Contemporary Archaeology in Theory: The New Pragmatism

This completely revised second edition of Contemporary Archaeology in Theory challenges the traditional boundaries between prehistoric and historical archaeologies, as well as those between time, space, things, and people. Essays by a distinguished group of archaeologists outline the emergence of a socially conscious archaeology by addressing the material mediation of contemporary social problems such as colonialism, industrialism, racialization, and globalization.  Contemporary Archaeology in Theory: The New Pragmatism investigates the gradual incorporation of questions of identity, meaning, agency, and practice alongside those of system, process, and structure. This new edition is an essential reader for students and a thought–provoking assessment of the field for all archaeologists, indigenous peoples, and the concerned lay public.

List of Tables and Figures x

List of Contributors xiii

Preface xv

Acknowledgments xvii

Part I The New Pragmatism 1

Part II Landscapes, Spaces, and Natures 51

1 The Temporality of the Landscape 59
Tim Ingold

2 Identifying Ancient Sacred Landscapes in Australia: From Physical to Social 77
Paul S. C. Tacon

3 Landscapes of Punishment and Resistance: A Female Convict Settlement in Tasmania, Australia 92
Eleanor Conlin Casella

4 Amazonia: The Historical Ecology of a Domesticated Landscape 104
Clark L. Erickson

Part III Agency, Meaning, and Practice 129

5 Practice and History in Archaeology: An Emerging Paradigm 137
Timothy R. Pauketat

6 Technology′s Links and Cha nes: The Processual Unfolding of Technique and Technician 156
Marcia–Anne Dobres

7 Structure and Practice in the Archaic Southeast 170
Kenneth E. Sassaman

8 Daily Practice and Material Culture in Pluralistic Social Settings: An Archaeological Study of Culture Change and Persistence from Fort Ross, California 191
Kent G. Lightfoot, Antoinette Martinez, and Ann M. Schiff

Part IV Sexuality, Embodiment, and Personhood 217

9 Good Science, Bad Science, or Science as Usual? Feminist Critiques of Science 226
Alison Wylie

10 On Personhood: An Anthropological Perspective from Africa 244
John L. Comaroff and Jean Comaroff

11 Girling the Girl and Boying the Boy: The Production of Adulthood in Ancient Mesoamerica 256
Rosemary A. Joyce

12 Domesticating Imperialism: Sexual Politics and the Archaeology of Empire 265
Barbara L. Voss

Part V Race, Class, and Ethnicity 281

13 The Politics of Ethnicity in Prehistoric Korea 290
Sarah M. Nelson

14 Historical Categories and the Praxis of Identity: The Interpretation of Ethnicity in Historical Archaeology 301
Sian Jones

15 Beyond Racism: Some Opinions about Racialism and American Archaeology 311
Roger Echo–Hawk and Larry J. Zimmerman

16 A Class All Its Own: Explorations of Class Formation and Conflict 325
LouAnn Wurst

Part VI Materiality, Memory, and Historical Silence 339

17 Money Is No Object: Materiality, Desire, and Modernity in an Indonesian Society 347
Webb Keane

18 Remembering while Forgetting: Depositional Practices and Social Memory at Chaco 362
Barbara J. Mills

19 Public Memory and the Search for Power in American Historical Archaeology 385
Paul A. Shackel

20 Re–Representing African Pasts through Historical Archaeology 404
Peter R. Schmidt and Jonathan R. Walz

Part VII Colonialism, Empire, and Nationalism 423

21 Archaeology and Nationalism in Spain 432
Margarita D ´az–Andreu

22 Echoes of Empire: Vijayanagara and Historical Memory, Vijayanagara as Historical Memory 445
Carla M. Sinopoli

23 Conjuring Mesopotamia: Imaginative Geography and a World Past 459
Zainab Bahrani

24 Confronting Colonialism: The Mahican and Schaghticoke Peoples and Us 470
Russell G. Handsman and Trudie Lamb Richmond

Part VIII Heritage, Patrimony, and Social Justice 491

25 The Globalization of Archaeology and Heritage A Discussion with Arjun Appadurai 498

26 Sites of Violence: Terrorism, Tourism, and Heritage in the Archaeological Present 508
Lynn Meskell

27 An Ethical Epistemology of Publicly Engaged Biocultural Research 525
Michael L. Blakey

28 Cultures of Contact, Cultures of Conflict? Identity Construction, Colonialist Discourse, and the Ethics of Archaeological Practice in Northern Ireland 534
Audrey Horning

Part IX Media, Museums, and Publics 551

29 No Sense of the Struggle: Creating a Context for Survivance at the NMAI 558
Sonya Atalay

30 The Past as Commodity: Archaeological Images in Modern Advertising 571
Lauren E. Talalay

31 The Past as Passion and Play: Catalhoyuk as a Site of Conflict in the Construction of Multiple Pasts 582
Ian Hodder

32 Copyrighting the Past? Emerging Intellectual Property Rights Issues in Archaeology 593
George P. Nicholas and Kelly P. Bannister

Index 618

Robert W. Preucel is Professor and Chair of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, Gregory Annenberg Weingarten Curator of the American Section at the University Museum, and Director of the Penn Center for Native American Studies.  His most recent book is Archaeological Semiotics (Wiley–Blackwell, 2009 in paper).

Stephen A. Mrozowski is the founding director of the Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, where he also serves as Chair of the Department of Anthropology. He has published more than sixty scholarly articles and monographs and is the author of The Archaeology of Class in Urban America (2006).