ABSTRACT
Meskell also touches upon the archaeology of ethnicity and nationalism but this is more fully explored by Siân Jones, who examines the common discourses of identity which have structured notions such as ‘peoples’ and ‘cultures’. She indicates the historical contingency of the concepts used in the archaeological identification of past ethnicities, and, importantly, suggests alternative ways of conceptualizing ethnicity, indicating that it is dynamic and contested rather than necessarily static or homogeneous. The point is well made that archaeology has tended to deal with ‘wholes’: bounded entities of peoples, ethnic groups, ‘tribes’, and suchlike. Instead Jones indicates that a more complex view of such phenomena is key to understanding the archaeology of identities. Rather than presume the existence of discrete ‘categories’, ‘entities’, or ‘wholes’, their relevance in fact needs to be proven (Insoll forthcoming).
