The Craft of Archaeology

Authors

  • Michael Shanks STANFORD UNIVERSITY
  • Randall H. McGuire BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24901/rehs.v37i148.215

Keywords:

artisanal archaeology, Arts and Crafts Movement, political practice, alienation

Abstract

The idea of archaeology as craft challenges the separation of reasoning and execution that characterizes the field today. The Arts and Crafts Movement of the late nineteenth century established craftwork as an aesthetic of opposition. We establish craft in a Marxian critique of alienated labor, and we propose a unified practice of hand, heart, and mind for archaeology. The debates engendered by postprocessual archaeology have firmly situated archaeology in the present as a cultural and political practice. Many, however, still do not know how to work with these ideas. We argue that a resolution to this dilemma lies in thinking of archaeology as a craft. This resolultion does not provide a method, or a cookbook, for the practice of archaleology, as indeed the core of our argument is that attempts at such standardization lie at the heart of the alienation of archaeology. Rather, we wish to consider archaeology as a mode of cultural production, a unified method practiced by archaeologist, “client” public, and contemporary society.

Author Biographies

Michael Shanks, STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Doctor, Profesor en Arqueología Clásica en la Universidad de Stanford. Sus líneas de investigación incluyen la historia e investigación del diseño, la teoría arqueológica, estudios sobre el patrimonio y arqueologías del pasado contemporáneo, la arqueología de Grecia y Roma y la arqueología regional de las fronteras inglesas escocesas. Entre sus libros destacan: Archaeology in the Making: Conversations through a Discipline (2013), Archaeology: The Discipline of Things (2012), The Archaeological Imagination (2012) y Theatre/Archaeology (2001).

Randall H. McGuire, BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY

Doctor, Profesor Distinguido en Antropología de la Universidad Binghamton. Ha enfocado su investigación sobre el desarrollo de relaciones de poder en el pasado. Sus proyectos recientes se han enfocado en la arqueología contemporánea de la frontera Estados Unidos-México en Nogales, Arizona. Sus publicaciones incluyen: “Steel Walls and Picket Fences: Rematerializing the U.S.-Mexican Border in Ambos Nogales”. American Anthropologist, 115(3) (2013):466-481, Reinhard Bernbeck y Randall H. McGuire, eds. Ideologies in Archaeo-logy (2011), Elisa Villalpando y Randall H. McGuire, Entre muros de Piedra (2009), Archaeology as Political Action (2008) y A Marxist Archaeology (1992).

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Published

2016-09-16