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A Marxist archaeology / Randall H. McGuire ; with a new prologue by the author.

Penn Museum Library CC75.7 .M395 2002
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Format:
Book
Author/Creator:
McGuire, Randall H.
Language:
English
Subjects (All):
Marxian archaeology.
Marxian archaeology--United States.
Hohokam culture.
Indians of North America--Antiquities.
Indians of North America.
United States.
Physical Description:
xxxii, 326 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
Place of Publication:
Clinton Corners, N.Y. : Percheron Press, [2002]
Summary:
Marxism is a rich intellectual tradition that offers archaeologists a way around many of the seemingly irresolvable theoretical oppositions that beset us and as such deserves a place in the theoretical and substantive debates in archaeology. This introduction to Marxist theory as it applies to archaeology explores long-term historical change and cultural evolution, and advocates a dialectical and historical approach to the study of the past. The book was originally published by Academic Press in 1992 but this affordable paperback edition features an extensive new introduction by the author.
Contents:
Archaeological Theories 1
Archaeology as a Field of Study 3
Making Theory in Archaeology 5
Marxism 9
The Political Nature of Marxism 10
The Dialectic and History of Marxism 12
One Reading of a Marxist Archaeology 14
2. A Brief History of Marxism 21
Marx 23
The Marxism of the Second International 25
Engels 27
Second International Marxism after Engels 28
Comintern Marxism 30
Marxist Scholarship in Eastern Europe 31
Western Marxism 32
Lukacs and Korsch 33
Gramsci 34
The Frankfurt School and Critical Theory 36
Postwar Marxism 39
The New Left 39
Existential Marxism 41
Structural Marxism 41
The English Historians 43
Marxism in a Postmodern World 44
In the Tracks of the Second International 46
Hegelian Marxism 48
3. Archaeology and Marxism 53
Writing Histories of Archaeology 53
Soviet Archaeology 56
The Birth of Soviet Archaeology to 1945 56
Soviet Archaeology after World War II (1945-1960) 59
Soviet Archaeology since 1960 60
Latin America 62
The Beginnings of Archaeology in Latin America 62
Latin American Archaeology (1945-1960) 64
Latin American Archaeology (1960-1980) 65
El Grupo Oaxtepec 67
Anglo-American Archaeology 68
Childe (1921-1945) 69
U.S. Anthropology and Archaeology (1918-1945) 70
Childe (1945-1957) 70
U.S. Anthropology and Archaeology (1945-1960) 71
Anglo-American Archaeology (1960-1980) 73
Alternative Archaeologies in Great Britain and the United States Today 75
Whither a Marxist Archaeology 83
4. The Dialectic
Marxism as a Theory of Relations 91
The Dialectic 93
The Language of the Dialectic 94
Contradiction 95
The Laws of the Dialectic 97
Limitations of the Dialectic 99
The Dialectics of Material Culture 100
Material Culture
Passive or Active 101
Material Culture as Objectification 102
A Dialectical Epistemology for Archaeology 106
Archaeology as a Social and Natural Science 108
Realism 111
5. The Making of History 117
Two Notions of Determinism 119
Determinism in Processual Archaeology 119
Determinism in the Dialectic 121
Materialism 123
The Material and the Mental 123
Culture and Nature 126
Ecology and Society 127
The Dialectics of Culture and Nature 129
Agency, Structure, and Culture 131
Power 132
Agency 133
Structure 134
Culture 138
History as Dialectic 142
6. History and Evolution 145
The Abstract and the Concrete 146
Processual Archaeology and the Search for a General Theory 147
The Dialectical View 148
Cultural Evolution 150
Cultural Evolution and History
Two Examples 151
Cultural Evolution as a Fact 153
Cultural Evolution and Historical Sequences 155
The Family and the State 157
The Family and the Household 158
The State 161
History 167
Kinds of History 168
The Role of Abstraction in History 170
The Historical Study of Developmental Change 173
7. Death and Society in a Hohokam Community 179
Kin and Class 180
Primitive Communism 181
Class and Archaeology 182
Kin and Class as Social Relations 184
The Hohokam and the Cite of La Ciudad 187
The Village of La Ciudad 191
Hohokam Social Structure 193
Ethnographic Analogy 195
The Moreland Locus 197
Ideology 203
The Sedentary to Classic Period Transition 206
The Process of Transformation 208
8. Critical Archaeology
Archaeology and the Vanishing American 213
The Present in the Past 215
The Past as Object 215
The Critical Dialectic of Past and Present 217
Archaeology and Native American Pasts 218
Who Controls the Past? 219
Why Should Archaeologists Address the Interests of Indian People? 220
Heritage and Nation 222
The Vanishing American 226
Trigger and Patterson on Indians and American Archaeology 227
The Image of the Indian in the New Republic 228
The Mound-Builder Myth 230
The Indian in Victorian America 232
The Early Twentieth Century 234
From Termination to Self-Determination 237
The Vanishing American in the Southwest 238
Indian Pasts and Indian Activism 240
9. The Praxis of Archaeology 247
A Summary of a Marxist Perspective 248
The Dialectic 248
Understanding the Lived Experience of People 249
A Self-Reflexive Archaeology 251
The Practice of Archaeology 252
Making Observations of the World 253
Communicating Archaeology 257.
Notes:
"This Percheron Press paperback edition ... is an unabridged republication of the edition published by Academic Press in 1992"--T.p. verso.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN:
0971242747
OCLC:
49823079

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