ABSTRACT

This volume provides a forum for debate between varied approaches to the past. The authors, drawn from Europe, North America, Asia and Australasia, represent many different strands of archaeology. They address the philosophical issues involved in interpretation and a desire among archaeologists to come to terms with their own subjective approaches to the material they study, a recognition of how past researchers have also imposed their own value systems on the evidence which they presented.

chapter 2|4 pages

Interpretive archaeologies

Some themes, and questions

part 1|19 pages

Philosophical issues of interpretation

chapter 3|8 pages

Interpretation in contemporary archaeology

Some philosophical issues

chapter 4|3 pages

Past realities

chapter 5|3 pages

Interpretive anthropology

chapter 6|3 pages

The problems of origins

Poststructuralism and beyond

part 2|37 pages

The origins of meaning

chapter 7|11 pages

The origins of meaning

chapter 10|6 pages

Talking to each other

Why hominids bothered

chapter 11|5 pages

Interpretation in the Palaeolithic

part 3|46 pages

Interpretation, writing and presenting the past

chapter 13|10 pages

Writing on the countryside

chapter 15|6 pages

‘Trojan forebears', ‘peerless relics'

The rhetoric of heritage claims

chapter 16|8 pages

A sense of place

A role for cognitive mapping in the ‘postmodern' world?

part 4|40 pages

Archaeology and history

chapter 17|17 pages

The nature of history

chapter 18|4 pages

The French historical revolution

The Annales school

chapter 20|5 pages

Material culture in time

chapter 22|4 pages

Railroading epistemology

Palaeoindians and women

part 5|41 pages

Material culture

chapter 23|13 pages

Interpreting material culture

The trouble with text

chapter 25|5 pages

Tombs and territories

Material culture and multiple interpretation

chapter 28|4 pages

Knowing about the past