Paradigms in science and archaeology

The paradigm concept as developed in western philosophy of science contexts is reviewed, and the metaphysical paradigms that govern research protocols in mainstream Old and New World prehistoric archaeology are described and compared. It is concluded that post-1970 New World archaeological research receives its intellectual mandate from anthropology, is founded on postpositivist biases, and is governed by a critical-realist ontology, a modified-objectivist epistemology, and an experimental-manipulative methodology. Post-1970 Old World archaeological research is viewed as a kind of history, remains mostly in the strict empiricist tradition, and is governed by a realist ontology, an inductivist epistemology, and by an observational methodology. The claims of various kinds of postprocessual archaeology are also evaluated in terms of the paradigm concept.     

半个世纪以来的中国史前史研究(下篇)

文章总结了中国史前考古学的研究成果,并对中国史前史的发展历程进行了系统的阐述。     

谈考古学中的民族学类比方法

考古学中的民族学类比方法即是运用民族学材料做类比范本,综合其他文献及考古资料,研究解释考古材料,复原社会群体全貌的方法。这里的民族学材料作广义的解释,既包括现今仍存的民族学材料,也包括历史记载的民族学材料。...     

The Hohokam of Southwest North America

The Hohokam reached an apex of sociopolitical development between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries in the Sonoran Desert of North America. Hallmarks of the Hohokam tradition included red-on-buff pottery, large-scale canal irrigation agriculture, and monumental buildings, including ball courts, platform mounds, towers, and Great Houses. The development and elaboration of Hohokam society from their ceramic-producing predecessors during more than two millennia (ca. 1000 B.C. to A.D. 1450, or later) is a remarkable example of an arid land adaptation in the New World. The enigmatic collapse of Hohokam society took place shortly before European colonialists entered the North American Southwest in the mid–sixteenth century. Various agents (e.g., floods, disease, warfare) of this event are poorly understood and require additional study. So, too, does the degree of historical continuity between contemporary indigenous peoples and precontact archaeological cultures (e.g., Hohokam) in what is now Arizona and northern Mexico.     

Political economy and archaeology: Perspectives on exchange and production

Traditional approaches to the study of political economy are flawed in two respects. First, traditional approaches have submerged political economy within a discussion of political development and the evolution of complex society. Second, they have emphasized single dimensions of the economy such as production or distribution of resources as being the basis for political power. Current research has demonstrated that political economies are a mix of many different resource mobilization strategies that crosscut the production, service, and distribution sectors of the society. Archaeologists must attempt to identify this mix of strategies as a first step in reconstructing the structure of prehistoric political economy. Elites strive to control and mobilize resources from as many different sources as possible and invoke a common set of principles in doing so. These principles or components of the political economy are the accumulation, context, matrix control, and ideology principles. They are identified here as common mechanisms of resource creation, manipulation, and expropriation that can be applied to societies at different times and at different levels of organization.     

性别考古学研究综述——以中国考古学为中心

中国考古学理论与方法渐趋多元化,而性别考古学却未引起足够的重视。本文梳理了性别考古学产生以来所走过的的历程,尤其对中国考古学中的性别研究进行了较为详细的梳理。本文将中国考古学中的性别研究划分了三个阶段,即20世纪30年代至建国、建国之后至20世纪90年代、90年代至今。其中在第三个阶段,后现代视角的性别考古学真正在中国出现。本文并对中国后现代视角下的性别考古学进行了反思,希冀能够引起学者的注意。     

Migration as an explanatory concept in paleolithic archaeology

Migration is frequently invoked as an explanation for pattern in paleolithic archaeology but the credibility of doing so depends almost exclusively upon acceptance of an analogy between historical process and the processes that have combined to create an ancient archaeological record. It is argued here that paleolithic archaeology cannot be treated as an extension of history and that historical processes are therefore inappropriate analogies for the site formation processes manifest in Upper Pleistocene archaeological contexts. The credibility accorded migration as an explanatory concept varies from one national or regional research tradition to the next. Why this should be so is examined in a discussion of the paradigm concept and how it affects construals of the nature and meaning of pattern.     

Out of the Peat: Preliminary Geophysical Prospection and Evaluation of the Mid-Holocene Stationary Wooden Fishing Structures in Haapajärvi,Finland

The huge scientific and interpretive value of wetland archaeological sites has been well demonstrated in several studies. The management of the archaeological resource of wetland landscapes is problematic, however, and there is an urgent need for noninvasive techniques to detect waterlogged organic archaeological remains. Stationary wooden fishing structures associated with fishing sites constitute an important wetland archaeological resource in northern Europe. In Finland, similar wooden constructions have been used for fishing from prehistory to the early modern era. The discovery of sites has been accidental, because the waterlogged organic remains have been considered invisible to conventional geoprospection techniques. Because of this, a small project was launched at Lamminoja, northwest Finland, in order to investigate whether it would be possible to improve our chances to detect fishery sites in demanding wetland habitats. New information was obtained through geophysical prospection, trial excavations, and accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating. Geophysical testing was hampered by several factors, including complex sediments affected by modern drainage. New information was obtained, however, on the composition, age, and spatial distribution of the wooden fishing structures preserved in peat over 5000 years.     

Engendered and Feminist Archaeologies of the Recent and Documented Pasts

Engendered and feminist archaeologies in historical archaeology have developed in complementary ways to those in nonhistorical archaeologies but with distinct methodological issues and sources of data. This article discusses the development of engendered and feminist archaeologies that use textual sources, the continuing themes that characterize this body of work, and the state of the field today. The article concludes with a discussion of future directions for practitioners to pursue.     

Faunal Materials and Interpretive Archaeology—Epistemology Reconsidered

The objective of this paper is twofold. It intends to reformulate the assumptions of interpretive archaeology and within this context to elaborate the framework within which one can study social and symbolic relationships between humans and animals in the prehistoric farming communities of Central Europe. Postprocessual archaeology has failed to provide a satisfactory account of how to judge the credibility of competing issues about the past. In the interpretive approach to animal bone assemblages, it is argued that the results of actualistic studies justify this credibility. The objective of actualistic studies is to establish how, when, and by whom the archaeological record has been produced. Credibility is also provided by the biological characteristics of animals maintained and consumed. The first level of credibility is a prerequisite to a further interpretation of the social dimensions of human action with respect to animals. The second level of interpretation is based on the horizontal distribution of archaeological pasts within and between sites.     

Much More than Gender

Numerous publications on gender archaeology present case studies that incorporate gender in their analyses, but make little use of feminist theory and critique, and are ambivalent or negative to feminism. Aspects of Norwegian, British and American gender archaeology are discussed in relation to a desire for the ‘mainstream.’ The reasons for, and consequences of, a lack of feminist theorizing and engagement are related to Donna Haraway’s concept of situated knowledges.

Doing Archaeology as a Feminist: Introduction

Gender research archaeology has made significant contributions, but its dissociation from the resources of feminist scholarship and feminist activism is a significantly limiting factor in its development. The essays that make up this special issue illustrate what is to be gained by making systematic use of these resources. Their distinctively feminist contributions are characterized in terms of the recommendations for “doing science as a feminist” that have taken shape in the context of the long running “feminist method debate” in the social sciences.     

Revolutionary archaeology in Cuba

The Revolution of 1959 brought forth changes in the mission, theoretical orientation, and organization of archaeology in Cuba and created a role for, and constraints on, the profession that are unique in the Western Hemisphere. This paper draws upon examples from substantive field and laboratory research to examine the methods and theoretical perspectives of Cuban archaeology since the Revolution, focusing on the period from 1962 until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Archaeological practice during the Revolutionary period in Cuba has reflected the aims of the Revolutionary government, the influence of Soviet archaeology, the legacy of pre-Revolutionary approaches in North American archaeology, and the Cuban sense ofpatria.     

史前聚落与考古遗址

考察史前聚落必须以史前遗址为依据,但两者在文化内涵、时间和空间概念上存在很大差异,以遗址考察聚落有其它学科不可拟的优势,但也有一定的局限性。     

Household Archaeology in the Andes

Data from domestic contexts can be used to address significant anthropological research questions. Archaeological investigations in the Andes (areas once incorporated into the Inka empire, including northwestern Argentina, highland Bolivia, northern Chile, Ecuador, and Peru), like many parts of the world, rely on ethnohistory and ethnography to interpret the archaeological remains of domestic areas and make inferences about households. In this review I describe the ideas about Andean households that archaeologists are using and how domestic remains are being examined to infer social, economic, and political processes. Household archaeology in the Andes requires ethnoarchaeology and theory-building in order to understand the complex social dynamics at the foundation of ancient Andean societies.     

中国民族考古学的形成与考古学的本土化

中国民族考古学的形成是由自身独特背景和学术环境所决定的,在辩证唯物史观指导下,运用民族志材料解释,复原考古学材料。从民族考古发展到民族考古学形成了中国民族考古学的强烈特色。