Hostname: page-component-74d7c59bfc-k9qx5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-01-30T17:38:01.446Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Interpretive Archaeology and Its Role

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Ian Hodder
Ian Hodder*
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3DZ, England
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper seeks further to define the processes of the interpretation of meaning in archaeology and to explore the public role such interpretation might play. In contrast to postmodern and poststructuralist perspectives, a hermeneutic debate is described that takes account of a critical perspective. An interpretive postprocessual archaeology needs to incorporate three components: a guarded objectivity of the data, hermeneutic procedures for inferring internal meanings, and reflexivity. The call for an interpretive position is related closely to new, more active roles that the archaeological past is filling in a multicultural world.

Résumé

Este artículo intenta definir los procesos de la interpretación de significación en arqueología y explorar el papel público que esta interpretación podría tener. En contraste con la perspectiva postmodernista y postestructuralista, el debate hermenéutico incluye una perspectiva crítica. Una arqueología interpretativa postprocessual necesita incorporar tres componentes: una estricta objectividad de los datos, procedimientos hermenéuticos para inferir significados internos, y reftexividad. El interés en una posición interpretativa está relacionado a papeles nuevos y más activos que el pasado arqueológico cumple en un mundo multicultural.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , January 1991 , pp. 7 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1991

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

References Cited

Bapty, I., and Yates, T. 1990 Archaeology after Structuralism. Routledge, London.Google Scholar
Binford, L. 1983 In Pursuit of the Past. Thames and Hudson, London.Google Scholar
Binford, L. 1987 Data, Relativism and Archaeological Science. Man 22 : 391–404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Betti, E. 1984 The Epistemological Problem of Understanding as an Aspect of the General Problem of Knowing. In Hermeneutics : Questions and Prospects, edited by Shapiro, G. and Sica, A., pp. 25–53. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst.Google Scholar
Bruner, J. 1986 Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Harvard, University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Clifford, J., and Marcus, G. 1986 Writing Culture. University of California Press.Google Scholar
Collingwood, R. 1946 The Idea of History. Oxford University Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Conkey, M., and Spector, J. 1984 Archaeology and the Study of Gender. In Advances in Archaeological Theory and Method, vol. 7, edited by Schiffer, M. B., pp. 1–38. Academic Press, New York.Google Scholar
Eagleton, T. 1983 Literary Theory. Blackwell, Oxford.Google Scholar
Earle, T., and Preucel, R. 1987 Processual Archaeology and the Radical Critique. Current Anthropology 28 : 501–538.Google Scholar
Gadamer, H. G. 1975 Truth and Method. Seabury, New York.Google Scholar
Gathercole, P., and Lowenthal., D. 1989 The Politics of the Past. Unwin Hyman, London.Google Scholar
Habermas, J. 1971 Knowledge and Human Interests. Beacon Press, Boston.Google Scholar
Habermas, J. 1990 The Hermeneutic Claim to Universality. In The Hermeneutic Tradition, edited by Ormiston, G. L. and Schrift, A. D., pp. 245–272. State University of New York Press, Albany.Google Scholar
Heiddeger, M. 1958 The Question of Being. University Press, New Haven.Google Scholar
Hodder, I. 1986 Reading the Past. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hodder, I. 1989a This is Not an Article About Material Culture as Text. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 8 : 250–269.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodder, I. 1989b The Meanings of Things. Unwin Hyman, London Google Scholar
Hodder, I. 1989c Writing Archaeology : Site Reports in Context. Antiquity 63 : 268–274.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodder, I. 1990 The Domestication of Europe. Blackwell, Oxford.Google Scholar
Hodder, I. 1991a The Postprocessual Debate. In Processual and Postprocessual Archaeologies, edited by Preucel, R.. Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, in press.Google Scholar
Hodder, I. 1991b Gender Representation and Social Reality. In Proceedings of the 1989 Chacmool Conference, edited by University of Calgary Press, in press.Google Scholar
Kintigh, K. W. 1990 A Perspective on Reburial and Repatriation. SAA Bulletin 8(2) : 6–7. Society for American Archaeology, Washington, D. C. Google Scholar
Layton, R. 1989a Conflict in the Archaeology of Living Traditions. Unwin Hyman, London.Google Scholar
Layton, R. 1989b Who Needs the Past? Indigenous Values and Archaeology. Unwin Hyman, London.Google Scholar
Leone, M. 1982 Some Opinions About Recovering Mind. American Antiquity 47 : 742–760.Google Scholar
Leone, M., Potter, P. Jr., and Shackel, P. 1987 Toward a Critical Archaeology. Current Anthropology 28 : 283–302.Google Scholar
Lovis, W. A. 1990 How Far Will It Go? : A Look at S. 1980 and other Repatriation Legislation. SAA Bulletin 8(2) : 8–10. Society for American Archaeology, Washington, D. C. Google Scholar
Mascia-Lees, F., Sharpe, P., and Cohen, C. B. 1989 The Postmodernist Turn in Anthropology. Signs 15 : 7–33.Google Scholar
Merriman, N. 1989 Museum Visiting as a Cultural Phenomenon. In The New Museology, edited by Vergo, P., pp. 38–61. Reaktion Books, London.Google Scholar
Moore, H. 1990 Paul Ricoeur : Action, Meaning and Text. In Reading Material Culture, edited by Tilley, C., pp. 85–120. Blackwell, Oxford.Google Scholar
Olsen, B. 1990 Roland Barthes : From Sign to Text. In Reading Material Culture, edited by Tilley, C., pp. 163–205. Blackwell, Oxford.Google Scholar
Ormiston, G. L., and Schrift, A. D. 1990 The Hermeneutic Tradition. State University of New York Press, Albany.Google Scholar
Patterson, T. 1986 The Last Sixty Years : Toward a Social History of Americanist Archaeology in the United States. American Anthropologist 88 : 7–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patrik, L. E. 1985 Is There an Archaeological Record? In Advances in Archaeological Theory and Method, vol. 8, edited by Schiffer, M. B., pp. 27–62. Academic Press, New York.Google Scholar
Preucel, R. (editor) 1991 Processual and Postprocessual Archaeologies. Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, in press.Google Scholar
Renfrew, C. 1989 Comments on Archaeology into the 1990s. Norwegian Archaeological Review 22 : 33^11.Google Scholar
Ricoeur, P. 1971 The Model of the Text : Meaningful Action Considered as Text. Social Research 38 : 529–562.Google Scholar
Ricoeur, P. 1990 Hermeneutics and the Critique of Ideology. In The Hermeneutic Tradition, edited by Ormiston, G. L. and Schrift, A. D., pp. 298–334. State University of New York Press, Albany.Google Scholar
Shanks, M., and Tilley, C. 1987a Re-constructing Archaeology. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Shanks, M., and Tilley, C. 1987b Social Theory and Archaeology. Polity Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Thompson, J. 1981 Critical Hermeneutics. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tilley, C. 1989 Discourse and Power : The Genre of the Cambridge Inaugural Lecture. In Domination, Power and Resistance, edited by Miller, D., Rowlands, M, and Tilley, C., pp. 45–62. Unwin Hyman, London.Google Scholar
Tilley, C. 1990a Reading Material Culture. Blackwell, Oxford.Google Scholar
Tilley, C. 1990b Michel Foucault : Towards an Archaeology of Archaeology. In Reading Material Culture, edited by Tilley, C., pp. 281–347. Blackwell, Oxford.Google Scholar
Trigger, B. 1980 Archaeology and the Image of the American Indian. American Antiquity 45 : 662–676.Google Scholar
Trigger, B. 1989 A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Watson, P. J. 1986 Archaeological Interpretation, 1985. In American Archaeology Past and Future, edited by Meltzer, D., Fowler, D, and Sabloff, J., pp. 439–458. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D. C. Google Scholar
Yates, T. 1990 Jacques Derrida : “There is Nothing Outside the Text.” In Reading Material Culture, edited by Tilley, C., pp. 206–280. Blackwell, Oxford. Google Scholar