Yapping about Yesterdays: Archaeological Politics and Theoretical Development from the Mouths of Archaeologists

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

There have numerous discussions about the role of social values and politics in archaeological method, theory, and interpretation, especially regarding the so-called “critical theories” of feminism, queer theory, indigeneity, critical race theory, and disability theory (among many others). What remains under-researched in this literature is a more nuanced look at the ways in which these theories, and the political implications they interrogate, are understood and used by practicing archaeologists. In other words, how does the epistemic combine with the practical, the ideological with the phenomenal? Based off ethnographic interviews with emerging, practicing, and formers archaeologists, this study combines archaeological theory with the methods of linguistic anthropology to investigate the nuanced ways in which archaeologists epistemologically construct archaeological pasts and presents by talking about archaeological theory and their place in it. While ongoing, preliminary data suggests that archaeological politics and theory are “more slippery” than purported, in this paper I will further elucidate the various trajectories of theoretical and sociopolitical development within the field of archaeology.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53796