Thomas Julian (ed.) Interpretive Archaeology: A Reader

Leicester University Press, 2000. — 622 p. — ISBN: 0-7185-0191-8.New forms of archaeology are emerging which position the discipline firmly within the social and cultural sciences. These approaches have been described as "post processual" or "interpretive" archaeology, and draw on a range of traditions of enquiry in the humanities, from Marxism and critical theory to hermeneutics, feminism, queer theory, phenomenology and post-colonial thinking. This volume gathers together a series of the canonical statements which have defined an interpretive archaeology. Many of these have been unavailable for some while, and others are drawn from inaccessible publications. In addition, a number of key articles are included which are drawn from other disciplines, but which have been influential and widely cited within archaeology. The collection is put into context by an editorial introduction and thematic notes for each section.Introduction: the polarities of post-processual archaeology (Julian Thomas).
On the Character of Archaeology.Fields of discourse: reconstituting a social archaeology (John C. Barrett).
Theoretical archaeology: a reactionary view (Ian Hodder).
The craft of archaeology (Michael Shanks and Randall H. McGuire).
Materialism and an archaeology of dissonance (Christopher Tilley).
Interpretation, Inference, Epistemology.Symbolism, meaning and context (Ian Hodder).
Hermeneutics and archaeology: on the philosophy of contextual archaeology (Harald Johnsen and Bjornar Olsen).
Is there an archaeological record? (Linda E. Patrick).
On 'heavily decomposing red herrings': scientific method in archaeology and the ladening of evidence with theory (Alison Wylie).
Archaeology through the looking-glass (Tim Yates).
Social Relations, Power and Ideology.The roots of inequality (Barbara Bender).
Conceptions of agency in archaeological interpretation (Matthew H. Johnson).
Building power in the cultural landscape of Broome County, New York, 1880-1940 (Randall H. McGuire).
Mortuary practices, society and ideology: an ethnoarchaeological study (Michael Parker Pearson).
Redefining the social link: from baboons to humans (Shirley S. Strum and Bruno Latour).
Feminism, Queer Theory and the Body.Homosexuality, queer theory and archaeology (Thomas A Dowson).
Power, bodies and difference (Moira Gatens).
The social world of prehistoric facts: gender and power in Palaeoindian research (Joan M. Gero).
Bodies on the move: gender, power and material culture: gender difference and the material world (Henrietta Moore).
Engendered places in prehistory (Ruth Tringham).
Material Culture.Interpreting material culture: the trouble with text (Victor A. Buchli).
The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process (Igor Kopytoff).
Material metaphor, social interaction and historical reconstructions: exploring patterns of association and symbolism in the Igbo-Ukwu corpus (Keith Ray).
Interpreting material culture (Christopher Tilley).
Archaeology, Critique and the Construction of Identity.Can we recognise a different European past? A contrastive archaeology of later prehistoric settlements in southern England (J. D. Hill).
Discourses of identity in the interpretation of the past (Sian Jones).
Toward a critical archaeology (Mark P. Leone, Parker B. Potter, Jr. and Paul A. Shackel).
This is an article about archaeology as writing (Anthony Sinclair).
Space and Landscape.The Berber house or the world reversed (Pierre Bourdieu).
The temporality of the landscape (Tim Ingold).
Past practices in the ritual present: examples from the Welsh Bronze Age (Paul Lane).
Monumental choreography: architecture and spatial representation in late Neolithic Orkney (Colin Richards).