Bintliff (1995) Whither archaeology?'revisited

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.

2004

Archaeology at the Millennium: A Sourcebook, edited by Gary M. Feinman and T. Douglas Price, pp. 11-32. Kluwer/Plenum, New York., 2001

Settlement pattern studies are continuing to help form the methodologi cal, and occasionally the theoretical. basis for examining ancient culture as a whole. including social structure, ideology, iconograp~y, and economy.

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 1985

I. THE QUEST FOR RELEVANCE "Contemporary archaeology," says Kohl in his recent state-of-the-art review, "is nothing if not tortuously self-conscious" (1981:108), yet, as he observes, this self-consciousness has been curiously limited. While, in an archaeology context, self-consciousness led to a "vehement advocacy" of positivist methods for realizing objective, validated knowledge of other (past) cultures, other social sciences were led, by similar selfcriticism, to "question[ing] the possibility of impartial, value-free social science research" (Kohl 1981:93). The reason for this discrepancy has to do, I suggest, with the fact that archaeologists were motivated to reassess and overhaul their discipline by a deep concern to make it more "relevant." It was recognized that, so long as research remained descriptive, it would yield only curiosities and relics while, if a method could be devised for reliably interpreting the data as evidence of the cultural past, it might be in a position to provide information of quite broad and even pragmatic value. Thus, the New Archaeologists promoted positivism as a methodology capable of progressively eliminating error and, in this, of assuring approximation to an ideal of objective and possibly useful truth in knowledge claims about the past. By contrast to this, the self-consciousness of sociology and social anthropology referred to by Kohl did not arise so much from a perceived need to make research relevant as from a concern to take stock of the social and political interests that it was already serving, deliberately or inadvertently. Kohl notes with a touch of irony that, while archaeologists were refining their methodology so that it would yield information relevant to "explaining the past and possibly directing future social change" (1981:92), social anthropologists were "acknowledging their discipline's unsavory relationship to colonialism" (1981:92) and its role in transforming formerly isolated, noncapitalist and nonindustrial societies. They were also beginning to acknowledge what Handsman (1981a) has 133 0278-4165/85 $3.00