ABSTRACT
In manifold ways, the political contexts of archaeology are the concern of every chapter in this book. Our way of grouping them has emphasized certain common themes: Eurocentricity, conflicting majority and minority interpretations of heritage, unequal access to resources, disparities between professionals and the public. But any particular arrangement is inevitably arbitrary and incomplete, and readers may well find equally fruitful or more provocative commonalities of their own. Ours is only one way of structuring these diverse archaeological perspectives on the past.
