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Archaeology and Anthropology: Understanding Similarity, Exploring Difference

edited by Duncan Garrow and Thomas Yarrow

This book focuses on the relationship between the disciplines of archaeology and anthropology. Both disciplines arose from a common project: a desire to understand human social and cultural diversity. However, in recent years, archaeology's interest in anthropology has remained largely unreciprocated. To date, the causes and consequences of this imbalance have received little attention, particularly within anthropology.

Including papers by eminent thinkers within both disciplines, this book sheds new light on issues of disciplinary identity. The contributors show how a lack of collaboration has resulted in a narrowing of horizons within both disciplines and explore the grounds upon which these might be opened up. The papers draw on a range of theoretical perspectives and empirical case-studies, but are unified in their concern to explore the ideological, practical and methodological commitments that mark each discipline as distinct. Ultimately, the volume arrives at the startling conclusion that archaeology's apparent absence of data may actually be a positive attribute, leading to a distinctive approach from which anthropology can learn. 200p (Oxbow Books 2010)

Review Quotes

"For a while now archaeology has felt that ‘its time has come’. Growing with thoughtful practice, merging established methodologies with sophisticated and cosmopolitan theorizing, a disciplinary maturity urges making a mark in the academy... This is precisely what [this volume] undertakes. Indeed, whether it is Julian Thomas’ mystical sounding call to embrace “presence” or Ingold’s guru-like utterance that ”to be is to know, and that to know is to be”, there is a poignancy on the part of many of the contributions that sets this collection apart, offering introspective analysis and cognitive tools for just such therapeutic possibility."

Archaeolog (October 2010)

"Authors at the intersection of archaeology and anthropology open up exciting possibilities for dialogue and stretch the relationship between the disciplines in new ways."

Ian Hodder, Stanford University

"This collection of essays on the relationships between archaeology and anthropology provides a dialogue that has waxed and waned over the years with a radical new impetus. The result is a groundbreaking set of new proposals about what anthropologists and archaeologists need to learn from each other."

John Gledhill, University of Manchester

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: archaeological anthropology (Duncan Garrow & Thomas Yarrow)
2. Not knowing as knowledge: asymmetry between archaeology and anthropology (Thomas Yarrow)
3. Triangulating absence: exploring the fault-lines between archaeology and anthropology (Gavin Lucas)
4. Spaces that were not densely occupied – questioning ‘ephemeral’ evidence (Lesley McFadyen)
5. On the boundary: new perspectives from ethnography of archaeology (Matt Edgeworth)
6. Archaeology and the anthropology of memory: takes on the recent past (Paola Filippucci)
7. Resolving archaeological and ethnographic tensions: a case study from South-Central California (David Robinson)
8. Words and things: thick description in archaeology and anthropology (Chris Gosden)
9. Re-evaluating the long term: civilisation and temporalities (Stephan Feuchtwang and Michael Rowlands)
10. Relational personhood as a subject of anthropology and archaeology: comparative and complementary analyses (Chris Fowler)
11. No more ancient; no more human: the future past of archaeology and anthropology (Tim Ingold)
12. Commentary. Boundary objects and asymmetries (Marilyn Strathern)
13. Commentary. Walls and bridges (Julian Thomas)
Index

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