Lisa Nevett (ed.). Theoretical approaches to the archaeology of ancient Greece: manipulating material culture.

Abstract

What is ‘archaeology’, and how is ‘theory’ relevant to it? We might reasonably have thought we could now answer this question coherently for students wrestling with it (or that we had at least thoroughly discussed the topic in the publications of the last four decades; I cite a relevant few, not very recent, Anglo-Saxon examples here). In particular, most scholars have accepted ‘archaeology’ or ‘archaeological methodology’ (the application of a theory-informed, systematic and explicit query and interpretative framework to the recovery/analysis of a numerically and contextually representative set of data) as the most productive, balanced means of researching the material culture of the past in any quantity or diversity, where the aims are reconstructive, illuminative and interpretative, - especially when the ancient past is concerned.