ABSTRACT
Unsurprisingly, the reaction of processual archaeology to the papers reprinted above and to Reading the Past (Hodder 1986) and the two books by Shanks and Tilley (1987a; 1987b) concentrated on their most undermining feature-the attack on the objectivity and neutrality of archaeology as a science. Watson (1986) was concerned about the scepticism involved and claimed that I did not believe the real past was accessible (see also Bintliff 1990, 18). If this was so, and if the voices of ‘the other’, the marginal, the ‘fringe’, the subordinate were to be allowed, what would happen to the integrity of archaeology as a discipline? How would we be able to retain science funding if we admitted a political involvement? Surely post-processual really meant post-archaeology.
