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A study on creative object biographies. Can creative arts be a medium for understanding object–human interaction? Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2024-03-04 Konstantinos P. Trimmis, Christina Marini, Zoe Katsilerou, Maria Marinou, Konstantza Kapsali, Melpomeni Perdikopoulou, Valentina Soumintoub, Kristina Brkić Drnić, Ivan Drnić, Eleftheria Theodoroudi, Lita Tzortzopoulou Gregory, Christianne L. Fernee, Konstantina Kalogirou
Object biography, amended and expanded by the newer and ontologically updated concept of object itineraries, is a well-established analytical tool for documenting human–object interactions. The present paper explores its intersection with art, and proposes the concept of Creative Object Biography, as a step forward in the discourse and as a means for articulating and sharing alternative narratives
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Narratives of inequality. Towards an archaeology of structural violence in Late Iron Age Scandinavia Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2024-02-12 Ben Raffield, Christina Fredengren, Anna Kjellström
To date, traditional narratives of the Late Iron Age have focused almost exclusively on discussions of the elite. These were the martial rulers and major landholders who occupied the upper strata of Scandinavian society. The lives of lower-status population groups, including enslaved and other ‘unfree’ or dependent peoples such as landless farmers, have long been marginalized in archaeological discourse
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Finding the fun: Towards a playful archaeology Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2023-06-21 Aris Politopoulos, Angus A.A. Mol, Sybille Lammes
Games and other forms of play are core human activities, as vitally constitutive of cultural and social practices in the past as they are today. Consequently, play, games and fun should be central in archaeological theory, but our review shows they are anything but. Instead, very few studies deal with these concepts at all, and most of those that do focus on how the affordances play offers link it
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Always take a look back. Ethics in post-conflict archaeology Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2023-03-23 Simon Radchenko, Dmytro Kiosak
This reaction to the Paul Newson and Ruth Young paper entitled ‘Post-conflict ethics, archaeology and archaeological heritage. A call for discussion’ (Archaeological dialogues, 2022) supports the call for a discussion regarding archaeological ethics in post-conflict zones. Following the agreement on the fuzzy border between the state of ‘conflict’ and ‘post-conflict’, it reflects on the continuity
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Archaeological encounters: Ethics and aesthetics under the mark of the Anthropocene Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2023-03-22 Þóra Pétursdóttir, Tim Flohr Sørensen
What legitimizes archaeological work in an age of global climate change, socio-political crises and economic recession? On what topics should archaeology focus its research questions, and what forms of archaeological engagement are not merely justifiable but able to make a difference in light of such challenges? Today, there is a tendency, we argue, that archaeological responses to current challenges
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A conversation with Koji Mizoguchi. On globalization, Japanese archaeology and archaeological theory today Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2023-03-22 Artur Ribeiro
On the occasion of a short research trip to Japan, I had the opportunity to sit down with Professor Koji Mizoguchi in Kyushu University, Fukuoka, to discuss several topics, which you will find transcribed below. I was curious as to his thoughts that he – as the President of the World Archaeological Congress, a non-governmental and non-profit organization that promotes the exchange of archaeological
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Signs of prehistory. A Peircian semiotic approach to lithics Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2023-03-13 Justin Guibert, Antonio Pérez-Balarezo, Hubert Forestier
How can we understand prehistoric lithic objects? What meaning should we give them and what view should we adopt to claim access to their significance? How can we reduce and clarify our biases? This article is a proposal to introduce Peircian semiotics to review lithic objects. For a long time, these were apprehended as types, sometimes within evolutionary lineages; however, in this research, knapped
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Humanness as performance Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2022-11-09 John C. Barrett
If archaeology is the examination of historical conditions with reference to a surviving material residue, then one way in which these conditions might be characterized is as the different ways they had enabled the development of different forms of humanness. The historical construction of this diversity is discussed here as the ways that the relationships between humans and things had been performed
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New institutional economics in Viking studies. Visualising immaterial culture Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2022-09-23 Anders Ögren, Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson, John Ljungkvist, Ben Raffield, Neil Price
In this paper, we argue that closer engagement with the field of new institutional economics (NIE) has the potential to provide researchers with a new theoretical toolbox that can be used to study economic and social practices that are not readily traceable in material culture. NIE assumes that individual actions are based on bounded rationality and that the existence of rules (institutions) and their
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Post-conflict ethics, archaeology and archaeological heritage: a call for discussion Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2022-09-23 Paul Newson, Ruth Young
Ethics are fundamentally important to all forms of archaeological theory and practice and are embedded within many professional codes of conduct. The ethics of archaeological engagement with conflicts around the world have also been subject to scrutiny and debate. While archaeology and archaeological heritage are increasingly viewed as significant elements of post-conflict work, with much to contribute
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Pre-critical archaeology. Speculative realism and symmetrical archaeology Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2022-09-23 Eloise Govier
The rise of Symmetrical Archaeology has subtly recast archaeology as the study of things and not the study of the past or past peoples. This new description of the archaeological endeavour is often met with criticism. This paper continues in the critical vein but embraces a different strategy of engagement. Here, second-wave Symmetrical Archaeology is brought to the fore: its historical development
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Rainey and the Russians: Arctic archaeology, ‘Eskimology’ and Cold War cultural diplomacy Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2022-06-29 Lynn Meskell
This article recounts an untold chapter in the life of archaeologist Froelich Rainey, specifically his ambition to collaborate with Soviet scholars and deploy his personal networks to foster mutual understanding across the Iron Curtain during the height of the Cold War. The picaresque and implausible life of Rainey, who entered wartime Vienna in the turret of a B-52 bomber and was a State Department
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Global archaeology and microhistorical analysis. Connecting scales in the 1st-milennium B.C. Mediterranean Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2022-06-16 Corinna Riva, Ignasi Grau Mira
Recently, voices have been raised regarding the challenges of Big Data-driven global approaches, including the realization that exclusively tackling the global scale masks social and historical realities. While multi-scalar analyses have confronted this problem, the effects of global approaches are being felt. We highlight one of these effects: as classical scholarship struggles to decolonize itself
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Archaeologies of whiteness Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2022-04-29 Matthew C. Reilly
In the midst of ardent calls for decolonizing and building a more anti-racist archaeology, whiteness has gone largely unacknowledged in the history of disciplinary thought and practice. As a point of departure, this article asks: why are there so many White archaeologists? In addressing this question, I suggest that the development of early archaeological method and thought was deeply affected by White
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Consumers, curations, ‘community’, contestation and the time of COVID-19. Linkages and perspectives Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2022-04-29 Saro Wallace
Reification of ‘community’ and community engagement by professional curators of material culture has recently been critiqued in ways which highlight the diversity of cultural identities and priorities among the general public. When not acting as coherent local communities under professional supervision, people are otherwise curating culture in public space within frameworks of spiritual and creative
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Reassessing power in the archaeological discourse. How collective, cooperative and affective perspectives may impact our understanding of social relations and organization in prehistory Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2022-04-29 Julie Lund, Martin Furholt, Knut Ivar Austvoll
This paper critically examines how power is understood and used in archaeological interpretation of prehistoric societies. We argue that studies on power within archaeology have been haltered in their interpretive potential, frequently limited to individualizing coercive power with androcentric connotations. We explore new avenues of power through a retrospective view. Drawing on ideas first conceptualized
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Social arrangements. Kinship, descent and affinity in the mortuary architecture of Early Neolithic Britain and Ireland Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2022-01-10 Chris Fowler
This article reassesses the social significance of Early Neolithic chambered tombs. It critically evaluates inferences about social organization drawn from tomb architecture and interpretations of kinship based on aDNA analyses of human remains from tombs. Adopting the perspective that kinship is a multifaceted and ongoing field of practice, it argues that the arrangement of tomb chambers was related
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Heritage preservation in religious contexts. Disciplinary challenges for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2021-12-02 Trinidad Rico
This article examines the ways in which global heritage discourse has operated across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, from an ideological and historical perspective. Ideologically, I consider tensions between heritage preservation practice and religious traditions that share the same landscape or material culture. This discussion, which is relatively marginalized in the heritage literature
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Ceci n’est pas un subalterne. A Comment on Indigenous Erasure in Ontology-Related Archaeologies Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2021-12-02 Beatriz Marín-Aguilera
Having followed with great interest the latest scholarly literature on ontology-related archaeologies, especially in this journal, this essay will problematise the extractive nature of much of this scholarship in the long-history of Western imperialism, in which Indigenous knowledge has been collected, depoliticised, classified, and then re-signified within Western frameworks.
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On critical hope and the anthropos of non-anthropocentric discourses. Some thoughts on archaeology in the Anthropocene Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2021-12-02 Piraye Hacıgüzeller
In this essay I scrutinize the non-anthropocentric discourses used by the social sciences and humanities narratives and critiques of the Anthropocene. Although not always predominant within the academic Anthropocene debate, such discursive strands remain politically and ethically inspiring and influential in that debate and for the public discourse concerning the epoch. I stress that these discourses
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Heritage preservation and religious sites or a selected history of UNESCO? Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2021-12-01 Ruth Young
(stating with colonial reorganizations of the 19th century and then the rise of new nation states in the 20th) can provide context and the possibility for an alternative.What would such new religious foundations look like? The Agha Khan Trust for Culture has positioned itself as one possibility, yet it remains closely aligned withWestern preservationist expertise tempered with a commitment to local
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Expanding the ‘Islamic’ in Islamic heritage Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2021-12-01 Stephennie Mulder
In 2017, in the aftermath of the highly mediatized destruction of museum objects and heritage sites in Iraq and Syria by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), I edited a special issue of the International journal of Islamic architecture that aimed to explore Islamic attitudes to the material remains of the pre-Islamic past (Mulder 2017). The special issue asked whether, particularly in the premodern
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Preservationist doctrines as theological propositions in secular clothes Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2021-12-01 Ian Straughn
More than a decade ago – this would be prior to the Egyptian revolution of January 2011, when Hosni Mubarak was still in power, and it seemed likely that rule would pass to his sons – I was in Cairo thinking about potential new archaeological projects. I spent some time with an Egyptian colleague who was the chief inspector for the archaeological preserve that encompassed what remained of the undeveloped
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Is it possible to reconstruct a prehistoric religion? Latvian archaeology versus the believers Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2021-10-25 Zenta Broka-Lāce
Today there is a revival of groups who claim to practice ancient Latvian religion. They often accuse archaeologists of lying and concealing the evidence of Latvian past superiority. On the one hand, this might be considered a misuse of archaeological data in order to support religious or nationalistic beliefs. On the other hand, hypothetical reconstructions of prehistoric religious beliefs are related
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Degrowth in development-led archaeology and opportunities for change. A comment on Zorzin Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2021-05-12 Sadie Watson
Zorzin’s paper offers compelling discussion surrounding the various issues that face the practice of archaeology today. I would like to take some aspects of his paper and dive deeper into the implications for myself and my colleagues working within development-led archaeology in the UK and elsewhere. My own career has not been framed within a theoretical or academic sphere so my opinions about this
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Degrowth and archaeological learning beyond the neo-liberal university Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2021-05-12 Gabriel Moshenska
Academia has been described as a cake-eating contest where the prize is more cake. This is generally taken as a comment on workloads, but the competitive brutality of the academic job market suggests a coda: the winner chokes on cake, but the losers starve. The neo-liberal university – I write from the British version – reproduces itself and grows through the overproduction of PhDs with minimal academic
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Archaeology, anarchism, decolonization, and degrowth through the lens of Frase’s four futures Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2021-05-12 James Flexner
Acknowledgments. I would like to thank all the scholars who agreed to participate in this contribution by further opening the debate about the degrowth movement, and helped me to clarify further my own arguments through their pertinent comments and positively challenging questions; the Fondation maison des sciences de l’homme (FMSH) for its financial support through the Fernand Braudel–IFER Post-doctoral
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Degrowth, anti-capitalism or post-archaeology? A response to Nicolas Zorzin Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2021-05-12 LouAnn Wurst
1 When employed by Oxford Archaeological Unit (now Oxford Archaeology) on the Swindon–Gloucester road scheme (1996) we were required to sign a disclaimer against road protests. This was after the Newbury bypass and M3 Winchester protests where archaeologists had been active dissenting voices. Now we found ourselves working for the road builders, who did not consider this dichotomy to be appropriate
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Is archaeology conceivable within the degrowth movement? Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2021-05-12 Nicolas Zorzin
Since the 1980s, archaeology has been further embedded in a reinforced and accelerating capitalist ideology, namely neo-liberalism. Most archaeologists had no alternative but to adapt to it through concessions to the free-market economy and to the so-called mitigations taking place within development. However, it is now apparent that the ongoing global socio-ecological disaster we are facing cannot
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Talk like an Egyptian? Epistemological problems with the synthesis of a vocal sound from the mummified remains of Nesyamun and racial designations in mummy studies Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2021-05-12 Uroš Matić
The paper examines epistemological problems behind a recent study claiming to provide a synthesis of a vocal sound from the mummified remains of a man named Nesyamun and behind racial designations in Egyptian mummy studies more generally. So far, responses in the media and academia concentrated on the ethical problems of these studies, whereas their theoretical and methodological backgrounds have been
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Food systems in archaeology. Examining production and consumption in the past Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2021-05-12 Kelly Reed
Research on food has a long history in archaeology and anthropology, with many agreeing that we need to examine the food of complex societies in a more holistic way, through the various stages from production to disposal. Typically, this has occurred through the application of the concept of foodways, although this has a range of definitions and is generally only used in historical archaeological and
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Acknowledged authenticity. Or did the origin of rock matter in the Mesolithic? Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2021-05-12 Astrid J. Nyland
This article explores the concept of authenticity of rock, place and stone tools in the Mesolithic. It uses results from a recent pXRF analysis on a selection of greenstone adzes predominantly originating from a delimited area on the western coast of south Norway as its point of departure. The results show that, although the majority of the 80 analysed adzes were made of greenstone from one specific
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‘Violent care’? A response to Lynn Meskell and Trinidad Rico Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2020-11-13 Monika Stobiecka
mapped the desert landscape from above. Technocratic programmes like those outlined above reinforce a sense of superiority for Westerners in cultural and technical matters. Bell (2015, xiii) described such interventions as ‘vast schemes for the government of the universe’. However, as history reminds us, those claiming to bring knowledge and civilization are often ultimately the destroyers, looters
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Hijacking ISIS. Digital imperialism and salvage politics Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2020-11-13 Lynn Meskell
reproduction – even reproductions have a maker (Thompson 2018) – are also crucial details in discussions of technological (de)colonization. Stobiecka’s examination could benefit from a closer look at agency that comes from a deeper involvement with the artefact’s itineraries. A focus on itineraries considers that objects have ‘no real beginning other than where we enter them and no end since things
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The second coming of Palmyra. A technological prison Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2020-11-13 Trinidad Rico
[ ]the visible rejection of Syrian refugees across many European countries, contemporary with the free circulation and consumption of the replica, undermines efforts to construct a global discourse that addresses the human scale of the Syrian conflict (Cunliffe 2016;Thompson 2017) [ ]the apparent applause that this replica has received across the world evokes the strong rejection of the reproduction
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Archaeological heritage in the age of digital colonialism Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2020-11-13 Monika Stobiecka
Digital archaeologists claim that their practices have proven to be an important tool for mediating conflict, ensuring that the digital turn in archaeology entails engaging in current political issues. This can be questioned by analysing a copy of the Syrian Arch of Triumph. The original was destroyed in 2015. A year later, a copy was carved out of Egyptian marble; the replica was constructed thanks
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Spectrums of depositional practice in later prehistoric Britain and beyond. Grave goods, hoards and deposits ‘in between’ Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2020-11-13 Anwen Cooper, Duncan Garrow, Catriona Gibson
This paper critically evaluates how archaeologists define ‘grave goods’ in relation to the full spectrum of depositional contexts available to people in the past, including hoards, rivers and other ‘special’ deposits. Developing the argument that variations in artefact deposition over time and space can only be understood if different ‘types’ of find location are considered together holistically, we
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Degrowth and a sustainable future for archaeology Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2020-11-13 James L. Flexner
It is increasingly acknowledged that 21st-century archaeology faces serious challenges from a variety of directions, ranging from the theoretical to the practical. Above all, the discipline’s entanglement with capitalism, capitalist ideologies and capitalist institutions is simply unsustainable. The concept of degrowth involves a reconceptualization of archaeology’s possible future(s) in terms of a
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Power and all its guises. Environmental determinism and locating ‘the crux of the matter’ Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2020-11-13 Eloise Govier
Can we theorize the relationship between discourses that antagonize each other? In a recent article, Arponen et al. demonstrate the tension between two different research models, and spotlight the compelling impact these methods have on archaeological interpretation. In response to their observations, this paper theorizes how we can understand the position of the researcher in relation to the events
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Here we go again. The need to contest and refute biological determinism in archaeology Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2020-05-15 Nedra Lee
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The strange afterlife of biodeterministic imagination Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2020-05-15 Whitney Battle-Baptiste
Blakey’s critique of Reich into a European context – which I would like to do because that is the field with which I am more familiar – it should be obvious that in the same way as race is an ideological construct, so too are other categorizations of humans used in European archaeology and in archaeogenetic studies. Here the most critical examples are the essentialization of social identities, like
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Biodeterminism and pseudo-objectivity as obstacles for the emerging field of archaeogenetics Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2020-05-15 Martin Furholt
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Nationalist archaeology and foreign oil exploration in El Tajín, Mexico, 1935–1940 Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2020-05-15 Sam Holley-Kline
This article discusses the American Compañía Stanford’s efforts to drill an oil well on the outskirts of the archaeological site of El Tajín, Mexico, during the 1930s. Drawing on recent scholarly efforts to think beyond archaeology and the nation state, this article problematizes the notion of a unitary state behind the concept of nationalist archaeology, the constitution of archaeology and extractive
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Life on the fence line. Early 20th-century life in Ross Acreage Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2020-05-15 Haeden Stewart, Kendra Jungkind, Robert Losey
Despite widespread attention to the recent past as an archaeological topic, few archaeologists have attended to the particular social and ecological stakes of one of the most defining material features of contemporary life: the long-term effects of toxic industrial waste. Identifying the present era as the high Capitalocene, this article highlights the contemporary as a period caught between the boom-and-bust
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Imagined biodeterminism? Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2020-05-15 Thomas J. Booth
moral cover with neutral-sounding nature narratives. As archaeologists, or as scientists and humanists more generally, we must think out of the box of the Enlightenment’s colonial assumptions (Blakey 1998), requiring careful study of the political histories of our fields and the theories we borrow and use. Rarely part of standard curricula, for what may be obvious reasons, I have found the problem
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Response Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2020-05-15 Michael L. Blakey
Ripan Malhi and Agustin Fuentes point out that, ‘No matter how well-intended the practitioners, social and political ignorance can lead to “cultural harm” in scientific research, resulting in mistrust, stigmatization, or weakened political authority for communities whose members participate in these studies’ (Anton, Malhi and Fuentes 2018, 159). The chance for mitigating these harmful effects in social
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Unfinished narratives. Some remarks on the archaeology of the contemporary past in Iran Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2020-05-15 Maryam Dezhamkhooy, Leila Papoli-Yazdi
This paper discusses the emergence of an archaeology of the contemporary era in a Middle Eastern country, Iran. Far from North America and Europe, where the subfield was introduced, appreciated and developed by academic archaeologists, this archaeology is now also becoming established in Iran in spite of academic reluctance and (indirect) political pressure. The most encouraged form of archaeology
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Beyond binaries. Interrogating ancient DNA Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2020-05-15 Rachel J. Crellin, Oliver J.T. Harris
In this paper we explore ancient DNA (aDNA) as a powerful new technique for archaeologists. We argue that for aDNA to reach its full potential we need to carefully consider its theoretical underpinnings. We suggest that at present much aDNA research rests upon two problematic theoretical assumptions: first, that nature and culture exist in binary opposition and that DNA is a part of nature; second
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On the biodeterministic imagination Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2020-05-15 Michael L. Blakey
Biological determinism continues to rest on belief rather than evidence. The racial genetics of David Reich and his immediate predecessors exemplify science applied as racist ideology which obscures evidence for social criticism and moral accountability for inequity.
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Heritage in danger. The collapse of commercial archaeology in Spain Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2019-12-12 Eva Parga Dans
As in most European countries and elsewhere, Spanish commercial archaeology is a business model based on the theoretical and technical principles of safeguarding heritage that thrived during the 1990s and 2000s. However, nearly half of the Spanish archaeological companies closed by 2014, stressing the drama associated with the redundancy of its workforce in a mere five-year period and the threat to
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The thing-in-itself. A reaction to current use of the term in archaeology Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2019-12-12 Svein Vatsvåg Nielsen
Scholars writing within symmetrical archaeology, or speculative realism, have lately claimed that archaeology should strive to grasp the thing-in-itself. This paper questions the rationale of this claim. It presents the philosophical definition of the concept of a thing-in-itself and a short presentation of its reception. The author argues that the concept of the thing-in-itself has nothing to offer
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Anarchistic action. Social organization and dynamics in southern Scandinavia from the Iron Age to the Middle Ages Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2019-12-12 Trine Louise Borake
A general interest in centralized institutions, state formation and prestige objects has dominated research on social organization and dynamics in Scandinavia from the Late Iron Age to the Middle Ages. Accordingly, a focus on kingly power, aristocratic influence, hierarchies and warrior might has dominated archaeological research designs for the last forty years. Subsequently, other perspectives have
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Assemblages of practice. A conceptual framework for exploring human–thing relations in archaeology Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2019-12-12 Konrad A. Antczak, Mary C. Beaudry
In this paper we propose the conceptual framework of theassemblage of practiceas an effective middle-range heuristic tool that bridges deep theory and the data available to archaeologists. Our framework foregrounds vibrantthingsas opposed to staticobjects, and sympathetically articulates the current concepts ofentanglement,correspondenceandassemblage. To us anassemblage of practiceis a dynamic gathering
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What can the theory of anarchism and its analytical possibilities do for us? Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2019-12-01 Colin Grier
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We run tingz, tingz nah run we Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2019-12-01 Stuart Rathbone
best interest through skilful manipulation of social circumstances and material resources. But another answer is that in many cases they didn’t submit; aggrandizers were curtailed by overt and subversive resistance to their ends. This point brings to the forefront one issue not fully addressed by Borake – the relationship between the theory of anarchism and the concept of egalitarianism. They are not
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Applying an anarchist lens to the archaeological record. On Borake’s ‘anarchistic actions’ in Scandinavian culture history Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2019-12-01 Bill Angelbeck
1 The title of this piece is a Jamaican proverb. 2 Clastres did not resolve how authoritarian rule in neighbouring communities could have originated beyond invoking influence from a further external group, and so on, leaving a ‘chicken-and-egg’-style ‘mystery’ of the origin of political authority for future researchers to grapple with (Clastres 1989, 205). Barclay (1990, 136) identified the ‘big-man’
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Do you follow? Rethinking causality in archaeology Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2019-06-07 Eloise Govier
Philosopher and physicist Karen Barad (2003; 2007; 2012) has brought a new understanding of causality to the academic discourse (agential realism theory). Inspired by this new take on causality, I problematize the argument that archaeologists ‘follow’ materials. I begin by challenging the act of ‘following’ on two counts (causality and universalism), and then consider the work of Malafouris (2008a)
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A conversation with Alain Schnapp Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2019-06-07 Yannis Hamilakis, Felipe Rojas
On 13 November 2017, Yannis Hamilakis, Felipe Rojas, and several other archaeologists at Brown University engaged in a conversation with Alain Schnapp about his life and career. Hamilakis and Rojas were interested in learning about how Schnapp’s early academic and political interests intersected with the history of Classics and classical archaeology in France, Europe and elsewhere in the world, and
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Environmental determinism and archaeology. Understanding and evaluating determinism in research design Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2019-06-07 V. P. J. Arponen, Walter Dörfler, Ingo Feeser, Sonja Grimm, Daniel Groß, Martin Hinz, Daniel Knitter, Nils Müller-Scheeßel, Konrad Ott, Artur Ribeiro
With the emergence of modern techniques of environmental analysis and widespread availability of accessible tools and quantitative data, the question of environmental determinism is once again on the agenda. This paper is theoretical in character, attempting, for the benefit of drawing up research designs, to understand and evaluate the character of environmental determinism. We reach three main conclusions:
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Two cultures in the times of interdisciplinary archaeology. A response to commentators Archaeological Dialogues Pub Date : 2019-06-07 V. P. J. Arponen, Walter Dörfler, Ingo Feeser, Sonja Grimm, Daniel Groß, Martin Hinz, Daniel Knitter, Nils Müller-Scheeßel, Konrad Ott, Artur Ribeiro
We would like to begin by thanking the journal and the commentators for their time and attention.