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Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, Vol. 11, No. 1, March 2004 (°
C 2004)

Prologue: Toward an Archaeology of Place

Brenda J. Bowser1

KEY WORDS: archaeology of place; landscape archaeology.

The ability to understand multiple perspectives on archaeological places is

critical to the practice of archaeology today. As archaeologists, our own sense
of place in science and society is in the process of reconstruction, as the global
practice of archaeology broadens to be inclusive of multiple voices, including in-
digenous peoples, ethnic minorities, and other publics whose pasts are represented.
As questions of “who owns the past” and “who sets the agenda” rage, and some
academic archaeologists are rejecting anthropological theory as the foundation of
archaeological thinking, a growing movement seeks to expand upon new ways of
anthropological thinking and knowing (e.g., Bender, 1993; Feld and Basso, 1996;
Gregory and Urry, 1985; Hirsch and O’Hanlon, 1995; Low and Lawrence-Zúñiga,
2003) to develop an archaeological method and theory of “place.”
As Peter Whitridge (2002, p. 1) observes, “the notion of ‘place,’ of a mean-
ingful location, assumes a remarkable discursive richness, and need not remain
tethered to the archaeology of landscape.” Recent contributions by Bradley (1998,
2000), Ingold (1993), Tilley (1994), and others (e.g., Ashmore, 2002; Joyce and
Gillespie, 2000; Meskell, 2003; Robin and Rothschild, 2002; Zedeño, 1997) mark
the emergence of an “archaeology of place,” rooted partially in landscape archaeol-
ogy yet more attendant to understanding the ways in which people impart meaning
to their cultural and physical surroundings at multiple scales. Archaeologists who
grapple with the challenges of understanding the cultural and social meanings of
archaeological places are compelled by reasons ranging from purely intellectual,
to practical, to firm moral and ethical conviction (e.g., see Ashmore and Knapp,
1999; King, 2003; Watkins, 2000). Regardless of motivation, all approaches to such
meanings require consideration of subjective experience, a concept that shakes the
foundations of scientific archaeological inquiry. How can we maintain theoretical
1 Department of Anthropology, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington 99164-4910; e-mail:
bowser@wsu.edu.

1
1072-5369/04/0300-0001/0 °
C 2004 Plenum Publishing Corporation
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2 Bowser

and methodological rigor and an empirical basis in archaeology while we ad-

dress issues of multiple meanings and perspectives in today’s politicized arena of
practice?
To address this challenge, the authors in this special double-issue focus on
the use of archaeological and ethnoarchaeological data to understand the social
and cultural meanings of places and the material manifestations of those mean-
ings. The authors explore the ways in which people impart meaning to their cultural
and physical surroundings and identify methodological and theoretical approaches
to the archaeological analysis of subjective experience. Contributors draw method
and theory from the anthropology of landscape, cross-cultural proxemics, and phe-
nomenological experience, contemporary social theory, cultural geography, oral
history, and architecture. Collectively, the articles emphasize the importance of
considering diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives and integrating
multiple lines of evidence—ethnographic, linguistic, archival, archaeological, and
indigenous forms of knowledge—to achieve an understanding of the meanings
of archaeological places. These articles have emerged from the session, “Recon-
structing a Sense of Place: Method and Theory in Archaeology,” held at the 67th
annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Denver. In this special
double-issue, our goal is to contribute to archaeologists’ ability to apply material
data to reconstruct senses of place, to further the development of the archaeology
of place: a new frontier of exciting and innovative approaches to understanding
the past.

REFERENCES CITED

Ashmore, W. (2002). Decisions and dispositions: Socializing spatial archaeology. American Anthro-
pologist 104(4): 1172–1183.
Ashmore, W., and Knapp, A. B. (eds.) (1999). Archaeologies of Landscape: Contemporary Perspec-
tives, Blackwell, Cambridge, MA.
Bender, B. (ed.) (1993). Landscape: Politics and Perspectives, Berg, Oxford.
Bradley, R. (1998). The Significance of Monuments: On the Shaping of Human Experience in Neolithic
and Bronze Age Europe, Routledge, London.
Bradley, R. (2000). An Archaeology of Natural Places, Routledge, London.
Feld, S., and Basso, K. H. (eds.) (1996). Senses of Place, School of American Research, Santa Fe.
Gregory, D., and Urry, J. (eds.) (1985). Social Relations and Spatial Structures, MacMillan,
Basingstoke.
Hirsch, E., and O’Hanlon, M. (eds.) (1995). The Anthropology of Landscape: Perspectives on Place
and Space, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Ingold, T. (1993). The temporality of the landscape. World Archaeology 25(2): 152–174.
Joyce, R. A., and Gillespie, S. D. (eds.) (2000). Beyond Kinship: Social and Material Reproduction in
House Societies, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
King, T. F. (2003). Places That Count: Traditional Cultural Properties in Cultural Resource Manage-
ment, Alta Mira, Walnut Creek, CA.
Low, S. M., and Lawrence-Zúñiga, D. (eds.) (2003). The Anthropology of Space and Place: Locating
Culture, Blackwell, Cambridge, MA.
Meskell, L. (2003). Memory’s materiality: Ancestral presence, commemorative practice and disjunctive
locales. In Van Dyke, R. M., and Alcock, S. E. (eds.), Archaeologies of Memory, Blackwell, Oxford,
MA, pp. 34–55.
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Robin, C., and Rothschild, N. A. (2002). Archaeological ethnographies: Social dynamics of outdoor
space. Journal of Social Archaeology 2(2): 159–172.
Tilley, C. (1994). A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths, and Monuments, Berg, Oxford.
Watkins, J. (2000). Indigenous Archaeology: American Indian Values and Scientific Practice, Alta
Mira, Walnut Creek, CA.
Whitridge, P. (2002). Landscapes, houses, bodies, things: ‘Place’ and the archaeology of the Inuit
imaginary. Paper Presented at the 67th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology,
Denver.
Zedeño, M. N. (1997). Landscapes, land use, and the history of territory formation: An example from
the Puebloan Southwest. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 4: 67–103.

Brenda J. Bowser
Special Editor