CALL FOR PAPERS
A session in the Thematic Block, Archaeology and the Contemporary World, in the Ninth Annual Meeting of the European Association of
Archaeologists, 10-14 September, 2003, St. Petersberg, Russia.
Session Title:
New Directions in European Historical Archaeology
Organizers:
Stephanie Koerner (University of Manchester)
Russell Palmer (University of Manchester) [log in to unmask]
Discussant:
Laurent Olivier (Musee de Antiquites Nationales, Saint Germain-en-Laye, France)
The last several meetings of the European Association of Archaeologists have seen remarkable growth of interest in going beyond traditional
disciplinary boundaries and relationships between archaeology, historiography, and the humanities. The presently proposed session for the
Thematic Block, Archaeology and the Modern World, seeks to provide a context for researchers from different countries, and who work in a
variety of different institutional contexts to discuss:
a) the diversity of recent perspectives on 'historical archaeology', and
b) their relevance to changes that are taking place in relationships between intellectual culture and contemporary human affairs
Selected References
Arendt, H. [1961] 1977. Between Past and Present. New York: Penguin Books.
Bourdieu, P. 1990. The Logic of Practice, trans. by R. Nice. London: Polity Press.
Buchli, V. and Lucas, G. (eds.) 2001. Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past. London: Routledge.
Foucault, M. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977, trans. by L. Marshall, J. Mepham, and K. Soper, C.
Gordon (ed). New York: Pantheon Books.
Funari, P.P.A, Hall, M. and Jones, S. (eds.) 1999. Historical Archaeology. Back From the Edge. London: Routledge.
Lucas, G. 2001. Critical Approaches to Fieldwork. Contemporary and Historical Practice. London: Routledge.
Lubar, S. and Kingery, W.D. (eds) 1993. History from Things: Essays on Material Culture. Washington: Smithsonian Institute.
Lyotard, J.F. 1984. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. by G. Bennington and B. Massumai. Manchester: Manchester
University Press.
McManus, P.M. (ed) 1996. Archaeological Displays and the Public. Museology and Interpretations. London: Institute of Archaeology, University
College London.
Muir, E. and Ruggiero, G. (eds) Microhistory and the Lost Peoples of Europe, trans. by E. Branch. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Orser, Jr., C.E. 1996. A Historical Archaeology of the Modern World. London: Plenum Books.
Schmidt, P.R. and Patterson, T.C. (eds) 1996. Making Alternative Histories: the Practice of Archaeology and History in Non-Western Settings.
Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.
Schnapp, A. 1996. The Discovery of the Past. The Origins of Archaeology. London: The British Museum.
Skeates, R. 2000. Debating the Archaeological Heritage. London: Gerald Duckworth and Co. Ltd.
Stone, P.G. and MacKenzie, R. (eds) 1990. The Excluded Past: Archaeology in Education. London: Unwin Hyman Ltd.
Toulmin, S. 1990. Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
White, H. 1987. The Content of Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. London: John Hopkins University Press.
PAPERS
Introduction to the Aims of the Session and A Perspective on Some Issues Posed
Stephanie Koerner (University of Manchester)
Few categories are as old or given as much sustained attention by critics of dualist paradigms for human nature, history and knowledge as those
rooted in the supposed opposition of the written and the oral. The dichotomy played essential roles in the most contraversial debates in antiquity
over opposing pedagical and socio-political ideals, and modes of integrating theological and philosophical epistemic and ontic frames of reference.
Every major change in the various traditions of thought and culture, which form the background of contemporary paradigms for philosophy, the
humanities, and human sciences has involved discussions of the epistemic, ontic, social and ethical issues posed by variability among the ways
in which history can be investigated, represented, and, ultimately remembered.
Not surprisingly, the written and the oral have figured centrally in discussions of such key foci of the critique of meta-narratives as those
mentioned below.
(1) Dualist paradigms for human nature and history, in particular those structured around a complex series of dichotomies including those
of subject-object, individual-society, the mental and the material, rational discourse-rhetorical discourse, science-values, epistemology-ontology,
Western-Non-western.
(2) Essentialist options for the conditions of historical knowledge, in particular those rooted in the epistemic division between perceiving
things (like human minds) and extended things 'out there' (like nature and society) and the ontic divide which underwrote it (between rational
freedom and moral responsibility, and the causal necessities of the physical world and social systems. Notably, this frame of reference permits
only two mode of conceptualising history namely, either (a) as a product of perceiving things (including the 'minds' of people and, until quite
recently, God) or (b) as made up of extended things that can occur in a number of states or forms, such as the social types: band, tribe,
chiefdom and state.
(3) The implications of (1) and (2) for the privatisation of ethics and the globalization of indifference. That is, their implications for treatments
of the individual 'subject' as the source of all meaning and value, the removal of ethics from epistemology and ontology, and the reduction of social
life to inter-individual systems of contractual structures .
In these lights, to create a context in the EAA 2003 meeting for discussing new directions in historical archaeology is to invite reflection on the
very nature of history and human life-worlds, and the ways in which archaeology can impact our understandings of these (e.g, Laurent Olivier
2001).
Selected References
Adorno, T. 1974. Minima Moraia: Reflections from a Damaged Life, trans. by E. F. N. Jephcott. London: Verso.
Arendt, H. [1961] 1977. Between Past and Present. New York: Penguin Books.
Bourdieu, P. 1990. The Logic of Practice, trans. by R. Nice. London: Polity Press.
Foucault, M. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977, trans. by L. Marshall, J. Mepham, and K. Soper, C.
Gordon (ed). New York: Pantheon Books.
Gaitta, R. 2000. A Common Humanity. Thinking about Love and Truth and Justice. London: Routledge.
Geertz, C. 2000. Available Light. Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Husserl, E. [1936] 1970. The Crisis of European Science and Transcendent Phenomenology, trans. by D. Carr. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern
University Press.
Koerner, S. 2001. Archaeology, Nationalism, and Problems Posed by Science/Values, Epistemology/Ontology Dichotomies. World Archaeology
Bulletin 14: 57-96.
Koerner, S. 2002. Ethics and the Ontological Pre-conditions of the Historicity of Human Life-worlds. In A. Gardner (ed) Agency Uncovered.
London: University College London Press.
Lyotard, J.F. 1984. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. by G. Bennington and B. Massumai. Manchester: Manchester
University Press.
Olivier, L. 2001 The Archaeology of the Contemporary Past. In V. Buchli. and G. Lucas(eds), Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past. London:
Routledge, pp. 174-188.
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