Introduction: Archaeology and Post-Structuralism Ian Bapty and Tim Yates i If it recedes one day, leaving behind its works and signs on the shores of our ...

Psychological evidence suggests that laypeople understand the world around them in terms of intuitive ontologies which describe broad categories of objects in the world, such as ‘person’, ‘artefact’ and ‘animal’. However, because intuitive ontologies are the result of natural selection, they only need to be adaptive; this does not guarantee that the knowledge they provide is a genuine reflection of causal mechanisms in the world. As a result, science has parted ways with intuitive ontologies. Nevertheless, since the brain is evolved (...) to understand objects in the world according to these categories, we can expect that they continue to play a role in scientific understanding. Taking the case of human evolution, we explore relationships between intuitive ontological and scientific understanding. We show that intuitive ontologies not only shape intuitions on human evolution, but also guide the direction and topics of interest in its research programmes. Elucidating the relationships between intuitive ontologies and science may help us gain a clearer insight into scientific understanding. (shrink)

Agency in Archaeology is the first critical volume to scrutinize the concept of agency and to examine in-depth its potential to inform our understanding of the past. Theories of agency recognize that human beings make choices, hold intentions and take action. This offers archaeologists scope to move beyond looking at the broad structural or environmental change and instead to consider the individual and the group. The book brings together nineteen internationally renowned scholars who have very different, and often conflicting, stances (...) on the meaning and use of agency theory to archaeology. (shrink)

This book questions the value of the concept of 'agency', a term used in sociological and philosophical literature to refer to individual free will in archaeology. On the one hand it has been argued that previous generations of archaeologists, in explaining social change in terms of structural or environmental conditions, have lost sight of the 'real people' and reduced them to passive cultural pawns, on the other, introducing the concept of agency to counteract this can be said to perpetuate a (...) modern, Western view of the autonomous individual who is free from social constraints. This book discusses the balance between these two opposites, using a range of archaeological and historical case studies, including European and Asian prehistory, classical Greece and Rome, the Inka and other Andean cultures. While focusing on the relevance of 'agency' theory to archaeological interpretation and using it to create more diverse and open-ended accounts of ancient cultures, the authors also address the contemporary political and ethical implications of what is essentially a debate about the definition of human nature. (shrink)

Is gender determined by biology, society or experience? How have notions of gender and sexuality differed in past societies? Addressing such questions, Gender and Archaeology is the first critical introduction to the field of gender archaeology as it has evolved over the last two decades. It examines the impact of feminist perspectives on archaeology and shows the unique insights that gender archaeology offers on topics like the sexual division of labor, issues of sexuality, and the embodiment of gender identity. A (...) substantial case study of gender and space in the medieval English castle lucidly draws together and illustrates these issues. Comprehensive and accessible, Gender and Archaeology is sure to further debate in the field. (shrink)

After Modernity summarizes archaeological approaches to the contemporary past, and suggests a new agenda for the archaeology of late modern societies.

This volume provides an authoritative account of the current status of archaeological theory, as presented by some of its major exponents and innovators over ...

Interpretive Archaeologies provides a forum for debate between varied approaches to studying the past. It reflects the profound shift in the direction of archaeological study in the last fifteen years. The book argues that archaeologists must understand their own subjective approaches to the material they study as well as recognize how past researchers imposed their value systems on the evidence they presented. The book's authors, drawn from Europe, North America, Asia and Australasia, represent many different strands of archaeology. They address (...) the philosophical issues involved in interpretation and the origins of meaning in the evolution and emergence of "mind" in early hominids. They discuss the ways in which material culture is understood and presented in museums, and how the nature of history is itself in flux. (shrink)

This companion volume to Archaeology as Long-term History focuses on the symbolism of artefacts. It seeks at once to refine current theory and method relating to interpretation and show, with examples, how to conduct this sort of archaeological work. Some contributors work with the material culture of modern times or the historic period, areas in which the symbolism of mute artefacts has traditionally been thought most accessible. However, the book also contains a good number of applications in prehistory to demonstrate (...) the feasibility of symbolic interpretation where good contextual data survive from the distant past. In relation to wider debates within the social sciences, the volume is characterised by a concern to place abstract symbolic codes within their historical context and within the contexts of social actions. In this respect, it develops further some of the ideas presented in Dr Hodder's Symbolic and Structural Archaeology, an earlier volume in this series. (shrink)

This volume addresses the need to describe the world so that archaeology can have theory built as historical science.

I show how archaeologists have two problems. The construction of scenarios accounting for the raw data of Archaeology, the material remains of the past, and the explanation of pre-history. Within Archaeology, there has been an ongoing debate about how to constrain speculation within both of these archaeological projects, and archaeologists have consistently looked to biological mechanisms for constraints. I demonstrate the problems of using biology, either as an analogy for cultural processes or through direct application of biological principles to material (...) remains. This is done through setting out the requirements of a Darwinian Archaeology, and then measuring various approaches against these requirements. This approach leads to the conclusion that archaeologist's explanations of the past must include within their formulations an account of human cognitive capacities within their explanatory framework. The limits of our understanding of the human past will be the limits of our understanding of Homo sapiens. (shrink)

Common sense is not enough -- The "new archaeology" -- Archaeology as a science -- Middle-range theory, ethnoarchaeology, and material culture studies -- Culture and process -- Thoughts and ideologies -- Postprocessual and interpretative archaeologies -- Archaeology, gender, and identity -- Archaeology and cultural evolution -- Archaeology and Darwinian evolution -- Archaeology and history -- Archaeology, politics and culture -- Conclusion : the future of theory.

Is archaeology an art or a science? This question has been hotly debated over the last few decades with the rise of archaeological science. At the same time, archaeologists have seen a change in the intellectual character of their discipline, as many writers have adopted approaches influenced by social theory. The discipline now encompasses both archaeological scientists and archaeological theorists, and discussion regarding the status of archaeology remains polarised. Andrew Jones argues that we need to analyse the practice of archaeology. (...) Through an analysis of archaeological practice, influenced by recent developments in the field of science studies, and with the aid of extensive case studies, he develops a new framework which allows the interpretative and methodological components of the discipline to work in tandem. His reassessment of the status and character of archaeology will be of interest to students, scholars and professionals. (shrink)

This book is a groundbreaking attempt to address questions of non-human and material agency from a wide range of perspectives and disciplines: archaeology, ...

This volume explores the theoretical frameworks, methodology and field practice suited to late antique archaeology.

EDITORS' INTRODUCTION Perhaps the single most broadly unifying feature of the early new archaeology was the demand that archaeologists not take the aims and ...

Recent archaeological theory has show that images of the past have carried a particularly strong resonance within modern social groups. This volume explores the immeasurable impact that the phenomenon of archaeology has had on the representation of the past in the modern world. Modern society’s ‘archaeological imagination’ conceives of archaeology as a producer of images of the past which become representations of modern group identities. If archaeology is utilized by public groups to construct and represent identities, then what are archaeologists (...) to do with that public? The very fact that the public is interested in the past and in archaeological research is an opportunity for archaeology to engage that public. Participation in the public’s modern interest in archaeology, however, puts archaeology at risk. The growing role of archaeology and heritage within the economics of tourism, has led to a commodification of archaeological knowledge and experience for consumption. This volume begins a discourse on the implications of performing archaeology in a world dominated by modern trends of mass production, mass replication and representation of cultural forms and mass consumption of images of the past. The contributors explore to what extent we are experiencing a crisis of representation of the past due to contemporary consumption of mass-produced replicas, simulations, images and experiences of the past. To work through this crisis the contributors in this volume are exploring opportunities for development within archaeological thought and practice. Their arguments illustrate a move towards active, participatory and poetic archaeological thought and practice. Rather than focusing on what is produced through process (artifacts, monuments, interpretive centers, etc.), they are concerned with what they are doing, about taking part, about participating reflexively in the tradition of understanding and expressing understanding of the past. This volume does not conjure up romantic beliefs about the project of archaeology, but rather, it signals a fundamental revision of archaeology - not what it is, but what it can do. (shrink)

If cognition is distributed as well as embodied, then explanation in cognitive science must often highlight more or less transient extended systems spanning embodied brains, social networks or resources and key parts of the natural and the cultural world. These key parts of material culture are not simply cues which trigger the truly cognitive apparatus inside the head but instead form ‘‘a continuous part of the machinery itself’’, as ‘‘systemic components the interaction of which brings forth the cognitive process in (...) question’’ (Malafouris, 2004:58). On this view, cognitive science is thus not just the study of the brain: indeed, even neuroscience cannot be the study of the brain alone, for brains coupled with external resources may have unique functional and dynamical characteristics apparent only when we also attend to the nature of those resources and the peculiarities of the interaction. This chapter argues that if cognition is indeed thus distributed, then cognition is also historical and heterogeneous and must also be analysed diachronically and differentially. If mind is extended, that is to say, then historical cognitive sciences are essential to the interdisciplinary enterprise. This is not just because individual brains themselves are ‘‘biosocial organs permeated by history’’ (Cowley, 2002:75) but also on the longer scale because of dramatic historical diversity in the nature, properties and use of cognitive artefacts. According to Andy Clark, ‘‘the single most important task’’ for ‘‘a science of the bio-technological mind’’ is to understand ‘‘the range and variety of types of cognitive scaffolding and the different ways in which non-biological scaffolding can augment (or impair) performance’’ (Clark, 2002:29, my italics). Unique historical and cultural features of human beings extended cognitive make-up are thus not accidental extras added to a basic biologically given mind. Rather, such changing media, objects, routines, institutions and practices have.... (shrink)

This is the first book-length study to explore the relationship between archaeology and modern thought, showing how philosophical ideas that developed in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries still dominate our approach to the material remains of ancient societies. It discusses the modern emphasis on method rather than ethics or meaning, our understanding of change in history and nature, the role of the nation-state in forming our views of the past, and contemporary notions of human individuality, the mind, and materiality. Julian (...) Thomas also addresses the modern preoccupation with depth, which enables archaeology to be used as a metaphor in other disciplines. The book concludes by advocating a "counter-modern" archaeology that refuses to separate material evidence from political, moral, rhetorical, and aesthetic concerns, as well as meaning. (shrink)

This groundbreaking work considers one of the central themes of archaeology, time, which until recently has been taken for granted. It considers how time is used and perceived by archaeology and also how time influences the construction of identities. The book presents case studies, eg, transition from hunter gather to farming in early Neolithic, to examine temporality and identity. Drawing upon the work of Martin Heidegger, Thomas develops a way of writing about the past in which time is seenm as (...) central to the emergence of the identities of peoples and things. He questions the modern western distinction between nature and culture, mind and body, object and subject, and argues that in some senses the temporal structure of human beings, artefacts and places are similar. (shrink)

Since the l960s, archaeology has become increasingly taught in universities and practiced on a growing scale by national and local heritage agencies throughout the world. This book addresses the criticisms of postmodernist writers about archaeology's social role, and asserts its intellectual importance and achievements in discovering real facts about the human past. It looks forward to the creation of a truly global consciousness of the origins of human societies and civilizations.