The constitution of archaeological evidence

Gender politics and science

Dados Bibliográficos

ID20072814
AutoresA Wylie (0000-0002-0889-0007, autor correspondente)
Ano2007
Páginas111-132
Data de publicação2007-01-24
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoCHAPTER
PeriódicoThe archaeology of identities (SOURCE_BOOK)
EditoraRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.4324/9780203965986-17
OpenAlexW3212343102
ISBN9780203965986
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas24

I begin with a digression that will situate my discussion of archaeological uses of evidence in the wider context of debate about the objectivity and value neutrality of archaeological understanding. My aim is to show that although archaeology is a thoroughly social and political enterprise, evidential constraints are not reducible to the interests of individual archaeologists or to the macro-and micro-political dynamics of the contexts in which they operate. In fact they are in some respects constitutive of political interests. My thesis is that although archaeological evidence is thoroughly laden with theory – although it is unavoidably a construct, open to question and revision – it can nonetheless impose decisive limitations on what can be claimed about past cultural systems, their internal dynamics, and their trajectories of development and transformation. I elaborate this model and illustrate it with examples drawn from the rapidly growing corpus of archaeological research on questions about women and gender, some of which is explicitly feminist in perspective

Archaeology · Constitution · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Anthropology · Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies · History · Law