Archaeological reflexivity and the local voice

In this introductory essay to this volume, we chart and survey an emerging fi eld, that of archaeological ethnography. We show its links and associations with both disciplinary and social-political trends in archaeology and in social anthropology in the last decades, and discuss some of the key recent work that has been carried out under this rubric. We argue that archaeological ethnography needs to be defi ned broadly, as a trans-disciplinary and transcultural space that enables researchers and diverse publics to engage in various conversations, exchanges, and interventions. Material traces from various times are at the centre of this emerging space. The production of his space requires a radical rethinking of the ontological and epistemological basis of archaeology, questioning the moder nist roots of offi cial archaeologies, and demonstrating the existence of other, public discourses, practices and engagements with the material past which can be defi ned as alternative archaeologies. Archaeological ethnography can bring to the fore these alternative engagements without necessarily endorsing their premises, being constantly alert to their political connotations and renderings. The main interconnected facets of archaeological ethnography as we propose it here are its critical refl exivity, its holistic and multi-sited nature, its multi-temporal rather than presentist character, its sensuous and sensory engagement with the world, its political commitment, and its conception as collective and team practice, which transcends the boundaries between the researcher and his or her diverse publics.

Note: Full Paper Available through the Archaeological Review From Cambridge, http://www.societies.cam.ac.uk/arc/current.html An essay on the potential for place-based approaches to archaeological map-making, using my work with telescopic alidade and plane-table survey of stone architecture in Kalawao as a case study.

Archaeological Dialogues, 2006

Canadian Journal of Archaeology, 2014

D efining the relationship b e tw e e n a rc h a e o lo g y a n d th e people it studies has always been an elu sive undertaking. T he people o f the past are long gone by the time archaeologists arrive to tell th eir stories. W hat exactly we can and cannot say about them o r on th eir b eh a lf from th e im perfectly p re served an d n o n -rep resentative sam ple o f th e ir m aterial g estures is not, a n d never has been, very clear. Many archae ologists have, we think, underestim ated the complexity o f this problem . Archae ologists seem to expect the relationships between things and culture, culture and individuals, the past an d the present to be straightforw ard, w hen all evidence from the anthropology of o u r own expe riences suggests otherw ise. In the p re sent th ere is some correlation between m aterial things an d th eir roles in p eo p le's lives, b u t the reality, as anyone who has had a favourite coffee m ug or a dis like for specific places knows, is com plex and varied. T he distance between what we th in k ourselves to be capable o f as cu ltu ral beings a n d w hat we define as the subject o f o th er peoples' history is a m easure o f these limitations. Despite o ur hopes th at the past is understandable in o u r own terms, it seems likely th at this is as m uch an ethnocentric aspiration as a scholarly truth. M artindale and Nicholas (this volume) argue that such bias serves us well when the archaeologists are part o f the descent com m unity o f the people being studied, b u t generates ethnocen tric barriers to o u r perception when the arch aeo lo g ical-su b ject re la tio n sh ip is m ore distant. T here has always existed a double standard in archaeology on this front, one that reflects a wider asymme try in which som e ways of knowing the past are valued while others are not. T he im balance favours the dom inant cultural community, which in the cu rren t politi cal context Atalay 2007:253) defines as "western". H ere we refer n o t ju st to the declarative value o f considering m ulti ple points of view (which has increased lately), b u t to th e dem onstrable effort to do so, which as many papers in this special issue argue, requires disciplinary concessions o f privilege and forthright scrutiny about ethnocentrism . As with any subaltern dynam ic, th e asym m etry is m o re visible to th o se w ho occupy m arginalized p o in ts o f view, which in N orth Am erican archaeology at least, is prim arily Indigenous (although similar relatio n sh ip s exist in th e archaeology o f A frican-A m erican, L atino, C hinese a n d o th e r c o m m u n itie s). T h o se w ho are n o t m arginalized by the structural asym m etries o f pow er do n o t perceive

2014

Bulletin of the History of Archaeology, 1997

and Daniel Miller have in common? What are the relationships between McGuire's A MarxistArchaeology (1992) and Zen and the Art of Mo to rcycle Ma intenance (persig 1974)1 If you like the conjunction of paradigms from philosophy and psychology, reflections upon science and the humanities, refreshing reconsiderations of the processual and post-processual debates, and mental gymnastics, you will undoubtedly enjoy a majority of the essays found in this unique book. The goal of this volume is to reflect upon recent theoretical issues in archaeology. The commentators are, in the main, practicing archaeologists educated in the British tradition with substantial backgrounds in social anthropology, social theory, and philosophy. Therefore, some North American-trained anthropological anthropologists may find the scope of this interesting and introspective volume uncustomary and controver sial, perhaps even disjointed and diffused. The work goes beyond the "Old" and "New" Archaeology para digms, modernism. and post-modernism, objectivist and processual versus contextualist and post process ualist approaches, as well as other theoretical (and methodological) dichotomies. A majority of the authors are concerned about the major debates on archaeological theory that have taken place during the past two decades-for example, science and interpretation, and processualism and post-process ualism. Likewise, the papers concern the interr elationships of archaeology and contemporary social theory and draw from philosophy, the structure of science, gender studies, and ethics, among other humanities and social and physical sciences. In sum, the book engages an important question: Has contemporary theory in archaeology moved from constructive, "progressive" dialogues to a series of defensive, intractable positions or "pos tures?" Mackenzie also states that the idea that archaeologists " ... can disengage their personal, social, and political context from their work must also be construed as posturing" (p. 26). There are many fresh voices and divergent opinions presenting some invigorating ideas and challenging theoreticians of archaeological discourse.

Journal of Field Archaeology, 2021

This article presents a holistic and reflexive process for archaeological fieldwork from inception to publication. The opportunities afforded by maturing digital techniques allowed fundamental rethinking of field and laboratory practice paradigms. A number of normally unquestioned aspects of archaeological praxis were examined with the goal of reorganizing information dynamics. Instead of a series of disparate processes in the field and field laboratory and during study and publication phases, a heterarchically-organized common information framework bonded all aspects of work traditionally only brought together in post-excavation processing, replacing disparate datasets and encompassing ongoing processes such as excavation recording, finds processing, and final analyses. Recording uses a common interface based on the iDig iPad app, and analyses use 3D GIS, based on comprehensive photogrammetry and an underlying all-encompassing data engine. The development and application of the process are described with reference to the excavations, study, and publication of EBA sites on Keros, Cyclades, Greece.

30th EAA Annual Meeting Abstract Book, 2024

The power of Archeology as a politically and socially active science is unquestionable. Far from descriptive/analytical studies, Archeology is a tool of great action capable of entering into the debates of the present world. Continuous, non-stop “progress” - new techniques, new analytics, specialisation within specialisation, impact indices - dominate much of the discipline, but at some point along the way, do we put the brakes on all this and stop to think about what direction we are going in or how far we want to go? Reflections that go beyond mere academic transfers or the safeguarding of a common heritage. We study people, communities, elites, minorities, marginalised..., or at least the materiality/non-materiality left by these groups throughout history. So, we have a great responsibility on our hands. But does all this really have an impact on the communities living in the territories we research? In this paper we intend to do our bit to our possibilities as a science based on what we have been doing in the framework of Agrarian Archaeology in the study of local/rural mountain communities in the north and south of the Iberian Peninsula. In our research we have focused on these communities as the protagonists of their own history, active agents with a capacity for agency who have deployed various strategies to face up to different historical challenges. These diachronic approaches lead us to work or live in rural spaces that are still inhabited. This interaction makes us militant in the face of the problems that these territories are going through, seeking an agency that allows us to counteract the dominant discourses, to generate actions of co-construction of knowledge by integrating ourselves into the very communities in which we live and of which we form part as human capital and socialising agents of the territory.

American antiquity, 2003