Bapty, Ian. "Nietzsche, Derida and and Foucault: Re-excavating the Meaning of Archaeology."

Bapty, Ian. "Nietzsche, Derida and and Foucault: Re-excavating the Meaning of Archaeology." Archaeology after Structuralism: Post-Structuralism and the Practice of Archaeology. Ed. Ian Bapty and Tim Yates. London: Routledge, 1990. The plan of this paper is to use Nietzsche to frame a discussion of rather more recent trends in 'structuralism' and 'post-structuralism', and to do that specifically in relation to the thought of Foucault and his transition in the late 1960s/early 1970s to a position explicitly and implicitly claiming links with Nietzsche (and then, in a final skew of direction to interpose from this debate into the topic of this book -archaeology after structuralism). The point is not to conduct an analysis ultimately justifying Nietzsche against Foucault or Derrida, or vice versa, and then to impose this new 'truth' as yet another new epistemological underpinning for archaeology - which would be exactly to fall prey to the seductive wiles of what Nietzsche calls the 'will to truth' once more 'tempting us to many a venture' - instead the aim is to consider the value that binds together such opposing positions in their mutual activity and reactivity. . . . Read the rest here: http://archaeology.kiev.ua/meta/bapty.html.

Bapty, Ian, and Tim Yates. "Archaeology and Post-Structuralism."

Bapty, Ian, and Tim Yates, ed. Archaeology after Structuralism: Post-Structuralism and the Practice of Archaeology. London: Routledge, 1990. Nearly a decade has passed since the symbolic and structural archaeology conference announced a coherent challenge to to the existing paradig­matic and epistemological structure of archaeology. These ten years have been momentous ones for the discipline. Not only has its practice been transformed with the introduction of new conceptual frameworks (such as the notion of the archaeological record - material culture - as text) but also whole issues, questions and debates that were previously unthinkable have become relatively commonplace - debates about the social implications and embeddedness of scientific and academic study, about the politics of archaeological production, about the context of archae­ology and the social sciences in late capitalist society, about the construction of gender relations in the past, and so on. The framework provided by the New Archaeology had provided little, if any, space for consideration of these issues, and although the last three to four years have seen a general mellowing of the initial opposition to structuralism mobilised by the positivists (as elements of structuralist theory are diluted and wash over the international scene), for many processualists it is not only still possible to distance archaeology from these issues, from the present, from society, from contemporary systems of representation, but absolutely vital that we continue to do so. . . . Read the rest of the introductory chapter here: http://archaeology.kiev.ua/meta/bapty_yates.html.

Rundkvist, Martin. "Against Theoretical Archaeology." AARDVARCHAEOLOGY July 23, 2008.

Rundkvist's credo:

• Archaeology is part of the hugely successful, rationalist, empirical, scientific Enlightenment project to find out what the world really is and has been like.
• Archaeology is one of the disciplines within this project responsible (in close interdisciplinary cooperation) for finding out what life was like for people in the past.
• Archaeology alone takes care of the study of material remains of past societies.
• All enquiry that does not concern the life-ways of people in the past and/or does not study material remains is non-archaeology.
• All non-rationalist enquiry is non-science and thus non-archaeology.
• All impressionist-aesthetic commentary is non-science and thus non-archaeology.
• Politics are about values and thus non-science. Archaeology should therefore resist all attempts from inside and outside the discipline to ascribe political relevance to it.. . .

Read the whole entry here: http://scienceblogs.com/aardvarchaeology/2008/07/against_theoretical_archaeolog.php.