Nature & Antiquities. The making of archaeology in the Americas

PHILIP KOHL; PODGORNY IRINA; STEFANIE GÄNGER

The Arizona University Press

Año: 2014 p. 246

9780816531127

This volume explores the early history of archaeology in both Americas: the history of how practitioners in the field defined and corroborated a language, a method and a body of material evidence for the study of ancient America in and beyond the nineteenth century. Its contributions explore the history of the discipline in its historical context ? one that encompassed socio-political, intellectual and material dimensions and particularly one in which nature, as a field of intellectual enquiry as much as a cultural trope, was both meaningful and formative. The volume breaks new ground by entreating archaeologists to acknowledge the importance of ways of knowing that ensued from the study of nature in the history of archaeology, and by crossing disciplinary confines, but also in its Pan-American perspective: it takes the reader all across the American continent from the Southern Cone up to Canada, across the Andes, the Brazilian Amazon, Mesoamerica and the United States. It distinguishes itself from earlier contributions in the field by an approach of penser par cas, relying on, and making available, little known archival material and publications ranging from the periodical press of various American countries to images. The historiography of American archaeology, both North and South, has privileged for decades the study of grand socio-political narratives, institutionalized, public settings, and the politics of archaeology, and these by now familiar considerations remain indispensable. It is essential to complement these studies, however, with another history of archaeology ? one that is attentive to contingence and non-linearity, to the smaller scale and the finer grain. The intended audience of this book is an academic audience, from the fields of the history of science more broadly and the history of archaeology in particular. Scholars and advanced graduate students from Latin American Studies and Anthropology will have an interest in this publication, and so will scholars interested in the history of ideas about indigeneity.