Beyond antiquarianism. A review of current theoretical issues in German-speaking prehistoric archaeology

Kerstin P Hofmann,Philipp W Stockhammer

doi:10.1017/s1380203817000022

Abstract

AbstractWhereas German-speaking archaeology (GSA) has long been understood as generally uninterested in theoretical debates, the situation has taken a most interesting development since the year 2000. Archaeologists tried to escape the general decline of the small university disciplines by getting more and more involved in the overarching research questions of cultural studies and in large-scale collaborative projects. The necessity of integrating a clear theoretical and methodological approach for a successful proposal and the subsequent research changed the significance of theoretical discussions. As a consequence, theme-oriented research has developed which aims at addressing overarching themes in the cultural and social sciences. We have chosen five of the most prominent themes in German-speaking archaeology – self-reflexivity, identities, space, cultural encounter and knowledge transfer – as well as material culture, and shed light on their theoretical conceptualization and methodological implementation in recent publications. Despite the lack of dominant schools of thinking, its strong rootedness in the evaluation of empirical sources, and its close link to the discipline of history, current GSA can contribute to the overall theoretical discourse of the discipline.

Highlights

2 discussion has been perceived as rather uninterested in theoretical debates and has been understood as mostly antiquarian in its approach. This assessment has resulted in a self-fulfilling prophecy: as no one expected German-speaking archaeology (GSA) to publish on theoretical issues, no one would search for them – especially as this would require reading through thick monographs and anthologies predominantly published in German
Current theoretical approaches in GSA are characterized by a multitude of approaches ranging from describing, classifying and reconstructing via systemic–explanatory frameworks up to very conceptual and reflexive studies, which are very popular within theoretically interested GSA
We have shown for the issues of identity, space, cultural encounter and material culture how fruitful such attempts can be

Summary

Introduction

For many years post-war German-speaking prehistoric archaeology (or GSA for short), as part of Central European archaeology, with its materialoriented publications (see Gramsch and Sommer 2011; Gramsch 2011),. 2003), often written by historically trained young scholars (e.g. Gramsch 2006; Gramsch and Sommer 2011; Härke 2000; Mante 2007; Perschke 2014; Reichenbach and Rohrer 2011; Veit 2002b) This new reflexivity has been the focus of several projects at the Universities of Leipzig and Freiburg – especially in the context of the Collaborative Research Centres SFB 417 on regional processes of identification at Leipzig and SFB 541, Identities and Alterities, at Freiburg, as well as in the framework of the EU-financed Archives of European Archaeology.. Theories and concepts of the so-called spatial turn (cf Bachmann-Medick 2016) have been translated for archaeological research (cf Hofmann 2014–15; Hofmann and Schreiber 2015b) On this basis, the constructed space of past societies has been studied with a particular focus on social differentiation and the construction of power (e.g. Maran et al 2006; Paliou, Lieberwirth and Polla 2014; Trebsche, Müller-Scheeßel and Reinhold 2010).

Conclusion and further perspectives

16 One may add the recently initiated BEFIM