Bernbeck R, and McGuire RH, editors. 2011. Ideologies in Archaeology. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. 311 p. in 14 chapters; 99 additional pages of bibliography, contributor biographies and an index. ISBN 978-0-8165-2673-4 (alkaline paper)
Ideologies in Archaeology is an incredibly important book, if you want to understand the inherent but understated inner struggle that is part and parcel of studying and writing about the past. The book is an edited collection of articles which describe aspects of a philosophy of archaeology that has been bubbling among some scholars for some time now: arguably since V.G. Childe's day of the 1920s and 30s, when Marxism, with its condemnation of how states control and manipulate the lives of ordinary people first became part of academic discourse.
Overall, Ideologies in Archaeology attacks the notion in two main branches. Interestingly, the articles aren't necessarily grouped in this way, so it's probably just me using my classificatory mind (which is a small joke directed at Randy McGuire, who I have long admired, and which joke you will understand after you've read the book).
In the first and most prominent branch, the authors collectively argue that by writing about the past, by making "sense" and telling "coherent" stories based on ruins from ancient peoples, archaeologists often fall into the trap of communicating our own unstated beliefs about how the world works and thickly laying them on past peoples. That's dangerous, because we don't live or write in a vacuum: as we do that, we are impacting present day peoples, the descendants of those cultures who have their own belief systems about the past: our re-creating past lives in our own image privileges that re-creation above memory and local history.
So, when we say "archaeological evidence shows this" and don't add "local history shows this" or more to the point, share the stage with local historians, we are tacitly privileging our interpretations of the past. That is inescapably true: or rather, it has a dose of reality not often recognized and not especially sweet tasting.
The other part of the story, is one that I have to admit I have an easier time with: identifying evidence for the workings of state control in the past. How, say, the Iron Age elites at Hochdorf used gold trappings of a burial to promote the notion of elite superiority, even if the trappings weren't as fancy as they appeared. This part includes "interpellation", or how the state creates ideologies that people buy into. I'm an American--that is a state-created identity that includes a range of beliefs about the world that feeds back into supporting the American state. Also, inescapably true.
After an introduction that I needed to read both before the other articles and after I finished all the articles, the book is organized into two main sections: Complex Relations: Archaeologists' Ideologies and Those of Their Subjects, and Ideological Dimensions of Archaeological Discourse.
Complex Relations includes "A conceptual history of ideology and its place in archaeology" by Reinhard Bernbeck and Randall H. McGuire, which supplies the historical background for the philosophies presented in the book. Other chapters include one from Susan Kus and Victor Raharijaona on how Malagasy people deal with and produce their own "propagandy"; Matthew Cochran and Paul Mullins on "Shoppertainment" and consumer culture; Uzi Baram on the broader considerations of heritage tourism; Susan Pollock on imperial ideologies in Akkad; and Bettina Arnold on the illusion of power in early Iron Age Europe.
Ideological Dimensions of Archaeological Discourse includes Kathleen Sterling, who argues that the concept of "human nature" that we apply to hunter-gatherers is a power trip; Susan Alt on scales of explanations of mound building over time; Christopher N. Matthews and Kurt A. Jordan on how the incessant 'secularism' of science impacted the repatriation movement; Ruth M. Van Dyke on the unequal privileging of memory; Louann Wurst and Sue Novinger on the intersection of archaeology and education, how archaeology could impart the lessons learned into education but haven't as yet; Vicente Lull, Rafael Mico, Cristina Rihuete Herrada, and Robert Risch argue that we need to get out of our comfort zone; and finally, Jean-Paul Demoule asks whether archaeology can change society.
Ideologies and Archaeology has an extensive bibliography, biographies of the contributors and an index.
A quote to keep from Bernbeck and McGuire and cited by Demoule closes the book: "Archaeologists have hitherto only interpreted ideologies in various ways: the point is to criticise them in order to change the world."
Seriously. I'm wondering if Ideologies and Archaeology will change my life: I'm not sure, but it's certainly given me food for thought. We simply can't see the past without our modern spectacles, but it would be very useful to recognize the level of our short-sightedness.
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