Hostname: page-component-77f85d65b8-lfk5g Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-04-20T22:07:56.335Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Archaeology in the Humanities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Norman Yoffee  and
Severin Fowles
Norman Yoffee*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
Severin Fowles
Affiliation:
Barnard College
*
Norman Yoffee, Department of Near Eastern Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48104-1608, USA, and Severin Fowles, Department of Anthropology, Barnard College, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027, USA Email: nyoffee@umich.edu; sfowles@barnard.edu
Get access

Abstract

Since archaeology is fundamentally the study of the human past, which is what the word “archaeology” connotes according to its Greek etymology, it is part of the humanities. However, archaeologists work in teams with scientists and employ quantitative techniques and comparative methods of the social sciences; archaeologists are thus an academic hybrid and are pleased to live in the interstices of many disciplines. In this article we review the history of archaeology in the humanities and explore some new directions in archaeological research. We discuss the enduring questions of origins of the antiquity of humanity, religion and art, the first agricultural villages, and the earliest cities, states, and civilizations. We also consider new agendas in archaeology: historical archaeology, landscapes in the past and present, material studies of the present, and how archaeologists are engaged in modern politics.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Diogenes , Volume 58 , Issue 1-2: The Humanities Today , May 2011 , pp. 35 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Appadurai, A (1986) “Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value,” in Appadurai, A (ed.) The Social Life of Things, pp. 3–63. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bahn, P (ed.) (1996) The Cambridge Illustrated History of Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.Google Scholar
Bailey, G, Newland, C, Nilsson, A, Schofield, J (2009) “Transit, Transition: Excavating J641 VUJ,” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 19(1): 1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baines, J, Eyre, C (1983) “Four Notes on Literacy,” Goettinger Miszellen 61: 65–96.Google Scholar
Baines, J, Malek, J (2000) Cultural Atlas of Ancient Egypt. New York: Checkmark.Google Scholar
Baines, J, Yoffee, N (1998) “Order, Legitimacy, and Wealth in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia,” in Feinman, G, Marcus, J (eds) Archaic States, pp. 199–260. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.Google Scholar
Barrett, J (1994) Fragments from Antiquity: An Archaeology of Social Life in Britain, 2900–1200 BC. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Basso, K (1996) Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western Apache. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Bender, B (1978) “Gatherer-Hunter to Farmer: A Social Perspective,” World Archaeology 10: 204–219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bender, B, ed. (1993) Landscape: Power and Politics. London: Berg.Google Scholar
Bender, B (1998) Stonehenge: Making Space. London: Berg.Google Scholar
Boric, D, Robb, J (2008) Past Bodies: Body-Centered Research in Archaeology. Oxford: Oxbow Books.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P (1973) “The Berber House,” in Douglas, M (ed.), Rules and Meanings: The Anthropology of Everyday Knowledge, pp. 98–110. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bradley, R (1997) Rock Art and the Prehistory of Atlantic Europe. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bradley, R (1998) The Significance of Monuments. On the Shaping of Human Experience in Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bradley, R (2000) An Archaeology of Natural Places. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Brown, B (2001) “Thing Theory,” Critical Inquiry 28(1): 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butler, J P (1993) Bodies that Matter. On the Discursive Limits of Sex. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cauvin, J (2000) The Birth of the Gods and the Origin of Agriculture. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.Google Scholar
de Certeau, M (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Chang, K C (1987) The Archaeology of Ancient China, 4th ed. New Haven: Yale UP.Google Scholar
Cherry, J, Margomenou, D, Talalay, L, eds (2005) Prehistorians Round the Pond: Reflections on Aegean Prehistory as a Discipline. Papers Presented at a Workshop Held in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, University of Michigan, March 14–16, 2003. Ann Arbor: Kelsey Museum.Google Scholar
Clottes, J, Lewis-Williams, D (1998) The Shamans of Prehistory: Trance and Magic in the Painted Caves. New York: Henry N. Abrams.Google Scholar
Conkey, M (1984) “To Find Ourselves: Art and Social Geography of Prehistoric Hunter Gatherers,” in Schrire, C. (ed.) Past and Present in Hunter Gatherer Studies, pp. 253–276. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Cowgill, G L (1997) “State and Society at Teotihuacán, Mexico,” Annual Review of Anthropology 26: 129–161.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Curry, A (2008) “Göbekli Tepe: The World's First Temple,” Smithsonian Magazine, November.Google Scholar
Daniel, G (1975) A Hundred and Fifty Years of Archaeology. London: Duckworth.Google Scholar
Deloria, V Jr (1997) Red Earth, White Lies. Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing.Google Scholar
DeMarrais, E, Gosden, C, Renfrew, C, eds (2004) Rethinking Materiality: The Engagement of Mind with the Material World. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.Google Scholar
Dobres, M.-A., Robb, J., eds (2000) Agency in Archaeology. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fagan, B, et al., eds (1996) The Oxford Companion to Archaeology. Oxford: Oxford UP.Google Scholar
Flannery, K, ed. (1976) The Early Mesoamerican Village. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Flood, F B (2002) “Between Cult and Culture: Bamiyan, Islamic Iconoclasm and the Museum,” Art Bulletin 84(4): 641–659.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fogelin, L (ed.) (2008) Religion, Archaeology, and the Material World. Carbondale, IL: Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University.Google Scholar
Fritz, J (1978) “Paleopsychology Today: Ideational Systems and Human Adaptation,” in Redman, C., et al. (eds) Prehistory: Beyond Subsistence and Dating, pp. 37–59. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Gamble, C, Porr, M, eds (2005) The Hominid Individual in Context. Archaeological Investigations of Lower and Middle Palaeolithic Landscapes, Locales and Artefacts. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gell, A (1998) Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Oxford UP.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Godelier, M (1999) The Enigma of the Gift. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Gosden, C (2004) Archaeology and Colonialism: Cultural Contact from 5000 BC to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.Google Scholar
Gosden, C, Marshall, Y (1999) “The Cultural Biography of Objects,” World Archaeology 31(2): 169–178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamilakis, Y (2007) The Nation and its Ruins. Antiquity, Archaeology and National Imagination in Greece. Oxford: Oxford UP.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamilakis, Y, Labanyi, J (2008) “Introduction: Time, Materiality, and the Work of Memory,” History and Memory 20(2): 5–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamilakis, Y, Pluciennik, M, Tarlow, S, eds (2002) Thinking Through the Body: Archaeologies of Corporeality. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodder, I (1986) Reading the Past. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.Google Scholar
Hodder, I (1990) The Domestication of Europe. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hodder, I (1999) The Archaeological Process: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hodder, I, ed. (2001) Archaeological Theory Today. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Hodder, I (2006) The Leopard's Tale: Revealing the Mysteries of Çatalhöyük. London: Thames and Hudson.Google Scholar
Houston, S, ed. (2004) The First Writing: Script Invention as History and Process. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.Google Scholar
Ingold, T (1993) “The Temporality of the Landscape,” World Archaeology 25(2): 24-17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingold, T (2000) The Perception of the Environment. Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Johnson, M (2007) Ideas of Landscape. Oxford: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, A (2007) Memory and Material Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, R (1978) “Why Did the Tasmanians Stop Eating Fish?,” in Gould, R (ed.) Explorations in Ethnoarchaeology, pp. 11–47. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Kemp, B (1989) Ancient Egypt. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kenoyer, J M (1998) Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization. Karachi: Oxford UP.Google Scholar
Kidder, T (2002) “Mapping Poverty Point,” Am. Antiquity 76: 89–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kidder, T (2010) “Hunter-Gatherer Ritual and Complexity: New Evidence from Poverty Point, Lousiana,” in Alt, S (ed.) Ancient Complexities. New Perspectives in Pre-Columbian North America. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.Google Scholar
Klejn, L (1977) “A Panorama of Soviand Archaeology,” Current Anthropology 18: 1–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuijt, I, ed. (2000) Life in Neolithic Farming Communities: Social Organization, Identity, and Differentiation. New York: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Larsen, M T (1976) The Old Assyrian City-State and its Colonies. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag.Google Scholar
Latour, B (1993) We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP.Google Scholar
Lefebvre, H (1974) La Production de l’espace. Paris: Anthropos.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leone, M (2005) The Archaeology of Liberty in an American Capital: Excavation in Annapolis. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Leone, M, Silberman, N A, eds. (1995) Invisible America: Unearthing our Hidden History. New York: H. Holt.Google Scholar
Lewis-Williams, D (2002) The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origin of Art. London: Thames and Hudson.Google Scholar
Lewis-Williams, D, Pearce, D (2005) Inside the Neolithic Mind: Consciousness, Cosmos, and the Realm of the Gods. London: Thames and Hudson.Google Scholar
Longacre, W, ed. (1970) Reconstructing Prehistoric Pueblo Societies. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico.Google Scholar
Mauss, M (1990) The Gift. New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, M (1968) The Visible and the Invisible. Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP.Google Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, M (1992) The Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Meskell, L, ed. (1998) Archaeology under Fire: Nationalism, Politics and Heritage in Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meskell, L (2004) Object Worlds in Ancient Egypt: Material Biographies Past and Present. London: Berg.Google Scholar
Meskell, L, ed. (2005) Archaeologies of Materiality. Oxford: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meskell, L, Joyce, R (2003) Embodied Lives: Figuring Ancient Maya and Egyptian Experience. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Miller, D (1987) Material Culture and Mass Consumption. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Miller, D (2005) “Materiality: An Introduction,” in Miller, D (ed.) Materiality, pp. 1–50. Durham: Duke UP.Google Scholar
Mills, B J, Walker, W H, eds (2008) Memory Work: Archaeologies of Material Practices. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press.Google Scholar
Mithen, S (1996) The Prehistory of the Mind. A Search for the Origins of Art, Religion, and Science. London: Thames and Hudson.Google Scholar
Mithen, S (2006) The Singing Neanderthals. The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP.Google Scholar
Munn, N D (1992) The Fame of Gawa. A Symbolic Study of Value Transformation in a Massim (Papua New Guinea) Society. Durham: Duke UP.Google Scholar
Murray, T, ed. (1999) Encyclopedia of Archaeology: The Great Archaeologists. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murray, T, ed. (2001) Encyclopedia of Archaeology: History and Discoveries. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murray, T (2007) Milestones in Archaeology. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murray, T, Evans, C, eds (2008) The History of Archaeology: A Reader. Oxford: Oxford UP.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olsen, B (2003) “Material Culture after Text: Re-membering Things,” Norwegian Archaeological Review 36(3): 87–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olsen, B (2007) “Keeping Things at Arm's Length. A Genealogy of Asymmetry,” World Archaeology 39(4): 579–588.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Osborne, R, Tanner, J, eds (2007) Art's Agency and Art History. Oxford: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parker Pearson, M, Pollard, J, Richards, C, Thomas, J, Tilley, C, Welham, K, Albarella, U (2006) “Materializing Stonehenge,” Journal of Material Culture 11(1/2): 227–261.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pauketat, T (2007) Chiefdoms and Other Archaeological Delusions. Lanham, MD: AltaMira.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paynter, R (1989) “The Archaeology of Inequality,” Annual Review of Anthropology 18: 369–399.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Possehl, G (2002) The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.Google Scholar
Preda, A (1999) “The Turn to Things: Arguments for a Sociological Theory of Things,” The Sociological Quarterly 40(2): 347–366.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Preucel, R (2006) Archaeological Semiotics. Malden: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Price, N (2001) The Archaeology of Shamanism. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Randall, A, Sassaman, K (2010) “(E)mergent Complexities during the Archaic Period in Northeast Florida,” in Alt, S (ed.) Ancient Complexities. New Perspectives in Pre-Columbian North America. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.Google Scholar
Rathje, W, Murphy, C (2001) Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Renfrew, C (1980) “The Great Tradition versus the Great Divide: Archaeology as Anthropology,” American Journal of Archaeology 84: 287–298.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Renfrew, C (2002) “Genetics and Language in Contemporary Archaeology,” in Cunliffe, B, Renfrew, C, Davies, W (eds) Archaeology: the Widening Debate, pp. 43–76. Oxford: Oxford UP.Google Scholar
Renfrew, C, Bahn, P (2008) Archaeology. Theories, Methods, and Practice, 5th ed. London: Thames and Hudson.Google Scholar
Renfrew, C, Zubrow, E, eds (1994) The Ancient Mind. Elements of Cognitive Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robb, J (2008) “Introduction to ‘Time and Change in Archaeological Interpretation’,” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 18(1): 57–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rowly-Conwy, P (2007) From Genesis to Prehistory. The Archaeological Three-Age System and its Contested Reception in Denmark, Britain, and Ireland. Oxford: Oxford UP.Google Scholar
Sahlins, M (1972) Stone Age Economics. Chicago: Aldine.Google Scholar
Sassaman, K (2005) “Structure and Practice in the Archaic Southeast,” in Pauketat, T R, DiPaolo Loren, D (eds) North American Archaeology, pp. 79–107. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Scarre, C, ed. (2002) Monuments and Landscapes in Atlantic Europe. Perception and Society during the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Schmidt, K (2001) “Göbekli Tepe, Southeastern Turkey: A Preliminary Report on the 1995–1999 Excavations,” Paléorient 26(1): 45–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schnapp, A (1996) Discovery of the Past. London: British Museum.Google Scholar
Shanks, M (2007) “Symmetrical Archaeology,” World Archaeology 39(4): 589–596.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Singleton, Th A, ed. (1985) The Archaeology of Slavery and Plantation Life. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Smith, A (2003) The Political Landscape. Constellations of Authority in Early Complex Polities. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sugiyama, S (2005) Human Sacrifice, Militarism, and Rulership. Materialization of State Ideology at the Feathered Serpent Pyramid, Teotihuacan. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.Google Scholar
Taube, K (2000) The Writing System of Teotihuacan. Washington, DC: Center for Ancient American Studies.Google Scholar
Thomas, D H (2000) Skull Wars: Kennewick Man, Archaeology, and the Battle for Native American Identity. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Thomas, J (1996) Time, Culture and Identity. An Interpretative Archaeology. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Tilley, C (1994) Phenomenology of Landscape. London: Berg.Google Scholar
Tilley, C (2004) The Materiality of Stone: Explorations in Landscape Phenomenology. London: Berg.Google Scholar
Trigger, B (2006) A History of Archaeological Thought. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Dyke, R (2008) The Chaco Experience: Landscape and Ideology at the Center Place. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press.Google Scholar
Van Dyke, R, Alcock, S, eds (2003) Archaeologies of Memory. Oxford: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vansina, J (1985) Oral Tradition as History. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Veenhof, K (2008) Mesopotamia: The Old Assyrian Period. Fribourg: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Wade, N (2006) Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors. New York: Penguin Press.Google Scholar
Webmoor, T (2007) “What About ‘One More Turn after the Social’ in Archaeological Reasoning? Taking Things Seriously,” World Archaeology 39(4): 563–578.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiner, A (1992) Inalienable Possessions. The Paradox of Keeping-While-Giving. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Willey, G, Sabloff, J (1990) A History of American Archaeology, 2nd ed. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman.Google Scholar
Witmore, C (2007) “Symmetrical Archaeology: Excerpts of a Manifesto,” World Archaeology 39(4): 546–562.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wylie, A (2002) Thinking from Things. Essays in the Philosophy of Archaeology. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yoffee, N (2005) Myths of the Archaic State. Evolution of the Earliest Cities, States, and Civilizations. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yoffee, N, ed. (2007) Negotiating the Past in the Past. Identity, Memory, and Landscape in Archaeological Research. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar