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WORLD ARCHAEOLOGY, 2016

VOL. 48, NO. 5, 678-682 Routledge


httor://doi.ora/l0.1080100438243.2016.1209783 T e o r hFnncir Cmup

Decolonial archaeologies: from ethnoarchaeology to archaeological


ethnography
Yannis Harnilakis
Joukowsky Institute of Archaeology and the Ancient World, Brown University

A dialogue is always a good thing; and the dialogue on the origins, the problerns, the current state
and the potential future of ethnoarchaeology as a relic oras a still viable intellectual endeavour is
of particular interest and irnport. In reading this interesting and engaging set of papers, it becornes
irnrnediately clear that such a conversation is not rnerely to do with an archaeological sub-
discipline which, as adrnitted by Lyons and Casey, rnany archaeologists today regard a thing of
the past. It is rnostly about the very definition o f archaeology itself. As such, I will atternpt here to
link this discussion to the wider conternporary debates on the ontology of archaeology and on its
political underpinnings and role in the conternporary rnornent.
Many canonical texts in the discipline, especially in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, would present
ethnoarchaeology as a fairly coherent and clearly defined sub-field, associated at its origins with
'New Archaeology', and developed prirnarily in North Arnerica and Britain, perhaps in a couple of
other European countries. But a closer look would reveal that rnany of the practices now
associated with ethnoarchaeology have been developing in rnany parts of the world, partly
independently and partly in a critical dialogue with the Anglo-Arnerican tradition (see Fewster
2013; Politis 2015; Sillar and Rarnón Joffré this volume). The dialogue o f professionalNestern
archaeologists with indigenous people and traditions has often been, as Bill Sillar and Gabriel
Rarnón Joffré note, the driving force of such alternative strands of thought, and it is debatable
whether they can be called 'ethnoarchaeological' in the conventional sense. There is thus a danger
that the terrn rnay come t o denote a very disparate range o f phenornena with divergent, and
perhaps contradictory, ontologies, episternological directions and even political affinities. To clairn
thern all as ethnoarchaeological rnay be expedient for the advocates o f this field, but it is, at the
end o f the day, disingenuous and even confusing. Most o f the criticisrn of ethnoarchaeology,
including rny own (Harnilakis 201 1; Harnilakis and Anagnostopoulos 2009) in fact had in rnind the
foundational principles as presented and practised by the people who carne to be considered
pioneers in this field, prirnarily within the Anglo-Arnerican tradition.
While rnost o f the authors here seern to want to distance thernselves frorn that dorninant
tradition, the defensive position adopted by Lyons and Casey echoes these earlier principles,
despite the rhetorical proclarnations of the opposite. For a start, they are at pains to ernphasize,
time and again, that ethnoarchaeology is not a theory but a rnethod. This is a cop-out. It absolves
thern of any responsibility for the theoretical underpinnings o f the sub-field, for its relationship to
time and otherness, let alone its political undertones and effects.

CONTACT yannir Hamiakir y.hamilakir@brown.edu


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