Comparative Archaeologies

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Ludomir R. LoznyEditor

Comparative Archaeologies

A Sociological View of the Science of the Past

EditorLudomir R. LoznyDepartment of AnthropologyHunter CollegeCUNYNew York, NYUSAllozny@hunter.cuny.edu

ISBN 978-1-4419-8224-7 e-ISBN 978-1-4419-8225-4DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-8225-4Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011922754

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011All 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.

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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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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 manage-ment 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 useful distinction. It can be used to explain certain phenomena and ways in which the discipline has developed, for example as related to commercialization. But investigations in the history of archaeology have made it abundantly clear that our discipline is like the other social sciences and humanities in that all research is directly related to social and political development and current themes and tendencies. In fact, the birth of modern archaeology itself can be directly related to major social and political developments in Europe around the beginning of the nineteenth century at the end of the Enlightenment, when Napoleon had been defeated and Europe was being transformed. The new nation-states needed to create or redefine their national identities and found themselves in a need of national past and shared heritage.

Foreword

viii Foreword

Antiquaries had been studying the classical world for centuries before, but it is not a coincidence that the first professorship in the world to explicitly include nonclassical, prehistoric archaeology, dates from 1818 in The Netherlands and was followed rapidly by more such posts in other European countries.

What is studied about the past is thus directly related to what is relevant in the present. Moreover, it is also directly related to how it is studied and where. Different academic traditions are of crucial importance, for research, just as different legal and political systems determine how heritage resources can be managed. Local communities and native populations alike are claiming direct involvement not only in heritage resource management, but also in archaeological research. The new concepts of value-based management and value-centered conservation of archaeological resources have brought fundamental changes to the role of the archaeologist. From an expert uncovering truth he has now become an interpreter of changing meaning and significance.

I obviously do not want to imply by all this, that all archaeology is only about the present. There are many archaeologies and they can certainly bring us valuable insights about the foreign country that is our past, and its physical remains that survive all around us and below our feet. That is why the present book is so impor-tant. Its editor has brought together an impressive number of case studies from all around the world that testify to the different ways of how the past and the present interact in the different traditions that have developed around the world. Even in the age where Anglo-American models of studying the past and managing heritage are seemingly dominant, this has changed relatively little and diversity remains. In many contributions, little distinction is made between research archaeology and heritage management, and the discipline as a whole is set in its national context. Where archaeological heritage is strongly contested, either because neo-colonial agendas persist such as in Africa and the Near East, or because the colonizers never left and appropriated the land, such as in the Americas and Australia, it becomes especially clear that archaeology is not neutral. The arguments and interpretations of archaeological research can reinforce political arguments of the day just as they are being inspired or even explicitly used by those arguments. And by defining what heritage is to be valued and what not, archaeological stewardship is linked to political choice.

It is fortunate that the present collection of papers has been assembled, so that we have not only the possibility for international and cross-cultural comparison, but we also have the benefit of viewing some very different perspectives and vantage points from a diversity of authors, which makes reading of this book all the more interesting.

Leiden, The Netherlands Willem J.H. WillemsLeiden, May 2010

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Contents

Introduction ..................................................................................................... 1Ludomir R. Lozny

Archaeology in the Age of Globalization: Local Meanings, Global Interest ................................................................................................. 21Ludomir R. Lozny

Part I Archaeology in Europe

Toward a Historical Sociology of German Archaeology ............................ 53Ulrich Veit

A Social History of Danish Archaeology (Reprint with New Epilogue)..... 79Kristian Kristiansen

Being Through the Past: Reflections on Swedish Archaeology and Heritage Management ............................................................................. 109Johan Hegardt and Anna Källén

Oscillating Between National and International: The Case of Finnish Archaeology .................................................................. 137Visa Immonen and J.-P. Taavitsainen

Contemporary Polish Archaeology in Global Context ................................ 179Arkadiusz Marciniak

Polish Archaeology in Retrospective ............................................................. 195Ludomir R. Lozny

Archaeology in a Middle Country ................................................................. 221Silvia Tomášková

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A Panorama of Social Archaeology in Russia .............................................. 243Nikolay N. Kradin

Dig Up–Dig in: Practice and Theory in Hungarian Archaeology .............. 273László Bartosiewicz, Dóra Mérai, and Péter Csippán

Archaeology in the New Countries of Southeastern Europe: A Historical Perspective ................................................................................. 339Predrag Novaković

The Archaeology of Israel and Palestine ....................................................... 463David B. Small

Part II Archaeology in South America and the Caribbean Region

Archaeology and Politics in Argentina During the Last 50 Years .............. 495Gustavo G. Politis and Rafael Pedro Curtoni

“Silent and Alone”: How the Ruins of Palenque Were Taught to Speak the Language of Archaeology .................................. 527Irina Podgorny

The Past and the Revolutionary Interpretation of the Present: Our Experience of Social Archaeology, 33 Years Later .............................. 555Mario Sanoja Obediente and Iraida Vargas-Arenas

Peruvian Archaeology: Its Growth, Characteristics, Practice, and Challenge .................................................................................. 569Izumi Shimada and Rafael Vega-Centeno

The Agency of Academic Archaeology in Colombia.................................... 613Augusto Oyuela-Caycedo and Alejandro Dever

Colonialism and the History of Archaeology in the Spanish Caribbean ............................................................................... 641L. Antonio Curet

Part III Archaeology in Asia and the Pacific Region

Practice of Archaeology in Contemporary Japan ........................................ 675Fumiko Ikawa-Smith

Contemporary Archaeology as a Global Dialogue: Reflections from Southeast Asia .................................................................... 707Rasmi Shoocongdej

xiContents

Pacific Islands Archaeology ............................................................................ 731Frank R. Thomas

Part IV Archaeology in Africa

The Status of Archaeology and Anthropology in Southern Africa Today: Namibia as Example ......................................... 769Beatrice H. Sandelowsky

Excavating the History of Archaeology in Malawi ...................................... 785Yusuf M. Juwayeyi

The Practice of Archaeology in Nigeria ........................................................ 807C.A. Folorunso

Afterword ......................................................................................................... 827

Index ................................................................................................................. 829

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László Bartosiewicz Institute of Archaeological Sciences, ELTE, 1088 Budapest, Múzeum krt. 4/B, Hungary

Péter Csippán Institute of Archaeological Sciences, ELTE, 1088 Budapest, Múzeum krt. 4/B, Hungary

L. Antonio Curet The Field Museum, Chicago, IL, USA

Rafael Pedro Curtoni INCUAPA-CONICET-Facultad de Ciencias Sociales de la Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina

Alejandro Dever Department of Anthropology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

C.A. Folorunso Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria

Johan Hegardt The Museum of National Antiquities, Stockholm, Sweden

Fumiko Ikawa-Smith McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada

Visa Immonen Department of Archaeology, University of Turku, Henrikinkatu 2, FI 20014, University of Turku, Finland

Yusuf M. Juwayeyi Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Long Island University, Brooklyn, NY, USA

Contributors

xiv Contributors

Anna Källén Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

Nikolay N. Kradin Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnology, Far East Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Vladivostok, Russia; Department of Social Anthropology, Far-Eastern Federal University, Vladivostok, Russia

Kristian Kristiansen Department of Historical Studies, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

Ludomir R. Lozny Department of Anthropology, Hunter College, CUNY, New York, NY, USA

Arkadiusz Marciniak Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland

Dóra Mérai Institute of Archaeological Sciences, ELTE, 1088 Budapest, Múzeum krt. 4/B, Hungary

Predrag Novaković Department of Archaeology, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Mario Sanoja Obediente Instituto de Investigaciones, FACES, Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas, Venezuela

Augusto Oyuela-Caycedo Department of Anthropology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

Irina Podgorny CONICET-Museo de La Plata/Universidad de La Plata, Argentina

Gustavo G. Politis INCUAPA-CONICET-Facultad de Ciencias Sociales de la Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina

Beatrice H. Sandelowsky The University Centre for Studies in Namibia (TUCSIN), Namibia

Izumi Shimada Department of Anthropology, Faner Hall Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL, USA

Rasmi Shoocongdej Department of Archaeology, Silpakorn University, Bangkok, Thailand

David B. Small Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA

xvContributors

Jussi-Pekka Taavitsainen Department of Archaeology, University of Turku, Henrikinkatu 2, Turku 20014, Finland

Frank R. Thomas Pacific Studies, Oceania Centre for Arts, Culture and Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji

Silvia Tomášková Department of Anthropology and Department of Women’s Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

Iraida Vargas-Arenas Instituto de Investigaciones, FACES, Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas, Venezuela

Rafael Vega-Centeno Department of Anthropology, Faner Hall, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL, USA

Ulrich Veit Universität Leipzig, Professur für Ur- und Frühgeschichte, Ritterstr. 14, D-04109 Leipzig, Germany

Willem J.H. Willems Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

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