Marxist Perspectives in Archaeology

This book represents an attempt to gather together Marxist perspectives in archaeology and to examine whether indeed they represent advances in archaeological theory.

Matthew Spriggs (Author)

9780521109277, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 18 June 2009

168 pages
28 x 21 x 0.9 cm, 0.39 kg

Marxist theory has been an undercurrent in western social science since the late nineteenth century. It came into prominence in the social sciences in the 1960s and 1970s and has had a profound effect on history, sociology and anthropology. This book represents an attempt to gather together Marxist perspectives in archaeology and to examine whether indeed they represent advances in archaeological theory. The papers in this volume look forward to the growing use of Marxist theory by archaeologists; as well as enriching archaeology as a discipline they have important implications for sociology and anthropology through the addition of a long-term, historical perspective. This is a book primarily for undergraduates and research students and their teachers in departments of archaeology and anthropology but it should also be of interest to historians, sociologists and geographers.

Part I. Introduction: 1. Another way of telling: Marxist perspectives in archaeology Matthew Spriggs
Part II. Situating the Economic: 2. The economy and kinship: a critical examination of some of the ideas of Marx and Levi-Strauss C. A. Gregory
3. The motion of craft specialization and its presentation in the archaeological record of early states in the Turanian Basin Maurizio Tosi
4. Towards the quantification of productive forces in archaeology Luis F. Bate
Part III. Representation and Ideology: 5. Social change, ideology and the archaeological record Michael Parker Pearson
6. Ideology and material culture: an archaeological perspective Kristian Kristiansen
7. The spirit and its burden: archaeology and symbolic activity Susan Kus
8. Objectivity and subjectivity Mike Rowlands
Part IV. Social Transformations: 9. Explaining the Upper Palaeolithic Revolution Antonio Gilman
10. Force, history and the evolutionist paradigm Phil Kohl
11. The transformation of Asiatic formations: the case of late Prehispanic Mesoamerica John Gledhill
Part V. Epilogue
12. A consideration of ideology Peter Gathercole
Index.

Subject Areas: Archaeology [HD]