ABSTRACT
Historians of science interested in material culture, among whom I would count myself, often gripe about the tendency of other historians to present science as if it was really all about theory, a history of ideas and great geniuses, when really material culture and practice are essential to scientific practice. I assumed, given that material culture is the focus, that archaeologists would share this gripe. So I was surprised to read on the first page of Colin Renfrew and Paul Bahn’s textbook Archaeology Essentials: Theories, Methods, and Practice, ‘The history of archeology is . . . in the first instance a history of ideas, of theory, of ways of looking at the past’ (Renfrew and Bahn 2007: 13). For a discipline so powerfully evocative of material culture to a novice like me, it was a surprise to find that objects did not figure in this defining statement. Historians of science today would strongly disagree with such an interpretation. They would want to say that ideas and theory are not the only or even principal features of any science, especially not archaeology!
