We Have Never Not Been Experimental, or How Much More Experimental Can Anthropology Be?

This article provides an overview of experimental anthropology, arguing that, from its inception, anthropology has operated as a form of experimental inquiry aimed at producing a surplus of data, relations, and sensations. We explore this notion through a tripartite heuristic for understanding how anthropological creativity draws on methods from the natural sciences as well as from art and design: ( a ) experience-based experimentation, ( b ) the adoption of scientific protocols and instruments, and ( c ) experimentation with and through models. Despite the apparent diversity of contemporary approaches, efforts to reimagine experimentalism in anthropology can still be understood through this heuristic. We revisit it in reverse order, arguing, first, that modeling now takes place through prototypes, games, devices, and other relational infrastructures; second, that apparatus-based experimentation has opened new possibilities for sensory enrichment; and finally, that anthropological practice itself emerges as a radical venture that expands conceptual, physical, and existential boundaries, with ethnographic inquiry relentlessly generating excess data.