Archaeology and Political Commitment: The Archaeology of the Disappeared
Felix Acuto, SUNY Binghamton

Perhaps because archaeologists frequently study extinct societies, some that disappeared several thousands of years ago, they often believe that archaeological discourses do not have political implications. Nevertheless, in recent years, some scholars have begun to suggest that archaeology also constitutes a form of political praxis. A few projects are now attempting to use archaeological narratives to defy deeply rooted concepts and ideas that throughout the years have helped to promote or support different kinds of social inequalities. These projects also aim to recover the memory and voices of those minorities that official history has left aside or has intentionally silenced. I begin this paper by discussing and criticizing the validity and the degree of political commitment of some of these previous projects. Are they politically aware or are just academic fads or endeavors aimed to ease scholars' conscience? Have they incorporated local traditions of knowledge or the voices of local scholars? In the second part of this presentation, I introduce a new archaeological project that attempts to use archaeology to recover the voices of those who disappeared, and to actively preserve the memory of events that should not be forgotten. In March of 1976, a military dictatorship took power in Argentina. Supported by international consent, especially from the United States, this government carried out a plan to eradicate any kind of leftist tendency in Argentine political, artistic or intellectual fields. As a result, for more than six years many people were illegally imprisoned, tortured, and killed. In this paper, I present the archaeological study of an (un)official detention center.

Beyond the Walls of Academia: Archaeology for Indigenous Communities
Sonya Atalay, UC Berkeley Anthropology Department

The subjected 'Other' of anthropological research are often Native Americans and other Indigenous groups. Since Thomas Jefferson's time, excavations were conducted on the Native American spiritual and cultural landscape with little concern for the repercussions or benefits to the descendent communities involved. Archaeologists are now increasingly aware of the need to be relevant and accessible to local communities. The project presented here contributes to these endeavors by bridging academics with popular education, in an effort to democratize archaeological research, and is particularly oriented to model the ways that archaeological data can be made relevant for addressing issues crucial for contemporary Native communities such as sovereignty, heritage, repatriation and decolonization processes. The project, which is based on my dissertation research, integrates the results of archaeological work in Turkey with a series of curriculum units and a multimedia CD-ROM, both produced for use in Native American schools and communities. The CD-ROM, entitled Gikinawaabii, uses traditional Ojibwe pedagogical methods to express process of archaeological knowledge production. The teaching modules present findings on the uses of clay and cooking at the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük, and compares those with pre-contact Native American methods. The goal is to highlight cultural change in order to fight stereotypes of Native cultures as static or somehow inauthentic, while also addressing the conflict of Native identity that results from such essentialist concepts. Students using these materials engage with concepts of globalization and colonization processes and their effects on contemporary societies.

Deaf, Dumb, and Mute: how can "othering," silence, and identity construction inform social activism goals in archaeology?
Meredith Fraser - American University

The definition of archaeology as a primarily physical pursuit by both mainstream media and by its practitioners, coupled with the historical establishment of archaeologists' identities as white, male, able-bodied "heroes" serves to "other" particular bodies, individuals, and experiences. In the context of this "otherbodiedness," silence is mobilized as a strategy that mediates membership in the archaeological arena. This trend was initially identified in the context of the study of gender in archaeology, yet is made manifest once again through the near absence of archaeological dialogue regarding dis/ability. In this sense, archaeology is "deaf, dumb, and mute" with respect to dis/abled individuals and experiences. As a result, the possible contributions of dis/abled individuals to the discipline are not considered in archaeological discourse, thereby reducing the contents of our interpretive toolkits. This paper contends that archaeological practitioners' identity construction through normative discourses, underpinned by hegemonic ideologies, serves to constrain both the recognition of discrimination and reactions to it. In short, by operating within a system of privilege, and by defining our identities based on this privilege, we do not "see" those against whom we discriminate, thereby masking the experiences and identities of various individuals and groups through lack of recognition and silence. Consequently, this paper argues that an archaeology related to social justice concerns must include a critical examination of the ways in which constructions of disciplinary identity and archaeological practitioner's identities, rooted in normative discourse, serve to enable or dis/able participation in archaeology.

Archaeology and How 20th Century History is Remembered. Views Beyond the Privatization of Ethics and the Globalization of Indifference Offered by Projects Dealing with the 20th Century Histories of Guatemala, Bosnia, and Austria
Stephanie Koerner, School of Art History and Archaeology, University of Manchester

The last decades have seen a virtual explosion of debates turning variously on issues of 'agency', 'material culture' and 'historical memory'. The most positions build upon constructs from two bodies of theory; one associated with the expression, the 'critique of meta-narratives', the other structured around the categories, 'globalisation and multi-culturalism''. The aim of this paper is two fold. The more general objective is to examine the nature and consequences of tensions between the two above listed bodies of theory, especially for the ways in which 20th century history is represented and remembered. The more specific aim takes its departure from the two main 'post-processual' responses to the meta-narratives critique, namely: arguments against the notion of a human self, which is prior to its embodied and material preconditions, and concerns to focus attention on discrepant experiences. I admire much of the epistemological work that has been motivated by arguments against traditional notions of a timeless, placeless disembodied agent. But I worry that, if we come to close to reducing agency to material and embodied preconditions, we will be very unlikely to be able to address issues posed by studies seeking to focus on discrepant experiences. I will argue that this problem can be avoided from the perspectives offered by an ontology of the historicity of human agency, which challenges the status of ethics in modern epistemology and ontology. Building upon a conception of archaeological praxis, which calls into question notions of an archaeological 'record' of the operations of perceiving things and extended things, and philosophical principles relevant to the historicity of agency, I will outline the key requirements of such an ontology. One of the issues such an ontology ought to be able to broach is that of how historical entities constitute and tranform their 'identities' in relation to all the changes that they undergo. I will touch upon this matter by way of focusing attention on reguirements bearing upon the question of whether human experiences of discrepancies between how things are and ought to be can make a difference not just in the outcomes of particular events, but in conjunctures that reconfigure life-worlds over the longue durée. The final part of my talk centres on examples to illustrate the potential relevance of such an approach to projects being pursued in areas that saw the virtual destruction of pre-existing patterns of socio-cultural diversity during the 20th century. Emphasis falls on aspects of these projects that suggest something of radical archaeology's potential relevance to philosophical critiques of the privatisation of ethnic and the globalisation of indifference.

Warfare, biology and culture
Robert Layton, University of Durham, U.K.

The frequency of warfare among human populations has led some to argue that warfare is the product of an inherent human disposition, a genetically determined drive to aggression. The shocking claims of malpractice levelled by Tierney (2000) against Chagnon and his supervisor Neel have recently renewed debate on the 'naturalness' of warfare in simple human societies. The challenge to Chagnon's work has been mounted by cultural anthropologists, while Chagnon has been defended by sociobiologists such as Tooby. I argue that, even from the perspective of the evolution of social behaviour, Chagnon's approach is seriously deficient. Against the pessimistic view that warfare is inevitable, other evolutionary scientists have shown that human evolution has given us an unprecedented capacity to build social relationships based on reciprocity and trust (e.g. Axelrod 1990, Trivers 1985). De Waal (1989) argues that the more important social relations are to primate communities, the more they have elaborated peace-making procedures. There are, moreover, fundamental differences between human and chimpanzee territoriality that undermine parallels between chimp aggression and human warfare. Cultural anthropologists rightly argue that human society is far more complex than that of any other species. They question sociobiologists' habit of 'extrapolating from quite interesting statistics of animal mating and patterns of investment in care of offspring, and the various predictive models that can be made of these patterns, to the Vietnam War or the decisions of the Supreme Court' (Fischer 2001: 13). When the international community justifies standing aside from armed conflicts in Eastern Europe on the grounds that it is useless to intervene in age-old tribal hatreds, it evades explaining how tiny elites managed to arouse hatred in communities that had been multi-ethnic for generations. Fairhead (2000) argues recent conflicts in Central Africa have been caused by the value of resources and by wealth, and by international political economy. International intervention can worsen the problem by favoring one side, especially where access to vital minerals (cobalt, diamonds etc.) is the prize, and a secondary prize is control over the labor needed to exploit them. I shall illustrate some of the culturally-specific causes of, and responses to, conflict by outlining the dynamics of recent events in the Balkans and Eastern Africa. These cases reinforce the finding of archaeologists such as Maschner, that warfare develops in response to particular social and cultural conditions (Maschner 1997).
Axelrod, R. 1990 The evolution of co-operation. Harmondsworth, Penguin.
Fairhead, J. 2000. 'The conflict over natural and environmental resources', in F. Stewart, W. Nafziger and R. Vayryen (eds.) War, hunger and displacement, volume I. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fischer, M. 2001. In the science zone. The Yamomami and the fight for representation [part one]. Anthropology Today, 17.4: 9-14
Maschner, H. 1997. The evolution of Northwest Coast warfare. In D.L. Martin and D.W. Frayer (eds) Troubled times: violence and warfare in the past, pp. 267-302. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach.
Tierney, P. 2000. Darkness in El Dorado. New York: Norton.
Trivers, R. 1985 Social evolution. Menlo Park: Benjamin/Cummins. Waal, F. de 1989. Peacemaking among primates. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U. P.

Walking the Walk: Social Archaeology in Nicaragua
Geoffrey McCafferty, Dept. of Archaeology, University of Calgary

For much of its existence, archaeology has been a colonial enterprise engaged in mining areas for preciosities -- either material or theoretical - with little return for the host country. Exotic objects are housed in foreign museums, and even when they remain in-country are displayed in ostentatious buildings that are not readily accessible to commoners. Scholarly reports are written in esoteric language, often foreign to the country of origin, and published in specialist books and journals that are not available to the people most immediately impacted by the research. A social archaeology can be responsive to both the past and present, taking the needs and desires of host populations into account during all phases of archaeological practice. This paper will present initial results of a social archaeological project in Pacific Nicaragua, at the site of Santa Isabel, formerly the pre-Columbian town of Quauhcapolca. According to Colonial period sources, Quauhcapolca was the center of the Nahuat-speaking Nicarao, culturally affiliated with the Nahuas of central Mexico. The ruler of the Nicarao was named Nicaragua. One of the goals of the project, then, is to recover information about the culture of Nicaragua, the man, in order to enhance the cultural identity of Nicaragua, the country named after the man. By working with local schools and museums, the project will actively integrate recovered knowledge about this historical foundation with the existing community as well as the larger nation. Additionally, by collaborating with students and faculty of the local university's tourism program (there are no Nicaraguan universities currently training archaeologists) we will be helping to create a structure for archaeo-tourism, one of the major revenue producing aspects of Latin American economies. Finally, by including input from local agencies, this project will produce diverse returns that can benefit the communities most directly effected by our research.

Public dialectics: Marxist reflection in/of archaeology
Christopher N. Matthews, Hofstra University

The use of Marxist theory in archaeology serves two purposes. First, it provides an explanatory perspective for interpreting past societies that is focused on the dialectics social power, the production and reproduction of inequality, and the contradictions that motivate social action. Second, a Marxist perspective allows archaeology to be situated in the contemporary world as a set of specific social acts or a public praxis. Archaeology, that is, as it serves living interest groups is seen by Marxists as an active social process that drives a critical need for social responsibility and self-consciousness. This second use for Marxism parallels recent postmodern reflexive archaeologies that highlight the impact of archaeologists and archaeological processes on the creation of archaeological records. Though similar in this way, reflexive and Marxist archaeologies do not often overlap, as each is essentially driven by a distinct agenda and logic. It is the point here to disassemble this distinction. A Marxist perspective improves reflection by focusing on the social production both within and outside of archaeology of the positions for seeing one's archaeological self. It is simultaneously argued that reflection can be productively articulated with Marxism so that the conditions that promote archaeological self-awareness, especially the rise of identity politics and the heightened value of public significance in archaeology, can be seen to have changed the nature of the material basis of social relations in the contemporary world.

Who Do You Think You Are? Redefining the Role of the Archaeologist as a Facilitator
Robert R. Sauders, Department of Anthropology, American University

The advent of postmodernist and poststructuralist critiques in archaeological thought has successfully exposed the influence of various political and social pressures on the construction of historical and cultural narratives. As a result, the professional archaeological community has engaged in efforts to counteract the policies and practices embedded within archaeological research that perpetuate the marginalization of particular past people and experiences. However, despite these efforts, the professional community had neglected to consider how its position in the archaeological knowledge production sequence reinforces the very inequities that socially-active archaeologists have sought to remedy; particularly with regard to the non-professional communities. The professional archaeologist dominates all aspects of archaeological knowledge production - research design, excavation, analysis, interpretation, publication and presentation - which establishes an epistemological environment that fails to adequately incorporate public communities. Public archaeology programs are an increasingly popular means of integrating public communities into archaeological research; however, these programs ultimately perpetuate professional agendas and neglect viable public perspectives, while at the same time being deceptively promoted as a legitimate agent of public participation. In order to progress beyond the mere illusion of equitable public-professional integration in archaeological research, the professional community must renegotiate its relationship with public communities and redefine its function in archaeological research. This paper argues that meaningful social action and public integration in archaeological research can be realized by transforming the role of the archaeologist into that of a facilitator for community-based research. Such a reformation provides a mechanism for genuine public production of cultural and historical narratives. In addition, it works to reduce the colonialist, imperialist and nationalist practices attributed to the professional archaeological community.

Animal Liberation and Praxis:
The Challenges of Animal Rights Theory to our Production of Inclusive Emancipatory Histories in Archaeology
Daniel O. Sayers, College of William and Mary, Department of Anthropology

Historical archaeologists recognize that they have a unique analytical sphere from which to understand and interpret capitalist histories in manners which may engender extensive reconsiderations of long-held and parochial beliefs about past and the modern human conditions. It is true that capitalism does produce mystified understandings of past political-economic relationships, particularly those that come to our understanding, broadly, as gender, class and race relations. However, animal rights, environmentalist, and feminist theoreticians have long seen capitalist processes of mystification in notions of the nature of the human relationship with non-human beings. The results of these processes of abusive fetishization of animals and our generally grim relationships with most non-humans are profoundly social and have many important implications for political-economic analyses of the past and present. We can begin to explore our historical systemic mal-praxis towards non-human beings. In this process, we also may begin do elucidate how modern reinterpretations of the dialectics between humans and non-humans could assist in our attempts to guide archaeology towards gaining a praxeological momentum that can alter modern courses of social liberation and emancipation. This paper will explore a variety of intersections of theoretical and practical interest between elements of political-economic theories and analysis while highlighting the avenues of research that open up with the inclusion of several relevant animal rights concepts.

Rethinking the Household: Gender, Process Geographies and the Social Organization of Production
Jodi Barnes, American University

This paper integrates gender-based theory, ethnographic data, and an analysis of ceramic distribution to examine the concept of household at a single site (Sandy Hammock, 9PU10). A household is often examined as a domestic sphere within an area consisting of immobile aggregates of traits. In this paper, I utilize two approaches the "traditional household model" as well as one informed by a "process geography" approach in order to explore methods for destabilization. I argue that methods of destabilization are needed in order to avoid the shortcuts archaeologists often use to generalize and give concrete form to concepts such as gender or household. The traditional household model is based on the separation of production and reproduction, which is equated with the gender roles of men and women. Production occurs outside the household, and then the products of this activity are returned to the household, the loci of reproduction. I use the social organization of production as a framework to consider how gender and process geographies to rethink this concept of household. What does a household do? Are the architectural remains, features and material culture found with residences evidence of a household unit or is it an abstract functioning unit? What does the household as a unit of analyses tell us about the lived experience of active, gendered, peoples?

Middle Range Theory, Radical Archaeology and Processual Pluralism
Jerimy J. Cunningham, McGill University

Both Trigger (1995) and Saitta (1993) have argued that Middle Range Theory should be expanded to investigate cultural processes that are central to the radical agenda. But what exactly does "expanding middle range theory" mean in this context? I argue that any expansion of middle range theory requires archaeologists to disassemble existing cultural ontologies and adopt a pluralistic view of cultural process. I re-conceptualize cultural models as standpoints that are defined by the social and political purposes of any program of research. These standpoints engender overlapping fields of investigation in Middle Range Theory that can allow archaeologists to develop robust understandings of the causal influences that create material patterns.

Exploring the Significance of “the Past in the Past” for Eastern Woodland Archaeology
Bretton Giles, State University of New York at Binghamton

In this paper, I explore one method for investigating the importance of the past in the past in the Eastern United States during the Woodland period. Eastern Woodland archaeologists have tended to interpret archaeological sites within a temporal framework that interprets sites as representing slices in time. I suggest that these interpretations of archaeological sites, especially mound and earthwork sites, do not encapsulate their full meaningfulness. In contrast, I argue following Gosden (as well as Chapman 1997, Thomas 1996) that “past, present and future meet in complex forms, such that the present is only given meaning through retaining elements of the past and anticipating the future” (Gosden 1994:2). This paper has two goals. First, I propose a set of methods for investigating the “past in the past” in the Eastern Woodlands. Second, I explore the evidence for mounds and enclosures remaining active features in the landscape over the longue durée, which became closely associated with the past/ancestors. I argue, therefore, that part of the meaningfulness of mounds and other earthworks are the way in which they became entwined with ‘ancestors’ and ‘mythic figures,’ and thus implicated in new and different ways of constructing place. Chapman, 1997 Places as Timemarks– the social construction of prehistoric landscapes in eastern Hungary. In Semiotics of Landscape: Archaeology of the Mind, edited by G. Nash. British Archaeological Reports, International Series 661. Oxford: Archaeopress, pp.31-45. Gosden, Christopher 1994 Social Being and Time. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Thomas, Julian 1996 Time, Culture and Identity. London and New York: Routledge.

Early prehistory is uniquely capable of providing answers to fundamental questions concerning the human species; especially how we came to be the way we are. But the answers usually provided have a naturalising and reifying effect upon certain specific ways of understanding ourselves. These understandings are generated by underlying metaphysical principles that drive western thought. Such understandings have been uncovered in the work of Jacques Derrida and it is this that makes his work most useful to a radical archaeology. Derrida showed that western thought is logocentric - that is relies on foundational metaphysical principles such as truth, identity and origin. The desire for origin is written into western discourses in such a way that it cannot be easily avoided. Logocentrism - the metaphysical drive for foundation - is not something we have under our control. Traditional archaeology - being a product of western thought - relies on these logocentric principles. In this way they trap us, even as we attempt to reject them. Whilst Derrida's tactics allow us to interrogate these foundational issues and principle, they do not translate in any straightforward way into new methodological solutions. In this paper I will examine how we can follow up the implications of Derrida's observations. Our current methodologies and the interpretations they generate continually strengthen the structuring principles that validate prehistory. But the privileging of certain ideas carries with it the suppression of certain others. This paper considers the possibility of using alternative metaphors to inform new methodologies.

A Long History Narrative: Conchopata, Peru
Gonzalo Rodríguez C., Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Lima

One basic problem in Archaeology is how to link past and present. As archaeologists we always think about the best way 'to bridge the gulf' between them. A different understanding about it comes from Hans Georg Gadamer's "effective history" (Gadamer, H; 1991; Verdad y Método"; 1992, "Verdad y Método II"). According to him, there is not a "gulf to bridge" because past and present are linked through the perception of "the thing" across time. I feel, in practice, this approach leads to multidisciplinary research. In this paper, I discuss this approach and try to apply it to the Conchopata Archaeological site (Ayacucho, Peru), writing a narrative about its changing perception for local people and researchers across time, using both archaeological and historical data as well as my personal experience during my work there. Gadamer's ideas have been discussed elsewhere (Tilley C., 1991; "Material Culture and Text…"; Lavento M.; "A Hermeneutical Approach to Archaeological Truth …', 1995; Holtorf C., 1998; "Monumental Past…"; Karlsson H., 1999; "The 'play' will continue…"; among others) and some have even tried to apply "effective-history." However, I think it is useful to continue expanding on Gadamer's ideas for both theoretical and political reasons. The link between past and present is especially important to countries such as Peru; divided countries with many cultures and difficult presents. Dialogue of pasts and presents may be one way to create unity.

Mixed Assemblages and Indigenous Agents: Decolonizing Pine Hill
Siobhan M. Hart, University of Massachusetts, Department of Anthropology

The ways in which material culture is interpreted, especially in New England where artifacts are divided into piles of "historic" and "prehistoric" as soon as they are removed from the ground, are often the product of colonized minds. Asking different questions of the data and exposing the assumptions and biases intrinsic in methodologies can open up new entry points to examine landscapes, social boundaries, and material culture in ways that allow us to reassess and evaluate the validity of interpretations and arrive at alternative perspectives. Material culture provides an entry point for discussing contested histories and contexts, which are abundant in archaeological interpretations of Contact Period Native presence in New England. Analysis of the material culture excavated from the Pine Hill site (19-FR-17) presents an opportunity to challenge and offer alternatives to accepted notions of European and Native presence in the Connecticut River Valley. The site was excavated by the University of Massachusetts Amherst Archaeological Field School, and lies on the periphery of the village of Historic Deerfield, a space celebrating Euro-American presence and conquest in the valley. Pine Hill is a prominent place on the landscape and in the notions of spatiality of Contact Period Native peoples and Euro-Americans, as well as contemporary Euro-American tourists, archaeologists, and residents, and Native peoples in New England. Until recently, archaeologists have been complicit in reproducing the notion that post-Contact Native peoples were visitors but not residents in the valley and translating this understanding to popular thought. In this paper, I suggest that a critical examination of the archaeological methods that have marginalized mixed assemblages and Contact Period Native presence in New England makes archaeological interpretation more transparent and acknowledges Indigenous peoples and colonists as agents in the same time and place.

Archaeology and dissonance: Towards a theory of material engagement
Lambros Malafouris

Modern conceptual art often incorporates a variety of unexpected material forms and perceptual discrepancies as a powerful mean to engage the viewer in a conceptual dialectic with the artwork. Such purposely designed transfigurations effect a kind of psychological tension known as cognitive or visual dissonance. The experience of dissonance is common among archaeologists that often confront artifacts and assemblages that do not coincide with their established cognitive schemata and categories. However, while in the case of art dissonance operate as the vehicle of engagement, in the case of archaeology is often received as a sign of explanatory weakness. The usual reaction in order to suppress the resulting epistemic anxiety is either to marginalize the dissonant material or translate them in terms of a well-understood and familiar vocabulary. This paper, using examples from Aegean prehistory will investigate the cognitive parameters of this phenomenon in an attempt to reconfigure the inferential boundaries of archaeological theory and practice.

Interpretive Narrative: More Than Just "Telling the Story"
John P. McCarthy, Pennsylvania Department of Transportation

This paper takes note of an immerging trend in American archaeology toward the production of interpretive narratives that attempt to personalize, contextualize, and demystify the research process to make the results of archaeological research more relevant and meaningful. I will argue that this trend has its roots in two important movements in American archaeology. First, there has been a growing realization that the public, and even some of our colleagues, could not understand and did not care about the "narratives" that archaeologists were producing. At the same time, increasing disenchantment with the scientific paradigm of the New Archaeology led to the growing influence of post-modern/post-processual theoretical perspectives that emphasize understanding over objective description and that recognize the constructed and contingent aspects of the nature of knowledge. I will argue that this new focus on narrative is more than just "telling the story. " It recasts interpretation at the center of the archaeological enterprise, and accordingly, represents an important mythological advancement.

The Dialectic as Transcendent Diviner: Exploring Methods for a Radical Archaeology
Stephen A. Mrozowski, Fiske Center for Archaeological Research, Department of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts, Boston

This paper examines the dialectic as a method for transcending dualist approaches in contemporary archaeology. It presents a brief outline of the dialectic from Hegal to Marx to Lukacs to Ollman to today as background for a discussion of its importance in grounding methodological approaches in archaeology. Emphasis is placed on the dialectic as both method and praxis and in particular how it can aid archaeologists who wish to break the bonds of dualisms like society and nature or past and present. The paper will conclude with a few brief examples of its application in examining space and material culture.

Anarchy in the Bioarchaeology: Agency and Cooperativist Political Economy in the Investigation of Deceased Individuals
Christopher C. Null, U Mass Amherst

This paper proposes the integration of agency and a more "cooperativist" political economy into the study of deceased individuals, e.g. those found in skeletal or cemetery populations. The shift away from a "collectivist" approach is an attempt to reduce the potential for turning the individuals studied into cultural automatons. Coupling a cooperativist political economy with agency also provides an opportunity to rectify some of the more atomistic tendencies that have been indicated in the latter (Gero 2000). I find that this approach is worthwhile on numerous levels. Firstly, viewing individuals as knowledgeable social actors, i.e. agents, could serve to illuminate areas of the lived experience of deceased individuals which may have been glossed over previously. Secondly, by enriching the lived experience of those in the past, we can better serve descent communities by humanizing their ancestors, thus making them more accessible. The intended result is to present a more holistic picture of the lives of deceased individuals in situations where such investigations are requested by descent communities.

Interpretative Behavioral Archaeology: Taking the Measure of Unseen Practice
William H. Walker, New Mexico State University and Michael B. Schiffer, University of Arizona

We suggest that behavioral archaeology can positively contribute to the methodological aims of postprocessual and radical archaeology. Indeed an interpretative behavioral archaeology can embrace the study of practice and memory in a politically meaningful way. In this paper we explore ritual practice and the history of science. Many beliefs associated with ritual and the science of electricity concern activities of unseen forces or beings. We advocate expanding the study of practice to include the practice of unseen forces or beings. For many people such beings are not beliefs; they are real actors. We propose treating them as such in order to take their measure. To illustrate our vision we explore 18th century magical ideas about lightning and lightning rods as well as considerations of the life histories of ghosts and spirits in the American southwest.

Seeing Red: Some Reflections On Marxism And Methodology
LouAnn Wurst, SUNY-Brockport and Maria O'Donovan, Public Archaeology Facility

There has been a great deal of discussion about theoretical aspects of a Marxist dialectical mode of inquiry. To date, there has been very little explicit dialogue about the ramifications of these ideas for the "day today" operation of archaeology. In this context, we seek to build upon these previous theoretical discussions to help us better analyze and interpret our data. Marxist theory challenges archaeology and archaeologists to capture, reconstruct and interpret the dynamic interaction of dialectical relations of past societies. However, these ideals are hard to meet with concepts and methods inherited from the past. Business-as-usual pursuits often entail creating static constructs by freezing aspects of material culture as representative of particular time periods, places or social relationships. The practice of a Marxist archaeology requires a great deal of methodological and interpretative creativity and a praxis rooted in the material world to overcome these limitations. To create a truly dynamic and dialectical practice we must openly challenge concepts that focus on entities rather than relations, the methodological limitations of static categories, privileging some analytical scales over others, and reliance on stale interpretative concepts that capture only one vantage point of complex relations.

EthnoHistory: putting the 'ethno' back into 'history'
Danny Zborover, Department of Archaeology, University of Calgary

As the 'bastard' offspring of Western colonial anthropology and history, the practice of 'ethnohistory' had its share of methodological problems and theoretical predispositions right from its infancy. Even throughout the last fifty years, anthropologists and archaeologists have been practicing ethnohistory with the inherent assumption that indigenous history is qualitatively different from that of Euro-American history. Furthermore, as we are used to deal with voiceless material culture, archaeologists have often regarded indigenous historical sources (oral, pictorial, and written) as an additional supply of 'evidence'; one to be 'deconstructed' to its basic elements of "historical fact" and "fictional myth", and later 'reconstructed' and re-fitted to our own histories. This approach has consistently denied the agency of the indigenous historian, and ignored the potential of considering these as alternative, and often parallel ways of viewing 'History'. This presentation will reconsider the applications and implications of Mexican ethnohistory for archaeology and anthropology, by moving away from its anthropological foundation into its other roots in the historical discipline. In the latter, recent paradigm shifts from the 'positivist' history to the post-modern 'deconstructive' consciousness are allowing us to view 'History' not as the past itself, but as stories about the past. Because a historical text, like any other, can be read and performed in a number of situations and contexts, its meaning is necessarily multiple. Since by its very nature as performed narratives historical 'story-telling' is motivated by situated knowledge and mechanisms of power, it should accordingly call for epistemological self-reflexivity. If we would reconsider 'ethnohistory' as analogous to 'indigenous history' and intrinsically equivalent to all histories, we would be opening ourselves not just to 'other ways of seeing', but also to other ways of seeing ourselves.