Journal of Social Archaeology

ARTICLE

Copyright 2001 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) Vol 1(1): 512 [1469-6053(200106)1:1;512;017627]

Editorial statement

omentous intellectual shifts in the social sciences have often been marked by new publishing ventures, particularly journals, that chart the progress of innovative developments. In anthropology, Public Culture has occupied an important space in foregrounding a political anthropology which focuses on contemporary valences such as postcolonialism and diaspora. It is noteworthy that archaeologys developments in the last two decades have not been marked by similar projects. This is surprising since there have been major epistemic shifts in the subject matter, methodologies and wider responsibilities of archaeology in the past 20 years. New contextual and interpretive approaches have emerged alongside challenges to object-oriented, culture historical and scientic traditions that operated under the guise of objectivity. With the acknowledgement of reexivity came the recognition that archaeology operates in the world and its materiality and historicity have tangible effects on living people and communities. Few can now deny the political entanglements of the archaeological past and contemporary narratives. This journal offers a venue to investigate those imbrications by placing archaeology within wider discourses across the humanities and the social and natural sciences. Issues with contemporary salience include aspects of identity, ancient and modern. Today, archaeologists routinely contribute to analyses of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, class, race in short, social difference. Increasingly, social difference is formulated around theorizing the body, not only in archaeology but in social theory generally. Archaeology also engages with questions of social commemoration whether in the form of mortuary analysis, monumentality or landscape. This leads into larger questions concerning temporalities, diasporas, and social memory, topics
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articulated by Barbara Bender in this issue. Contemporary archaeology considers questions of time and identity in lived experience, specically as manifest in ritual, household archaeology and material culture studies. An explicit focus on the social in terms of identity, meaning and practice can certainly be seen as a positive development in archaeology. It is an outcome of a growing engagement with social theory in elds as diverse as history, social anthropology, linguistics, sociology, human geography, literature, gender studies, queer studies, etc. In this sense, a social archaeology forcefully expands upon Phillipss (Willey and Phillips, 1958: 2) dictum that archaeology is anthropology, or it is nothing. Archaeology is shifting its status from a discipline, with everything that that implies boundaries, canons and institutional forms of reproduction to a process of knowledge production mediated by material culture and experience. Archaeologists frequently make overtures to interdisciplinarity, particularly in the area of social theory. However, few have made substantive inroads to these other elds. The prole of the editorial board is drawn from anthropology, art history, social science, feminist theory and history, reecting a collaborative effort to establish a dialogic relationship between elds. By having anthropologists, feminists and others comment on relevant archaeological contributions, or by interviewing prominent social theorists, the journal seeks to stimulate discussion and debate. Through these collaborations we hope to move beyond the simple importation of outside theory into archaeology and instead to contribute to wider intellectual development in all elds. Archaeology is often critiqued for its attempts at theorybuilding: this venture affords us a rare venue to explore that possibility. We see the widespread support for interdisciplinary collaboration expressed in areas such as cultural studies, feminist and ethnic studies as a testament to the potential for academic exchange. Moreover, we actively encourage contributions from anthropologists and other social scientists working on material culture, the materiality and monumentality of the past and historical issues. Bryan Turners contribution in the current issue inaugurates this interdisciplinary dialogue. The journal will also stimulate intradisciplinary exchange by bringing together widely separated discourses and traditions. Regional specializations are now subject to wider global dissemination. The journal will facilitate the breakdown of those arbitrary and hegemonic boundaries between North American, Classical, Near Eastern, Mesoamerican, European and Australian archaeologies and beyond. We propose no temporal or topical limits, including the archaeology of ourselves and the very recent past. The journal thus provides a forum in which archaeologists working on common issues in different areas can engage with each other over questions of theory. The central requirement of all published work will be that a serious attempt is made to engage the social as not merely epiphenomenal, but as central to an understanding of past and present identities and meanings.

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s THE SOCIAL
Social archaeology is difcult to dene since it has shifted in its meaning continuously. A historical view can be useful in seeing the shape of previous attempts to understand the past in social terms. There is a tendency in historical accounts to see present forms of thought as leaping over the inadequacies of past approaches. In fact, we suggest that each generation continues to explore the questions framed by all its predecessors. Archaeology has always included a concept of the social, even if it was not always dominant and is sometimes hidden. Evolutionists, Boasians and V. Gordon Childe all attempted to understand past societies in their different ways. Grahame Clarke in his book Archaeology and Society (1939) saw archaeology as thoroughly social and, in fact, only justied by its social role. By the 1960s the origins of the term became oppositional: it was archaeology distinguished from more environmentally determined forms of explanation or from diffusionism, both of which took social formations and their changes into account. From the 1960s onwards there was a tendency to treat the social rather narrowly as economics and social organization. With the emergence of processual archaeology, Lewis Binford (1962) offered a systems view of culture that purported to integrate the material expressions of technology, society and ideology. In practice, only technology and society were addressed, perhaps a legacy of Christopher Hawkes (1954) ladder of inference, which argued that technology was easier to access methodologically than religion. In 1973, Colin Renfrew, as he discusses in this issue, gave an inaugural lecture that challenged processual archaeology to transcend the ecosystems approach and explore the emergence of symbolic systems and art styles. Five years later, a similar dissatisfaction was expressed by Charles Redman and others (1978) who argued for the need to go beyond subsistence and dating to look at style and information exchange. By 1984 Renfrew had identied ve basic topics for a social archaeology: societies and space and how landscapes of power are created; networks and ows (trade and interaction); structures of authority concerning monuments and the structure of pre-urban societies; the dynamics of continuous growth as approached through systems thinking; issues of discontinuity and long-term change (Renfrew, 1984). In contrast, the social approach of processual archaeology tended to dene the evolution of social complexity as its central focus (Yoffee and Sherratt, 1993). Today, Michael Schiffer (2000) engages with power, political action, and representation from the perspective of behavioural archaeology. These various perspectives foreground the centrality of the social and how it resonates today in archaeological dialogues. With the development of postprocessual archaeologies, the social began

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to address ideology and power. Some of these approaches draw inspiration from the Marxist-inspired work of Childe (1936). Daniel Miller and Christopher Tilley (1984) offer a critique of ideology that presupposes an active construction and representation of the social world by past peoples and maintains a critical attitude to the analysis of these practices. They advocate an understanding of human agency as historically constituted by social relations. Similarly, Randy McGuire (1992) has espoused a dialectical Marxist perspective conceived as a theory of internal relations as a way to resolve the dualisms of science and humanism, evolution and history, materialism and mentalism etc. Mark Leone and Parker B. Potter (1999) and others have been particularly interested in the institution of capitalism as a system by which ideology and power relations are reproduced. Some of the insights of these approaches, especially those of agency and power, have also been more widely adopted (Hodder, 1986). Most neo-Marxists would also place the social as central, in terms of the dialectic; both the dialectic of conicts between social groups and the dialectic of contradictions within social formations. Just to emphasize this point, the recent book by Kristian Kristiansen and Michael Rowlands, Social Transformations in Archaeology (1998), deals with the themes of objectivity and subjectivity, world systems and the archaeology of colonialism. All of these perspectives are encompassed within our understanding of social archaeology. Some have construed the social as the social context of the practice of archaeology. As early as 1939, Grahame Clark observed that archaeology has tended to ourish in those contexts where its value to the community was demonstrated, and stagnated where its possibilities were unrealized. Today, there are a number of ongoing debates about the roles of archaeology in nationalism (Kohl and Fawcett, 1995; Schmidt and Patterson, 1995; Meskell, 1998), heritage management (Cleere, 1989), indigenous issues (Layton, 1989; Biolsi and Zimmerman, 1997; Swindler et al., 1997), gender, feminism and sexuality (Gero and Conkey, 1991; Gilchrist, 1999; Meskell, 1999; Schmidt and Voss, 2000) and postcolonialism (Gosden, 1999). In this issue, Maria Franklin explores the context of African American archaeology to demonstrate the potential for more meaningful and emancipatory interpretations of black history.

s TOWARD A SOCIAL ARCHAEOLOGY

In using the term social archaeology, we advocate a more diverse archaeology that brings together and, at the same time, challenges different senses of the social. Given the breadth of the social and of debates about the social in so many different areas in archaeology, the generality of the term social archaeology seems more than justied. Rather than indicating a

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specic approach we see it as characterizing a broad range of approaches dealing with the social. It refers to a general direction and a general set of interests rather than prescribing a particular solution or paradigm. Today it seems widely accepted that the environment, the economy and technologies are fundamentally social. Thus the term social archaeology refers to a broad orientation within the discipline, rather than to a particular theoretical position. Archaeologists increasingly feel a responsibility to contribute to other disciplines from an independent and mature position. Our maturity and condence derives from advances in our understanding of material culture and the long term. Material culture has emerged in recent decades as a separate area of study to which many archaeologists have contributed (Hodder, 1989; Tilley, 1990, 1999) and which can be seen as contributing to ethnographic study from a different and independent angle (Appadurai, 1986). Archaeologists, whether evolutionary or historical, have specialized in understanding the material traces of human presence through time. As Martin Hall argues eloquently in this volume, the heart of archaeology as an intellectual practice is the search for the ways in which we express ourselves through the things that we make and use, collect and discard, value or take for granted, and seek to be remembered by. As such, all archaeology is inherently social. These concerns with the past inexorably, and appropriately, link us with concerns for the present. Our challenge is to be committed to understanding past societies in terms of their social contexts and lived experiences while, at the same time, to remain cognizant of how the knowledge of the past that we produce is used in the present. One avenue to accomplish this goal is to move from conceptualizing society as an object, to thinking of society in terms of social relations which constitute the core of any analysis. We can then examine how material culture is continuously implicated in webs of signication in the processes of creating meaning. We recognize that there are differences of opinion on the signicance of the social discussed here. We hope that this journal will play a central role in exploring them. One of the clear contrasts between cognitive archaeology and interpretive archaeology is that in the former it is often claimed that the cognitive can be studied as if separated from the social. Most interpretive archaeologists take the view that meaning and mind are thoroughly social, that knowledge is intimately linked to power, and that mind, body and practice are not easily separable. One of the dialogues that we hope to have in this journal is whether perception, symbolization and decision making can be studied as cognitive rather than as thoroughly cognitive and social. It is particularly encouraging that archaeology and its debates are becoming of increasing signicance for other disciplines. At times, this external interest is largely symbolic. The clearest example is the use of the metaphor of archaeology by Michel Foucault (1972), both in terms of his interest in

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the temporal sequences of discourses and in terms of his engagement with the materiality of many discursive practices. Other examples are more substantive, including the use of a long-term archaeological perspective in social geography (Soja, 2000). In Postmetropolis Soja draws on excavations at atalhyk, past and present, to continue his contemplation of placemaking. This is an instance where archaeological narratives become the subject of study for another discipline. Beyond Kinship (Joyce and Gillespie, 2000) exemplies other engagements where archaeologists collaborate with ethnographers in the study of subjects of mutual interest such as social relations and their materialization. In the current issue, Arjun Appadurai discusses other archaeological issues that have widespread contemporary relevance such as the authenticity of material objects and postcolonial relationships with the past. Recent work outside archaeology resonates with research by archaeologists themselves in identifying some form of agency for material artifacts. For example, the work by Gell (1998) in relation to the ethnography of art, or by Latour (1996) in discussing a wide range of contemporary objects, has created a new and broad-ranging interest in archaeological approaches to the material.

s JOURNAL GOALS
With these ideas in mind, the journal actively encourages contributions from a variety of theoretical perspectives. It will be inclusive and innovative rather than policing the boundaries of any one position. There are three aims that distinguish this journal from those already in existence. First, it will seek to explore the relations of archaeology to the humanities and social sciences. In the past, archaeology has been regarded as marginal to developments in social theory. Although this situation is now changing, archaeological writings are still not commonly cited by anthropologists, geographers and sociologists. We believe that archaeology, with its focus on materiality and time, can contribute substantially to existing theories of social meaning and should be integral in the construction of new ones. Second, the journal seeks to break down the divide that currently separates North American and European archaeologies, which has been both stimulating and divisive in the past few decades. One example of this polarization is the differential inuence of processual and postprocessual archaeologies on North American and British archaeologies (Preucel, 1995). Continental and Latin American archaeologies cannot easily be subsumed by either processual or postprocessual approaches and have their own distinctive traditions with which we will productively engage. Papers by Criado and Politis in this issue attest to the unique perspectives as yet

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under-appreciated in Anglophone archaeology. The journal can thus serve as a common ground for exploring the different inections of these approaches and result in a broadening of the discipline. Finally, the journal will advocate innovative modes of writing, presentation and the use of electronic media. Among the challenges facing archaeology is the need to better understand how the way we represent our knowledge inuences those whom we address. A number of archaeologists have begun to explore new ways of writing (Joyce et al., 2000). In a concrete way the journal offers a structural vehicle for broader participation in exploring the effects of new media. We encourage both traditional and innovative writing styles to acknowledge the importance of modes of representation and multiple perspectives on the past.

References
Appadurai, A., ed. (1986) The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Binford, L.R. (1962) Archaeology as Anthropology, American Antiquity 28: 217225. Biolsi, T. and L.J. Zimmerman, eds (1997) Indians and Anthropologists: Vine Deloria Jr. and the Critique of Anthropology. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Childe, V.G. (1936) Man Makes Himself. London: Watts. Clarke, G. (1939) Archaeology and Society. London: Methuen. Cleere, H., ed. (1989) Archaeological Heritage Management in the Modern World. London: Unwin Hyman. Foucault, M. (1972) The Archaeology of Knowledge. London: Routledge. Gell, A. (1998) Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gero, J.M. and M.W. Conkey, eds (1991) Engendering Archaeology: Women and Prehistory. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Gilchrist, R.L. (1999) Gender and Archaeology: Contesting the Past. London: Routledge. Gosden, C. (1999) Anthropology and Archaeology: A Changing Relationship. London: Routledge. Hawkes, C.F.C. (1954) Archaeological Theory and Method: Some Suggestions from the Old World, American Anthropologist 56: 155168. Hodder, I. (1986) Reading the Past: Current Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hodder, I., ed. (1989) The Meaning of Things: Material Culture and Symbolic Expression. London: Unwin Hyman. Joyce, R.A. and S. Gillespie, eds (2000) Beyond Kinship: Social and Material Reproduction in House Societies. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Joyce, R.A., C. Guyer and M. Joyce (2000) Sister Stories. New York: New York University Press [http://www.nyupress.nyu.edu/sisterstories]. Kohl, P.L. and C. Fawcett, eds (1995) Nationalism, Politics and the Practice of Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Journal of Social Archaeology 1(1) Kristiansen, K. and M.J. Rowlands (1998) Social Transformations in Archaeology: Global and Local Perspectives. London: Routledge. Latour, B. (1996) Aramis, or, The Love of Technology, trans. Catherine Porter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Layton, R., ed. (1989) Who Needs the Past? Indigenous Values and Archaeology. London: Unwin Hyman. Leone, M.B. and P.B. Potter Jr, eds (1999) Historical Archaeologies of Capitalism. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. McGuire, R.H. (1992) A Marxist Archaeology. New York: Academic Press. Meskell, L.M., ed. (1998) Archaeology Under Fire: Nationalism, Politics and Heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. London: Routledge. Meskell, L.M. (1999) Archaeologies of Social Life: Age, Sex, Class etc. in Ancient Egypt. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Miller, D. and C. Tilley, eds (1984) Ideology, Power and Prehistory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Preucel, R.W. (1995) The Postprocessual Condition, Journal of Archaeological Research 3: 14775. Redman, C.L., M.-J. Berman, E.V. Curtin, W.T. Langhorne Jr, N.M. Versaggi and J.C. Wanser, eds (1978) Social Archeology: Beyond Subsistence and Dating. New York: Academic Press. Renfrew, C.R. (1973) Social Archaeology: An Inaugural Lecture. Southampton: University of Southampton. Renfrew, C.R. (1984) Approaches to Social Archaeology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Schiffer, M.B., ed. (2000) Social Theory in Archaeology. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Schmidt, P.R. and T.C. Patterson, eds (1995) Making Alternative Histories: The Practice of Archaeology and History in Non-Western Settings. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press. Schmidt, R.A. and B.L. Voss, eds (2000) Archaeologies of Sexuality. London: Routledge. Soja, E. (2000) Postmetropolis: Studies of Cities and Regions. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Swindler, N., K.E. Dongoske, R. Anyon and A.S. Downer (1997) Native Americans and Archaeologists: Stepping Stones to Common Ground. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. Tilley, C., ed. (1990) Reading Material Culture: Structuralism, Hermeneutics and Post-Structuralism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Tilley, C. (1999) Metaphor and Material Culture. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Willey, G.R. and P. Phillips (1958) Method and Theory in Archaeology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Yoffee, N. and A. Sherratt, eds (1993) Archaeological Theory: Who Sets the Agenda? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.