Archaeology Is Anthropology - Softcover

Gillespie, S.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1931303126 ISBN 13: 9781931303125

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012

Synopsis

Archaeology and anthropology have come a long way in the pasthalf-century, and the 1950s thinking concerning the relationshipbetween the two is increasingly considered irrelevant. However, theplacement of archaeology within the discipline of anthropology hasalways been uneasy—and was just as much a half-century andmore ago as it is now. Is archaeology only now on the brink of"divorce" after decades of pleas for mutual respect and cooperationhave finally proven inadequate (Watson 1995)? Is separation theonly alternative left to sustain and further archaeology and tofinally shake off a second-class status to socioculturalanthropology that archaeologists have long contested (Willey andSabloff 1993:152)? In what sense can we profess that archaeology isstill anthropology?

This volume evaluates the reasons proffered for separationagainst those in favor of maintaining the identity and practice ofarchaeologists as anthropologists. Arguments for the separation ofarchaeology from the discipline of which it has been a part forover a century take several different forms, weighing variousintellectual factors: historical, methodological, and theoretical.Recent changes in the practice of archaeology and in theorganization of professional societies must also be considered.

About this title

About the Author:

SUSAN D. GILLESPIE is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Florida. Her research combines archaeological, iconographic, and ethnohistorical approaches to the investigation of social organization and social identity. Her geographic focus is Mesoamerica, which her scholarship treats as a symbiotic area (a "field of ethnological study") whose co-evolving societies are best understood from regional and interregional long-term comparative perspectives. Her excavations, iconographic, and documentary analyses have focused on the Aztecs, Olmecs, and Maya. She is especially interested in understanding the formation and interactions of social groups and hierarchy from a sociocosmic perspective, and how conceptions of time, place, person, and event were represented in material ways. These include architectural forms and landscapes, ritual and mundane actions, the crafting of portable objects, the manipulation of symbolic forms and icons, and the construction and maintenance of narratives.

DEBORAH L. NICHOLS is the William J. Bryant 1925 Professor of Anthropology at Dartmouth College. Her research has focused on the development of early cities and states in Central Mexico. One area of research has involved a reanalysis of artifacts and excavation data from the site of Cerro Portezuelo in the eastern Basin of Mexico that George Brainerd excavated in the mid-1950s to understand the Classic to Postclassic transition. Among the important findings of the project, she and co-investigators established that occupation of the site began in the Late/Terminal Formative/Preclassic, associated with Patlachique/Tezoyuca ceramics. Our findings indicate that, contrary to most models, Teotihuacan did not exert strong central control of the economy of the southeast Basin of Mexico during the Early Classic period. Cerro Portezuelo obtained obsidian from Michoacan, as well as the Pachuca source controlled by Teotihuacan, and imported Early Classic pottery from the western Basin of Mexico, as well as from the Teotihuacan Valley.

About this edition

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1931303126
• ISBN 13: 9781931303125
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 175