1. Home
  2. Issues
2021
No. (14), Ethnoarchaeology 2020
No. Nr (13), Oral History - Emotions 2019
No. (12), Public History 2018
No. (11), Cultural History of Knowledge 2017
No. (10), Anthropology – Folklore – History 2016
No. (9), Cultural Heritage 2015
No. (8), Anthropology and History 2014
No. 1 (6), Semiotics of History No. 2 (7), History and Gender 2013
No. 1 (4), On Representation No. 2 (5), Genealogies of Culture 2012
No. 2 (3), Readings of the Past No. 1 (2), Anthropology / history of the Contemporary World 2011
No. 1-2 (1), Preliminaries
ISSN 2084–1418
The paper edition of the Anthropology of History Yearbook is the definitive version

2021, No. (14), Ethnoarchaeology

Andrzej P. Kowalski
Archaeology in the study of the culture of prehistoric communities

Keywords: archaeology, theory of culture, archaeological studies of culture, theory of archaeological research

Abstract:
Archaeology is a discipline that does not develop social theory and concepts of culture itself. In this respect, it is destined to collaborate with social sciences, mainly ethnology and sociology. The article presents the successive stages of transferring certain cultural theories to archaeology. From evolutionism, through functionalism, configurationism, semiotics, to current trends in the humanities, archaeology has defined the essence of culture in various ways. There is a tendency. Initially, the positivist paradigm of empiricism prevailed. During the period of the attractiveness of semiotic methods, cognitive and symbolic anthropology, efforts were also made to apply ideological concepts of culture in archaeology. Nowadays, after the iconic and performative turn, after the "return to things," archaeology is once again offered by humanities to understand culture identified with knowledge of material objects or with the experience of the so-called past derived from the sensual experience of artifacts. One can see the gradual disappearance of intellectual effort in favor of the growing attractiveness of the archaeological spectacle, an event depicting prehistoric realities. Archaeology is increasingly devoted to naturalistic analyses of monuments, once again setting aside studies of culture understood as a past, social action-normative system.

About Author:
ANDRZEJ PIOTR KOWALSKI – philosopher, cultural anthropologist, professor at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, University of Gdańsk. E-mail: andrzej.kowalski@ug.edu.pl. ORCID: 0000-0003-2009-2689.

References
Go back