Socio-Political Values and Archaeological Research: A Rejoinder to Tangri

Abstract

One of the consequences of the turn towards critical self-reflection in archaeology (see e.g. Clarke 1973; Shanks and Tilley 1987) has been that we now understand more about the power of tradition. Tradition guides the socialisation of practitioners (especially in matters related to the goals of archaeology, problem selection, methodology and assessments of the plausibility of knowledge claims). Tradition also structures the terms in which practitioners of disciplines cognate to archaeology establish the meaning or plausibility of archaeological knowledge claims. In this sense tradition both oversees the production and the legitimation of archaeological knowledge (Murray 1987).