Relativism, Politics and Debate

Abstract

Firstly, we would like to extend our thanks to the editorsof Archaeological Dialoguesand those authors who took the trouble to consider our article and write their responses to it. This discussion is a welcome extension to the workshop we had in Lampeter, and represents the open debate and pluralism which we believe is vital for an active and self-critical discipline. In this reply we would like to concentrate mainly on substantive issues raised by the respondents, rather than engage in point-scoring against individual participants. Nonetheless, there are a number of what we feel are mis-readings or mis-representations of our original article, which in themselves may be symptomatic of the type of ‘debate’ which has unfortunately characterised much of the discussion of recent theoretical and political issues, particularly within Anglo-American archaeology. In particular, it is regrettable that several commentators discussed our paper very much in the context of the old dichotomy of processual and postprocessual archaeologies. While Veit (p. 192), Bintliff, Kohl and, to some extent, Raven considered the paper as an attempt to moderate a single, established postprocessual position which may go some way towards a ‘convergence’ of both camps, Veit also viewed it in terms of a ‘counter-attack against processual archaeology’ (p. 189). We would like to emphasise that our multivocal discussion should not be seen as being written by, or on behalf of a certain ‘camp’ within current debates in our discipline, but by a diverse mix of theoretically interested archaeologists with a wide range of opinions, some of which conflict with one another. Other issues of polemic, rhetoric and form are dealt with at the end of this reply. At this point, however, it may be helpful to reiterate the origins and aims of our article.