Alison Wylie 
Thinking from Things [PDF ebook] 
Essays in the Philosophy of Archaeology

In this long-awaited compendium of new and newly revised essays, Alison Wylie explores how archaeologists know what they know. Examining the history and methodology of Anglo-American archaeology, Wylie puts the tumultuous debates of the last thirty years in historical and philosophical perspective.

Innehållsförteckning

Preface

Acknowledgments


PART ONE. Introduction

Philosophy from the Ground Up


PART TWO. How New Is the New Archaeology, and Other Historical Essays

1. How New Is the New Archaeology?

2. The Typology Debate

3. The Conceptual Core of the New Archaeology

4. Emergent Tensions in the New Archaeology

5. Arguments for Scientific Realism

6. Between Philosophy and Archaeology


PART THREE. Interpretive Dilemmas: Crisis Arguments in the New Archaeology

7. The Interpretive Dilemma

8. Epistemological Issues Raised by Symbolic and Structuralist Archaeology

9. The Reaction against Analogy

10. Putting Shakertown Back Together: Critical Theory in Archaeology

11. Archaeological Cables and Tacking: Beyond Objectivism and Relativism


PART FOUR. On Being ’Empirical’ but Not ’Narrowly Empiricist’

12. ’Heavily Decomposing Red Herrings’: Middle Ground in the Anti-/Postprocessualism Wars

13. Bootstrapping in the Un-natural Sciences—Archaeology, for Example

14. The Constitution of Archaeological Evidence: Gender Politics and Science

15. Rethinking Unity as a ’Working Hypothesis’ for Philosophy of Science: How Archaeologists Exploit the Disunities of Science

16. Unification and Convergence in Archaeological Explanation


PART FIVE. Issues of Accountability

17. Ethical Dilemmas in Archaeological Practice: The (Trans)formation of Disciplinary Identity


Notes

Bibliography

Index

Om författaren

Alison Wylie is Professor of Philosophy at Washington University. She is the coeditor of Critical Traditions in Contemporary Archaeology: Essays in the History, Philosophy, and Socio-Politics of Archaeology (1989; 1995), Ethics in American Archaeology (2000), and Equity Issues for Women in Archaeology (1994).