Publisher description

Bruce Trigger's new book is the first ever to examine the history of archaeology from medieval times to the present in world-wide perspective. At once stimulating and even-handed, it places the development of archaeological thought and theory throughout within a broad social and intellectual framework. The successive but interacting trends apparent in archaeological thought are defined and the author seeks to determine the extent to which these trends were a reflection of the personal and collective interests of archaeologists as these relate - in the West at least - to the fluctuating fortunes of the middle classes. While subjective influences have been powerful, Professor Trigger argues that the gradual accumulation of archaeological data has exercised a growing constraint on interpretation. In turn, this has increased the objectivity of archaeological research and enhanced its value for understanding the entire span of human history and the human condition in general.

Prehistoric archaeologists cannot observe their human subjects nor can they directly access their subjects' ideas. Both must be inferred from the remnants of the material objects they made and used. In recent decades this incontrovertible fact has encouraged partisan approaches to the history and method of archaeology. An empirical discipline emphasizing data, classification, and chronology has given way to a behaviorist approach that interprets finds as products of ecologically adaptive strategies, and to a postmodern alternative that relies on an idealist, cultural-relativist epistemology based on belief and cultural traditions. In Artifacts and Ideas, Bruce G. Trigger challenges all partisan versions of recent developments in archaeology, while remaining committed to understanding the past from a social science perspective. Over 30 years, Trigger has addressed fundamental epistemological issues, and opposed the influence of narrow theoretical and ideological commitments on archaeological interpretation since the 1960s. Trigger encourages a relativistic understanding of archaeological interpretation. Yet as post-processual archaeology, influenced by postmodernism, became increasingly influential, Trigger countered nihilistic subjectivism by laying greater emphasis on how in the long run the constraints of evidence could be expected to produce a more comprehensive and objective understanding of the past. In recent years Trigger has argued that while all human behavior is culturally mediated, the capacity for such mediation has evolved as a flexible and highly efficient means by which humans adapt to a world that exists independently of their will. Trigger agrees that a complete understanding of what has shaped the archaeological record requires knowledge both of past beliefs and of human behavior. He knows also that one must understand humans as organisms with biologically grounded drives, emotions, and means of understanding. Likewise, even in the absence of data supplied in a linguistic format by texts and oral traditions, at least some of the more ecologically adaptive forms of human behavior and some general patterns of belief that display cross-cultural uniformity will be susceptible to archaeological analysis.Advocating a realist epistemology and a materialist ontology, Artifacts and Ideas offers an illuminating guide to the present state of the discipline as well as to how archaeology can best achieve its goals.

Human Expeditions pays tribute to Trigger's immense legacy by bringing together cutting edge work from internationally recognized and emerging researchers inspired by his example.

Sample Text

Bruce Trigger has merged the history of archaeology with new perspectives on how to understand the past. He is a critical analyst and architect of social evolutionary theory, an Egyptologist, and an authority on aboriginal cultures in north-eastern North America. His contextualization of archaeology within broader society has encouraged appreciation of the power of archaeological knowledge and he has been an effective voice for non-oppositional forms of argument in archaeological theory. In The Archaeology of Bruce Trigger, leading scholars discuss their own approaches to the interpretation of archaeological data in relation to Trigger's fundamental intellectual contributions Contributors include Michael Bisson (McGill), Stephen Chrisomalis (Toronto), Jerimy J. Cunningham (Calgary), Brian Fagan (Lindbrior Corporation), Clare Fawcett (St. Francis Xavier), Junko Habu (California at Berkeley), Ian Hodder (Stanford), Jane Kelley (Calgary), Martha Latta (Toronto), Robert MacDonald (Archaeological Services Inc.), Randall McGuire (Binghamton), Lynn Meskell (Columbia), Toby Morantz (McGill), Robert Pearce (London Museum of Archaeology), David Smith (Toronto), Peter Timmins (Timmins Martelle Heritage Consultants), Silvia Tomásková (North Carolina), Bruce G. Trigger (McGill), Alexander von Gernet (Toronto), Gary Warrick (Wilfrid Laurier), Ronald F. Williamson (Archaeological Services Inc.), Alison Wylie (Washington), and Eldon Yellowhorn (Simon Frasier)