The Institution of Archaeology

Summary

Archaeology is perhaps now, more than ever before, a viable career choice for university students. Although academic positions seem to be dwindling, opportunities in contract, commercial, or compliance archaeology are skyrocketing as the development ethic of North American capitalism continues to expand. Armed with a field school and a handful of undergraduate courses, these new graduates represent the dominant practice of archaeology today. The question is, what are they practising? Who has been teaching them, and what are they learning in their archaeological education? In this paper, I take a critical approach to the who, what, where, when, how, and why's of the institution of archaeology. In the gap between theory and practice -- between what is said versus what is done -- the unspoken power of archaeology as an ideological tool of the state is exposed. While this conclusion has been long-established, archaeological educators remain reticent to directly confront this "negative reality" in their classrooms, pressured by both within and without. The result is that the institution of archaeology remains complicit in what is ultimately a hegemonic project of imperialist violence.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Archaeology and the State

Keywords

Spatial Coverage