Archaeology

The Loss of Isolation

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3597503
AutoresChristopher Tilley (University College London, autor de correspondencia)
Año1998
Volumen72
Número277
Páginas691-693
Fecha de publicación1998-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAntiquity (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0003-598X • E-ISSN: 1745-1744
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0003598x00087123
OpenAlexW2100068335
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas6
Referencias citadas1

It is interesting to reflect that only nine years separate David Clarke's paper 'Archaeology: the loss of innocence' and the publication of Symbolic and structural archaeology (Hodder 1982), which may be taken to mark the beginning of a 'post-processual' archaeology. Many of the ideas put forward in that book were being discussed and developed at Cambridge from around 1978. David's paper, and its publication in ANTIQUITY, may be taken as representing the highwater mark of 'new' or processual archaeology in the academy. Almost as soon as the ideas had been presented, and not really very well developed in the practice of doing archaeology, they were under fire and being replaced. Yet David was still attacking 'traditional' archaeology, fighting for his own position in the 1973 paper, and putting foward an agenda for the future of archaeology. It was a manifesto for future work. New Archaeology was then 11 years old and had already achieved a certain hegemony in Anglo-American archaeology, at least among younger academics more interested in ideas than recovering and describing evidence. In 1998 what is labelled 'post-processual' archaeology differs fundamentally from many of the ideas presented in the Hodder volume and it is doubtful whether anyone would still wish to follow David's agenda or advocate early 'post-processual' ideas. The pace of thinking has inexorably heated up. Both David's paper and the Hodder book are now primarily of historical interest in the development of a disciplinary consciousness in which archaeology is becoming increasingly self-reflexive, critically interrogating its intellectual presuppositions, procedures and practices

Archaeological theory · Archaeology · Classical archaeology · Discipline · Hegemony · Politics · Prehistoric archaeology · Prehistory · Reflexivity · Social science · Sociology · Anthropology · Archaeological Research and Protection · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · History · Image Processing and 3D Reconstruction · Law