Abstract
Social anthropology courses, some elective and some mandatory, for archaeology students at the Department of Archaeology, University of Belgrade, commenced only after 2003. Since Serbian society opened itself from its isolation, the key challenge has been to teach new generations who have grown up during the civil wars in Former Yugoslavia to recognize broader perspectives on human cultures, universalities, and differences. Anthropology has been consequently utilized as a prominent tool for cultural relativism, multiculturalism, ‘Otherness’, and reflexive thinking. However much these facets have all proved necessary, they seem to have fallen to the wayside in ‘post-truth’ world. It has therefore become unclear in teaching how to address the phenomenon. This paper aims to critically discuss anachronous traditions in social and physical anthropology in combination with new challenges of the biologisation of social identities in archaeology and social anthropology.
Highlights
There is common thinking that the aim of archaeology is just to excavate and analyse the ruins of the past, archaeology is located within a patchwork of diverse epistemologies as well as is referent to activism regarding heritage and the future of human culture
Archaeology and anthropology are so mutually beneficial to one another in their study that one cannot do without the other. Both fields are located in a social context; as such, it should be understood and, if necessary, criticized and re-calibrated. This text was written from an archaeological point of view, taking into account the very simple idea that archaeology has multiple benefits if ideas from social anthropology are included in its teaching
One of the leading changes in terms of content was the introduction of ideas that came from social anthropology, which were implicitly present in the research of archaeologists of processual or post-processual persuasions
Summary
There is common thinking that the aim of archaeology is just to excavate and analyse the ruins of the past, archaeology is located within a patchwork of diverse epistemologies as well as is referent to activism regarding heritage and the future of human culture. Social anthropology and archaeology in education matter. This article aims to provide background on the application of courses of social anthropology at the Department of Archaeology, Belgrade, Serbia which reflect how teaching these comparative worlds of knowledge, changes one’s thinking about the deep past as well as how to critically re-evaluate the social realities of students and scholars who are still citizens of a country within the semi-periphery of Europe
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