Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Let Archaeology Be
Richard G. Fox
Wenner-Gren Foundation for
Anthropological Research, Inc.
and other students of objects produced and consumed pology, whereas the new "biocultural" area compounds
by humankind in a common, broad intellectual prac- medical anthropology, epidemiology, social construc-
tice.2 Let this be a lesson to American anthropology tionism, and science studies. The burgeoning interest in
and archaeology. the anthropology of animals and the cultures of chim-
T. J. Ferguson (this volume) chronicles another his- panzees tramples many conventional or even essential-
tory in which the development of a very broad anthro- ist scholarly boundaries. Public issues such as race and
pology occurred. In their pursuit of cultural repatriation racism, ecological degradation, genetically modified
and heritage, Native American groups had to marshal crops, immigration, and cultural property claims also
evidence from the four fields and far beyond them. No demand that we embrace a broad scholarship. Debates
pronouncements or allegiances but only a very practical within anthropology, such as the face-off over Hawaiian
question directed them toward "realizing" an all-inclu- responses to first European contact or the friendlier dis-
sive anthropology. agreement over the character of the Precolumbian Mayan
Could American anthropology, once freed from al- state, cannot be resolved by subdisciplinary loyalties that
legiances and counterallegiances, get on with the many fetter scholarship.
research questions that require archaeology and cultural I find it strange that some archaeologists pronounce
anthropology, for example, to league together? Could we the need for alarums and excursions against external en-
truly revise our graduate curricula around linking topics emies when the "outside world," at least as I know it,
like race, disability, nationalism, identity, and everyday seems so ready to profit from their knowledge. To me, it
life and thereby get beyond the sorry tokenism of re- is not obvious why archaeologists would want to fortify
quiring our students to take one course in each subfield? themselves against a so-called hostile, or, anyway, for-
Could we give up the snide dismissals of postmodern- eign, outside world by retreating to separate departments
ism3 and not be so self-protective (and appear so terribly and programs. Instead of a martial posture, it would
vulnerable)? not do harm, I respectfully suggest, were American ar-
Many of the essays in this collection indicate that chaeologists to adopt a more reflexive positionthe kind
such integrative work has been around a long time and is of self-inspection that Susan Gillespie and Rosemary
still very much ongoing. Teresita Majewski illuminates Joyce suggest.
the codependency between historical archaeology and To start, let us recognize that pledges of allegiance
cultural anthropology. David Anderson adroitly links the bind the faithful, or, better put, define the faithful, often
Garbage Project in archaeology to ecological issues in precisely to fend off internal challenges to beliefs. Ameri-
the world today. An older cultural ecology from Julian can archaeology has undergone fundamental chal-
Steward motivated settlement-pattern studies in archae- lengesby that I mean developments that affect the
ology, according to Timothy Earle. George Armelagos field's very characterin recent years, and perhaps these
speaks of the complex merger of skeletal biology and internal challenges, rather than external enemies, pro-
archaeology that underlies the growth of the new field voke the calls for separate allegiance and subdisciplin-
of bioarchaeology. The evolutionary approach that ary loyalty. One challenge comes from cultural resource
Geoffrey Clark advocates necessarily links socio- management, which offers many important opportuni-
cultural anthropologists with archaeologists and bio- ties to American archaeology but also insinuates funda-
logical anthropologists. William Doelle shows that an mental changes in pedagogy and professional identity.
analytic concept like "community"nothing so grand Another challenge comes from the claims indigenous
as Clark's evolutionary theorycan still accomplish the groups have made for control over their cultural proper-
work of integration. ties and heritageclaims that native populations and
In accord with these scholars, I believe the research government, too, have judged superior to those of ar-
questions beckoning to anthropologists today make chaeological science. Still another challenge to Ameri-
more salient than ever before an integrated approach to can archaeology comes from postprocessual archaeology,
anthropology (by which 1 mean one that is even more especially when it arrives with a British accent. This chal-
inclusive than the four-field approach). The material cul- lenge may be the most threatening, because postprocessual
ture studies I mentioned earlier link up with research on archaeology often has taken over the ready acceptance
consumption, on the one hand, and with work on the within current sociocultural anthropology that American
character of museum collections, on the other. Analyses (processual) archaeology once enjoyed.
of "landscape" and "urban space" clearly define a com- Nothing good will come to American archaeology
mon ground between archaeology and cultural anthro- from trying to ignore these challenges by displacing its
Let Archaeology Be 153
dismay, displeasure, or dread onto ostensible enemies 2. University College, London, is one center for
outside. If my last statement qualifies as a pronounce- this recent development of material culture studies in
ment, the only allegiance it demands is a pledge to Britain. More than other British anthropology programs,
pursue significant research questions and to integrate University College has instituted an American-style an-
scholarship across fields and subdisciplines as those re- thropology, but notand this is the pointwithin an en-
search questions require. vironment of pronouncements and pledges of allegiance.
3. Principled criticism of postmodernism can be
Notes pointed and amusing, without being snide and dismiss-
ive (see Sokal and Bricmont 1999).
1. Nothing I write here should be taken as necessar-
ily representing the official policy of the Wenner-Gren Reference
Foundation or its board of trustees. 1 write as an Ameri-
can anthropologist, and when 1 use the word "our," the Sokal, Alan, and Jean Bricmont
reference is to anthropology and anthropologists in the 1999 Fashionable Nonsense, Postmodern Intellectuals'
United States. Abuse of Science. New York: Picador USA.