Preface to the first edition Preface to the second edition 1. The problem 2. The systems approach 3. Structuralist archaeology 4. Marxist archaeology, ideology and practice 5. Archaeology and history 6. An ethnohistoric example: reconsideration of ethnoarchaeology and middle range theory 7. Contextual archaeology 8. Post-processual archaeology 9. Conclusion: archaeology as archaeology Bibliography Index.

Reading the past : current approaches to interpretation in archaeology

Archaeology includes the study of artifacts and other aspects of material culture but is more importantly about people-understanding people's daily lives, their sense of place in the world, the food they ate, their art, their spirituality, and their political and social organization. In piecing together multiple lines of evidence, including written documents, oral histories, analytical data from artifacts and ecofacts, and a range of regional and local environmental evidence, archaeologists attempt to write the stories of the past. Stated simply, archaeology is one of many tools utilized for understanding the past. However, when placed in its proper historical context, it is clear that the discipline of archaeology was built around and relies upon Western knowledge systems and methodologies, and its practice has a strongly colonial history.' Many archaeologists have come to recognize that archaeology is based on, and generally reflects, the values of Western cultures.2 In privileging the material, scientific, observable world over the spiritual, experiential, and unquantifiable aspects of archaeological sites, ancient peoples, and artifacts, archaeological practice demonstrates that it is solidly grounded in Western ways of categorizing, knowing, and interpreting the world. However, as Indigenous and local groups around the world have demonstrated, it is not only archaeologists who feel stewardship responsibilities toward archaeological materials and locations-many groups have rights and responsibilities to the human and material remains and to the knowledge, memories, and spiritual power that are intimately tied with the places and materials studied by archaeologists. Prior to European colonization, communities were able to act as stewards over their

Indigenous Archaeology as Decolonizing Practice

This review calls for the definition of a landscape approach in archaeology. After tracing the development of the landscape idea over its history in the social sciences and examining the compatibility between this concept and traditional archaeological practice, we suggest that archaeology is particularly well suited among the social sciences for defining and applying a landscape approach. If archaeologists are to use the landscape paradigm as a “pattern which connects” human behavior with particular places and times, however, we need a common terminology and methodology to build a construct paradigm. We suggest that settlement ecology, ritual landscapes, and ethnic landscapes will contribute toward the definition of such a broadly encompassing paradigm that also will facilitate dialogue between archaeologists and traditional communities.

An Archaeology of Landscapes: Perspectives and Directions

▪ Abstract This paper traces the conjunction of two interrelated epistemic phenomena that have begun to shape the discipline since the early 1990s. The first entails theorizing social identity in past societies: specifically, how social lives are inscribed by the experiences of gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and so on. The other constitutes the rise of a politicized and ethical archaeology that now recognizes its active role in contemporary culture and is enunciated through the discourses of nationalism, sociopolitics, postcolonialism, diaspora, and globalism. Both trends have been tacitly shaped by anthropological and social theory, but they are fundamentally driven by the powerful voices of once marginalized groups and their newfound place in the circles of academic legitimacy. I argue that our disciplinary reticence to embrace the politics of identity, both in our investigations of the past and our imbrications in the present, has much to do with archaeology's lack of reflexivity, both personal and disc...

The Intersections of Identity and Politics in Archaeology

Oral traditions provide a viable source of information about historical settings dating back far in time—a fact that has gained increasing recognition in North America, although archaeologists and other scholars typically give minimal attention to this data. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) lists oral traditions as a source of evidence that must be considered by museum and federal agency officials in making findings of cultural affiliation between ancient and modern Native American communities. This paper sets forth the NAGPRA standards and presents an analytical framework under which scholars can proceed with evaluation of historicity in verbal records of the ancient past. The author focuses on an Arikara narrative and argues that it presents a summary of human history in the New World from initial settlement up to the founding of the Arikara homeland in North Dakota. Oral records and the archaeological record describe a shared past and should be viewed as natural partners in post-NAGPRA America. In conceptual terms, scholarship on the past should revisit the bibliocentric assumptions of “prehistory,” and pursue, instead, the study of “ancient American history”-an approach that treats oral documents as respectable siblings of written documents.

Alan S. Downer

Papers

Native Americans and Archaeologists: Stepping Stones to Common Ground