Structuralism in Archaeology

Although, back in the 1970s, Edmund Leach threatened archaeology that he will ‘poison’ it with structuralism, his structuralist work did not have that far reaching impact on the changes of archaeological interpretative paradigms. The reason for that is – on the one hand, structuralists’ lack of inte...

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Autor principal: Aleksandar Palavestra
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Publicado: University of Belgrade 2016
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Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/d0031caa4b2e414d9982e0587bd4a3a8
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spelling oai:doaj.org-article:d0031caa4b2e414d9982e0587bd4a3a82021-12-02T07:01:42ZStructuralism in Archaeology0353-15892334-8801https://doaj.org/article/d0031caa4b2e414d9982e0587bd4a3a82016-02-01T00:00:00Zhttps://eap-iea.org/novi-ojs/index.php/eap/article/view/300https://doaj.org/toc/0353-1589https://doaj.org/toc/2334-8801Although, back in the 1970s, Edmund Leach threatened archaeology that he will ‘poison’ it with structuralism, his structuralist work did not have that far reaching impact on the changes of archaeological interpretative paradigms. The reason for that is – on the one hand, structuralists’ lack of interest in diachronic interpretation, and on the other, the concept of the universal structures of mind for which upcoming poststructuralism did not have much interest. To be fair, there are some rather interesting structuralist interpretations in archaeology (even in the Serbian one) mostly based on the application of binary oppositions. However, in the broader context, structuralism, work of Levi-Strauss, and de Saussure linguistics in particular, enabled archaeologists to understand material culture in a semiotic field – as a study of signs and contexts of meanings. In other words, objects in archaeology, under the influence of structuralism, have been seen as organised in the wider systems of signs (organised in binary oppositions, but not necessarily) with particular meanings. One of the problems of this semiotic, structural approach in archaeology is that it automatically equates material culture and language, which is highly problematic, since meanings in material culture are rarely arbitrary in the way that it is the case in a linguistic relation between signifier and signified. Poststructuralism, theory of practices and poststructuralist critique of scientific positivism had much higher impact to archaeology, especially postprocessual one.Aleksandar PalavestraUniversity of BelgradearticleAnthropologyGN1-890ENFRSREtnoantropološki Problemi, Vol 4, Iss 2 (2016)
institution DOAJ
collection DOAJ
language EN
FR
SR
topic Anthropology
GN1-890
spellingShingle Anthropology
GN1-890
Aleksandar Palavestra
Structuralism in Archaeology
description Although, back in the 1970s, Edmund Leach threatened archaeology that he will ‘poison’ it with structuralism, his structuralist work did not have that far reaching impact on the changes of archaeological interpretative paradigms. The reason for that is – on the one hand, structuralists’ lack of interest in diachronic interpretation, and on the other, the concept of the universal structures of mind for which upcoming poststructuralism did not have much interest. To be fair, there are some rather interesting structuralist interpretations in archaeology (even in the Serbian one) mostly based on the application of binary oppositions. However, in the broader context, structuralism, work of Levi-Strauss, and de Saussure linguistics in particular, enabled archaeologists to understand material culture in a semiotic field – as a study of signs and contexts of meanings. In other words, objects in archaeology, under the influence of structuralism, have been seen as organised in the wider systems of signs (organised in binary oppositions, but not necessarily) with particular meanings. One of the problems of this semiotic, structural approach in archaeology is that it automatically equates material culture and language, which is highly problematic, since meanings in material culture are rarely arbitrary in the way that it is the case in a linguistic relation between signifier and signified. Poststructuralism, theory of practices and poststructuralist critique of scientific positivism had much higher impact to archaeology, especially postprocessual one.
format article
author Aleksandar Palavestra
author_facet Aleksandar Palavestra
author_sort Aleksandar Palavestra
title Structuralism in Archaeology
title_short Structuralism in Archaeology
title_full Structuralism in Archaeology
title_fullStr Structuralism in Archaeology
title_full_unstemmed Structuralism in Archaeology
title_sort structuralism in archaeology
publisher University of Belgrade
publishDate 2016
url https://doaj.org/article/d0031caa4b2e414d9982e0587bd4a3a8
work_keys_str_mv AT aleksandarpalavestra structuralisminarchaeology
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