The historiography of archaeology: exploring theory, contingency and rationality

Abstract

From the 1990s onwards the history of archaeology has been enjoying something of a vogue. The publication of the five-volume Encyclopedia of the History of Archaeology (Murray 1999, 2001) has greatly expanded our store of biographies and national histories, the Bulletin of the History of Archaeology has provided a much needed forum for research, as has the History of Archaeology Research Network (HARN), and the Archives of European Archaeology project has re-focused our attention on how much of the history of archaeology in Europe has still to be written. During the same period archaeologists have continued to justify and to advocate the significance of ‘novel’ approaches to archaeology through partial histories of the discipline (the most notable recent examples being those associated with the revival of ‘Darwinian archaeologies’ such as Lyman, O’Brien and Dunnell 1997). Other agendas have been advanced through the production of alternative histories of national archaeologies (e.g. Patterson 1995), the role of women (e.g. Diaz-Andreu and Sorrensen 1998) and of amateurs (e.g. Kehoe and Emmerichs 1999). Show more