Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T08:23:01.362Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From determinism to accountability. Archaeology, anthropology and ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 June 2019

Kathryn Lafrenz Samuels
Kathryn Lafrenz Samuels*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Maryland, USA
*
Email: lafrenzs@umd.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The discussion by Arponen et al. inserts itself into long-standing debates about the place of causality and determinism in archaeological interpretation. While some of the discussion might feel like retreading familiar ground in those debates, the authors bring a refreshing clarity of exposition to the problem, and more importantly they propose several promising directions for future research. For example, their exhortation to ‘see the human–environment relationship as always already sociocultural’ (p. 8) should be firmly established by now, but I agree with their assertion that this perspective ‘seems underdeveloped in archaeology’ (p. 8) and that looking to anthropology is one especially productive route for developing such a sensibility. In the following I wish to extend and respond to their arguments by (1) addressing how anthropological approaches might best be incorporated into archaeological research on palaeo-environments and coupled human–environment systems, and (2) highlighting the ethical and moral dimensions of this process as integral to it.

Type
Discussion
Information
Archaeological Dialogues , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , June 2019 , pp. 14 - 17
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Broome, J., 2012: Climate matters. Ethics in a warming world, New York.Google Scholar
Carrithers, M., 2005: Anthropology as a moral science of possibilities, Current anthropology 46, 433–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gardiner, S.M., 2011: A perfect moral storm. The ethical tragedy of climate change, Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geertz, C., 1973: The interpretation of cultures, New York.Google Scholar
Haraway, D., 1988: Situated knowledges. The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective, Feminist studies 14, 575–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leach, E., 1961: Rethinking anthropology, New York.Google Scholar
Leach, E., 1967: An anthropologist’s reflection on a social survey, in Jongmans, G., and Gutkind, P.C.W. (eds), Anthropologists in the field, Assen.Google Scholar
Malkki, L.H., 2007: Tradition and improvisation in ethnographic field research, in Cerwonka, A., and Malkki, L.H. (eds), Improvising theory. Process and temporality in ethnographic fieldwork, Chicago, 162–88.Google Scholar
Stephens, S., 1994: Situated knowledges and accountable scientific visions, Ethnos 59, 71–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar