Interpretive Archaeology and Its Role
- 20 January 1991
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in American Antiquity
- Vol. 56 (1) , 7-18
- https://doi.org/10.2307/280968
Abstract
This paper seeks further to define the processes of the interpretation of meaning in archaeology and to explore the public role such interpretation might play. In contrast to postmodern and poststructuralist perspectives, a hermeneutic debate is described that takes account of a critical perspective. An interpretive postprocessual archaeology needs to incorporate three components: a guarded objectivity of the data, hermeneutic procedures for inferring internal meanings, and reflexivity. The call for an interpretive position is related closely to new, more active roles that the archaeological past is filling in a multicultural world.This publication has 11 references indexed in Scilit:
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