West Texas. Across these settings, he explores how close attention to particular things and places can illuminate transformations unfolding over centuries and millennia.
He is the author of Old Lands: A Chorography of the Eastern Peloponnese, Greece and co-author of Pasts Otherwise: An Archaeology of War, Objects Untimely: Object-Oriented Philosophy and Archaeology, and Archaeology: The Discipline of Things. He also co-edited Archaeology in the Making and co-edits Routledge’s Archaeological Orientations series with Gavin Lucas. His current work examines the passing of agrarian worlds, the making of humankind, and archaeology’s promise as a way of orienting ourselves toward the work of sustaining a habitable world.
Books
| Pasts Otherwise. An Archaeology of War (Co-author with B. Olsen), London: Bloomsbury, 240pp. | 2026 |
| 반시대적 객체 객체지향 철학과 고고학 (Korean Version of Objects Untimely—co-author with G. Harman; Translated by Kim Hyojin). Seoul: Galmuri Press. | 2025 |
| Objetos intempestivos. Filosofía y Arqueología orientadas a objetos. (Co-author with G. Harman). Segovia: Materia Oscura, 290pp. | 2024 |
| Objects Untimely: Object-oriented philosophy and archaeology. (Co-author with G. Harman). Cambridge: Polity, 224pp. | 2023 |
| Old Lands. A Chorography of the Eastern Peloponnese, Greece. London: Routledge, 550pp. | 2020 |
| Archaeology in the Making: Conversations through a Discipline. (Co-editor with W. Rathje and M. Shanks). London: Routledge, 448pp. | 2013 (2017 paperback) |
| Archaeology: The Discipline of Things. (Co-author with B. Olsen, M. Shanks and T. Webmoor). Berkeley: The University of California Press, 256pp. | 2012 |
Editorial Positions
| Archaeological Orientations (co-editor with Gavin Lucas), Routledge. | from January 2011 |
| Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, (member, editorial board), Equinox. | from October 2012 |
Recent Journal Articles and Book Chapters
| “For Want of an Anthropocene Archaeology.” (with L. Olivier) In J. Driessen, Q. Letesson and L. Simon (eds.) Ontologies in the Making. Anthropological & Archaeological Perspectives. Louvain: Louvain University Press. | 2025 |
| “The Anthropocene: Deep or Shallow? A note on the role of archaeology.” In J. Driessen, Q. Letesson, and L. Simon (eds.) Ontologies in the Making. Anthropological & Archaeological Perspectives. Louvain: Louvain University Press. (31pp) | 2025 |
| “On striving as readers: A response to Greer.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 34(1), 22-24. | 2024 |
| “Ascending Sáos: A Chorographic Excursion in the midst of Incompressible Objects.” In C. Ernsten and N. Shepherd (eds) Walking as Embodied Research: Drift, Pause, Indirection. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. (26pp) | 2024 |
| “Lessons alongside Things: From Stanford to Sværholt” In Bjerck, H.B., M. Burström, Þ. Pétursdóttir, and A. Svestad (eds.) For Love of Archaeology. Tromsø Museums Skrifter XXXVIII. (23-33). | 2023 |
| “OOO, Archaeology, and the Anthropocene: Comments on Maritime Archaeology and Anthropocene Philosophy.” In S.A. Rich and P.B. Campbell (eds) Contemporary Philosophy for Maritime Archaeology: Flat Ontologies, Oceanic Thought, and the Anthropocene. Sidestone Press. (279-308). | 2023 |
| “On being led by proxies for paradigms.” Current Anthropology 64(5), 573-74. | 2023 |
| “Argos: Across the thin surface of time.” Urban Temporalities, a special issue of ARG/Archiv für Religionsgeschichte (edited by Jörg Rüpke and Anna Sun) 25(1), 251-70. | 2023 |
| “Anthropoiesis revisited: Hominization through the incorporation of nonhumans.” In F. Coolidge, K. Overmann, and T. Wynn (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Archaeology. OUP. (25pp.) | 2022 |
| “Excavating War and Idleness: The Case of Sværholt” (with Stein Farstadvoll, Ingar O. Figenschau, and Bjørnar J. Olsen). The Journal of Conflict Archaeology, (62pp). | 2022 |
| “Theory above? Theory alongside? A reply to Bauer, Beck, Johnson, Marila, and Preucel” (with G. Lucas). Norwegian Archaeological Review. 55(1), 92-95. | 2022 |
| “Paradigm Lost: What is a commitment to theory in contemporary archaeology?” (with G. Lucas). Norwegian Archaeological Review. 55(1), 64-77. | 2022 |
| “Will the Real Materialisms Please Step Forward?” Journal of Material Culture. 26(3), 318-21. | 2021 |
| “When Defense is not Enough. On things, archaeological theory, and the politics of misrepresentation” (with B. Olsen). Forum Kritische Archäologie 10, 67-88. | 2021 |
| “Regrounding Chorographically.” Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 34(1) (Response to Review Feature on Old Lands, by invitation). 124-31. | 2021 |
| “A Journey to A Chorography.” Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 34(1) (Review Feature on Old Lands, by invitation). 109-11. | 2021 |
| “Finding symmetry? Archaeology, objects, and posthumanism.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal. 31(3), 477-85. | 2021 |
| “Through the Jackpile-Paguate Uranium Mine.” (with C.L. Francisco) In B. Olsen, M. Burström, C. DeSilvey, & Þ. Péturdóttir (eds) After Discourse: Things, Affects, Ethics. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. (257-81). | 2021 |
| “Matter.” In H. Callan (ed.) The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Wiley Blackwell. (9pp.). | 2021 |
| "Objecthood." In L. Wilkie & J. Chenoweth (eds.) A Cultural History of Objects: Modern Period, 1900 to Present. London: Bloomsbury, (40pp.). | 2020 |
| "Hypanthropos. On apprehending and approaching that which is in excess of monstrosity, with special consideration given to the photography of Edward Burtynsky." A special issue of The Journal of Contemporary Archaeology (edited by Matthew Reilly), 6(1), 136-53. | 2019 |
| "Symmetrical Archaeology" In C. Smith (ed.) The Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. New York: Springer, (15pp.). | 2019 |
| "Chronopolitics and Archaeology." (Revised version) In C. Smith (ed.) The Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. New York: Springer, (6pp.). | 2019 |
| "Symmetrical Archaeology" In S.L. López Varela (ed.) The SAS Encyclopedia of Archaeological Sciences. Wiley Blackwell, (3pp.). | 2019 |
| "Describing Hermion/Ermioni. Between Pausanias and Digital Maps, a Topology." (with C. Lightfoot) In M. Gillings, P. Hacigüzeller & G. Lock (eds.) Re-mapping Archaeology. London: Routledge, (27pp.). | 2018 |
| "For the objects, archaeology, and the archaeological." Archaeological Dialogues. 25(1), 28-34. | 2018 |
| "The End of the Neolithic? At the emergence of the Anthropocene" In S.E. Pilaar Birch (ed.) Multispecies Archaeology. London: Routledge. | 2018 |
| "Complexities and Emergence: The Case of Argos." In A.R. Knodell and T.P. Leppard (eds.) Regional Approaches to Society and Complexity Studies in Honor of John F. Cherry. London: Equinox. | 2017 |
| "Things are the Grounds of All Archaeology." In J.M. Blaising, J.P. Legendre, and L. Olivier (eds.) Clashes of Times: Archaeology in the Age of Presentism, Louvain: Louvain University Press. | 2017 |
| "Archaeology, symmetry, and the ontology of things: A response to critics" (with Bjørnar Olsen) Archaeological Dialogues 22(2), 187-97. | 2015 |
| "Bovine Urbanism: The Ecological Corpulence of Bos Urbanus." In. B. Clarke (ed.) Earth, Life & System: Interdisciplinary Essays on Environment and Evolution. Fordham University Press, 225-49. | 2015 |
| "Archaeology and the Second Empiricism." In F. Herschend, C. Hillerdal and J. Siapkas (eds.) Debating Archaeological Empiricism. London: Routledge, 37-61. | 2015 |
Awards
| Texas Tech Parents Association's Barnie E. Rushing, Jr. Faculty Distinguished Research Award (SSHCA-Social Sciences, Humanities, Creative Arts) 2024-2025 | 2025 |
| President's Research Professorship, Texas Tech University | 2019-2025 |
| Senior Research Fellowship, Centre for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters. | 2016-2017 |
| President's Mid-Career Faculty Award | 2015-2016 |
| TTU Humanities Research Fellowship, the Humanities Center at Texas Tech | 2015 |
| Donnelley Family Fellowship, The National Humanities Center | 2014-2015 |
| Texas Tech Alumni Association New Faculty Award | 2013 |
Photo: Ron Jautz 2015
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