Comment to: “A critical archaeology revisited”, by L. A. Wilkie and K. Bartoy, Current Anthropology, 41,5, 2000.

 PEDRO PAULO A. FUNARI

Departamento de História, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, C. Postal 6110, Campinas, SP, 13081-970, Brazil. (pedrofunari@sti.com.br). 4 IV 00

 

Wilkie and Bartoy  have written an article which should foster considerable discussion among all those concerned with epistemological issues relating to archaeology. Several years ago, Robert Whallon (1985:23) emphasized that “there is still a strong atheoretic trend” in American archaeology and this is in a way true still today for most archaeology world wide and so a theoretical discussion is always welcome. The authors adopt some positive interpretive avenues, such as proposing that historical archaeology should not be interpreted only as the archaeology of capitalism (cf. Funari 1999) or that archaeologists must act with the community. However, the overall impression is that the authors spouse a conservative outlook, uncritical of present day contradictions in society and of archaeological praxis within society.

You can read the entire text in:“A critical archaeology revisited”, by L. A. Wilkie and K. Bartoy, Current Anthropology, 41,5, 2000, 764-765.