Economy and exchange

The economics of past societies has traditionally been one of the most important topics of scientific archaeology. On one hand, economic activities are related to fundamental human survival and have always been part of the daily routine of an individual or small family group. On the other, the study of past economies is inevitably associated with the broad historical context in which archaeology as a discipline originated and further developed. For that reason, this chapter combines theoretical perspectives that include a wide range of economies, from domestic to political, traditional to modern, gift economies to commodity economy. The chapter consists of four parts: it reviews the historical development of economic archaeology, relates economic development to social complexity, discusses the categories and classes of items that have been produced and used in different cultural contexts, and explores distribution, namely the trade and exchange activities in which goods become gifts and commodities.

Feminist archaeologies and gender studies

This chapter discusses the influence of feminist theories on theory construction, self-conception, and the public perception of archaeology and its various sub-disciplines. The theoretical foundations of gender archaeology are also considered. As there are many feminist theories as well as archaeologies, the chapter also summarizes what can be described as broad sets of overlaps, and to an extent simplifies the variety of different points of view. Feminist criticism as well as new questions, models, and methods based on it reached archaeology in the 1980s, later than the other humanities. Initial efforts could be classified as women’s studies that mostly aimed to balance a male-biased view of the past by adding a female view to it. Since the 1990s, the term ‘gender’ with its various aspects is the focus of discussion. The number, convertibility, and history of genders are also important topics. In addition, feminist archaeology focuses on archaeology’s own institutions, their social rules, their language, and their image, which are also linked to the gender expectations of the surrounding society. These aspects are also connected to the way images of the past are presented to the public, and which effects they have on gender discourses.

Social Organization and Change

First, this chapter considers the meaning of ‘society’ in sociology, and how it relates to the concept of culture. It then proposes an interpretation of social organization and change based on theories taken from the social sciences. The main aim is to investigate these issues as they have been presented by different schools and currents within archaeology from the mid-19th century to present times. Evolutionist, culture-historical, Marxist, functionalist and processual archaeologies have based their ideas of social change on an organic metaphor of society, rooted deeply in the classic views of 19th-century social sciences. Post-processual archaeology has been the only one to adopt other concepts of society, drawn from various sociological theories, e.g. those of Bourdieu, Habermas, Giddens, or Sztompka.

Theory in the Field

Archaeological fieldwork is normally treated as a matter of applying techniques that are designed to recover particular data sets, which have been identified either on the basis of research priorities or by the concerns of cultural resource management. The data are treated as objectively secure, whilst their interpretation might be open to question. The role of theory is widely assigned to the process of interpretation, and therefore often treated as an optional aspect of the analysis that is excluded from the process of data recovery. We counter this characterization by treating theory as one of the essential tools required by the fieldworker to enable the critical evaluation of the procedures by which archaeological knowledge is constructed. Such a theorized perspective pre-eminently requires that the procedures of fieldwork help fieldworkers to develop an interpretive archaeology of people in an informed way at the moment of fieldwork.

Signs and Symbols

The human ability to represent concepts through image-making seems pivotal for enabling the formation of complex cultures. This chapter is concerned with the important but permeable boundaries between and around the categories of ‘art’ and ‘writing’. The writing:art/sign:symbol distinction has been fundamental to the location of the survey points forming the boundaries between archaeology and its siblings, e.g. philology, classics and ancient history, and to some extent anthropology. Contemporary notions of art and writing are contrasted with those of past societies and how image-bearing objects differ from other kinds of material culture. The question of when a drawing of something becomes part of a writing system and the types of literacy required to understand linguistic signs are also considered. Sociological and anthropological approaches to art and contemporary theories of visual culture are evaluated for the ways in which these can contribute to archaeological discourse on sign and symbol as a branch of material culture studies.

Marxist Archaeologies

Marxist archaeologies have represented one of the most important theoretical developments of archaeology. The approaches that go under this label can be extremely diverse, but often maintain the use of and/or the engagement with some basic ideas derived from the thought of Marx, Engels, and subsequent thinkers of the Marxist tradition. These concepts can be identified, for instance, in the notions of means, relations, and mode of production as well as in that of class. Contrarily to many other strands of archaeological theory, however, Marxism is not only a philosophy but has had an active role in recent global history, being related to both emancipatory struggles and dictatorial regimes worldwide. Because of this, the development of Marxist archaeologies (variously declined) will be discussed also in their historical development through the twentieth century and beyond, until the present day.

Who is theory for?

Theory holds a paradoxical position in archaeology: its symbolic prestige is restricted to academic circles, and contrasts with the poor influence it exerts upon the daily practice of archaeology. This problem relates to the lack of a solid body of doctrines, but also to the methodological blurredness and disciplinary unsteadiness of archaeology. Past ideological abuses of interpretative models, as well as the tangible materiality of the archaeological sources have often encouraged demagogic, positivist attitudes among researchers, where down-to-earth explanations become evidence that discredit the need for theory in archaeology. We use a very broad definition of “theory”, encompassing the epistemology and the historiographic analysis of archaeological research: theory deals with everything that is linked to the nature of archaeology, to its scientific approaches, and to its relationship to the past and present. Functioning as a guide to archaeological practice, theory can therefore not be the field of specialists only.