Ideological Uses and Management Policies of Archaeological Sites in Post-Socialist Albania: The Case of Saranda Area (Finiq and Butrint)

Abstract

This article is a sample of the research I am conducting in the wider area of Saranda as part of the wider framework of critical analysis of cultural heritage, this scientific field that is placed at the meeting point of archaeology and anthropology. The two sciences have intersected in many different ways since the 1980s. Archaeology as a science that studies the archaeological remains of the past was confronted with anthropology whose purpose is the cultural analysis of social phenomena and relationships. The result of this partnership is a wide range of approaches, which are called post-process archaeologies . These approaches represent a variety of analyses, which emphasize a contextual, and thus contemporaneous, nature of archaeological evidence, the critique of archaeology as a scientific search for objective truth, its links with history and the contested nature of archaeological data and of the archaeological work. This perspective turns the interest of research from explanation to interpretation and from the positivist tradition of natural science to the tradition of interpretational philosophy, i.e. the preeminent study of meaning.