Archaeology and Anthropology: Understanding Similarity, Exploring Difference

201 Pages·2010·4.508 MB·English

by  Duncan Garrow, Thomas Yarrow

ARCHAEOLOGY
AND ANTHROPOLOGY

Archaeology
and Anthropology
edited by
Duncan Garrow and Th omas Yarrow
Oxbow Books
Oxford and Oakville
Published by
Oxbow Books, Oxford, UK
© Oxbow Books and the individual authors, 2010
ISBN 978-1-84217-387-9
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
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or from our website
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Cover photo by Chuck Choi
(detail of Riverlines by Richard Long, Hearst Tower, New York City)
Printed in Great Britain by
Short Run Press, Exeter
Contents
List of fi gures vii
Notes on the contributors ix
Acknowledgements xi
1. Introduction: archaeological anthropology 1
Duncan Garrow & Th omas Yarrow
2. Not knowing as knowledge: asymmetry between archaeology and
anthropology 13
Th omas Yarrow
3. Triangulating absence: exploring the fault-lines between archaeology
and anthropology 28
Gavin Lucas
4. Spaces that were not densely occupied – questioning ‘ephemeral’
evidence 40
Lesley McFadyen
5. On the boundary: new perspectives from ethnography of archaeology 53
Matt Edgeworth
6. Archaeology and the anthropology of memory: takes on the recent past 69
Paola Filippucci
7. Resolving archaeological and ethnographic tensions: a case study from
South-Central California 84
David Robinson
8. Words and things: thick description in archaeology and anthropology 110
Chris Gosden
9. Re-evaluating the long term: civilisation and temporalities 117
Stephan Feuchtwang and Michael Rowlands
10. Relational personhood as a subject of anthropology and archaeology:
comparative and complementary analyses 137
Chris Fowler
11. No more ancient; no more human: the future past of archaeology
and anthropology 160
Tim Ingold
vi Contents
12. Commentary. Boundary objects and asymmetries 171
Marilyn Strathern
13. Commentary. Walls and bridges 179
Julian Th omas
Index 185
List of fi gures
Figure 3.1 Th e intentional structure of archaeology and anthropology.
Figure 3.2 Triangulating absence: the threefold fracture between archaeology and
anthropology.
Figure 4.1 Schematic representation of Leach’s ‘black box’.
Figure 4.2 Schematic representation of archaeologists’ relationship with those they
study.
Figure 7.1 Cached in situ artifacts in crevice at Cache Cave, South-Central
California.
Figure 7.2 Linguistic areas of South-Central California as documented by
anthropologists.
Figure 7.3 Indian Henry, a Tubatulabal informant, touching a red pictograph (photo
by Tomas T. Waterman, June 1916. By kind permission of the Phoebe
Hurst Museum).
Figure 7.4 Pictographs at the Emigdiano Chumash site of Th ree Springs.
Figure 7.5 Archaeological sites on cost-surface network in the Emigdiano territory.
Figure 7.6 Th ree Mono women prepare acorns on a bedrock mortar station (photograph
by Nellie T. McGraw Hedgpeth, 1904–1905. By kind permission of the
Phoebe Hurst Museum).
Figure 7.7 A three-dimensional model of Pleito rock-art locale.
Figure 7.8 Pictographs from Pleito showing extensive overpainting.
Figure 7.9 Schematic representation of South-Central Native Californian notions of
time.

Notes on the contributors
Matt Edgeworth is a research associate at the University of Leicester. He studied for his
degree and PhD in archaeology and anthropology at the University of Durham. He has worked
mostly for commercial archaeological units, directing numerous fi eldwork projects. He is the
author of Acts of Discovery (Archaeopress 2003) and editor of Ethnographies of Archaeological
Practice (Altamira 2006).
Stephan Feuchtwang is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology, at the London
School of Economics. Since 1966 he has undertaken research on popular religion and politics
in China resulting in a number of publications on charisma, place, temples and festivals. He
is currently undertaking research on the comparison of civilisations and empires.
Paola Filippucci is a college lecturer in social anthropology at Murray Edwards College,
Cambridge. She has a fi rst degree in archaeology and her current research on the social memory
of war and post-war reconstruction in Eastern France has an archaeological element through
her membership of a team specializing in Great War archaeology (see http://www.no-mans-
land.info/).
Chris Fowler is a lecturer in later prehistoric archaeology at the School of Historical Studies,
Newcastle University. He has written a number of publications on concepts of the body and
person in anthropology and archaeology, and specialises in British Neolithic and early Bronze
Age archaeology.
Duncan Garrow is a lecturer at the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, University
of Liverpool. His research interests include the Mesolithic-Neolithic ‘transition’ in north-west
Europe; Iron Age and Roman material culture; long-term histories of depositional practice and
interdisciplinary approaches to material culture.
Chris Gosden is Professor of European Archaeology at the School of Archaeology, University
of Oxford. His research interests include the relationship between anthropology and archaeology,
and interdisciplinary understandings of human intelligence. He is currently involved in projects
investigating Celtic Art in Iron Age and Roman Britain, ‘Englishness’ within the Pitt-Rivers
Museum, and material culture in Borneo.
Tim Ingold is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. His ethnographic
focus is on the circumpolar North, and he has written on hunting and pastoralism, human-
animal relations, evolutionary theory, language and tool use, environmental perception and