Marx's Ghost: Conversations with Archaeologists

Description

How did our current society come into being and how is it similar to as well as different from its predecessors? These key questions have transfixed archaeologists, anthropologists and historians for decades and strike at the very heart of intellectual debate across a wide range of disciplines. Yet scant attention has been given to the key thinkers and theoretical traditions that have shaped these debates and the conclusions to which they have given rise. This pioneering book explores the profound influence of one such thinker - Karl Marx - on the course of twentieth-century archaeology. Patterson reveals how Australian archaeologist V. Gordon Childe in the late 1920s was the first to synthesize discourses from archaeologists, sociologists, and Marxists to produce a corpus of provocative ideas. He analyzes how these ideas were received and rejected, and moves on to consider such important developments as the emergence of a new archaeology in the 1960s and an explicitly Marxist strand of archaeology in the 1970s. Specific attention is given to the discussion arenas of the 1990s, where archaeologists of differing theoretical perspectives debated issues of historic specificity, social transformation, and inter-regional interaction. How did the debates in the 1990s pave the way for historical archaeologists to investigate the interconnections of class, gender, ethnicity, and race? In what ways did archaeologists make use of Marxist concepts such as contradiction and exploitation, and how did they apply Marxist analytical categories to their work? How did varying theoretical groups critique one another and how did they overturn or build upon past generational theories? Marxs Ghost: Conversations with Archaeologists provides an accessible guide to the theoretical arguments that have influenced the development of Anglophone archaeology from the 1930s onwards. It will prove to be indispensable for archaeologists, historians, anthropologists, and social and cultural theorists alike.

Thomas C. Patterson Professor and Chair of Anthropology,University of California at Riverside

'Marx's Ghost successfully explains Marx's varied influences in the arcaeology of the formation of class and state structures...It is direct, clear and readily accessible to undergraduate audiences.' Anthropological Forum 'As Marx might say: this book should change the field.' Mark P. Leone, University of Maryland 'This is a wonderfully important work. Patterson's idea of wrapping the history of archaeological theory in the skeins of Marx's ideas can be seen at work in their trenches.' Carole Crumley, University of North Carolina 'Patterson resurrects the lingering presence or 'ghost' of Karl Marx in archaeological discussions over the last 50 years or so Patterson's sensible overview can be profitably read by advanced undergraduates, graduate students and professional archaeologists alike.' Philip L. Kohl, Wellesley College 'An important book on the many ways that archaeologists have been affected by the writings of Marx. Archaeologists are charged with developing our most fundamental understandings of the history of being human, and as such, Patterson's book has wide significance for historians, philosophers and scientists of all stripes In strikingly clear prose, Patterson reads the complex nineteenth-century Marx with the insights of modern scholarship.' Robert Paynter, University of Massachusetts 'An excellent, well written, study of the variety of social theory that has dominated anthropological archaeology during the last fifty years.' American Anthropologist 'Contains the best presentation of 'basic Marx' (and Engels) that I have ever read; it is clear, concise without being simplistic, and focused on those aspects of Dialectical Materialism of most use to archaeologists.' American Anthropologists 'As Marx might say, this book should change the field.' Journal of Anthropological Research 'The author is a skillful analyser of theoretical landscapes and is also expert at linking theories to their wider political, economic, and cultural contexts' Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 'Marx's Ghost should be read by archaeology students as part of a general training in archaeological theory, not as the last word on the subject by any means, bus as a solid adn honest exposition by an archaeologist who is a committed Marxist.' Tim Murray, The Australian Journal of Anthropology