Artifacts and Ideas: Essays in Archaeology - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0765801655 ISBN 13: 9780765801654

Publisher: Transaction Publishers, 2002

Synopsis

Prehistoric archaeologists cannot observe their human subjects nor can they directly access their subjects' ideas. Both must be inferred from the remnants of the material objects they made and used. In recent decades this incontrovertible fact has encouraged partisan approaches to the history and method of archaeology. An empirical discipline emphasizing data, classification, and chronology has given way to a behaviorist approach that interprets finds as products of ecologically adaptive strategies, and to a postmodern alternative that relies on an idealist, cultural-relativist epistemology based on belief and cultural traditions.

In Artifacts and Ideas, Bruce G. Trigger challenges all partisan versions of recent developments in archaeology, while remaining committed to understanding the past from a social science perspective. Over 30 years, Trigger has addressed fundamental epistemological issues, and opposed the influence of narrow theoretical and ideological commitments on archaeological interpretation since the 1960s. Trigger encourages a relativistic understanding of archaeological interpretation. Yet as post-processual archaeology, influenced by postmodernism, became increasingly influential, Trigger countered nihilistic subjectivism by laying greater emphasis on how in the long run the constraints of evidence could be expected to produce a more comprehensive and objective understanding of the past.

In recent years Trigger has argued that while all human behavior is culturally mediated, the capacity for such mediation has evolved as a flexible and highly efficient means by which humans adapt to a world that exists independently of their will. Trigger agrees that a complete understanding of what has shaped the archaeological record requires knowledge both of past beliefs and of human behavior. He knows also that one must understand humans as organisms with biologically grounded drives, emotions, and means of understanding. Likewise, even in the absence of data supplied in a linguistic format by texts and oral traditions, at least some of the more ecologically adaptive forms of human behavior and some general patterns of belief that display cross-cultural uniformity will be susceptible to archaeological analysis.Advocating a realist epistemology and a materialist ontology, Artifacts and Ideas offers an illuminating guide to the present state of the discipline as well as to how archaeology can best achieve its goals.

About this title

Review:

-... a fine narrative of the development of Trigger's metaphysics in his archaeological and historical research. It is accessible, clearly written, and worth close reading.- --Journal of Field Archaeology -This collection is a fine narrative of the development of Trigger's metaphysics in his archaeological and historical research. It is accessible, clearly written, and worth close reading.- --Christopher S. Peebles, Journal of Field Archaeology -Trigger is a brilliant essayist, and Artifacts and Ideas brings together a number of the most incisive and keenly observed essays he has written in the course of a long and productive career.- --Alison Wylie, Washington University -Eloquent, subtly nuanced, and thoroughly grounded in the contemporary world, Trigger's essays are an essential guide to the multifaceted archeology of today.- --Brian Fagan, University of California, Santa Barbara ..". a fine narrative of the development of Trigger's metaphysics in his archaeological and historical research. It is accessible, clearly written, and worth close reading." --Journal of Field Archaeology "This collection is a fine narrative of the development of Trigger's metaphysics in his archaeological and historical research. It is accessible, clearly written, and worth close reading." --Christopher S. Peebles, Journal of Field Archaeology "Trigger is a brilliant essayist, and Artifacts and Ideas brings together a number of the most incisive and keenly observed essays he has written in the course of a long and productive career." --Alison Wylie, Washington University "Eloquent, subtly nuanced, and thoroughly grounded in the contemporary world, Trigger's essays are an essential guide to the multifaceted archeology of today." --Brian Fagan, University of California, Santa Barbara "This collection is a fine narrative of the development of Trigger's metaphysics in his archaeological and historical research. It is accessible, clearly written, and worth close reading." --Christopher S. Peebles, Journal of Field Archaeology "Trigger is a brilliant essayist, and Artifacts and Ideas brings together a number of the most incisive and keenly observed essays he has written in the course of a long and productive career." --Alison Wylie, Washington University "Eloquent, subtly nuanced, and thoroughly grounded in the contemporary world, Trigger's essays are an essential guide to the multifaceted archeology of today." --Brian Fagan, University of California, Santa Barbara ..". a fine narrative of the development of Trigger's metaphysics in his archaeological and historical research. It is accessible, clearly written, and worth close reading." --Journal of Field Archaeology .".. a fine narrative of the development of Trigger's metaphysics in his archaeological and historical research. It is accessible, clearly written, and worth close reading." --Journal of Field Archaeology

Synopsis:

Prehistoric archaeologists cannot observe their human subjects or directly access their ideas; both must be inferred from what survives of the material objects they made and used. In recent decades this has led to a partisan approach to the history and method of archaeology. From an empirical discipline stressing data, classification, and chronology, it has given way to a behaviorist approach interpreting finds as products of ecologically adaptive strategies and then to an idealist, cultural-relativist epistemology stressing belief and cultural traditions. Most recently, Darwinian or evolutionary archaeology has established itself as a materialist substitute. In Artifacts and Ideas, Bruce G. Trigger challenges these partisan versions of recent developments in archaeology while remaining committed to understanding the past from a social science perspective.

About this edition

• Publisher: Transaction Publishers
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0765801655
• ISBN 13: 9780765801654
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 253
• Editor: Trigger Bruce