R. Lee Lyman on a Seat at the High Table in Anthropology

I am not suggesting that archaeologists abandon use of ethnologically documented cultural processes as explanatory tools, nor am I suggesting that archaeologists abandon traditional ethnological and anthropological theories. What I am suggesting is that a little explored arena that is likely to contain evidence of unique processes—particularly, tempos and modes of change, to borrow Simpson’s (1944) wording—is the temporally coarse-grained archaeological record itself. It is there that ethnologically imperceptible large-scale processes may be revealed. And, if the history of paleontology is any guide, it is precisely those sorts of revelations that will gain archaeologists a seat at the high table of anthropology.

To gain those insights, archaeologists must occasionally discard the tint of the archaeology is prehistoric ethnology mantra and consider the archaeological record as potentially revealing something invisible to an ethnologist. It may reveal nothing, but how will we know unless we look?

Source

R. Lee Lyman. 2007. Archaeology’s quest for a seat at the high table of anthropology. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 26:2:133-149.