Making Alternative Histories: The Practice of Archaeology and History in Non-Western Settings (School of American Research Advanced Seminar Series)

After working for more than a century in Third World cultural contexts, most archaeologists from the West have yet to hear and understand the voices of their non-Western colleagues. Many of the researchers who have seriously listened to - and sometimes adopted - alternative modes of thought have found that advocacy for different views on the uses of archaeology and history may lead to censure by colleagues on methodological grounds. But are there ways that archaeologists and historians from different intellectual traditions can achieve common ground on the meanings and uses of archaeology and history?
In Making Alternative Histories, eleven scholars from Africa, India, Latin America, North America, and Europe debate and discuss how to respond to the erasures of local histories brought about by colonialism, by neocolonial influences, and by the ongoing practice of traditional Western archaeologists and history. The contributors present a profound challenge to traditional Western modes of scholarship. Making Alternative Histories will be required reading for Western archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians who recognize their responsibility to confront and acknowledge Third World experiences and perspectives.

In sum, this volume is an important contribution to the growing library of works that seek to demystify the production of historical and scientific knowledge... Undertaken as a collaborative endeavor that involved scholars of different backgrounds in the production of knowledge, the book is a signpost to the future. --Tamara L. Bray, Anthropological Quarterly Vol. 71, no. 1 (January 1998)

....a very solid contribution to our understanding of what doing archaeology in society can (and should) entail. --Bulletin of the History of Archaeology

In sum, this volume is an important contribution to the growing library of works that seek to demystify the production of historical and scientific knowledge... Undertaken as a collaborative endeavor that involved scholars of different backgrounds in the production of knowledge, the book is a signpost to the future. --Tamara L. Bray, Anthropological Quarterly Vol. 71, no. 1 (January 1998)