Description
This is the first book-length study to explore the relationship between archaeology and modern thought, showing how philosophical ideas that developed in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries still dominate our approach to the material remains of ancient societies.
Addressing current debates from a new viewpoint, Archaeology and Modernity discusses the modern emphasis on method rather than ethics or meaning, our understanding of change in history and nature, the role of the nation-state in forming our views of the past, and contemporary notions of human individuality, the mind, and materiality.
Table of Contents
List of figures , Preface, Acknowledgements, 1 The emergence of modernity and the constitution of archaeology, 2 Archaeology and the tensions of modernity, 3 The tyranny of method, 4 History and nature, 5 Nation-states, 6 Humanism and ‘the individual’, 7 Depths and surfaces, 8 Mind, perception and knowledge, 9 Materialities, 10 Towards a counter-modern archaeology: Difference, ethics, dialogue, finitude, Bibliography, Index
