Discourse, Totalization and 'The Neolithic'

Abstract

In a recent study of the significance of the work of Michel Foucault to the practice of archaeology, Christopher Tilley suggests that, hitherto, archaeological historiography has been written under the rubric of the 'History of Ideas'. In attempting to describe the emergence and descent of the concept of the Neolithic, the author intends to make use of several of the insights provided by Foucault in The Archaeology of Knowledge. The basic element of archaeological analysis is the statement, a function which cannot necessarily be reduced to the sentence or the sign. While diffusionism was to survive as a major theme in European prehistory, it was augmented at the turn of the century by the formation of the notion of the archaeological culture. The culture concept can again be seen as a consequence of the desire to fit archaeological evidence into a totalizing framework, in the case of Kossinna a framework of bounded ethnic units.