ABSTRACT
Given the long tradition which considers the symbolic in terms of signs in a language (Hodder 1989), the challenge of a symbolic archaeology is to explore the relationship between material culture and language. To what extent is a pot or an axe symbolic in the way that the words ‘pot’ or ‘axe’ carry meaning? Are the material culture meanings, like the linguistic meanings, arbitrary, organised by, for example, paradigmatic and syntagmatic relationships?
