Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-ws8qp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-19T07:01:59.563Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Presentism and the LAW

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Extract

We welcome the Lampeter Archaeology Workshop's (LAW) attempt to clarify the ways in which they understand relativism in post-processual archaeology and especially their distinctions among several kinds of relativism. We would like to comment on links between epistemological relativism and a particular view of history (or, more generally, the past) that the LAW's discussion raises. In particular, we draw attention to several implications of their positions, including the relative emphasis placed on the past and/or the present in archaeological interpretations, different ways of linking past and present, and the political implications of such links

Type
Discussion
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, B., 1994: Exodus, Critical inquiry 20, 314327.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Apel, K.-O., 1971: Szientistik, Hermeneutik, Ideologiekritik. Entwurf einer Wissenschaftslehre in erkenntnisanthropologischer Sicht, in Apel, K.-O., Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik, Frankfurt am Main, 744.Google Scholar
Arnold, B., 1990: The past as propaganda: totalitarian archaeology in Nazi Germany, Antiquity 64 (244), 464478.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bahn, P., 1998: Iceman returns to italy. Police escort Ötzi home, Archaeology May/June, 26.Google Scholar
Bernbeck, R., and Pollock, S., 1996: Ayodhya, archaeology, and identity, Current anthropology 37 (Supplement), 138142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bintliff, J.L., 1988: A review of contemporary perspectives on the ‘meaning’ of the past, in Bintliff, J. (ed.), Extracting meaning from the past, Oxford (Oxbow Monograph 1), 236.Google Scholar
Bintliff, J.L., 1991: Post-modernism, rhetoric and scholasticism at TAG: the current state of British archaeological theory, Antiquity 65, 274278.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bintliff, J.L., 1993: Why Indiana Jones is smarter than the Post-Processualists, Norwegian archaeological review, 26, 91100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bintliff, J.L., 1995: ‘Whither archaeology?’ revisited, in Kuna, M. and Venclova, N. (eds), Whither archaeology? Papers in honour of Evzen Neustupny, Prague, 2435.Google Scholar
Bintliff, J.L., 1997: Catastrophe, chaos and complexity: the death, decay and rebirth of towns from Antiquity to today, Journal of European archaeology 5, 6790.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Connor, S., 1992: The ethics of discourse: Habermas, Lyotard and Rorty, in Connor, S., Theory and cultural value, Oxford, 102132.Google Scholar
Danforth, L.M., 1995: The Macedonian conflict: ethnic nationalism in a transnational world, Princeton (NJ).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Habermas, J., 1968: Erkenntnis und Interesse, in Habermas, J., Technik und Wissenschaft als ‘Ideologie’, Frankfurt am Main, 146168.Google Scholar
Hassan, F., 1997: Beyond the surface: comments on Hodder's ‘reflexive excavation methodology’, Antiquity 71, 10201025.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodder, I. (ed.), 1996: On the surface: Çatalhöyük 1993–5, London(British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara monographs 22).Google Scholar
Kohl, P., 1993: Limits to a post-processual archaeology (or, the dangers of a new scholasticism), in Yoffee, N. and Sherratt, A. (eds), Archaeological theory. Who sets the agenda? Cambridge, 1319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kohl, P., 1988: Review of academic freedom and apartheid: the story of the World Archaeological Congress, Academe 74 (4), 4041.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kohl, P., and Fawcett, C. (eds) 1995a, Nationalism, politics, and the practice of archaeology, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Kohl, P., and Fawcett, C., 1995b: Archaeology in the service of the state. Theoretical considerations, in Kohl, P. and Fawcett, C. (eds), Nationalism, politics, and the practice of archaeology, Cambridge, 318.Google Scholar
Koselleck, R., 1979: Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten, Frankfurt am Main.Google Scholar
Kus, S., 1989: Time is on my side, paper presented at the Wenner-Gren Foundation symposium ‘Critical approaches in archaeology: material life, meaning, and power’ Cascais, Portugal, 1725 March 1989 (unpublished paper).Google Scholar
Latour, B., 1988: The pasteurization of France, Cambridge (MA).Google Scholar
Lowenthal, D., 1985: The past is a foreign country, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Renfrew, C., 1996: Prehistory and the identity of Europe or, Don't lets be beastly to the Hungarians, in Graves-Brown, P., Jones, S. and Gamble, C. (eds), Cultural identity and archaeology. The construction of European communities, London, 125137.Google Scholar
Shanks, M., and Tilley, C., 1987: Re-constructing archaeology. Theory and practice, London.Google Scholar