Comparative Archaeologies A Sociological View of the Science of the
Archaeology, as with all of the social sciences, has always been characterized by competing theoretical propositions based on diverse bodies of locally acquired data. In order to fulfill local, regional expectations, different goals have been assigned to
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Ludomir R. Lozny Editor
Comparative Archaeologies A Sociological View of the Science of the Past
Editor Ludomir R. Lozny Department of Anthropology Hunter College CUNY New York, NY USA [email protected]
ISBN 978-1-4419-8224-7 e-ISBN 978-1-4419-8225-4 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-8225-4 Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London Library of Congress Control Number: 2011922754 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
For Magda Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point
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Foreword
Archaeology is not about the past. For a substantial part of my life as an archaeologist, I have assumed that archaeology was about the past. When I decided to devote my life to it, I was convinced that archaeology was not only the world’s most entertaining outdoor activity, but also that it was about studying societies from the past on the basis of their material remains. And after completing my studies, during the next step in my career, supported by a grant for a number of years, that is what I thought I was doing. Then came the practice of work outside academia, and I found out that in fact my profession comprised two distinct branches. On the one hand there was the archaeological research that I had been involved in, and apart from that there were also the sites and monuments that had to be taken care of, the archaeological heritage or resource management. Managing archaeological resources has little to do with the past and, by definition, is in the present. I learned that the purpose of this work was primarily to preserve archaeological sites as a source of information about the past. The value of archaeological resources to society is of course considerably wider than that, and I have been finding out about value-based approaches to heritage, stakeholder involvement, and multiple interpretations of the past ever since. Nevertheless, I have long believed in the dichotomy between archaeological research that produced knowledge of the past and archaeological resource management that dealt not just with the archaeological fabric but with the heritage values ascribed to it and that was inherently political as a result. I now know that such differentiation is not a
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