Movementality: a reflection on the experience of mobility

Mobility has always been central to archaeological thinking about a wide range of topics, from ethnogenesis and identity formation to settlement process, social networks, regional interactions, power relations, technological innovation and eco-adaptive strategies, among others. However, as Antonites and Ashley rightly observe here, 'mobility and movement' has generally been axiomatic in archaeological thought. Archaeology is a science perennially concerned with the human experience of time in space. Yet, it is ironic that it has been a captive of an epistemology that privileges the rootedness of cultures, traditions and people in particular places. Therefore, whenever the concept of mobility is invoked, it tends to default to the explanation of the spatial relationships between monuments, sites, communities, places and objects in which unidirectional migration and diffusion generally play a major role.....