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
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN FR SR
Publicado:	University of Belgrade 2016
Materias:	Anthropology GN1-890
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/f48a627a6fa54f9eb2384c0e6067e66f
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id	oai:doaj.org-article:f48a627a6fa54f9eb2384c0e6067e66f
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:f48a627a6fa54f9eb2384c0e6067e66f2021-12-02T01:16:36ZStructuralism in Archaeology0353-15892334-8801https://doaj.org/article/f48a627a6fa54f9eb2384c0e6067e66f2016-02-01T00:00:00Zhttp://eap-iea.org/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, Pp 137-148 (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/f48a627a6fa54f9eb2384c0e6067e66f
work_keys_str_mv	AT aleksandarpalavestra structuralisminarchaeology
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Structuralism in Archaeology

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