The “Social” in Archaeological Theory: An Historical and Contemporary Perspective

La Tradición Teuchitlán a través de la obra de Phil C. Weigand: la presencia del agente y su discurso en la arqueología del Occidente de México

“…El uso de teorías y de metodologías relacionadas con principios biológicos como la teoría de sistemas, llevaron a muchos procesualistas a pensar que la objetividad en la arqueología era no sólo una condición plausible (Binford 1991, 249), sino que incluso lo pensaban como una condición de necesidad para que el investigador pudiese realizar su labor (Hodder 2003).…”

“…Existieron varios cuestionamientos a esta pretensión de objetividad en arqueología, pues, la dificultad para que el investigador se desprenda de sus perjuicios fue cada vez más evidente (Hodder 1985). Esto dio paso a una clara conciencia de la importancia del sujeto observante frente al objeto observado e incluso llevó a autores como Schiffer (1991, 39-45) a postular que el arqueólogo es uno de los factores importantes (tal vez el mayor) en el proceso de formación del registro arqueológico.…”

Past Practices: Rethinking Individuals and Agents in Archaeology

“…Indeed, Johannes Fabian (1994) has noted that human acting is always acting in company. Hodder (2004) helpfully suggests that agency, like power, is less a thing we possess than a capacity that we exer-cise. With Thomas, he sees the group as forming part of the resources used for individual agency, and thus views group behaviour as another form of individual agency.…”

The Historiography of Landscape Research on Crete

“…Prevalent theoretical perspectives in archaeological landscape research have represented a world view of an 'orderly and objective -thus observable -physical environment within which human activity is contained; this is conditioned by the environment, but it is also transforming it. However, the increase of regional research and the wide spatial and chronological scales of data acquired, together with developments in social archaeological theory (Hodder 2002;Johnson 2004), mark a new era in archaeological landscape studies; survey data are required, critiqued and used for past social reconstructions from a variety of perspectives, with an emphasis on communities, ideology and complex socio-political relationships (Relaki 2003;Diacopoulos 2004). Recently, post-modern archaeological thought has drawn attention to the 'meaning' of various spatial concepts such as environment, region, landscape, space and place and tries to understand past societies not only through the identification of large-scale economic patterns and political hierarchies, but by focusing down at the community and the person level, engendering space, exploring agency, highlighting symbolism and trying to reveal personal experience.…”