In many facets of Western culture, including archaeology, there remains a legacy of perceiving gender divisions as natural, innate, and biological in origin. This belief follows that men are naturally pre-disposed to public, intellectual pursuits, while women are innately designed to care for the home and take care of children. In the interpretation of material culture, accepted notions of gender roles are often applied to new findings: the dichotomy between the domestic sphere of women and the public sphere of (...) men can color interpretations of new materials. In this innovative volume, the contributors focus explicitly on analyzing the materiality of historic changes in the domestic sphere around the world. Combining a global scope with great temporal depth, chapters in the volume explore how gender ideologies, identities, relationships, power dynamics, and practices were materially changed in the past, thus showing how they could be changed in the future. (shrink)

In Turkey, the period after the establishment of the Republic saw archeological representations play an active role in defining the ancient past and producing new disciplinary knowledge. Visual practices emerged as important sites for the formation of a new conception of the ancient past in the larger context of the political and cultural discourse over the modernization of the country. Based on museum guidebooks, official publications, and archival documents, this paper focuses on the İzmir region after the establishment of the (...) Turkish Republic in 1923 and explores how the ancient past was perceived and displayed in relation to the historical and cultural transformations that occurred in Turkey after the Greco-Turkish War. (shrink)

Most accounts of the historical a priori can be traced back to Husserlian phenomenology. Foucault’s appeals to the historical a priori are more problematic because of his hostility to this tradition. In this paper, I argue that Foucault’s diplôme thesis on Hegel, his studies of Kant’s Anthropology, his response to critics of The Order of Things, and his later work on Kant’s essay “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” all suggest that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German philosophy (...) helped to shape his conception of the historical a priori. (shrink)

In this article, I argue for historical epistemology as a methodology for critical disability studies by examining Foucault’s archaeology of cure in History of Madness. Although the moral, medical, and social models of disability frame disability history as an advancement upon moral and medical authority and a replacement of it by sociopolitical knowledge, I argue that the more comprehensive frame in which these models circulate—the “models framework”—requires the more nuanced approach that historical epistemology offers. In particular, the (...) models framework requires greater use of epistemology as an analytical tool for understanding the historical construction of disability. Thus, I turn to Foucault’s History of Madness in order to both excavate one particular archaeological strand in the text—the archaeology of cure—and to demonstrate how this narrative disrupts some of the key assumptions of the models framework, challenging DS to consider the epistemological force of non-medical fields of knowledge for framing disability and procedures for its cure and elimination. I conclude by arguing that DS must develop historical epistemological methodologies that are sensitive to the complex overlays of moral, medical, and social knowledge, as well as attend to the social construction of scientific and biomedical knowledge itself. (shrink)

The concept of rule permeates Foucault’s methodological formulations concerning the object of his investigation, but he offers few explicit discussions of the epistemological status of such rules. My claim is that the explication of Foucauldian rules in terms of Wittgensteinian criteria clarifies their epistemological status, and thereby enables one to formulate a novel conception of the historical a priori, one that is defensible against recurrent objections which charge that Foucault’s theoretical reflections confuse concepts that are distinct. Foucault and Wittgenstein (...) are best seen as articulating a sense of intelligibility in which forms are integral to content and meaning is not abstracted from social practices. ‘Form of life’ increases the conceptual cogency of ‘historical a priori,’ whereas the latter delineates what it would be like to take the former’s historicity seriously. (shrink)

The ambition of “scientific creationism” is to prove that science actually confirms religion. This is especially true in the case of Muslim creationism, which adopts a reasoning of a syllogistic type: divine revelation is truth; good science confirms truth; divine revelation is henceforth scientifically proven. Harun Yahya is a prominent Muslim “creationist” whose website hosts many texts and documentary films, among which “Evidence of the true faith in historical sources”. This is a small audiovisual production which, starting from some (...) archeological files, seeks to demonstrate that Qur’an truth precedes science but is equally proven by it. In this paper, we examine the organization of the scientific and religious argumentative repertoires and, in particular, what in each of them is taken as evidence and gets access to an authoritative status. It leads us to show how much this type of Muslim creationism constitutes a kind of scientism. (shrink)

Interpreters of Michel Foucault's 1966 Les mots et les choses have often conflated the terms 'episteme' and 'historical a priori'. This article suggests that the two terms are entirely separate: while 'episteme' refers to the configuration of thought in a given historical period, 'historical a priori' refers to the conditions of unity for a certain field of science within a given period. In his use of the term 'historical a priori', Foucault is thus much closer to (...) Husserl than has hitherto been appreciated. Keeping the two terms separated also sheds new light on the archaeological method that Foucault uses, showing that there is a procedure to get from an archive of texts to the reconstruction of an episteme. (shrink)

"The standard historical image of Jean-Luc Godard is that of a resolute iconoclast breaking with the representational norms and codes of classical cinema in the name of liberating film from the deadening weight of its past. His numerous formal innovations—syncopated montage, unconventional framing, unique experiments with dialogue, etc.—along with his abandonment of traditional narrative and character development, his playful pastiche of genres, his debunking of the representational illusions of cinematic realism, his reflexive preoccupation with film itself and the general (...) dissolution of the distinction between high and low art have created a potent new form of cinema that continues to have far-reaching effects. More experimental than Truffaut, more temerarious than Chabrol, but less fastidious than Resnais, less obtuse and prolix than Rivette, Godard is seen as the bumptious enfant terrible of the Cahiers du cinéma who set the agenda for a new era of modernist filmmaking...". (shrink)

Archaeology and Intentionality explores perhaps one of the most overlooked topics in archaeology, that of intentionality. In archaeology, most explanations of human behaviour rely on intentionality and this book fills a surprising gap in the literature. By identifying the historical trajectory of the notion of intentionality, this book reframes our understanding of what it means to act intentionally and how archaeologists provide explanations concerning past (and present) societies. In general, this book presents a strong framework for (...) archaeological research, one that fits to current archaeological practices and research around the world. This framework considers that past actors were not unconditional free agents, who could act however they wished, nor were they absolute prisoners of the economic, biological, and environmental circumstances in which they lived. From the standpoint of intentionality, it becomes clear that human agency is not about what you can or cannot do, but about what you should, that is to say, actions are above all ethical. In a world wealth inequality runs rampant, where humans have damaged the environment beyond recognition, and where technology advances at an alarming rate - it is important that we recognize our intentions and the ethical responsibility that accompanies those intentions. The book highlights how archaeology is the perfect discipline to understand how and from where those intentions come from. Addressing several problems in archaeological theory and connecting archaeology, philosophy and social theory, this book. (shrink)

This article examines the potential of art and archaeological remains for the study of women's social history in early Christianity. Part I considers important sources for art and archaeological data; the received method and classification criteria for the discipline of early Christian art and archaeology; and the types of problems both earlier and contemporary approaches to the material remains present for scholars. Part II proposes an approach to understanding early Christian art and material culture as part of a larger (...) ongoing social discourse in the ancient Mediterranean world where cultural representations take part in the lively social and aural culture of life lived in close proximity to others. This approach places art and archaeological evidence in the foreground and documentary sources in the background as corroborative evidence. (shrink)

The cultural and temporal context that any archaeologist is a part of will necessarily bias the way in which he or she interprets material remains. While interpretation is a crucial part of the archaeological process, the preconceived notions an archaeologist may hold can colour their interpretation of the society in question. Through examples such as the excavations at Knossos in Crete, the effect such biases can have on archaeological interpretation and discourse is studied.

This book approaches the contemporary era--a period comprised between the late nineteenth and the twenty first centuries--as an archaeological age that can be defined by specific material processes. It argues that the materiality of our era, and particularly its ruins and rubbish, tells something profound and original about us--something disturbing, as well. The aim of the book is twofold: it reflects on the theory and practice of the archaeology of the contemporary past--its epistemology, politics, ethics and aesthetics--and it seeks (...) to characterize the present based on the three excesses that define it: spatial, temporal and material. All of them leave traces that can be explored archaeologically. This is the first attempt at describing the contemporary era from an archaeological point of view. Global in scope, the case studies that illustrate the argument come from every continent. The bibliography is also global and includes works from peripheral traditions that are rarely considered. This is a book of archaeology, but one that intends to go beyond academic limits. For that, it engages in a dialogue with philosophy, anthropology, history and geography. The book will be essential reading for students and practitioners of the archaeology of the contemporary past, historical archaeology and archaeological theory. But it will also be of interest to anybody concerned with globalization, modernity and the Anthropocene. (shrink)

This chapter reviews the historical evidence concerning the development of slavery in eastern Africa, the various forms found in societies on the coast and in the interior, the social and cultural consequences of enslavement, and its ultimate abolition. It then looks at the known and potential archaeological traces of the trajectories of these different systems of slavery, with particular reference to the area along the middle and lower Pangani River, Tanzania. The chapter concludes with a consideration of whether or (...) not it would be possible to discern slavery from the surviving archaeological remains alone, and the implications of this answer for future archaeological investigations of slavery elsewhere in the region. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Historical Contexts of Cultural Appropriation in Archaeology A Typology of Cultural Appropriation in Archaeology Modes of Resolution Conclusions Acknowledgments References.

This article discusses the response which Hegel gives in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy to a problem which is first posed in his early writings. The problem is that of the possibility to comprehend the Absolute, the Infinity („Life” is the term Hegel uses in his Early Writings) using the reflexion as instrument. The later response is to see the concept (Begriff) in his speculative sense (in fact the form of absolute reflexion) as a spiritual, historical entity (...) and so, as tradition of representation (Vorstellung). The tradition of a thought is what marks the passage from dominative, intelectual thinking to integrative, reasonable thinking. (shrink)

Since archaeology is fundamentally the study of the human past, which is what the word “archaeology” connotes according to its Greek etymology, it is part of the humanities. However, archaeologists work in teams with scientists and employ quantitative techniques and comparative methods of the social sciences; archaeologists are thus an academic hybrid and are pleased to live in the interstices of many disciplines. In this article we review the history of archaeology in the humanities and explore some (...) new directions in archaeological research. We discuss the enduring questions of origins of the antiquity of humanity, religion and art, the first agricultural villages, and the earliest cities, states, and civilizations. We also consider new agendas in archaeology: historical archaeology, landscapes in the past and present, material studies of the present, and how archaeologists are engaged in modern politics. (shrink)

Provides an accessible account of the changing world of archaeological theory. It charts the emergence of the new emphasis on relations as well as engaging with current theoretical trends and the thinkers archaeologists regularly employ. This book will be an essential guide to cutting-edge theory for students and for professionals wishing to reacquaint themselves with this field. Oliver J.T. Harris is lecturer in archaeology in the School of Archaeology & Ancient History, University of Leicester. Craig N. Cipolla is (...) lecturer in historical archaeology in the School of Archaeology & Ancient History, University of Leicester"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

"Drawing upon recent work in theoretical archaeology, and on case studies from the prehistoric Near East, medieval Europe, early modern North America, and Mesoamerica, John Moreland challenges many of the assumptions which have hitherto underpinned archaeological research in historic periods, arguing that we will only fully understand these pasts when we begin to appreciate the historically specific ways in which both documents and artefacts were 'activated' in the reproduction and transformation of power and identity. A concluding chapter warns that (...) any contribution these arguments may make to the better understanding of the historical past will be negated if we fail to appreciate the very real dangers posed, to all the peoples of the past, by the recent 'linguistic turn' in both disciplines."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)

The trans-Atlantic trade that brought slaves from the African continent to the New World has generated such interest and controversy that it has tended to obscure another significant African slave trade, that which saw individuals sent across the Sahara to be sold in North Africa and Western Asia. This trans-Saharan trade was both longer-lived and, in terms of numbers eventually enslaved, demographically similar to the better-known trans-Atlantic trade. This chapter summarizes current understandings of the trans-Saharan slave trade for the period (...) ad 750–1500 approximately, and assesses the prospects for its archaeological recognition. A second topic will be to suggest the merits of a comparative approach considering the impact of slave trading on social and political frameworks: the argument here is that a consideration of wider themes can bring us closer to understanding roots and causes, invalidating the convenient assumption that the Atlantic slave trade was a historical curiosity which can be safely consigned to the annals of the past. (shrink)

Hasmonean Realities behind Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles: Archaeological and Historical Perspectives. By Israel Finkelstein. Ancient Israel and Its Literature, vol. 34. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2018. Pp. xi + 208. $32.95.

Archaeological facts have a perplexing character; they are often seen as less likely to “lie,” capable of bearing tangible, material witness to actual conditions of life, actions and events, but at the same time they are notoriously fragmentary and enigmatic, and disturbingly vulnerable to dispersal and attrition. As Trouillot (1995) argues for historical inquiry, the identification, selection, interpretation and narration of archaeological facts is a radically constructive process. Rather than conclude on this basis that archaeological facts and fictions are (...) indistinguishable, I identify a number of strategies that archaeologists rely on to make discerning use of “legacy” data – archaeological data recovered and curated over for decades, even centuries, often for very different purposes than those that animate contemporary archaeological inquiry. These include source criticism, secondary retrieval, repositioning and recontextualizing these data in ways that can, sometimes radically shift the “facts” associated with them. The construction of critical genealogies of these facts – the travels and transformations of the material, interpretive and narrative facts of archaeology – is a crucial condition for the successful exploitation of these epistemic possibilities. (shrink)

Media archaeological methods for extending the lifetime of new media into ‘old media’ have experienced a revival during the past years. In recent media theory, a new context for a debate surrounding media archaeology is emerging. So far media archaeology has been articulated together with such a heterogeneous bunch of theorists as Erkki Huhtamo, Siegfried Zielinski, Thomas Elsaesser and to a certain extent Friedrich Kittler. However, debates surrounding media archaeology as a method seem to be taking it (...) forward not only as a subdiscipline of (media) history, but increasingly into what will be introduced as materialist media diagrammatics. This article maps some recent media archaeological waves in German media theory. The text addresses Wolfgang Ernst’s mode of media archaeology and his provocative accounts on how to rethink media archaeology as a fresh way of looking into the use and remediation of media history as a material monument instead of a historical narrative and as a recent media theoretical wave from Germany that seems to not only replicate Kittler’s huge impact in the field of materialist media studies but develop that in novel directions. However, as will be argued towards the end, Ernst’s provocative take that hopes to distinguish itself as a Berlin brand of media theory in its hardware materiality and time-critical focus resonates strongly with some of the recent new directions coming from US media studies, namely in software and platform studies. (shrink)

Archaeological data are shadowy in a number of senses. Not only are they notoriously fragmentary but the conceptual and technical scaffolding on which archaeologists rely to constitute these data as evidence can be as constraining as it is enabling. A recurrent theme in internal archaeological debate is that reliance on sedimented layers of interpretative scaffolding carries the risk that “preunderstandings” configure what archaeologists recognize and record as primary data, and how they interpret it as evidence. The selective and destructive nature (...) of data capture in archeology further suggests that there may be little scope for putting “legacy” data to work in new ways. And yet archaeologists have been strikingly successful in mining old datasets for new insights. I situate these concerns in the broader context of debate about the epistemic standing of the historical sciences, and then consider three strategies by which archaeologists address the challenges posed by legacy data. The first two – secondary retrieval and recontextualization – are a matter of reconfiguring the scaffolding that underpins evidential reasoning. The third turns on redeploying old data in the context of computational models that support the experimental simulation of the cultural systems and contexts under study. (shrink)

The increased interest in contemporary relations of culture and governance that has been prompted by the post-Foucauldian literature on governmentality has paid insufficient attention to the need to redefine the concept of culture, and to rethink its relation to the social, that such work requires. This paper contributes to such an endeavour by arguing the need to eschew the view that culture works by some general mechanism in order to focus on the ways in which specific cultural knowledges are translated (...) into distinctive technical and operational forms in the context of particular institutions and programmes of governance. In doing so, it draws on the perspectives of science studies and actor network theory and applies these to examine how the fabrication of the prehistoric past that resulted from the endeavours of the nineteenthcentury historical sciences was translated into distinctive technical forms in the context of typological museum displays. These developments are related to the changing objectives of liberal government and the emergence of an archaeologized structure of the self. (shrink)

Sogdians in China: Archaeological and Art Historical Analyses of Tombs and Texts from the 3rd to the 10th Century AD. By Patrick Wertmann. Archäologie in China / Archaeology in China and East Asia, vol. 5. Darmstadt: Philipp von Zabern, 2015. Pp. iv + 336, 116 plates. €86.

This book explores the diverse understandings of the archaeological record in both historical and contemporary perspective, while also serving as a guide to reassessing current views. Gavin Lucas argues that archaeological theory has become both too fragmented and disconnected from the particular nature of archaeological evidence. The book examines three ways of understanding the archaeological record - as historical sources, through formation theory, and as material culture - then reveals ways to connect these three domains through a reconsideration (...) of archaeological entities and archaeological practice. Ultimately, Lucas calls for a rethinking of the nature of the archaeological record and the kind of history and narratives written from it. (shrink)

In the perspective of the philosophical archaeology proposed, here, the arkhé towards which archaeology regresses must not be understood in any way as an element that can be situated in chronology ; it is, rather, a force that operates in history—much in the same way in which Indoeuropean words express a system of connections among historically accessible languages, in which the child in psychoanalysis expresses an active force in the psychic life of the adult, in which the big (...) bang, which is supposed to have originated the universe, continues to send towards us its fossil radiation. But the arkhé is not a datum or a substance. It is much rather a field of bipolar historical currents within the tension of anthropogenesis and history, between point of emergence and becoming, between arch-past and present. And as such—that is to say, to the extent to which it is something that it is necessarily supposed to have factually happened, and which yet cannot be hypostatized in any chronologically identifiable event—it is solely capable of guaranteeing the intelligibility of historical phenomena, of ‘saving’ them archaeologically within a future perfect, yet not grasping its origin, but rather its history, at once finite and untotalizable. (shrink)

The question of archaeology corroborating any ‘historical information’ is excluded from the outset by the poetic genre of Song of Songs. This contribution therefore focusses on archaeology’s more modest purpose as far as its relationship with texts is concerned, namely whether it can facilitate the understanding of the text by investigating the material culture that features in Song of Songs. Archaeology is therefore understood in terms of its more extended definition, including artefacts, objects functioning as metaphors, (...) and historical geography. Attention amongst others will be paid to cities mentioned, the David’s Tower, Pharaoh’s palanquin, fauna and flora, as well as pottery.Contribution: Although archaeology cannot inform everything in the text, the continuous archaeological endeavour has the hermeneutical function to transpose the reader into the ancient life world, preventing him or her of anachronistic projection of the present-day readers own world into the text, but also appreciating the common human condition which the present-day reader shares with the world of the text. (shrink)

In the past few decades, much political-philosophical reflection has been dedicated to the realm of "the political." Many of the key figures in contemporary political theory—Jacques Rancière, Alain Badiou, Reinhart Koselleck, Giorgio Agamben, Ernesto Laclau, and Slavoj i ek, among others—have dedicated themselves to explaining power relations, but in many cases they take the concept of the political for granted, as if it were a given, an eternal essence. In An Archaeology of the Political, Elías José Palti argues that (...) the dimension of reality known as the political is not a natural, transhistorical entity. Instead, he claims that the horizon of the political arose in the context of a series of changes that affirmed the power of absolute monarchies in seventeenth-century Europe and was successively reconfigured from this period up to the present. Palti traces this series of redefinitions accompanying alterations in regimes of power, thus describing a genealogy of the concept of the political. Perhaps most important, An Archaeology of the Political brings to theoretical discussions a sound historical perspective, illuminating the complex influences of both theology and secularization on our understanding of the political in the contemporary world. (shrink)

I focus here on archaeologists who work with Indigenous descendant communities in North America and address two key questions raised by their practice about the advantages of situated inquiry. First, what exactly are the benefits of collaborative practice—what does it contribute, in this case to archaeology? And, second, what is the philosophical rationale for collaborative practice? Why is it that, counter-intuitively for many, collaborative practice has the capacity to improve archaeology in its own terms and to provoke critical (...) scrutiny of its goals and methodological norms? The broader import, I argue, is a rethinking of traditional views of objectivity that takes social, contextual values to be a resource for improving what we know, rather than inevitably a source of compromising error and distortion (as discussed in detail in Chapters 7 and 9). (shrink)

This article has a twofold scope: I want to suggest that the term “philosophical archaeology” is a methodologically significant concept which is relevant when working historically with the humanities—texts primarily. As a means for this the two most interesting philosophical archaeologists will play a key role: Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben. Furthermore, I want to discuss why philosophical archaeology is needed when working critically with what Jan Assmann so famously has defined as cultural memory scholarship. For this purpose (...) Carlo Ginzburg’s concept of, especially, the principle of reality will be discussed lastly where also the difference—or, perhaps, the alleged difference-between law and history, proof and fact will be debated. (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)

RESUMEN: La muerte del hombre anunciada por Foucault está en estrecha relación con la muerte de Dios anunciada por Nietzsche. El retorno del lenguaje conlleva la desaparición del hombre como figura cardinal del saber moderno. La historia es discontinua. Foucault dudó de las verdades de cada época y de las verdades intemporales. En este artículo trazo el recorrido del hombre en Les mots et les choses, mostrando la tensión entre el lenguaje y la desaparición del hombre, hablo de la discontinuidad (...) de la historia y los “jeux de vérité”, y muestro que Foucault se consideraba, por encima de todo, un pensador escéptico. / ABSTRACT: The death of man proclaimed by Foucault is in close relationship with the death of God proclaimed by Nietzsche. The return of language is linked with the disappearance of man. History is discontinuos. Foucault doubted the truths of each era as well as the timeless truths. In this article I present man’s journey in Foucault’s Les mots et les choses, showing the tension between language and the disappearance of man, I talk about historical discontinuity and the “jeux de vérité”, and I argue that Foucault considered himself, above all, a skeptical thinker. (shrink)

This Sixth volume in the series The Key Debates. Mutations and Appropriations in European Film Studies investigates the question of screens in the context both of the dematerialization due to digitalization and the multiplication of media screens. Scholars offer various infomations and theories of topics such as the archeology of screen, film and media theories, contemporary art, pragmatics of new ways of screening (from home video to street screening).

This paper explores the interplay between cinema and archaeology, focusing on how films interpret and represent historical and theological narratives. Initially, it reviews the evolution of film as a medium that not only entertains but also serves as a conduit for historical education, emphasizing the creation of new cinematic forms that enhance the depiction of archaeological findings. This study then assesses the accuracy of historical representations in film, analyzing the production processes to determine their fidelity to (...) archaeological evidence. Specifically, it examines two historical films, "The Building of the Army" and "The Last Emperor", evaluating how they reconstruct historical events and convey the philosophical ideas of the screenwriters. The analysis reveals that these films achieve a high degree of historical accuracy, with scene layouts and locations corroborating archaeological records with approximately 90% accuracy. Furthermore, the films significantly enhance viewers' historical understanding, increasing it from 67% to 91%, as evidenced by their engagement and the perceived authenticity of the recreations. This paper argues that the fusion of cinematic and archaeological methodologies not only fosters interdisciplinary integration but also deepens the audience's engagement with historical and theological themes. By enhancing the viewer’s appreciation for history through accurately depicted and philosophically rich narratives, films contribute to both educational outcomes and the broader discourse on the intersection of film, archaeology, and theology. (shrink)

The northern frontiers of the Ottoman Empire lay across a swathe of lands between Hungary and Iran, arcing through the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, then north of the Black Sea through the steppes of southern Ukraine, and finally proceeding further east along the Caucasus Mountains as far as the Caspian Sea. In a frontier region such as the one on the northern Black Sea, where environment, human geography and historical traditions made the steppe an alien place that did (...) not readily yield to control and assimilation, the fortress was indispensable for maintaining the centre's presence. As imperial presence in such an area was anchored at and emanated from the fortress, the fortress can be seen as a prime target of a strategy aimed at learning about this frontier of the Ottoman world. (shrink)

In their landmark 2010 paper, “The weirdest people in the world?”, Henrich, Heine, and Norenzayan outlined a serious methodological problem for the psychological and behavioural sciences. Most of the studies produced in the field use people from Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) societies, yet inferences are often drawn to the species as a whole. In drawing such inferences, researchers implicitly assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that WEIRD populations are generally representative of the (...) species. Yet neither of these assumptions is justified. In many psychological and behavioural domains, cultural variation begets cognitive variation, and WEIRD samples are recurrently shown to be outliers. In the years since the article was published, attention has focused on the implications this has for research on extant human populations. Here we extend those implications to the study of ancient _H. sapiens_, their hominin forebears, and cousin lineages. We assess a range of characteristic arguments and key studies in the cognitive archaeology literature, identifying issues stemming from the problem of sample diversity. We then look at how worrying the problem is, and consider some conditions under which inferences to ancient populations via cognitive models might be provisionally justified. (shrink)

Change and Archaeology explores how archaeologists have historically described, interpreted, and explained change and argues that change has been under-theorised. The study of change is central to the discipline of archaeology but change is complex and this makes it challenging to write about in nuanced ways that effectively capture the nature of our world. Relational approaches offer archaeologists more scope to explore change in complex and subtle ways. Change and Archaeology presents a posthumanist, post-anthropocentric, new materialist approach (...) to change. It argues that our world is constantly in the process of becoming and always on the move. By recasting change as the norm rather than the exception and distributing it between both humans and non-humans this book offers a new theoretical framework for exploring change in the past that allows us to move beyond block-time approaches where change is located only in transitional moments and periods are characterised by blocks of stasis. Archaeologists, scholars, anthropologists and historians interested in the theoretical frameworks we use to interpret the past will find this book a fascinating new insight into the way our world changes and evolves. The approaches presented within will be of use to anyone studying and writing about the way societies and their environs move through time. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Freud, Archaeology and Egypt: Religion, Materiality and the Cultural Critique of Origins SIMON GOLDHILL In memoriam John Forrester i. With a rhetoric that is as self-serving as it is historically false, scientific writers since the Second World War have insisted that Darwin’s evolutionary biology was the breakthrough that heralded the triumph of secularism and materialism, the very conditions of modernity: the Scientific Revolution. Darwin’s theorizing does have a (...) specific purchase on one crucial aspect of Judaeo-Christian thinking, for sure. Darwin’s theory of evolution challenged the perfection of man, made in God’s image, by proposing instead a theory of continuous and continuing change. The Bible insists on a moment of origin—bereshit, “In the beginning... ” [Genesis 1 1]—and the rabbinical and Christian commentators on this opening demand that creatio ex nihilo is an unchallengeable principle, in the face of the considerable challenge of repeated philosophical rejections of such an idea.1 The Gospel of Luke proclaims that it will narrate the genesis of Jesus and to this purpose opens with a genealogy from Abraham to Jesus, an unbroken line that grounds and authorizes the fulfilment of the messianic prophesy of Isaiah. In aggressive and precisely polemical contrast, Darwin exclaimed: “What an infinite number of generations, which the mind cannot grasp, must have succeeded each other in the long roll of years!.”2 Rather than listing a precise number of generations from Adam and Eve, as the Hebrew Bible and the Gospels would have us do, arion 28.3 winter 2021 76 freud, archaeology and egypt Darwin imagines a narrative for the human race without beginning and without end and without perfection. But when Darwin does this, it was already nothing new. Not only had books like Chambers’ Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation scandalously opened the door to a model of evolutionary change without divine providential causation, but also Charles Lyell’s seminal Principles of Geology back in the 1830s had already revealed this chasm of time.3 “In the economy of the world,” he wrote, “I can find no traces of a beginning, no prospect of an end”—and he had the facts in the ground to prove it.4 James Playfair, who helped popularize Lyell’s stunning discovery of the deep time of the earth, demonstrates an iconic reaction to Lyell’s science: “in the distance of this extraordinary perspective... [t]he mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time.”5 The abyss of past time makes the nineteenth-century scholar giddy, dizzy with an overload of imagination. It was geology, first of all, not biology that challenged the very ground on which Christian theories of time and human development stood. As Ruskin beautifully put it: “If only the Geologists would let me alone, I would do very well, but those dreadful Hammers! I hear the clink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses.”6 But, more perhaps even than geology, the most challenging threat to the established intellectual and social understanding of things came from critical history. Ernest Renan, renegade Catholic, and one of the most influential and notorious writers on Christianity in the 19th century, was typical when he wrote “My faith has been destroyed by historical criticism, not by scholasticism nor by philosophy.”7 Critical history showed that the earliest stories, on which so much depended, were myths not history. The stories of earliest Greek history, as Grote argued, or Roman history, as Niebuhr had earlier demonstrated, were veined with legends and fantasies, and did not provide access to “wie es eigentlich gewesen hat,” to “what actually happened,” the watchword of empirical Simon Goldhill 77 historiography.8 As Bishop Wilberforce thundered in already too late anticipation, “The alarming question is... whether the human mind, which with Niebuhr has tasted blood in the slaughter of Livy, can be prevailed upon to abstain from falling next upon the Bible.”9 So, terrifyingly to the orthodox, the doubt which undermined Livy, did indeed focus sharply on the bible and even of the lives of the saints from a much later period. A series of horrifying books—Strauss or Renan on... (shrink)

Entanglement theory posits that the interrelationship of humans and objects is a delimiting characteristic of human history and culture. This edited volume of original studies by leading archaeological theorists applies this concept to a broad range of topics, including archaeological science, heritage, and theory itself. In the theoretical explications and ten case studies, the editors and contributing authors: build on the intersections between science, humanities and ecology to provide a more fine-grained, multi-scalar treatment emanating from the long-term perspective that characterizes (...) archaeological research; bring to light the subtle and unacknowledged paths that configure historical circumstances and bind human intentionality; examine the constructions of personhood, the rigidity of path dependencies, the unpredictable connections between humans and objects and the intricate paths of past events in varied geographic and historical contexts that channel future actions. This broad focus is inclusive of early complex developments in Asia and Europe, imperial and state strategies in the Andes and Mesoamerica, continuities of postcolonialism in North America, and the unforeseen and complex consequences that derive from archaeological practices. This volume will appeal to archaeologists and their advanced students. (shrink)