North American Provincialism and Outdated Archaeological Curricula: The Bane of Global Archaeology

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Essential Contributions from African to Global Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

I was trained at Northwestern University by Stuart Struever, a student of L. Binford. I was nurtured on a positivist paradigm and force-fed like a goose on the 1960s New Archaeology. I was gratefully cured of these limitations by elders in East Africa who taught me deep respect for historical perspectives on the past. Because I and other Africanists departed from accepted positivist norms, few in North America paid heed our research and publications. We were ideological heretics and worked in an “exotic” and distant world that seemed marginal at best to North Americanists. I kept current with the latest literature in both regions, aware that to be well-informed was critical to my academic outlook, but my counterparts practiced their craft and continue to practice their craft disinterested in and oblivious to most of what is happening in African archaeology. This provincialism mimics other provincial perspectives of the American experience, manifest repeatedly in our country’s view of global affairs. Reform of archaeological curricula is long overdue, with a need to incorporate important theoretical and methodological perspectives from other world areas, including Africa. An open and brutally honest dialogue about these issues is a much-needed first step to reform.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Essential Contributions from African to Global Archaeology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36400.0