ABSTRACT
At the dawn of the new millennium, American archaeology finds itself at the threshold of a new, more humanistic orientation toward the past. At the core of this transformation is a redefinition of the relationship between archaeologists and Indian peoples. Over the past twenty years, the discipline of archaeology has suffered the loss of a unified vision of its purpose and goals. This general experience of disciplinary fragmentation is best understood within the context of the post-positivist, anti-colonialist, and post-modernist movements that have swept through many sectors of late twentieth-century academia. In the case of American archaeology, the somewhat reluctant turn toward a more self-conscious, inclusive and humanistic approach to the construction of knowledge about the past has been accelerated by the passage of repatriation legislation.
