ANTH 303 Anthropological Theory Fall 2018
I acknowledge that St FX is in Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq People.
23 Oct. : READ: Wylie, Alison, with Kelly Koide, Marisol Marini and Marian Toledo (2014) “Archaeology and critical feminism of science: Interview with Alison Wylie. Scientiae Studia 12(3): 549-590. http://philpapers.org/archive/WYLAAC.pdf


The following questions will help guide our discussion as we try to make sense of this, and other, theories. In addition, we will apply the theory to the video shown in the first day of class:

How can this theory be seen as a product of the historical period in which it was created?
What questions does this theory ask?
What information does this theory see as important?
What are other relevant assumptions made by the theory?
How does the theory analyse this information to answer the questions it sees as important?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of this approach?

Some concepts from Wylie or about archaeological theory:
- culture history approach
    - 1930s-1950s
    - descriptive
    - defines “periods” and “areas” with associated material culture
    - viewed change as outcome of diffusion or innovation)
    - emphasis on base level theory
- “new archaeology”/processual archaeology: Binford
    - 1960s-70s
    - claims to scientific validity to interpret archaeological remains
    - similar to cultural ecology in focusing on material environment, technology/subsistence practices, social organization
    - emphasis on middle-range theory to make use of base level material;
- post-processual archaeology (Hodder)
    - 1980s-
    - emphasis on contingent, historically contextual nature of archaeological investigation
        - we interpret things through our own contemporary priorities and knowledge, and cannot discover “objective” eternal truths (social constructivist)
    - high level critical theory
- Wylie (note she is a philosopher of science, not an archaeologist)
    - feminism
    - standpoint theory
    - objectivity
    - relativism
    - essentialism
    - how to understand the past, taking gender and other inequalities as an essential element
    - how to understand inequality (gender-based, racialized, class, etc.) in the past?
        - how does the presence of archaeologists from different groups affect archaeological knowledge? How does the structure of archaeological knowledge production affect what types of archaeologists and insights get recognition?
    - agency

Applying Wylie/different types of archaeological theory to the video:
    - if this were an artifact from a past society (we are archaeologists at some point in the future), what does it tell us about the society in which it was produced, both as a technology and as a recorded item that is discovered?
        - culture history
        - processualism
        - post-processualism