a 017627

8/6/2019 A 017627

1/8

Copyright 2001 SAGE Publications(London,Thousand Oaks,CA and New Delhi)

Vol 1(1):512 [1469-6053(200106)1:1;512;017627]

Journal of Social Archaeology A R T I C L E

5

Editorial statement

Momentous intellectual shifts in the social sciences have often been

marked by new publishing ventures, particularly journals, that chart

the progress of innovative developments. In anthropology, Public Culture

has occupied an important space in foregrounding a political anthropology

which focuses on contemporary valences such as postcolonialism and dias-pora. It is noteworthy that archaeologys developments in the last two

decades have not been marked by similar projects. This is surprising since

there have been major epistemic shifts in the subject matter, methodologies

and wider responsibilit ies of archaeology in the past 20 years. New con-

textual and interpretive approaches have emerged alongside challenges to

object-oriented, culture historical and scientific traditions that operated

under the guise of objectivity. With the acknowledgement of reflexivity

came the recognition that archaeology operates in the world and its materi-

ality and historicity have tangible effects on living people and communities.Few can now deny the political entanglements of the archaeological past

and contemporary narratives.

This journal offers a venue to investigate those imbrications by placing

archaeology within wider discourses across the humanities and the social

and natural sciences. Issues with contemporary salience include aspects of

identity, ancient and modern. Today, archaeologists routinely contribute to

analyses of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, class, race in short, social differ-

ence. Increasingly, social difference is formulated around theorizing the

body, not only in archaeology but in social theory generally. Archaeologyalso engages with questions of social commemoration whether in the form

of mortuary analysis, monumentality or landscape. This leads into larger

questions concerning temporalities, diasporas, and social memory, topics
http://www.sagepub.co.uk/http://www.sagepub.co.uk/

8/6/2019 A 017627

2/8

6 Journal of Social Archaeology 1(1)

articulated by Barbara Bender in this issue. Contemporary archaeology

considers questions of time and identity in lived experience, specifically as

manifest in ritual, household archaeology and material culture studies.

An explicit focus on the social in terms of ident ity, meaning and prac-tice can certainly be seen as a positive development in archaeology. It is an

outcome of a growing engagement with social theory in fields as diverse as

history, social anthropology, linguistics, sociology, human geography, litera-

ture, gender studies, queer studies, etc. In this sense, a social archaeology

forcefully expands upon Phillipss (Willey and Phillips, 1958: 2) dictum that

archaeology is anthropology, or it is nothing. Archaeology is shifting its

status from a discipline, with everything that that implies boundaries,

canons and institut ional forms of reproduction to a process of knowledge

production mediated by mater ial culture and experience.

Archaeologists frequently make overtures to interdisciplinarity, particu-

larly in the area of social theory. However, few have made substantive

inroads to these other fields. The profile of the editorial board is drawn from

anthropology, art history, social science, feminist theory and history, reflect-

ing a collaborative effort to establish a dialogic relationship between fields.

By having anthropologists, feminists and others comment on relevant

archaeological contributions, or by interviewing prominent social theorists,

the journal seeks to stimulate discussion and debate. Through these collab-

orations we hope to move beyond the simple importation of outside theory

into archaeology and instead to contribute to wider intellectual develop-ment in all fields. Archaeology is often critiqued for its attempts at theory-

building: this venture affords us a rare venue to explore that possibility. We

see the widespread support for interdisciplinary collaboration expressed in

areas such as cultural studies, feminist and ethnic studies as a testament to

the potential for academic exchange. Moreover, we actively encourage con-

tributions from anthropologists and other social scientists working on

material culture, the materiality and monumentality of the past and his-

torical issues. Bryan Turners contribution in the current issue inaugurates

this interdisciplinary dialogue.The journal will also stimulate intradisciplinary exchange by bringing

together widely separated discourses and traditions. Regional specializa-

tions are now subject to wider global dissemination. The journal will facili-

tate the breakdown of those arbitrary and hegemonic boundaries between

North American, Classical, Near Eastern, Mesoamerican, European and

Australian archaeologies and beyond. We propose no temporal or topical

limits, including the archaeology of ourselves and the very recent past. The

journal thus provides a forum in which archaeologists working on common

issues in different areas can engage with each other over questions oftheory. The central requirement of all published work will be that a serious

attempt is made to engage the social as not merely epiphenomenal, but as

central to an understanding of past and present identities and meanings.

8/6/2019 A 017627

3/8

7Editorial

s THE SOCIAL

Social archaeology is difficult to define since it has shifted in its meaning

continuously. A historical view can be useful in seeing the shape of previousattempts to understand the past in social terms. There is a tendency in

historical accounts to see present forms of thought as leaping over the

inadequacies of past approaches. In fact, we suggest that each generation

continues to explore the questions framed by all its predecessors.

Archaeology has always included a concept of the social, even if it was

not always dominant and is sometimes hidden. Evolutionists, Boasians and

V. Gordon Childe a ll attempted to understand past societies in their differ-

ent ways. Grahame Clarke in his bookA rchaeology and Society (1939) saw

archaeology as thoroughly social and, in fact, only justified by its social role.By the 1960s the origins of the term became oppositional: it was archae-

ology distinguished from more environmentally determined forms of expla-

nation or from diffusionism, both of which took social format ions and their

changes into account.

From the 1960s onwards there was a tendency to treat the social rather

narrowly as economics and social organization. With the emergence of

processual archaeology, Lewis Binford (1962) offered a systems view of

culture that purported to integrate the material expressions of technology,

society and ideology. In practice, only technology and society wereaddressed, perhaps a legacy of Christopher H awkes (1954) ladder of infer-

ence, which argued that technology was easier to access methodologically

than religion. In 1973, Colin Renfrew, as he discusses in this issue, gave an

inaugural lecture that challenged processual archaeology to transcend the

ecosystems approach and explore the emergence of symbolic systems and

art styles. Five years later, a similar dissatisfaction was expressed by Charles

Redman and others (1978) who argued for the need to go beyond subsist-

ence and dating to look at style and information exchange. By 1984

Renfrew had identified five basic topics for a social archaeology: societies

and space and how landscapes of power are created; networks and flows

(trade and interaction); structures of authority concerning monuments and

the structure of pre-urban societies; the dynamics of continuous growth as

approached through systems thinking; issues of discontinuity and long-term

change (Renfrew, 1984). In contrast, the social approach of processual

archaeology tended to define the evolution of social complexity as its

centra l focus (Yoffee and Sherratt, 1993). Today, Michael Schiffer (2000)

engages with power, political action, and representation from the perspec-

tive of behavioural archaeology. These various perspectives foreground

the centrality of the social and how it resonates today in archaeologicaldialogues.

With the development of postprocessual archaeologies, the social began

8/6/2019 A 017627

4/8


to address ideology and power. Some of these approaches draw inspiration

from the Marxist-inspired work of Childe (1936). Daniel Miller and

Christopher Tilley (1984) offer a critique of ideology that presupposes an

active construction and representation of the social world by past peoplesand maintains a critical attitude to the analysis of these practices. They

advocate an understanding of human agency as historically constituted by

social relations. Similarly, Randy McGuire (1992) has espoused a d ialecti-

cal Marxist perspective conceived as a theory of internal relations as a way

to resolve the dualisms of science and humanism, evolution and history,

materialism and mentalism etc. Mark Leone and Parker B. Potter (1999)

and others have been particularly interested in the institution of capitalism

as a system by which ideology and power relations are reproduced. Some

of the insights of these approaches, especially those of agency and power,

have also been more widely adopted (Hodder, 1986). Most neo-Marxists

would also place the social as central, in terms of the dialectic; both the

dialectic of conflicts between social groups and the dialectic of contradic-

tions within social formations. Just to emphasize this point, the recent book

by Kristian Kristiansen and Michael Rowlands, Social Transformations in

A rchaeology (1998), deals with the themes of objectivity and subjectivity,

world systems and the archaeology of colonialism. All of these perspectives

are encompassed within our understanding of social archaeology.

Some have construed the social as the social context of the practice of

archaeology. As early as 1939, Grahame Clark observed that archaeologyhas tended to flourish in those contexts where its value to the community

was demonstrated, and stagnated where its possibilities were unrealized.

Today, there are a number of ongoing debates about the roles of archae-

ology in nationalism (Kohl and Fawcett , 1995; Schmidt and Patterson, 1995;

Meskell, 1998), heritage management (Cleere, 1989), indigenous issues

(Layton, 1989; Biolsi and Zimmerman, 1997; Swindler et al., 1997), gender,

feminism and sexuality (Gero and Conkey, 1991; Gilchrist, 1999; Meskell,

1999; Schmidt and Voss, 2000) and postcolonialism (Gosden, 1999). In this

issue, Maria Franklin explores the context of African American archae-ology to demonstrate the potential for more meaningful and emancipatory

interpretations of black history.

s TOWARD A SOCIAL ARCHAEOLOGY

In using the term social archaeology, we advocate a more diverse archae-

ology that brings together and, at the same t ime, challenges different sensesof the social. Given the breadth of the social and of debates about the

social in so many different areas in archaeology, the generality of the term

social archaeology seems more than justified. Rather than indicating a

8/6/2019 A 017627

5/8

9Editorial

specific approach we see it as characterizing a broad range of approaches

dealing with the social. It refers to a general direction and a general set of

interests rather than prescribing a part icular solution or paradigm. Today it

seems widely accepted that the environment, the economy and technologiesare fundamentally social. Thus the term social archaeology refers to a

broad orientation within the discipline, rather than to a particular theoreti-

cal position.

Archaeologists increasingly feel a responsibility to contribute to other

disciplines from an independent and mature position. Our maturity and

confidence derives from advances in our understanding of material culture

and the long term. Material culture has emerged in recent decades as a sep-

arate area of study to which many archaeologists have contributed (Hodder ,

1989; Tilley, 1990, 1999) and which can be seen as contributing to ethno-

graphic study from a different and independent angle (Appadurai, 1986).

Archaeologists, whether evolutionary or historical, have specialized in

understanding the material traces of human presence through time. As

Martin Hall argues eloquently in this volume, the heart of archaeology as

an intellectual practice is the search for the ways in which we express our-

selves through the things that we make and use, collect and discard, value

or take for granted, and seek to be remembered by. As such, all archaeology

is inherently social. These concerns with the past inexorably, and appropri-

ately, link us with concerns for the present .

Our challenge is to be committed to understanding past societies in termsof their social contexts and lived experiences while, at the same time, to

remain cognizant of how the knowledge of the past that we produce is used

in the present. One avenue to accomplish this goal is to move from con-

ceptualizing society as an object, to thinking of society in terms of social

relations which constitute the core of any analysis. We can then examine

how material culture is cont inuously implicated in webs of signification in

the processes of creating meaning.

We recognize that there are differences of opinion on the significance of

the social discussed here. We hope that this journal will play a central rolein exploring them. One of the clear contrasts between cognitive archaeology

and interpretive archaeology is that in the former it is often claimed that the

cognitive can be studied as if separated from the social. Most interpretive

archaeologists take the view that meaning and mind are thoroughly social,

that knowledge is intimately linked to power, and that mind, body and prac-

tice are not easily separable. One of the dialogues that we hope to have in

this journal is whether perception, symbolization and decision making can

be studied as cognitive rather than as thoroughly cognitive and social.

It is particularly encouraging that archaeology and its debates are becom-ing of increasing significance for other disciplines. At times, this external

interest is largely symbolic. The clearest example is the use of the metaphor

of archaeology by Michel Foucault (1972), both in terms of his interest in

8/6/2019 A 017627

6/8


the temporal sequences of discourses and in terms of his engagement with

the mater iality of many discursive practices. Other examples are more sub-

stantive, including the use of a long-term archaeological perspective in

social geography (Soja, 2000). In Postmetropolis Soja draws on excavationsat atalhyk, past and present, to continue his contemplation of place-

making. This is an instance where archaeological narratives become the

subject of study for another discipline. Beyond Kinship (Joyce and Gil-

lespie, 2000) exemplifies other engagements where archaeologists collaborate

with ethnographers in the study of subjects of mutual interest such as social

relations and their materialization. In the current issue, Arjun Appadurai

discusses other archaeological issues that have widespread contemporary

relevance such as the authenticity of material objects and postcolonial

relationships with the past. Recent work outside archaeology resonates with

research by archaeologists themselves in identifying some form of agency

for material artifacts. For example, the work by Gell (1998) in relation to

the ethnography of art, or by Latour (1996) in discussing a wide range of

contemporary objects, has created a new and broad-ranging interest in

archaeological approaches to the material.

s JOURNAL GOALS

With these ideas in mind, the journal actively encourages contributions

from a variety of theoretical perspectives. It will be inclusive and innovative

rather than policing the boundaries of any one position. There are three

aims that distinguish this journal from those already in existence.

First, it will seek to explore the relations of archaeology to the humani-

ties and social sciences. In the past, archaeology has been regarded as mar-

ginal to developments in social theory. Although this situation is now

changing, archaeological writings are still not commonly cited by anthro-

pologists, geographers and sociologists. We believe that archaeology, withits focus on materiality and time, can contribute substantially to existing

theories of social meaning and should be integral in the construction of new

ones.

Second, the journal seeks to break down the divide that currently sepa-

rates North American and European archaeologies, which has been both

stimulating and divisive in the past few decades. One example of this polar-

ization is the differential influence of processual and postprocessual archae-

ologies on North American and British archaeologies (Preucel, 1995).

Continental and Latin American archaeologies cannot easily be subsumedby either processual or postprocessual approaches and have their own

distinctive traditions with which we will productively engage. Papers by

Criado and Politis in this issue attest to the unique perspectives as yet

8/6/2019 A 017627

7/8

11Editorial

under-appreciated in Anglophone archaeology. The journal can thus serve

as a common ground for exploring the different inflections of these

approaches and result in a broadening of the discipline.

Finally, the journal will advocate innovative modes of writing, presen-tat ion and the use of electronic media. Among the challenges facing archae-

ology is the need to better understand how the way we represent our

knowledge influences those whom we address. A number of archaeologists

have begun to explore new ways of writing (Joyce et al., 2000). In a concrete

way the journal offers a structural vehicle for broader participation in

exploring the effects of new media. We encourage both traditional and inno-

vative writing styles to acknowledge the importance of modes of represen-

tation and multiple perspectives on the past.

References

Appadurai, A., ed. (1986) The Social L ife of Things: Commodities in Cultural Per-

spective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Binford, L.R. (1962) Archaeology as Anthropology, American A ntiquity 28:

217225.

Biolsi, T. and L.J. Zimmerman, eds (1997)Indians and A nthropologists:Vine Deloria

Jr. and the Critique of A nthropology. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Childe, V.G. (1936) Man Makes Himself. London: Watts.

Clarke, G. (1939)A rchaeology and Society. London: Methuen.Cleere, H., ed. (1989) A rchaeological Heritage Management in the Modern World.

London: Unwin Hyman.

Foucault, M. (1972) The A rchaeology of Knowledge. London: Rout ledge.

Gell, A. (1998) A rt and A gency: A n A nthropological Theory. Oxford: Oxford U ni-

versity Press.

Gero, J.M. and M.W. Conkey, eds (1991) Engendering A rchaeology: Women and

Prehistory . Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Gilchrist, R.L. (1999) Gender and A rchaeology: Contesting the Past. London: Rout -

ledge.

Gosden, C. (1999) A nthropology and A rchaeology: A Changing Relationship.London: Routledge.

Hawkes, C.F.C. (1954) Archaeological Theory and Method: Some Suggestions from

the Old World,A merican Anthropologist56: 155168.

Hodder, I. (1986)Reading the Past: Current A pproaches to Interpretation in A rchae-

ology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hodder, I., ed. (1989) The Meaning of Things: Material Culture and Symbolic

Expression . London: Unwin Hyman.

Joyce, R.A . and S. G illespie, eds (2000)Beyond Kinship: Social and M aterial Repro-

duction in House Societies. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Joyce, R.A., C. Guyer and M. Joyce (2000) Sister Stories. New York: New York Uni-versity Press [http://www.nyupress.nyu.edu/sisterstories].

Kohl, P.L. and C. Fawcett, eds (1995) Nationalism, Politics and the Practice of

A rchaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

8/6/2019 A 017627

8/8


Kristiansen, K. and M.J. Rowlands (1998) Social Transformations in Archaeology:

Global and L ocal Perspectives. London: Rout ledge.

Latour, B. (1996)A ramis, or, The Love of Technology, trans. Catherine Porter. Cam-

bridge, MA: H arvard U niversity Press.

Layton, R., ed. (1989) Who N eeds the Past? Indigenous Values and A rchaeology.

London: Unwin Hyman.

Leone, M.B. and P.B. Potter Jr, eds (1999) Historical A rchaeologies of Capitalism .

New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.

McGuire, R.H. (1992) A Marxist A rchaeology. New York: Academic Press.

Meskell, L.M., ed. (1998) A rchaeology Under Fire: Nationalism, Politics and Heri-

tage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. London: Rout ledge.

Meskell, L.M. (1999) A rchaeologies of Social L ife: A ge, Sex, Class etc. in A ncient

Egypt. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Miller, D. and C. Tilley, eds (1984) Ideology, Power and Prehistory. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Preucel, R.W. (1995) The Postprocessual Condition, Journal of A rchaeological

Research 3: 14775.

Redman, C.L., M.-J. Berman, E.V. Curtin, W.T. Langhorne Jr, N.M. Versaggi and

J.C. Wanser, eds (1978) Social A rcheology: Beyond Subsistence and Dating. New

York: Academic Press.

Renfrew, C.R. (1973) Social A rchaeology: A n Inaugural L ecture. Southampton:

University of Southampton.

Renfrew, C.R. (1984)A pproaches to Social A rchaeology. Cambridge, MA : Harvard

University Press.

Schiffer , M.B., ed. (2000) Social Theory in A rchaeology. Salt Lake City: Universityof Utah Press.

Schmidt, P.R . and T.C. Pat terson, eds (1995)Mak ing A lternative H istories: The Prac-

tice of A rchaeology and H istory in Non-Western Settings. Santa Fe, NM: School

of American R esearch Press.

Schmidt, R.A. and B.L. Voss, eds (2000) A rchaeologies of Sexuality. London: Rout-

ledge.

Soja, E. (2000) Postmetropolis: Studies of Cities and Regions. Oxford: Basil Black-

well.

Swindler, N., K.E. Dongoske, R. Anyon and A .S. Downer (1997)Native A mericans

and A rchaeologists: Stepping Stones to Com mon Ground. Walnut Creek, CA:Altamira Press.

Tilley, C., ed. (1990) Reading Material Culture: Structuralism, Hermeneutics and

Post-Structuralism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Tilley, C. (1999) Metaphor and M aterial Culture. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Willey, G.R. and P. Phillips (1958) Method and Theory in A rchaeology. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press.

Yoffee, N. and A . Sherrat t, eds (1993)A rchaeological Theory: Who Sets the Agenda?

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

a 017627

Documents