Archaeology in the Making: Conversations through a Discipline

443 Pages·2012·5.28 MB·English

by  William L Rathje

ARCHAEOLOGY IN THE MAKING
Archaeology in the Making is a collection of bold statements about archaeology, its history, how it works,
and why it is more important than ever. This book comprises conversations about archaeology among
some of its notable contemporary figures. They delve deeply into the questions that have come to fas-
cinate archaeologists over the last forty years or so, those that concern major events in human history
such as the origins of agriculture and the state, and questions about the way archaeologists go about
their work. Many of the conversations highlight quite intensely held personal insight into what moti-
vates us to pursue archaeology; some may even be termed outrageous in the light they shed on the way
archaeological institutions operate – excavation teams, professional associations, university departments.
Archaeology in the Making is a unique document detailing the history of archaeology in second half
of the twentieth century to the present day through the words of some of its key proponents. It will be
invaluable for anybody who wants to understand the theory and practice of this ever developing
discipline.
William L. Rathje † was Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. He was an
archaeologist interested in the way the material and the mental fit together in a world and, like all human-
related worlds, these do not mesh as expected. A pioneer in Modern Material Culture Studies, Rathje
was the Director of The Garbage Project – a 31-year-old study of household garbage and related inter-
view-survey in several North American cities. His books include Rubbish!: The Archaeology of Garbage
(1992), Encyclopedia of Garbage (1997), and Archaeology (1982), a standard and classic textbook.
Michael Shanks is the Omar and Althea Dwyer Hoskins Professor of Classical Archaeology at Stanford
University. A series of critical interventions in debates about the character of the archaeological past,
methodology, theory, and case studies in European prehistory and the archaeology of Greco-Roman
antiquity, have made him a key figure in contemporary archaeological thought. His publications include
the books Reconstructing Archaeology (1992), Social Theory and Archaeology (1987), Experiencing the Past
(1991), Art and the Early Greek State (1999), Theatre/Archaeology (2001), and The Archaeological Imagination
(2012). As a member of the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, an ex-Director of Stanford Humanities
Lab, and a co-Director of the Revs Program in automotive research at Stanford University, he works in
material culture studies on interdisciplinary approaches to design.
Christopher Witmore is Associate Professor of Classical Archaeology at Texas Tech University and a
senior founding member of the Metamedia Laboratory at Stanford. Chris is fascinated by the character
and scope of archaeology, a field of practices deeply committed to things and what they tell us about
their past. As well as numerous articles, he is co-author of Archaeology: The Discipline of Things (2012) and
co-editor of the Routledge Archaeological Orientations series with Gavin Lucas.
ARCHAEOLOGY IN
THE MAKING
Conversations through a discipline
Edited by William L. Rathje †, Michael Shanks and
Christopher Witmore
WITH
SUSAN E. ALCOCK, LEWIS BINFORD †, VICTOR BUCHLI, JOHN F. CHERRY,
MARGARET W. CONKEY, GEORGE L. COWGILL, IAN HODDER, KRISTIAN KRISTIANSEN,
MARK LEONE, RANDALL H. MCGUIRE, LYNN MESKELL, ADRIAN PRAETZELLIS,
MARY PRAETZELLIS, WILLIAM L. RATHJE †, COLIN RENFREW, MICHAEL BRIAN SCHIFFER,
ALAIN SCHNAPP, MICHAEL SHANKS, RUTH TRINGHAM, PATTY JO WATSON,
AND ALISON WYLIE
First published 2013
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2013 Michael Shanks, Christopher Witmore and the estate of William
Rathje for selection and editorial matter; individual contributions, the
contributors.
The right of William Rathje †, Michael Shanks and Christopher Witmore
to be identified as authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for
their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Archaeology in the making: conversations through a discipline with Susan
E. Alcock [et al.] / editors,
William Rathje, Michael Shanks and Christopher Witmore.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Archaeology—Philosophy. 2. Archaeology—Methodology.
I. Rathje, William L. II. Shanks, Michael. III. Witmore, Christopher. IV.
Alcock, Susan E.
CC72.A715 2012
930.1—dc23 2012017671
ISBN: 978-0-415-63480-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-08347-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Book Now Ltd, London
In Memoriam
Lewis R. Binford 1931–2011
William L. Rathje 1945–2012
CONTENTS
Editorial preface ix
1 Introduction 1
William L. Rathje†, Michael Shanks, and Christopher Witmore
PART I
The archaeological imagination 5
2 Lewis Binford† 7
3 Michael Brian Schiffer 25
4 Patty Jo Watson 47
5 Colin Renfrew 68
6 Alison Wylie 93
7 Ian Hodder 122
PART II
The workings of archaeology 139
8 Adrian Praetzellis and Mary Praetzellis 141
9 Kristian Kristiansen 164
viii Contents
10 George L. Cowgill 185
11 Alain Schnapp 204
12 Susan E. Alcock and John F. Cherry 229
PART III
Politics 249
13 Mark Leone 251
14 Victor Buchli and Randall H. McGuire 270
15 Margaret W. Conkey 290
16 Ruth Tringham 308
17 Lynn Meskell 335
18 William L. Rathje† and Michael Shanks 352
19 Archaeology: an ecology of practices 380
Christopher Witmore and Michael Shanks
References 399
Index 420
EDITORIAL PREFACE
This book has been a long time in the making. The main chapters are transcriptions of actual
conversations that took place between the fall of 2002 and 2011. They have been edited to
ensure clarity and flow. They are supported by an editorial introduction, section headings,
footnotes and references in the conversations, and an end commentary that aims to situate
the conversations in the context of the discipline of archaeology and in relation to the history
of disciplines generally.
A result of convenience and chance more than design, the roots of the book are to be
found in the way Rathje and Shanks grabbed opportunities to share their passion for archae-
ology and to exploit synergies in a new archaeological institution, Stanford’s Archaeology
Center, founded in 1999, and particularly also in Metamedia, the collaborative lab environ-
ment Shanks created within the Archaeology Center. A brief account of personal history and
these circumstances will explain a good deal about who appears in our conversations and
what is discussed.
Having retired from the University of Arizona and moved to the Bay Area in 2000, Bill
Rathje took a position as a “Consulting Professor” in the new Archaeology Center at Stanford
University. Soon thereafter, Michael Shanks, enthralled by Rathje’s garbology and archaeology
of the contemporary past, invited him to team teach a graduate seminar on “Archaeological
Theory”. Seizing what he regarded as a learning opportunity – from Shanks, whose reputation
in the area he had known for decades; from the grad students who would attend; and from the
cutting-edge environment at Stanford in which he found himself – Rathje agreed.
After observing Stanford for a year, Rathje realized that he was part of a nexus of con-
temporary archaeology. One or two or three admired colleagues appeared every week to
give talks at the Center, to interact with students, and to informally discuss a wide variety
of theoretical issues. In 1969, while a graduate student at Harvard, Rathje had taken what
was called the “Archaeology Super-Seminar.” Under the direction of Professor Stephen
Williams, then the Director of the Peabody Museum, eight internationally renowned
archaeologists each took up residence at Harvard one-at-a-time for a week and participated
in the Super-Seminar where students asked them questions. Rathje suggested to Shanks that
x Editorial preface
they take a lead from this experience and invite some colleagues to participate in the
Stanford Archaeology Center’s weekly public talk to be followed by a dinner to which stu-
dents in the “Theory” seminar would be invited. On the following day the visiting scholar
would participate in a conversation with Shanks, Rathje and students in the seminar about
the visitor’s background and the general state of archaeological theory. Shanks instantly
agreed; he thought this would give a human face to theory, a field that can appear abstract
and daunting, while also reaching out with an invitation to participate in debating what
theory is really all about – thoughtful archaeology.
Rathje and Shanks set right to work. Rathje had always wondered why the discussions in
Harvard’s “Super-Seminar” had not been published. After all, these were some key figures in
archaeology directly answering graduate students’ questions. Well before any conversations
began at Stanford, it was decided that the conversations should be published, if at all possible.
As the founder and director of Stanford’s Metamedia Lab, Shanks saw to it that, with the help
of Chris Witmore and other graduate students at the time, all public talks were thoroughly
documented, as were all of the seminar conversations, and even the social events.
The guests of that seminar back in 2002 were meant to offer some of the different flavors
of archaeological thinking, though there could never be an aspiration to be in any way rep-
resentative of archaeology’s diversity. There were some who could be called “icons” of con-
temporary archaeology, notable figures in the most cited and utilized theoretical strains of
archaeology – Lew Binford (“New” or “Processual” archaeology), Michael Schiffer
(“Behavioral” archaeology), and Ian Hodder (“Postprocessual” and “Interpretive” archaeol-
ogy). “Marxist” archaeology and “gender and feminist” perspectives came also with Randy
McGuire, Victor Buchli, and Meg Conkey. Patty Jo Watson, who had written Explanation in
Archeology in 1971 with Chuck Redman and Steve LaBlanc, offered clarification of the
Processual format for doing archaeology. Mark Leone, who had frequent talks with Hodder
in England as he was hashing out the initial underpinnings of Postprocessual archaeology,
who had spent considerable effort on a major Marxist approach to historical archaeology, and
who developed Postprocessual approaches in his comprehensive work in Historic Annapolis,
offered more scope and nuance. We figured that both Rathje and McGuire had interacted
closely with Schiffer as he published the papers that built the structure of Behavioral archae-
ology and could knowledgably discuss its components. Shanks had a similar relationship with
Hodder that would open up the discussions. And, in order to explore Cultural Resource
Management (CRM), that pivot of archaeological theory, we asked Adrian and Mary
Praetzellis to describe the projects they used to build a major CRM program at Sonoma State
College. We were easily able to connect their pioneering work with Leone and McGuire, for
example, who had both plied CRM’s practice and political waters.
The seminar went better than expected. What emerged was indeed the experience of
archaeology in its human face. Less a story of competing theories, of great discoveries or
seminal publication, of leading figures pursuing and promoting their new “ism” (structuralism
in archaeology, feminism, processualism et al.), we discovered common ground across what were
held to be radically competing and opposed viewpoints, unexpected common orientation on
topics such as creative relationships with other cultures, on robust and secure discourse, on the
cultural politics of the past.
We felt that we had to continue what was looking like a kind of ethnography or even
psychoanalysis of our discipline, and one that was opening up new angles on its working, on
Editorial preface xi
its recent history, revealing much that is normally hidden and left unspoken. So Rathje and
Shanks continued to invite colleagues and guests of the Archaeology Center to conversation.
It became an even more opportunistic mix, depending upon the accidents of competing
schedules as much as attempts to cover particular topics and agendas – Colin Renfrew,
Kristian Kristiansen, George Cowgill, Ruth Tringham, Alain Schnapp, Alison Wylie, Susan
Alcock, John Cherry, Lynn Meskell, and finally, Rathje and Shanks themselves. While most of
the conversations are centered on individuals, some took place with pairs of scholars, and here
too a combination of opportunity and design played a role. A halt was called in 2011 when
it was clear that we had accumulated a wonderfully rich picture, approaching a decade in its
contemporary reference, stretching over forty years of some careers, more than enough to be
collected in a single volume.
Acknowledgments
Over the years many have put a great deal of labor into seeing this project through.
Elizabeth Gremillion Witmore and Christopher Witmore spent many hours transcribing
the original tapes. We are grateful for the encouragement of Susan Alcock, Alfredo
González-Ruibal, Gavin Lucas, Bjørnar Olsen, Krysta Ryzewski, Timothy Webmoor, and
especially Susan Bielstein, John F. Cherry, Mark Leone and Elizabeth Gremillion Witmore.
Comments from Susan Bielstein, Bob Chapman, John F. Cherry, Matthew Gibbons,
Matthew Johnson, Alex Knodell, Gavin Lucas, Bjørnar Olsen, John Robb, Timothy
Webmoor and an anonymous reviewer went far in improving the manuscript. Conversations
with numerous students and colleagues about the contemporary climate of the discipline,
the states of archaeological affairs, have had an impact on both the structuring of these
conversations and the commentary; here we wish to acknowledge Susan Alcock, Douglas
Bailey, Mary Beaudry, Peter Carne, John F. Cherry, Ewa Domanska, Matt Edgeworth,
Alfredo González-Ruibal, Omur Harmansah, Ian Hodder, Alex Knodell, Kostas Kotsakis,
Kristian Kristiansen, Gavin Lucas, Ian Morris, Bjørnar Olsen, Alain Schnapp, Ruth
Tringham, Timothy Webmoor, and Joseph Zehner. We thank the Routledge production
team for all their hard work: Ruth Berry and Amy Davis-Poynter; thanks also to Jef Boys
and Richard Cook at Book Now.
This project received generous support from the Stanford Archaeology Center and the
Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, Brown University. In addi-
tion, we are grateful to both the Department of Classical & Modern Languages &
Literatures and the College of Arts & Sciences at Texas Tech University for research sup-
port and to Timothy Lenoir, the Jenkins Collaboratory and the Information Sciences and
Information Studies Group at Duke University for hosting one of us (Witmore) as a
visiting scholar during the summer of 2011 when the final edits were completed. We owe
a great deal to the graduate students who participated in the original Conversations
Seminar at Stanford University in 2002. We also extend our thanks to the former
Administrator for the Stanford Archaeology Center Aileen Bibaoco-Agustin for all her
logistical support. Finally, we wish to thank all the conversationalists for their steadfast
confidence, encouragement, and patience.
Tucson, Palo Alto, and Lubbock 2011