Spoiled terminology: ‘Inhabited reuse’ as an alternative paradigm to <i>spolia</i> and other concepts for antiquities reuse in the Ottoman Empire and beyond

ABSTRACT Reuse of antiquities is a phenomenon that provides rich insights into how people related to the past. Our analyses can broaden further to encompass the wider temporal and spatial context of most reuse cases, in which, with longstanding, active reuse practices, acts of reuse would not be inherently dissonant. To inhabit a space with an active reuse practice was to experience a triple temporality of an object’s antiquity, habituation to its position in day-to-day life before reuse occurred, and habituation to its position in day-to-day life after reuse. ‘Inhabited reuse’ practices negotiated between the latter double habituations, with diverse results. This essay applies the concept of ‘inhabited reuse’ to a central Ottoman case study, but it is applicable beyond the empire's borders. This inhabited perspective can overcome constraints in conception of reuse through the concept of ‘spolia,’ which often incorporates anachronistic assumptions of reuse as rupture. Furthermore, negotiation of double habituation is an intellectual practice indicative of an epistemic community. Through recognizing epistemes within inhabited reuse practices, one can accord the respect that ‘spolia studies’ scholars aim to give them without placing the practice beneath labels of the very same epistemes that destroyed them with terms such as ‘indigenous archaeologies.’