Archaeological Theory Research Articles

Archaeological theory today, 2nd edn., edited by Hodder, Ian

<i>Archaeological theory today, 2nd edn</i>., edited by Hodder, Ian

«Braseros» de bronce protohistóricos en Extremadura. Viejos y nuevos hallazgos; nuevas y viejas ideas

The updated catalogue for the so called metallic “braziers” coming from the Spanish region of Extremadura, in the southwestern Iberian Peninsula is presented here. It includes from the oldest findings, like the silver one from the Aliseda Treasure to the latest unpublished items. They are already more than 20 vessels coming from nine archaeological sites both from Cáceres and Badajoz provinces, where until a few years such production were practically unknown. With the presentation of the new repertory, many archaeological theories touching these signaled objects are reviewed too.

Evolution, Agency, and Objects: Re-Discovering Classical Pragmatism

Historically, the influence of American pragmatism on archaeology and archaeological theory has been limited. Until recently, archaeologists have shown little interest in pragmatism (Preucel & Mrozowski 2010). In what follows we will provide a plausible explanation for this omission and, more importantly, an outline of why and how the lacuna can be filled. Our argument centres mainly around classical pragmatism, in particular the work of G.H. Mead (1863-1931).

Archaeology after the End of history

This paper offers a survey of the rapid changes observed in the field of archaeological theory in the last 20 years or so; in the midst of cataclysmic changes in the way scholars, and the public at large, attempt to comprehend the past, archaeologists have learnt to trust significantly less their valuable raw data and "facts", in favour of more nuanced accounts allowing for the complexity of the phenomena they study. More to the point, they slowly realise that, as historians, they are internal to the problems under their scrutiny. &lt;br /&gt;

Flanqueando el procesualismo y post-procesualismo: Arqueología, teoría de la complejidad y la filosofía de Gilles Deleuze

The paper suggests that the politically informed complex philosophy of Gilles Deleuze can enable archaeologists to overcome the dichotomy between processualism and postprocessualism, opening the door to different kinds of archaeological thinking. His philosophy facilitates the reception and translation into the social sciences of the ideas coming from complexity theory, thanks to his realist stance and his prioritization of ontological over epistemological concerns. This move allows us to overcome the ‘symmetric turn’ and the different dichotomies underlying current archaeological thought, such as structure-process, subject-object, identity-difference, truth-value, or self-other. Finally, the paper rethinks some areas of archaeological theory through a critique of the internal and external conformation of the discipline, aiming at opening the spectrum of available interpretative frameworks.

World Systems, Cores, and Peripheries in Prehistoric Europe

The paper reviews the rise and utility of World Systems Theory in archaeology, with particular reference to Europe and the Bronze Age. After a consideration of its origins in the 1970s and 1980s, the main aspects of the theory are discussed. The evidence that shows that the Bronze Age world was highly interconnected is presented, and the implications of a World Systems view of the period considered. In an attempt to work towards a new narrative of the European Bronze Age, a brief discussion of network methods is introduced, since these offer an alternative, ‘bottom-up’, approach to the period which, it is argued, is more appropriate to the data than the World Systems approach.

Teoria i metodologia archeologii na Uniwersytecie w Poznaniu

The article attempts to present and evaluate the role and achievements of the Department of History and Methodology of Prehistory at the Institute of Prehistory at Adam Mickiewicz University, in terms of a reflection on theory and methodology of archaeology, developed in the framework of the Department, and pioneered by Professor Jan Żak. The first part presents an overview of the theoretical reflection and the range of issues undertaken by Professor Żak, while the second, by the employees of the Department of History and Methodology of Prehistory after Professor’s death. What all of these share is an attempt to find answers to questions about what is a “theory” in archaeology, what is its relationship with the practice of the discipline, the humanities and the intellectual world in general, as well as the role it played in the development of Polish archaeology in the past few decades.

The Archaeology of Immateriality

Despite changes in archaeological theory and practice over the past 40 years, most archaeologists are still not very good at acknowledging that “significance” is context-dependent and non-material. In this paper I present two cases studies from New England where archaeologists collaborated with Native peoples on sites that had significant preservation concerns. I evaluate to what extent these projects were successful in their goal of decolonizing archaeology. I call for a definition of materiality that acknowledges that tangible objects and their intangible contexts and meanings are inextricable, and that values are continuously created and recreated in the present by a variety of memory communities.

Introduction: The Materiality of Traces and Legacies

This Special Issue presents issues in contemporary archaeological theory and practice as influenced by the work of H. Martin Wobst. Wobst came to study in the U.S. nearly 50 years ago and has contributed to many changes in the theory and practice of archaeology since then. Though the papers cover a wide range of topics they share common interests in seeing materiality as constitutive of culture, archaeologists as participants in the present as well as observers of the past, and an interest in transcending traditional definitions of archaeological research.

“Making Us Uneasy”: Clarke, Wobst, and Their Critique of Archaeology Put into Practice

Both David Clarke and Martin Wobst have had a significant impact on archaeological theory and practice through their critical insights into the nature of archaeological inquiry and their respective challenges to assumptions about what we know and how we know it. This paper examines the development and historical context of some of their ideas, and highlights how their notions of responsibility, self-awareness, and relevance influence or intersect with contemporary archaeological practice.

Theory, Disciplinary Perspectives and the Archaeology of Later Medieval England

THE FIELD OF late-medieval archaeology has matured significantly over the past 25 years, and its engagement with archaeological theory has increased substantially over the last decade. Yet late-medieval archaeology still has not lived up to the enormous potential of its wealth of material and documentary evidence. It has been overshadowed by early medieval archaeology in the adoption of theoretical perspectives, and its relationships with the disciplines and evidence of history and art history are still complex and uneven. The article demonstrates the close links that have always existed between archaeological theory and disciplinary attitudes in medieval archaeology, contending that in a maturing field we should now be able to engage more effectively with both social theory and other disciplines to improve the recognition and relevance of our research. The article reviews the current state of archaeological theory in both late-medieval archaeology and the discipline as a whole, and offers suggestions on the challenges and opportunities presented by integration with history and art history. Finally, the article highlights present agendas and future directions in late-medieval archaeology, examining case studies of recent research that provide a way forward for socially informed and multidisciplinary archaeologies of the buildings, landscapes, and objects of the later Middle Ages. These studies demonstrate that empirical analysis and social interpretations are fully compatible, and that we should all be pursuing social questions, whenever and however we research the later Middle Ages.

In Search of the Middle Ground: Quantitative Spatial Techniques and Experiential Theory in Archaeology

In March 2011, a conference was held at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, focusing on the possibilities and potentials of combining quantitative spatial studies with more human-centred and theoretically explicit approaches to past landscapes. This short introduction outlines the main themes and goals of the conference and the resultant papers, published here as a special issue.

Understanding the archaeological record

This book explores the diverse understandings of the archaeological record in both historical and contemporary perspective, while also serving as a guide to reassessing current views. Gavin Lucas argues that archaeological theory has become both too fragmented and disconnected from the particular nature of archaeological evidence. The book examines three ways of understanding the archaeological record - as historical sources, through formation theory and as material culture - then reveals ways to connect these three domains through a reconsideration of archaeological entities and archaeological practice. Ultimately, Lucas calls for a rethinking of the nature of the archaeological record and the kind of history and narratives written from it.

Zooarchaeology and Modernity in Iceland

This paper follows the lead of the increasing numbers of scholars utilizing the methods and theory of environmental archaeology within historical archaeology. This paper addresses the issue of “modernity” in early modern Iceland through the analysis of faunal assemblages from historic sites in Iceland. It examines the idea of modernity through the ideas of commoditization of animals as well as the improvement of domestic animals as seen through these faunal assemblages. There are a number of possible faunal indications of processes associated with modernity in the existing historic assemblages of Iceland though at least some of these have deep roots in the medieval period. Examining the idea of modernity through the faunal assemblages of historic-period Iceland both help refine the idea of modernity as well as reveal the medieval roots of much of what we term “modern”.

Theory, Locality, and Methodology in Archaeology: Just Add Water?

Continuing the work of the ‘Vienna Circle’, philosopher Carl Hempel created explanatory models to ground scientific inquiry in logic and empirical truth. Beginning with the physical sciences, he explored the application of these models to the social sciences as well. Terrestrial archaeologists incorporated Hempelian concepts by calling for global changes in archaeological methodology. These changes, explicitly designed to maximize data collection (a necessary first step to develop archaeological general laws crucial to Hempelian explanation and confirmation), were developed using particular idiosyncratic geographical cues that would undermine archaeology if implemented in other contexts. In this article, I argue that similarly unconscious artifacts of particular archaeologists’ goals and locations have also governed underwater archaeology’s growth as a discipline, much to its detriment. It is my hope that understanding the philosophical and archaeological issues that have led archaeology to this point wil...

Advancing Theory? Landscape Archaeology and Geographical Information Systems

This paper will focus on how Geographical Information Systems (GIS) have been applied in Landscape Archaeology from the late 1980s to the present. GIS, a tool for organising and analysing spatial information, has exploded in popularity, but we still lack a systematic overview of how it has contributed to archaeological theory, specifically Landscape Archaeology. This paper will examine whether and how GIS has advanced archaeological theory through a historical review of its application in archaeology.

Intransigent archaeology. An interview with Evžen Neustupný on his life in archaeology

AbstractAn interview with Evžen Neustupný opens up a range of issues regarding the theory and history of archaeology and its development in Central Europe. His view of the discipline differs in many ways from that of current global trends. His ‘artefact archaeology’ inverts the concept of adaptation and highlights the role of artefacts in the creation of the human world. The interview also shows that post-war archaeology even to the east of the Iron Curtain followed the trajectory from culture-history paradigm to processualism and onwards. It also testifies to the situation in the social sciences under the Communist regime and the ambiguous role of Marxist philosophy.

The Location of Theory: A Discussion with Homi Bhabha

On Friday April 30th, 2010, the noted postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha entered into discussion with Alejandro Haber, Yannis Hamilakis and Uzma Rizvi, as part of the opening plenary session of TAG 2010, the Theoretical Archaeology Group conference at Brown University. The session was moderated by Nick Shepherd, and convened by Omur Harmansah on behalf of the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World. The theme for the plenary session was The Location of Theory (a full statement of the theme is given below). Haber, Hamilakis and Rizvi were asked to prepare 1000–2000 word statements in response to the theme. These were circulated in the weeks before TAG2010. Homi Bhabha gave a detailed and thoughtful response, in which he addressed each of the statements, and enlarged on the place and meaning of a project of theory in archaeology. In this issue of Archaeologies, we publish the statements by Haber, Hamilakis and Rizvi, produced in response to the session brief. The outline for the plenary session on The Location of Theory was multi-authored, and was workshopped by a group meeting in the Joukowsky Institute in the months leading up to TAG 2010. The full text of this statement follows: The TAG 2010 meeting at Brown University will open to debate the supposed universal applicability of Archaeological Theory (in the singular), given the emergent reaction and critique from scholars from various localities in the world which have long been generating diverse archaeological practices and theories (in the plural). Given archaeology’s long history and intimate entanglements with imperialist, colonialist and even racist discourses, archaeological practice and theory have always been deeply political as an agent of change in the global scale and within histories of places. In the last few decades, archaeologists and archaeological theorists have been increasingly engaged with tracing the genealogies of the discipline in colonial modernity and reflecting on its powerfully political status in the postcolonial world (e.g. Hamilakis and Duke 2007; Liebmann and Rizvi 2008). Archaeological theory itself, with its theories of the center (such as processualism and postprocessualism) arguably has a globalizing tendency to Archaeologies: Journal of the World Archaeological Congress ( 2012) DOI 10.1007/s11759-012-9199-7

Statistical Analyses Cannot be Divorced from Archaeological Theory: A Reply to Potter

AbstractPotter criticizes our experimental study of the roles played by indirect bias and guided variation in shaping prehistoric Great Basin projectile point variation. His criticisms are technically correct from the standpoint of statistical convention, but he fails to understand the theoretical rationale of our study. Without such an understanding, his assertion that our conclusions are questionable is incorrect. Here we point out again (1) how our experimental work bridges the gap between cultural-transmission theory and the empirical record and (2) why our conclusions are indeed valid.

1 Home Turf: Archaeology, Territoriality, and Politics

ABSTRACTArchaeological studies of political life have often assumed that the control of territory is an inherent aspect of social power, particularly within complex polities. Frustration with the rigid territorialism of archaeological approaches to politics has fostered enthusiasm for alternative models of political space, including networks. While we concur with this frustration, we argue that territorial models should still be integral to archaeological studies of political landscapes. However, archaeologists should reframe the control of territory as one of many modalities through which authority can be claimed and reproduced and focus attention on variability in territorial patterns and processes. In this introduction, we review previous approaches to territoriality in anthropology and corollary fields, outline dimensions of variability in territorial behaviors and institutions, and provide a foundation for the series of essays in this volume, which collectively seek to invigorate the study of territoriality in anthropological archaeology. [territoriality, archaeological theory, landscape archaeology]