Randall McGuire | Binghamton University (original) (raw)
Articles & chapters - Southwest/Northwest by Randall McGuire
The Casas Grandes World,, 1999
Prehispanic Northwest Mexico, that area from the international frontier south to the southern bor... more Prehispanic Northwest Mexico, that area from the international frontier south to the southern borders of the Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua, is an immense gray zone. Whether it was peripheral to the prehistory of the Southwest United States/Northwest Mexico Culture Area or not, it has been peripheral in the minds and theories of archaeologists (Phillips 1989). Traditionally they have explained cultural developments in the region using one of two models. Either these developments were simply the southern fringes of the Hohokam or Mogollon traditions of the Southwest (Haury 1976), or they resulted from the intrusion of Mesoamerican merchants from the south, who set up major centers as trade outposts (Di Peso 1974, 1983). More recently these debates have been recast in models of world systems that reach south to Mesoamerica (Di Peso 1983; Whitecotton and Pailes 1986; Weigand 1982) or peer polities developing in situ based primarily on local ecological relationships (Minnis 1989). At the core of all of these debates is the nature of economic relations at and between major Northwest centers such as Casas Grandes in Chihuahua and Cerro de Trincheras in Sonora (Figure 10.1). Charles Di Peso (1979a:158159) identified Casas Grandes and Cerro de Trincheras as Mesoamerican commercial centers. Two groups of Mesoamerican donors entered the Northwest by A.D. 1100 to establish the two centers, and they both withdrew south in the midfourteenth century. The two groups of merchants operated independently of each other, gathering goods from the southwestern cultures to the north and then shipping them south to their home polities in Mesoamerica. Di Peso argued that Cerro de Trincheras was "a spectacular hillside trenched defense system" built by Mesoamerican merchants to protect the marine shell industry at the nearby site of La Playa (Di Peso 1979a:158). From the site of La Playa these merchants shipped bulk raw materials to the Hohokam shell artisans. Di Peso's theory about Cerro de Trincheras is only one of several that attempt to account for the site in terms of specialized functions or in terms of processes centered outside of northern Sonora. Among the oldest of these ideas are the notions that the site was a refuge fort (McGee 1898) or that it was a massive terraced agricultural field (Huntington 1912). Numerous scholars have suggested that Cerro de Trincheras was a rude station, specializing in the production of shell jewelry, at the southern periphery of
The Kiva, 1987
This paper summarizes what is currently known about Hohokam shell exchange in the U.S. Southwest ... more This paper summarizes what is currently known about Hohokam shell exchange in the U.S. Southwest and attempts to interpret the role of this trade in Hohokam prehistory. Data gathered in the 1970s and 1980s and the application of quantitative methods in exchange analysis form the basis for this new synthesis. This synthesis treats Hohokam shell exchange in terms of regional specialization within a bounded exchange network. We further consider how Hohokam shell exchange changed between the Sedentary and Classic periods and examine the importance of these changes for our interpretations of Hohokam prehistory. Our synthesis is integrated by a social theory that incorporates productive relations, exchange relations, and the social meaning of shell. Recent research leads us to question many of the conclusions of the early analyses and to emphasize that Hohokam shell exchange was, at times, Editor's Note: The Kiva gratefully acknowledges a financial contribution from the Department of Anthropology, SUNY, Binghamton, to help defray the cost of publication of this paper.
Mogollon Archaeology: Proceedings of the 1980 Mogollon Conference, 1982
A fall off model using bivariate regression was applied to Hohokam shell and Kayenta pottery dist... more A fall off model using bivariate regression was applied to Hohokam shell and Kayenta pottery distributions fro AD 750 to 1150 along the Gila-Salt to Flagstaff exchange route. The distribution of Kayenta pottery was found to decrease exponentially with distance from source. Conversely the Hohokam shell distribution was uncorrelated with distance. Further analysis using ordinal techniques showed a strong positive correlation between site size and shell distribution but no such correlation could be demonstrated for Kayenta potter. We suggest that the two different commodities served different functions and that they were exchanged through different modes. Shell was a prestige good traded by specialists and the ceramics were utilitarian goods exchanged in a down the line fashion.
Culture areas haunt our research. They affect how we frame questions, how we define the boundari... more Culture areas haunt our research. They affect how we frame questions, how we define the boundaries of our studies, what journals we read, what colleagues we talk to, where we go to school and dozens of other aspects of archaeology, in subtle and complex ways. One way to understand these impacts is to engage the historiography of the concept and from that engagement to rethink the Southwest/Northwest culture area. Archaeologists have worked since the late 1950s with a consensus on the meanings and limits of the Southwest/Northwest culture area . This consensus permeates contemporary archaeological research where it has such a taken for granted status that it only warrants discussion with neophytes to the study of the region, for example in introductory textbooks and popular presentations. In this article I seek to question the meaning and limits of the Southwest/Northwest and to raise the concept of the cultural area once again as an intellectual problem. This may strike some readers as an anachronistic endeavor after a half century of harmony. This unanimity, however, has lulled archaeologists into a complacency that prevents us from seeing the limitations and faults that the consensus embodies. Much has changed in 50 years. The culture area concept does not integrate well with current theory and developments in the archaeology of Northwest México suggest the need for an empirical re-evaluation of the meaning and limits of the Southwest/Northwest.
American Antiquity, Jul 5, 2015
At the turn of the twenty-first century, critics suggested that warfare profoundly shaped cultura... more At the turn of the twenty-first century, critics suggested that warfare profoundly shaped cultural change in the prehistoric Southwest/Northwest. This challenge was part of a much larger debate concerning violence and warfare before civilization. It has become clear that scholars need to consider violence and warfare to understand the aboriginal history of the Southwest/Northwest. Increasingly, archaeologists are asking: How did indigenous peoples practice war? How did warfare relate to social organization, adaptation, and religion? How did these relations change over time? Many authors have argued
that we best answer these questions in well researched and carefully considered case studies. In Sonora, México, prehispanic peoples constructed terraces on isolated volcanic hills and built rooms, compounds, and other edifices on their summits to create cerros de trincheras. The Cerros de Trincheras and Defense Project mapped and collected Trincheras Tradition cerros de trincheras in Sonora. We used Geographic Information Systems analysis to demonstrate how these cerros de trincheras were defensive, what defenses protected, and how these relationships changed over time. This article compares Trincheras Tradition cerros de trincheras to general models of “primitive” war, Yuman warfare, Andean Colla pukaras, and New Zealand Maori pas in order to infer a Trinchereño way of war.
Journal of Field Archaeology, 1989
In the past decade more than 700 archaeomagnetic samples have been collected from the Hohokam are... more In the past decade more than 700 archaeomagnetic samples have been collected from the Hohokam area of southern Arizona. Four hundred twenty of the dated archaeomagnetic
samples could be assigned to specific phases and phase transitions and this large data set is useful in analyzing the absolute chronology of the Hohokam area. Mean dates and date ranges for each phase and transition provide the data for a new calibration of the Hohokam chronology and a discussion o f the nature of Hohokam phases. The exercise serves to illustrate the utility of large sets of absolute dates in general, and of archaeomagnetismin particular, in contributing to chronological issues
Rautman's critique of our article "Although They Have Petty Captains They Obey Them Badly: The Di... more Rautman's critique of our article "Although They Have Petty Captains They Obey Them Badly: The Dialectics of Prehispanic Western Pueblo Social Organization" (McGuire and Saitta 1996) provides us with an opportunity to clarify some points about our theoretical perspective. Rautman shares our dissatisfaction with attempts to characterize Prehispanic western pueblo social organization as either egalitarian or hierarchical. She, however, questions our dismissal of processual theory and our advocacy of a dialectical approach to the problem. She proposes instead an alternative approach that relies on the concept of heterarchy. We have little problem with the use of heterarchy as a descriptive label for late Prehispanic pueblo social orga- nization, but we desire a more dynamic understanding of that organization than the concept of heterarchy allows. We find that understanding in a dialectical approach.
American Antiquity, Jan 9, 1996
Southwestern archaeologists have debated the nature of late Prehispanic western pueblo social org... more Southwestern archaeologists have debated the nature of late Prehispanic western pueblo social organization for nearly a century. Weret he fiourteenth-century pueblos egalitarian or hierarchical? This issue remains unsettled largely because of the oppositional thinking that has informed most contributions to the debate: that is, the tendency to franze questions about Prehispanic sociopolitical organization in dichotomous "either-or" terms. We critique this approach to the problem and examine one of the most prominent controversies about Prehispanic social organization: the Grasshopper Pueblo-Chavez Pass controversy. We propose an alternative approach rooted in a dialectical epistemology, and a theory of social life that emphasizes the lived exper-ience of people. What impresses us most about late Prehispanic western social organization is not that it was egalitarian or hierarchical, but that it was both. We discuss how this basic contradiction between communal life and hierarchy was a major internal motor driving change in these pueblos.
Culture areas haunt our research. They affect how we frame questions, how we define the boundarie... more Culture areas haunt our research. They affect how we frame questions, how we define the boundaries of our studies, what journals we read, what colleagues we talk to, where we go to school and dozens of other aspects of archaeology, in subtle and complex ways. Cultural areas such as Mesoamerica and the Northwest/Southwest define real differences but these differences do not correspond to the boundaries of the culture areas. Defining cultural areas in terms of their boundaries creates false distinctions and channels research in unproductive ways. There are other boundaries that cross-cut Mesoamerica and the Northwest/Southwest and further confound and confuse our understandings of prehispanic developments in the Americas. These boundaries include the international frontier, state boundaries and cultural subdivisions within each culture area. The problems of cultural areas are most apparent to those researchers who work on their edges. The development of an international community of archaeologists working in northwestern México leads us to rethink how we define the similarities and differences between Mesoamerica and the Northwest/Southwest. An alternative to defining cultural areas by their boundaries is to define them dynamic webs of relations between social groups.
The late thirteenth century religious ideologies that transformed the Pueblo World sprang from fa... more The late thirteenth century religious ideologies that transformed the Pueblo World sprang from far-ranging beliefs, rituals, and social relations inextricably linked to Mesoamerica (Figure 2.1). Indigenous peoples living in the southwest of the United States and the northwest of México (the Southwest/Northwest) clearly share many aspects of cosmology, iconography, belief, and ritual with peoples living in Mesoamerica. But, Pueblo religion also differs from Mesoamerican religion in many ways. It did not diffuse north in neat packages of cosmology and ritual, nor did Mesoamerican missionaries, traders, or conquers impose a new religion on Pueblo Peoples. This chapter presents a more complex model of this relationship that considers the historical dynamics of similarity and difference between the Pueblos and Mesoamerica.
Multidisciplinary Approaches to Social Violence in the Prehispanic American Southwest. Ed. By D. Nichols & P. Crown, University of Arizona Press, Tucson., 2008
Books by Randall McGuire
A Marxist Archaeology, 2002
This text provides an introduction to marxist theory as it applies to archaeology.It explores lon... more This text provides an introduction to marxist theory as it applies to archaeology.It explores long term historical change and cultural evolution, to the study of the past. It will be of interest to students and professionals in archaeology and to historians, theoreticians and philosophers.
The Casas Grandes World,, 1999
Prehispanic Northwest Mexico, that area from the international frontier south to the southern bor... more Prehispanic Northwest Mexico, that area from the international frontier south to the southern borders of the Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua, is an immense gray zone. Whether it was peripheral to the prehistory of the Southwest United States/Northwest Mexico Culture Area or not, it has been peripheral in the minds and theories of archaeologists (Phillips 1989). Traditionally they have explained cultural developments in the region using one of two models. Either these developments were simply the southern fringes of the Hohokam or Mogollon traditions of the Southwest (Haury 1976), or they resulted from the intrusion of Mesoamerican merchants from the south, who set up major centers as trade outposts (Di Peso 1974, 1983). More recently these debates have been recast in models of world systems that reach south to Mesoamerica (Di Peso 1983; Whitecotton and Pailes 1986; Weigand 1982) or peer polities developing in situ based primarily on local ecological relationships (Minnis 1989). At the core of all of these debates is the nature of economic relations at and between major Northwest centers such as Casas Grandes in Chihuahua and Cerro de Trincheras in Sonora (Figure 10.1). Charles Di Peso (1979a:158159) identified Casas Grandes and Cerro de Trincheras as Mesoamerican commercial centers. Two groups of Mesoamerican donors entered the Northwest by A.D. 1100 to establish the two centers, and they both withdrew south in the midfourteenth century. The two groups of merchants operated independently of each other, gathering goods from the southwestern cultures to the north and then shipping them south to their home polities in Mesoamerica. Di Peso argued that Cerro de Trincheras was "a spectacular hillside trenched defense system" built by Mesoamerican merchants to protect the marine shell industry at the nearby site of La Playa (Di Peso 1979a:158). From the site of La Playa these merchants shipped bulk raw materials to the Hohokam shell artisans. Di Peso's theory about Cerro de Trincheras is only one of several that attempt to account for the site in terms of specialized functions or in terms of processes centered outside of northern Sonora. Among the oldest of these ideas are the notions that the site was a refuge fort (McGee 1898) or that it was a massive terraced agricultural field (Huntington 1912). Numerous scholars have suggested that Cerro de Trincheras was a rude station, specializing in the production of shell jewelry, at the southern periphery of
The Kiva, 1987
This paper summarizes what is currently known about Hohokam shell exchange in the U.S. Southwest ... more This paper summarizes what is currently known about Hohokam shell exchange in the U.S. Southwest and attempts to interpret the role of this trade in Hohokam prehistory. Data gathered in the 1970s and 1980s and the application of quantitative methods in exchange analysis form the basis for this new synthesis. This synthesis treats Hohokam shell exchange in terms of regional specialization within a bounded exchange network. We further consider how Hohokam shell exchange changed between the Sedentary and Classic periods and examine the importance of these changes for our interpretations of Hohokam prehistory. Our synthesis is integrated by a social theory that incorporates productive relations, exchange relations, and the social meaning of shell. Recent research leads us to question many of the conclusions of the early analyses and to emphasize that Hohokam shell exchange was, at times, Editor's Note: The Kiva gratefully acknowledges a financial contribution from the Department of Anthropology, SUNY, Binghamton, to help defray the cost of publication of this paper.
Mogollon Archaeology: Proceedings of the 1980 Mogollon Conference, 1982
A fall off model using bivariate regression was applied to Hohokam shell and Kayenta pottery dist... more A fall off model using bivariate regression was applied to Hohokam shell and Kayenta pottery distributions fro AD 750 to 1150 along the Gila-Salt to Flagstaff exchange route. The distribution of Kayenta pottery was found to decrease exponentially with distance from source. Conversely the Hohokam shell distribution was uncorrelated with distance. Further analysis using ordinal techniques showed a strong positive correlation between site size and shell distribution but no such correlation could be demonstrated for Kayenta potter. We suggest that the two different commodities served different functions and that they were exchanged through different modes. Shell was a prestige good traded by specialists and the ceramics were utilitarian goods exchanged in a down the line fashion.
Culture areas haunt our research. They affect how we frame questions, how we define the boundari... more Culture areas haunt our research. They affect how we frame questions, how we define the boundaries of our studies, what journals we read, what colleagues we talk to, where we go to school and dozens of other aspects of archaeology, in subtle and complex ways. One way to understand these impacts is to engage the historiography of the concept and from that engagement to rethink the Southwest/Northwest culture area. Archaeologists have worked since the late 1950s with a consensus on the meanings and limits of the Southwest/Northwest culture area . This consensus permeates contemporary archaeological research where it has such a taken for granted status that it only warrants discussion with neophytes to the study of the region, for example in introductory textbooks and popular presentations. In this article I seek to question the meaning and limits of the Southwest/Northwest and to raise the concept of the cultural area once again as an intellectual problem. This may strike some readers as an anachronistic endeavor after a half century of harmony. This unanimity, however, has lulled archaeologists into a complacency that prevents us from seeing the limitations and faults that the consensus embodies. Much has changed in 50 years. The culture area concept does not integrate well with current theory and developments in the archaeology of Northwest México suggest the need for an empirical re-evaluation of the meaning and limits of the Southwest/Northwest.
American Antiquity, Jul 5, 2015
At the turn of the twenty-first century, critics suggested that warfare profoundly shaped cultura... more At the turn of the twenty-first century, critics suggested that warfare profoundly shaped cultural change in the prehistoric Southwest/Northwest. This challenge was part of a much larger debate concerning violence and warfare before civilization. It has become clear that scholars need to consider violence and warfare to understand the aboriginal history of the Southwest/Northwest. Increasingly, archaeologists are asking: How did indigenous peoples practice war? How did warfare relate to social organization, adaptation, and religion? How did these relations change over time? Many authors have argued
that we best answer these questions in well researched and carefully considered case studies. In Sonora, México, prehispanic peoples constructed terraces on isolated volcanic hills and built rooms, compounds, and other edifices on their summits to create cerros de trincheras. The Cerros de Trincheras and Defense Project mapped and collected Trincheras Tradition cerros de trincheras in Sonora. We used Geographic Information Systems analysis to demonstrate how these cerros de trincheras were defensive, what defenses protected, and how these relationships changed over time. This article compares Trincheras Tradition cerros de trincheras to general models of “primitive” war, Yuman warfare, Andean Colla pukaras, and New Zealand Maori pas in order to infer a Trinchereño way of war.
Journal of Field Archaeology, 1989
In the past decade more than 700 archaeomagnetic samples have been collected from the Hohokam are... more In the past decade more than 700 archaeomagnetic samples have been collected from the Hohokam area of southern Arizona. Four hundred twenty of the dated archaeomagnetic
samples could be assigned to specific phases and phase transitions and this large data set is useful in analyzing the absolute chronology of the Hohokam area. Mean dates and date ranges for each phase and transition provide the data for a new calibration of the Hohokam chronology and a discussion o f the nature of Hohokam phases. The exercise serves to illustrate the utility of large sets of absolute dates in general, and of archaeomagnetismin particular, in contributing to chronological issues
Rautman's critique of our article "Although They Have Petty Captains They Obey Them Badly: The Di... more Rautman's critique of our article "Although They Have Petty Captains They Obey Them Badly: The Dialectics of Prehispanic Western Pueblo Social Organization" (McGuire and Saitta 1996) provides us with an opportunity to clarify some points about our theoretical perspective. Rautman shares our dissatisfaction with attempts to characterize Prehispanic western pueblo social organization as either egalitarian or hierarchical. She, however, questions our dismissal of processual theory and our advocacy of a dialectical approach to the problem. She proposes instead an alternative approach that relies on the concept of heterarchy. We have little problem with the use of heterarchy as a descriptive label for late Prehispanic pueblo social orga- nization, but we desire a more dynamic understanding of that organization than the concept of heterarchy allows. We find that understanding in a dialectical approach.
American Antiquity, Jan 9, 1996
Southwestern archaeologists have debated the nature of late Prehispanic western pueblo social org... more Southwestern archaeologists have debated the nature of late Prehispanic western pueblo social organization for nearly a century. Weret he fiourteenth-century pueblos egalitarian or hierarchical? This issue remains unsettled largely because of the oppositional thinking that has informed most contributions to the debate: that is, the tendency to franze questions about Prehispanic sociopolitical organization in dichotomous "either-or" terms. We critique this approach to the problem and examine one of the most prominent controversies about Prehispanic social organization: the Grasshopper Pueblo-Chavez Pass controversy. We propose an alternative approach rooted in a dialectical epistemology, and a theory of social life that emphasizes the lived exper-ience of people. What impresses us most about late Prehispanic western social organization is not that it was egalitarian or hierarchical, but that it was both. We discuss how this basic contradiction between communal life and hierarchy was a major internal motor driving change in these pueblos.
Culture areas haunt our research. They affect how we frame questions, how we define the boundarie... more Culture areas haunt our research. They affect how we frame questions, how we define the boundaries of our studies, what journals we read, what colleagues we talk to, where we go to school and dozens of other aspects of archaeology, in subtle and complex ways. Cultural areas such as Mesoamerica and the Northwest/Southwest define real differences but these differences do not correspond to the boundaries of the culture areas. Defining cultural areas in terms of their boundaries creates false distinctions and channels research in unproductive ways. There are other boundaries that cross-cut Mesoamerica and the Northwest/Southwest and further confound and confuse our understandings of prehispanic developments in the Americas. These boundaries include the international frontier, state boundaries and cultural subdivisions within each culture area. The problems of cultural areas are most apparent to those researchers who work on their edges. The development of an international community of archaeologists working in northwestern México leads us to rethink how we define the similarities and differences between Mesoamerica and the Northwest/Southwest. An alternative to defining cultural areas by their boundaries is to define them dynamic webs of relations between social groups.
The late thirteenth century religious ideologies that transformed the Pueblo World sprang from fa... more The late thirteenth century religious ideologies that transformed the Pueblo World sprang from far-ranging beliefs, rituals, and social relations inextricably linked to Mesoamerica (Figure 2.1). Indigenous peoples living in the southwest of the United States and the northwest of México (the Southwest/Northwest) clearly share many aspects of cosmology, iconography, belief, and ritual with peoples living in Mesoamerica. But, Pueblo religion also differs from Mesoamerican religion in many ways. It did not diffuse north in neat packages of cosmology and ritual, nor did Mesoamerican missionaries, traders, or conquers impose a new religion on Pueblo Peoples. This chapter presents a more complex model of this relationship that considers the historical dynamics of similarity and difference between the Pueblos and Mesoamerica.
Multidisciplinary Approaches to Social Violence in the Prehispanic American Southwest. Ed. By D. Nichols & P. Crown, University of Arizona Press, Tucson., 2008
A Marxist Archaeology, 2002
This text provides an introduction to marxist theory as it applies to archaeology.It explores lon... more This text provides an introduction to marxist theory as it applies to archaeology.It explores long term historical change and cultural evolution, to the study of the past. It will be of interest to students and professionals in archaeology and to historians, theoreticians and philosophers.
Bill Rathje, Michael Shanks and Chris Witmore in conversation with Lewis Binford, Victor Buchli, ... more Bill Rathje, Michael Shanks and Chris Witmore in conversation with Lewis Binford, Victor Buchli, John Cherry, Meg Conkey, George Cowgill, Ian Hodder, Kristian Kristiansen, Mark Leone, Randy McGuire, Adrian Praetzellis, Mary Praetzellis, Colin Renfrew, Mike Schiffer, Alain Schnapp, Ruth Tringham, Patty Jo Watson, Alison Wylie.
Anuario de arqueología, Nov 11, 2021
Discursos del Sur, revista de teoría crítica en Ciencias Sociales
El gran mito intelectual de finales del siglo XX es que el siglo XXI iba a despertar en un mundo ... more El gran mito intelectual de finales del siglo XX es que el siglo XXI iba a despertar en un mundo de fenómenos “pos”: posindustrial, poscolonial y, el más importante, poscapitalista. En este artículo me baso en argumentos que, desarrollados previamente a favor de una praxis de la arqueología, buscan desafiar el statu quo y frenar el capitalismo acelerado. Aunque me siento escéptico acerca de los grandes planes para cambiar el mundo, sugiero que podemos ralentizar en algo al capitalismo acelerado. Podemos hacer esto tanto en la práctica de la arqueología como en el mundo en general. Las contradicciones del capitalismo acelerado dan forma a la práctica de la arqueología tanto en la gestión de los recursos culturales como en la academia. Asimismo, también podemos utilizar la arqueología para confrontar las falacias ideológicas que apoyan, naturalizan y justifican las crecientes desigualdades en la riqueza. Este artículo demuestra cómo la arqueología puede revelar tales falacias en el es...
Oxford University Press eBooks, Oct 27, 2011
University of Arizona Press eBooks, Aug 23, 2022
The 80th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, 2015
Trincheras Sites in Time, Space, and Society
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2017
The international border between the United States and Mexico has no meaning for the Aboriginal h... more The international border between the United States and Mexico has no meaning for the Aboriginal history of the Southwest/Northwest. It has, however, greatly limited the amount of archaeology done in northern Mexico. Since the 1980s, Mexican and U.S. archaeologists have done increasing amounts of research in the Mexican state of Sonora. Here they have developed an international collaborative practice of archaeology unique in North America. Sonora has a rich archaeological record that includes Paleoindian and Archaic sites. This chapter focuses on the agricultural peoples of Sonora, beginning with the Early Agricultural site of La Playa. Archaeologists have defined six ceramic period archaeological traditions in the state (Central Coast, Trincheras, Casas Grandes, Río Sonora, Huatabampo, and Serrana). Contrary to earlier interpretations of these traditions as extensions of events, processes, and cultures found to the south or the north, contemporary archaeology is demonstrating them t...
World Archaeology, 2022
In this World Archaeology issue - An Archaeology of Inequality - archaeologists continue the disc... more In this World Archaeology issue - An Archaeology of Inequality - archaeologists continue the discipline's engagement with social inequality in a wide range of contexts and times. My work has always been about power, oppression and how to change these things. Robert Paynter and I wrote an earlier volume -The Archaeology of Inequality - that addressed these goals (McGuire and Paynter 1991 ). When Bob and I published the book thirty years ago, Anglophone archaeology was locked in a debate between a culture history of traditions and a processual archaeology focused on cultural evolution.
V. Gordon Childe tuvo una relacion larga e importante con la antropologia y la arqueologia de Ame... more V. Gordon Childe tuvo una relacion larga e importante con la antropologia y la arqueologia de America del Norte. Muchas de sus ideas tuvieron una profunda influencia en los investigadores norteamericanos, que aun hoy en dia continua. Los manuales introductorios mencionan constantemente a Childe por sus criterios arqueologicos para identificar la civilizacion y por su teoria sobre los origenes de la agricultura. Sin embargo, los arqueologos norteamericanos a menudo malinterpretan su teoria. Durante la segunda mitad del siglo XX lo caracterizaron como difusionista y posteriormente como neoevolucionista. Por un lado, vincularon su interes por la historia, la difusion y las culturas arqueologicas con una historia cultural normativa. Por otra parte, parecia ser un materialista neoevolucionista que adopto una vision sistemica de la sociedad, estudio los cambios evolutivos y busco patrones en el registro arqueologico. Estas malinterpretaciones ocurrieron porque pocos arqueologos norteameri...
Anales de Arqueología Y Etnología , Nov 1, 2017
En junio de 1902, tropas mexicanas atacaron un campamento de mujeres y niños yaquis en Sonora, Mé... more En junio de 1902, tropas mexicanas atacaron un campamento de mujeres y niños yaquis en Sonora, México, matando a 124 yaquis. Tres semanas más tarde, el antropólogo físico norteamericano Aleš Hrdlička recogió los cráneos de 10 individuos, huesos humanos, sombreros, mantas, armas y una cuna del campo de batalla. Envió estos materiales al Museo Americano de Historia Natural en la ciudad de Nueva York. El proyecto binacional Cerro Mazatán colaboró con las tribus yaquis de Sonora y Arizona para repatriar los restos humanos y otros materiales que Hrdlička tomó del campo de batalla. La colaboración fue un éxito y en el otoño de 2009 el Museo Nacional de Historia Natural devolvió los restos al pueblo yaqui. Este proyecto es un ejemplo valioso de cómo la Arqueología indígena puede arreglar las cosas y expiar las transgresiones pasadas de la arqueología.
espanolDurante el siglo XX, las ciudades fronterizas de Nogales, Arizona (Estados Unidos), y Noga... more espanolDurante el siglo XX, las ciudades fronterizas de Nogales, Arizona (Estados Unidos), y Nogales, Sonora (Mexico), conformaron la comunidad transnacional unitaria de Ambos Nogales. Hoy en dia la gente de Ambos Nogales recuerda con nostalgia esta frontera como una cerca de madera entre vecinos. A mediados de la decada de los 90 Estados Unidos demolio la cerca y erigio un muro de acero para cerrar la frontera y prevenir la inmigracion de indocumentados y el contrabando de drogas. En 2011 construyeron un nuevo y mejorado muro de acero. La rematerializacion de la frontera entre Estados Unidos y Mexico en Ambos Nogales emerge dialecticamente como fortificacion y como trasgresion. El muro es el elemento mas visible de la militarizacion de la frontera de Estados Unidos, pero no la hace mas segura. Estados Unidos erigio el muro para limitar la agencia de quienes cruzan la frontera. Sin embargo, el muro da lugar a agencias que sus constructores no imaginaron o que no desearon y los que l...
Annual Review of Anthropology, 2020
Fleeing violence, poverty, abuse, war, and climatic change, tens of millions of people have fled ... more Fleeing violence, poverty, abuse, war, and climatic change, tens of millions of people have fled their homes in the Global South seeking refuge in adjacent nations and in the Global North. This modern migration entails a material, sensual experience in time. The craft of archaeology has traditionally engaged with the material, the sensual, and the temporal. Archaeologists who study the materiality of modern undocumented migration embrace activist-engaged research that applies the craft of archaeology to the contemporary world. They study the materiality of migration to reveal and comprehend the lived experience of displaced persons. They seek to understand the barriers erected to that journey, the things migrants acquire and leave on the trail, migrant placemaking, their stranded lives, how they build new lives, what the migrants have left behind in their home countries, and the heritage of forced migration. They approach this work in critical solidarity with displaced peoples.
American Anthropologist, 2018
American Anthropologist, 2009
... Memory Work: Archaeologies of Material Practices edited by Barbara J. Mills and William H. Wa... more ... Memory Work: Archaeologies of Material Practices edited by Barbara J. Mills and William H. Walker. KATINA LILLIOS. Article first published online: 21 MAY 2009. ... More content like this. Find more content: like this article. Find more content written by: KATINA LILLIOS. ...
Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2002
ABSTRACT Archaeology, defined as the study of material culture, extends from the first preserved ... more ABSTRACT Archaeology, defined as the study of material culture, extends from the first preserved human artefacts up to the present day, and in recent years the ‘Archaeology of the Present’ has become a particular focus of research. On one hand are the conservationists seeking to preserve significant materials and structures of recent decades in the face of redevelopment and abandonment. On the other are those inspired by social theory who see in the contemporary world the opportunity to explore aspects of material culture in new and revealing ways, and perhaps above all the central question of the extent to which material culture — be it in the form of objects or buildings — actively defines the human experience. Victor Buchli's An Archaeology of Socialism takes as its subject a twentieth-century building — the Narkofim Communal House in Moscow — and seeks to understand it in terms of domestic life and changing policies of the Soviet state during the 70 or so years since its construction. Thus Buchli's study not only concerns the meaning of material culture in a modern context, but focuses specifically on the household — or more accurately on a series of households within a single Russian apartment block. A particular interest attaches to the way in which the building was planned to encourage communal living, during a pre-Stalinist phase when the State sought to intervene directly in domestic life through architectural design and the manipulation of material culture. Subsequent political changes brought a revision of modes of living within the Narkofim apartment block, as the residents adjusted and responded to changing political and social pressures and demands. The significance of Buchli's study goes far beyond the confines of Soviet-era Moscow or indeed the archaeology of the modern world. He questions the role and potential danger of social and archaeological theory of the totalizing kind: a natural response perhaps to the experience of the Narkofim Communal House as an exercise in Soviet social engineering. He poses fascinating questions about the relation between individual households and the state ideology, and he emphasizes the role of material culture studies in reaching an understanding of these processes. In the brief essay that opens this Review Feature, Victor Buchli outlines the principal aims and conclusions of An Archaeology of Socialism. The diversity of issues that the book generates is revealed in the series of reviews which follows, touching in particular upon the ways in which routines of daily life — archaeologically visible, perhaps, through the analysis of domestic space — relate to structures of authority in society as a whole.
Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2013
European Journal of Archaeology, 2014
My review of Stephen Chrisomalis and Andre Costopolus edited volume Human Expeditions, leads to a... more My review of Stephen Chrisomalis and Andre Costopolus edited volume Human Expeditions, leads to a reflection of festschrifts. The festschrift and the memorial volume are dying enterprises. Many scholars find festschrift volumes a waste of time because they often lack coherence and frequently consist of papers that the authors could not publish elsewhere. Critics have clearly identified the cardinal sins of the genre and for these sins such volumes do not sell. Publishers are torn when the scholarly community wants to honor a significant scholar especially if that scholar published with their press. Their hearts say yes but their business models say no. These critiques raise the question of how do we honor and remember our esteemed colleagues. We do not usually present them with flowers, cakes, chocolates or watches but instead we honor them with scholarship. It is time for scholars to rethink the festschrift/memorial genre. The gift of scholarship to our esteemed colleagues or to their memories is a most appropriate gift. But, perhaps we should not present this gift bound between two covers. A website might be a more dynamic, expansive vehicle that offers much more flexibility and creativity for honoring our esteemed colleagues than the weighty book on a library shelf.
Discursos del Sur. 11:19-34, 2023
El gran mito intelectual de finales del siglo XX es que el siglo XXI iba a despertar en un mundo ... more El gran mito intelectual de finales del siglo XX es que el siglo XXI iba a despertar en un mundo de fenómenos «pos»: posindustrial, poscolonial y, el más importante, poscapitalista. En este artículo me baso en argumentos que, desarrollados previamente a favor de una praxis de la arqueología, buscan desafiar el statu quo y frenar el capitalismo acelerado. Aunque me siento escéptico acerca de los grandes planes para cambiar el mundo, sugiero que podemos ralentizar en algo al capitalismo acelerado. Podemos hacer esto tanto en la práctica de la arqueología como en el mundo en general. Las contradicciones del capitalismo acelerado dan forma a la práctica de la arqueología tanto en la gestión de los recursos culturales como en la academia. Asimismo, también podemos utilizar la arqueología para confrontar las falacias ideológicas que apoyan, naturalizan y justifican las crecientes desigualdades en la riqueza. Este artículo demuestra cómo la arqueología puede revelar tales falacias en el estudio de los derechos de los trabajadores y la frontera entre los Estados Unidos y México.
Anuario de Arqueología, 2021
Resumen: De las cenizas del post-modernismo ha surgido un posthumanismo que ha declarado que el m... more Resumen: De las cenizas del post-modernismo ha surgido un posthumanismo que ha declarado que el marxismo en arqueología está muerto. Los partidarios de la teoría posthumanista de la Arqueología Simétrica seleccionan a su conveniencia algunas ideas marxistas para luego refutarlas y descartarlas, sin considerar la profundidad y los matices que las diferentes teorías marxistas poseen. Caracterizan de manera incorrecta a la dialéctica relacional como una forma de pensamiento de opuestos, pero ignoran el dualismo fundamental que subyace a su propia postura teórica. Igualan a humanos y cosas argumentando que ambos comparten una ontología común. El marxismo relacional resuelve la naturaleza dualista de esa postura y demuestra que las cosas, los animales y la gente pueden estudiarse relacionalmente pero reconociendo al mismo tiempo las diferencias ontológicas que existen entre ellos. El marxismo vive.
Revista de Arqueología Histórica Argentina y Latinoamericana,, 2018
La Huelga y Guerra del Carbón de 1913-1914 resultó en la Masacre de Ludlow, donde 25 personas, i... more La Huelga y Guerra del Carbón de 1913-1914 resultó en la Masacre de Ludlow, donde 25 personas, incluyendo dos mujeres y 11 niños, murieron, así como en diez días de guerra de clases abierta en el sur de Colorado. Hoy en día, el sindicato United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) mantiene el sitio de Ludlow como un monumento a la lucha de los trabajadores organizados en los Estados Unidos. El Proyecto Arqueológico
Guerra del Carbón en Colorado excavó el sitio para recuperar la memoria de Ludlow y de la lucha de clases en las minas de Colorado. Para hacer esto construimos una praxis arqueológica radical que confronta a la desigualdad y la explotación en el mundo. Clave en este esfuerzo es una arqueología de la clase obrera de los Estados Unidos que vaya más allá de la audiencia tradicional de clase media que tiene la arqueología, para contar a familias de clase trabajadora acerca de la historia de la clase obrera. Este proyecto es una forma de acción política directa, que trae los eventos de 1913-1914 a un diálogo contemporáneo acerca de la lucha de clases y el sindicalismo en los Estados Unidos.
Vestigos, 2018
Los arqueólogos están acostumbrados a asumir una relación directa entre la inversión funeraria y ... more Los arqueólogos están acostumbrados a asumir una relación directa entre la inversión funeraria y el estatus social (Binford, 1971; Saxe, 1970; Tainter, 1978; O’Shea, 1984; Bartel, 1982). Muchos han supuesto que los ricos siempre han adquirido para sí las formas de exhibición mortuoria más suntuosas. Para estos investigadores, el ritual mortuorio, la forma de enterramiento, el ajuar funerario y los monumentos reflejan directamente la dimensión social, que a su vez es el resultado de las relaciones materiales que determinaron el nivel evolutivo de la cultura.
Recientemente, un número cada vez mayor de investigadores han rechazado la conceptualización del ritual funerario como algo determinado y en ningún caso determinante, y en su lugar han ubicado al ritual mortuorio en el ámbito de la ideología (Hodder, 1982; Pearson, 1982; Shanks & Tilley, 1982; Miller & Tilley, 1984; Kristiansen, 1984). Ellos consideran al análisis de los restos mortuorios como un caso particular dentro del estudio más general sobre cómo la ideología legitima el orden social. Ellos destacan el poder y las anomalías entre los poderosos y los que carecen de poder en las sociedades como una dinámica interna para el cambio cultural. Como ideología, el ritual funerario no se refiere necesariamente a las relaciones reales de poder en una sociedad, sino a una expresión idealizada de estas relaciones. El ritual actúa ideológicamente para mantener el orden social al distorsionar la verdadera naturaleza de las relaciones sociales. El ritual funerario es, por lo tanto, una parte activa de la negociación y la lucha entre los poderosos y los que carecen de poder en la sociedad.
Mi propósito inicial al estudiar las lápidas de los últimos 180 años en el condado de Broome, Nueva York, fue determinar si proporcionaban un reflejo directo de la estratificación social en la comunidad. Luego de un breve examen, fue evidente que en algunos períodos temporales sí lo hacían y en otros no. El supuesto de que reflejan directamente el orden social dentro de una única etapa evolutiva claramente no se confirma. Más importante aún, la respuesta a mi pregunta inicial planteó temas mucho más fascinantes que la investigación original.
En junio de 1902, tropas mexicanas atacaron un campamento de mujeres y niños yaquis en Sonora, Mé... more En junio de 1902, tropas mexicanas atacaron un campamento de mujeres y niños yaquis en Sonora,
México, matando a 124 yaquis. Tres semanas más tarde, el antropólogo físico norteamericano Aleš Hrdlička
recogió los cráneos de 10 individuos, huesos humanos, sombreros, mantas, armas y una cuna del campo
de batalla. Envió estos materiales al Museo Americano de Historia Natural en la ciudad de Nueva York. El
proyecto binacional Cerro Mazatán colaboró con las tribus yaquis de Sonora y Arizona para repatriar los
restos humanos y otros materiales que Hrdlička tomó del campo de batalla. La colaboración fue un éxito y
en el otoño de 2009 el Museo Nacional de Historia Natural devolvió los restos al pueblo yaqui. Este proyecto
es un ejemplo valioso de cómo la Arqueología indígena puede arreglar las cosas y expiar las transgresiones
pasadas de la arqueología.
Palabras clave: Masacre – Sierra Mazatán – Aleš Hrdlička - repatriación
ABSTRACT
In June 1902, Mexican troops attacked the camp of women and children and killed 124 Yaqui. Three
weeks later, the North American physical anthropologist Aleš Hrdlička collected the skulls of 10 individuals,
human bone, hats, blankets, weapons, and a cradleboard from the battlefield. He shipped these materials to
the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The bi-national Proyecto Cerro Mazatán project
worked collaboratively with the Yaqui tribes of Sonora and Arizona to repatriate the human remains and other
materials than Hrdlička took from the battlefield. The collaboration was a success and in the fall of 2009 the
National Museum of Natural History returned the remains to the Yaqui people. This project is a valuable
example of how indigenous Archaeology can set things right and atone for archaeology’s past transgressions.
Keywords: Massacre – Sierra Mazatán – Aleš Hrdlička - repatriation
La idea de la arqueología como arte desafía la separación entre razonamiento y ejecución, teoría ... more La idea de la arqueología como arte desafía la separación entre razonamiento y ejecución, teoría y práctica, que hoy caracteriza a la disciplina. El Movimiento de Artes y Oficios de fines del siglo XIX estableció a la artesanía como una manifestación estética de oposición. Asentamos a la artesanía dentro de una crítica marxista del trabajo alienado y proponemos una práctica unificada de mano, corazón y mente. Los debates engendrados por la arqueología postprocesual han definido firmemente a la arqueología del presente como una práctica cultural y política. Sin embargo, muchos arqueólogos aún no saben cómo implementar estas ideas. Argüimos que una solución a este dilema consiste en pensar en la arqueología como artesanía. Esta resolución no provee un método o un libro de recetas para la práctica de la arqueología, puesto que el núcleo de nuestro argumento es que la intención de regularizar la arqueología constituye precisamente la causa de alienación de la disciplina. Por el contrario, deseamos considerar a la arqueología como un modo de producción cultural, una práctica unificada que involucra al pasado, al arqueólogo, al público, al cliente y a la sociedad contemporánea.
The idea of archaeology as craft challenges the separation of reasoning and execution that characterizes the field today. The Arts and Crafts Movement of the late nineteenth century established craftwork as an aesthetic of opposition. We establish craft in a Marxian critique of alienated labor, and we propose a unified practice of hand, heart, and mind for archaeology. The debates engendered by postprocessual archaeology have firmly situated archaeology in the present as a cultural and political practice. Many, however, still do not know how to work with these ideas. We argue that a resolution to this dilemma lies in thinking of archaeology as a craft. This resolultion does not provide a method, or a cookbook, for the practice of archaleology, as indeed the core of our argument is that attempts at such standardization lie at the heart of the alienation of archaeology. Rather, we wish to consider archaeology as a mode of cultural production, a unified method practiced by archaeologist, "client" public, and contemporary society.
Anuario de Arqueología, Rosario (2015), 7:9-23, May 1, 2015
V. Gordon Childe tuvo una relación larga e importante con la antropología y la arqueología de Amé... more V. Gordon Childe tuvo una relación larga e importante con la antropología y la arqueología de América del Norte. Muchas de sus ideas tuvieron una profunda influencia en los nvestigadores norteamericanos, que aún hoy en día continua. Los manuales introductorios mencionan constantemente a Childe por sus criterios arqueológicos para identificar la civilización y por su teoría sobre los orígenes de la agricultura. Sin embargo, los arqueólogos norteamericanos a menudo malinterpretan su teoría. Durante la segunda mitad del siglo XX lo caracterizaron
como difusionista y posteriormente como neoevolucionista. Por un lado, vincularon su interés por la historia, la difusión y las culturas arqueológicas con una historia cultural normativa. Por otra parte, parecía ser un materialista neoevolucionista que adoptó una visión sistémica de la sociedad, estudió los cambios evolutivos y buscó patrones en el registro arqueológico. Estas malinterpretaciones ocurrieron porque pocos arqueólogos norteamericanos se tomaron el trabajo de leer y estudiar sus escritos sobre la sociedad y el conocimiento. A finales del siglo XX, un puñado de arqueólogos angloparlantes se volcó a leer seriamente a Marx. Estos investigadores empezaron a estudiar, comprender y emplear la totalidad del pensamiento de Childe
ENGLISH version: McGuire, Randall H. & Rodrigo Navareete 2004 Between Motorcycles and Rifles: ... more ENGLISH version: McGuire, Randall H. & Rodrigo Navareete 2004 Between Motorcycles and Rifles: Anglo-American and Latin American Radical Archaeologies. In Global Archaeological Theory. Ed by. P. Funari, A. Zarankin, and E. Stoval, pp. 309-336, Routledge, London.
Las fantasmas de las áreas culturas aparecen nuestros investigaciones. Por este áreas determinan ... more Las fantasmas de las áreas culturas aparecen nuestros investigaciones. Por este áreas determinan que preguntas preguntamos, que regiones estudiamos, que revistas leimos, que colegos hablamos, que universidades estudimos y muchos otros aspectos de arquerología en maneras sbtle y complejo. Las áreas culturales como Mesoamérica y el Noroeste/Suroeste tienen un contento de verdad pero este contento no coresponde de las fronteras de este áreas. Este fronteras definir distinciónes falsas y encauzan nuestros investigaciones en maneras improductivas. Tambien, hay otras frontieras que separan dentro de Mesoamérica y el Noroeste/Suroeste. Estes incluen la frontiera internacional, frontieras del estados, y subdivisiones culturales de las áreas culturas. Los problemas de las áreas culturales y del uso de frontieras para definir investigaciones son mas aparamente a las margins de las áreas. El desarrollo de una comunidad de arqueologos trabajaran en el noroeste de México has cambiado nuestros entendiemento de las sim y diferencias dentro de Mesoamérica y el Noroeste/Suroeste. La alternativa de una definición de áreas culturales por frontieras es a ver los como reds dinamicas de relaciones sociales.
Spanish translation of Breaking down Cultural Complexity: Inequality and Heterogeneity
A menudo, la arqueología es como un perro que habla. Que el perro pueda hablar fascina a la gente... more A menudo, la arqueología es como un perro que habla. Que el perro pueda hablar fascina a la gente aunque ellos no tienen interés en lo que el perro diga. Desde la década de los 1970s, la Arqueología Social Latinoamericana (ASL) ha estado haciendo hablar al perro utilizando la teoría marxista para hacerle decir cosas importantes acerca del mundo moderno. La ASL ha dicho algunas cosas importantes aunque una cantidad de arqueólogos la han criticado rotundamente y desestimado por hacer demasiado hincapié en conceptos, definiciones, y etiquetas y no lo suficiente en la práctica de la arqueología. La actual crisis del capitalismo ha traído un renovado interés en el Marxismo y una nueva generación de arqueólogos para la ASL (Tantaleán y Aguilar en este volumen). La Arqueología Social Latinoamericana: De la Teoría a la Praxis habla a través de generaciones de arqueólogos sociales y enfrenta las críticas hechas a la ASL.
En este comentario, discutiré mi propia perspectiva sobre cómo hacemos que el perro diga algo interesante y sobre como esa perspectiva se relaciona con la ASL. La Arqueología Social Latinoamericana se mantiene en una posición única en el mundo y quiero animar a sus participantes a explotar esa posición para decir cosas que algunos de nosotros en los estados nucleares especialmente los estados nucleares que hablan inglés) tenemos problemas para ver.
PERSONAS, COSAS, RELACIONES Reflexiones arqueológicas sobre las materialidades pasadas y presentes. EditorsFélix A. Acuto y Valeria Franco Salvi, Ediciones Abya-Yala, Quito-Ecuado, pp. 175-212. , 2015
En la actualidad, muchos arqueólogos buscan escribir historias del presente que comprometen y hac... more En la actualidad, muchos arqueólogos buscan escribir historias del presente que comprometen y hacen visible el detritus de la modernidad. Siguiendo a Benjamin, los arqueólogos estudian las ruinas como vidas petrificadas que nos dan acceso a los procesos destructivos de la modernidad. Una creciente devastación de las personas y las cosas caracteriza a la era moderna y se revela en escombros y ruinas. Este detritus pesa sobre el presente y modela el futuro. La exploración arqueológica de estas ruinas revela lo que la máquina de poder moderna busca esconder. El muro de la frontera Estados Unidos-México es un ejemplo material de la destrucción de la modernidad. El muro no ha logrado crear una barrera inexpugnable sino que ha generado restos materiales. Las ruinas contemporáneas en ambos lados de la frontera en Ambos Nogales, Arizona y Sonora, ejemplifican la destrucción causada y escondida por el muro.
En el marco de las “4tas Jornadas Rosarinas de Arqueología”, organizadas por el Departamento de A... more En el marco de las “4tas Jornadas Rosarinas de Arqueología”, organizadas por el Departamento de Arqueología, Escuela de Antropología, Facultad de Humanidades y Artes, Universidad Nacional de Rosario, los días 31 de Octubre y 1 de Noviembre de 2013, tuvimos la oportunidad de contar con la presencia de los destacados arqueólogos estadounidenses Randall McGuire y Ruth Van Dyke (Binghamton University/State Universtiy
of New York, Estados Unidos). Los mismos, que vinieron a la Argentina invitados por el Doctorado en Ciencias Antropológicas de la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, accedieron amablemente a dar conferencias sobre sus temáticas de investigación y a participar en un taller de discusión con docentes, alumnos y graduados de nuestro departamento. Esto constituyó una valiosa oportunidad para intercambiar opiniones y experiencias acerca de la práctica arqueológica en nuestros respectivos países, teniendo como ejes estructurantes cuestiones básicas tales como el estado del debate epistemológico y teórico en la arqueología Contemporánea, y el rol social y político de la práctica arqueológica. A continuación, tras una breve reseña de la trayectoria académica de ambos investigadores,
se presenta la transcripción editada de las conversaciones que resultaron de ese enriquecedor encuentro.
La Arqueología se ha utilizado tradicionalmente para apoyar al poder en las arenas de lucha por l... more La Arqueología se ha utilizado tradicionalmente para apoyar al poder en las arenas de lucha por la econom- ía, las ideologías, las identidades y la política. La ar- queología puede ser una forma de praxis para ayudar a crear un mundo más humano, una vez que los arqueó- logos se convierten en más que “simples oradores”. La gran mayoría de los arqueólogos practica su arte para obtener el conocimiento del mundo. Varios ar- queólogos han tratado de criticar al mundo y el lugar de la arqueología en el mismo. Muy pocos han entra- do completamente en la dialéctica de la praxis y han construido una arqueología de la acción política para transformar el mundo. Por lo tanto, debemos pregun- tarnos: ¿cómo es la Arqueología política? y ¿cómo la práctica de la arqueología encaja en una praxis de la arqueología?
Vor über 75 Jahren forderte Antonio Gramsci aus seiner Zelle eines Faschistengefängnisses die Int... more Vor über 75 Jahren forderte Antonio Gramsci aus seiner Zelle eines Faschistengefängnisses die Intellektuellen auf, ihre esoterische Suche und ihre akademischen Beifallsbekundungen aufzugeben und in das reale Leben politischer Kämpfe einzusteigen. Im zweiten Jahrzehnt des 21. Jahrhunderts gibt es nur wenige akademische Disziplinen, die noch esoterischer zu sein scheinen als die Archäologie. Der indigene US-amerikanische Gelehrte und Aktivist Vine Deloria (1997: 211) kommentierte den Umstand folgendermaßen:
When we stop and think about it, we live in a society so rich and so structured that we have the luxury of paying six-figure salaries to individuals who know a little bit about the pottery patterns of a small group of ancient people.
Doch es ist gerade diese Exotik und vermeintliche Irrelevanz für das Alltagsleben, welche der Archäologie politische Schlagkraft gibt. An den Schauplätzen der Kämpfe um Einfluss auf Wirtschaft, Ideologie, Politik und Identitäten nimmt die Archäologie traditionell eine Rolle ein, in der sie den Status Quo und somit die Mächtigen unterstützt. Archäologie wurde eingesetzt zur Konstruktion von Gründungsmythen des bürgerlichen Nationalismus, manchmal mit entsetzlichen Folgen, wie an den Beispielen des Nationalsozialismus in Deutschland (Arnold 1990) oder der Babri-Moschee in Ayodhya, Indien (Romey 2004) verdeutlicht werden kann. In anderen Zusammenhängen, etwa dem ehemaligen Gestapo-Hauptquartier in Berlin (Topografie des Terrors 2005) und dem Club Atlético in Buenos Aires (Weissel 2003: 29) nutzten Archäolog_innen ihr Können, um gegenwärtige Verhältnisse in Frage zu stellen (Little und Zimmerman 2010). Archäologie kann eine Praxis sein, die zu einer humaneren Welt beiträgt, sobald Archäolog_innen sich mehr zutrauen, als „einfach Erzählende“ zu sein.
Antiquity, 2023
Hanscam and Buchanan (2023) give us an insightful comparative analysis of Hadrian's Wall and the ... more Hanscam and Buchanan (2023) give us an insightful comparative analysis of Hadrian's Wall and the US/Mexico border wall. Their analysis shows how critically to study and use these long walls in an explicitly political archaeology. I have engaged in archaeology as political action (McGuire 2008), and have researched the materiality of the US/Mexico border while doing humanitarian work along that border (McGuire 2013). Hanscam and Buchanan deftly employ archaeology as a political tool to challenge capitalist ideologies about borders. They plead for a politically relevant archaeology that engages the past to address modern issues. Without such relevance, they fear that archaeology will be made redundant. I emphatically agree with them that an activist archaeology makes our discipline more relevant. I fear, however, that these politics may be our demise rather than our salvation.
Walling In and Walling Out Why Are We Building New Barriers to Divide Us?, 2020
People have built walls for thousands of years to protect cities, to divide cities and along the ... more People have built walls for thousands of years to protect cities, to divide cities and along the borders of polities. This paper examines this process to place modern walls in a historical context and to ask in what ways is modern wall building similar and different from earlier walls. For most of human history, people primarily built walls as military technology. The European invention of cannon in the 16th century radically changed global wall construction. The further development of artillery in the late 19th century as well as tanks and aircraft in the 20th essentially made walls obsolete as military technology. Within cities, walls defined and elaborated ethnic and religious differences but this custom also declined in the 19th century to be revived in the second half of the 20th century. Many walled cites such as Carcassonne in France and long walls such as the Great Wall of China and Hadrian’s Wall in England are important parts of global heritage. Modern walls largely lack the military emphasis of earlier walls but retain the power to define, assert, protect, and ultimately polarize radical, ethnic, religious and national identities.
In Explorations in Behavioral Archaeology. Ed. by W.H. Walker and J. M. Skibo, pp. 187-20, University of Utah Press, Provo., 2015
Michael Schiffer redefined archaeology as the use of material culture to study human behavior. T... more Michael Schiffer redefined archaeology as the use of material culture to study human behavior. This definition established modern material culture studies and has promoted creative archaeological studies of the contemporary world that extend beyond Behavioral Archaeology. But the Modernist Project writ large often leads to devastation, and the United States-México border wall is one material example. The wall has failed to create an impregnable border but rather has generated material debris. Contemporary ruins on both sides of the border in Ambos Nogales, Arizona and Sonora, exemplify the destruction both caused and hidden by the wall.
American Anthropologist, Sep 15, 2013
"ABSTRACT For most of the 20th century, the border cities of Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora... more "ABSTRACT For most of the 20th century, the border cities of Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora formed the
single transnational community of Ambos Nogales (Both Nogales). Today the people in Ambos Nogales nostalgically
remember this border as a picket fence between neighbors. In the mid-1990s, the United States tore down the picket
fence and erected a steel wall to enclose the border and prevent undocumented migration and drug smuggling. In
2011, they erected a new and improved steel wall. The rematerialization of the U.S.–Mexican border through Ambos
Nogales emerges dialectically from fortification and transgression. The wall is the most visible instrument of the
United States’ militarization of the border, but the wall does not secure the border. The United States built the
wall to limit the agency of crossers. The wall, however, enables agency that the builders did not imagine or desire,
and crossers continually create new ways to transgress the barrier. The material border facilitates and restricts the
agency of the people of Ambos Nogales, and they rematerialize the border in ways that contravene the interests
of the nation-states. This in turn leads the nation-state to rematerialize the border to counter this transgression.
[contemporary archaeology, borders, U.S.–Mexican border]
RESUMEN Por el siglo XX, las ciudades fronterizas de Nogales, Arizona y Nogales, Sonora conformaron una sola
comunidad transnacional de Ambos, Nogales. Hoy en d´ıa la gente de Ambos, Nogales solo recuerda con nostalgia
esta frontera como una cerca entre vecinos. A mediados de la de´ cada de los 90’s Estados Unidos demolio´ la cerca y
erigio´ unmuro de acero que bloqueo´ la frontera para prevenir la inmigracio´ n de indocumentados y el contrabando de
drogas. En 2011 se construyo´ un nuevo ymejoradomuro de acero; fue as´ı como la reconstruccio´ n de la frontera E.U.–
Me´ xico en Ambos, Nogales surgio´ del dialecto de fortificacio´ n y transgresio´ n. Aunque el muro es el ma´ s importante
instrumento de militarizacio´ n en la frontera, e´ ste no la asegura. Estados Unidos construyo´ el muro para limitar a la
agencia de quienes cruzan; sin embargo e´ ste le permite aquello que sus constructores no deseaban ni imaginaban
y estos cruces crean continuamente nuevas formas de traspasar la barrera. La frontera material facilita y restringe
a la agencia de la gente de Ambos, Nogales; no obstante ellos crearon formas de infringir en los intereses de las
Q1 naciones-estado, a quienes conllevo´ a reconstruir la frontera para oponerse a esta transgresio´ n."
American Anthropologist, 2018
VITAL TOPICS FORUM Archaeology as Bearing Witness Edited by Mark W. Hauser This Vital Topics Fo... more VITAL TOPICS FORUM
Archaeology as Bearing Witness
Edited by Mark W. Hauser
This Vital Topics Forum looks at archaeology as a form of
bearing witness. While bearing witness has been an important
frame for scholarly interrogation of structural violence
for some time (Agamben 1998; Butler 2016), it is perhaps
Paul Farmer (2004) who popularized this way of scrutinizing
structural violence. For Farmer, there are two ways to bear
witness. The first is “to show the stoic suffering of the poor”
(25). The second entails showing that suffering “is a consequence
of structural violence that is immanent to the prevailing
system and that links together apparently disconnected
aspects of that system” (26).At its most general level, bearing
witness is a valuable way to scrutinize violent encounters,
traumatic events, dislocations, and structural inequalities.
It can help obtain support from those who might feel distant
from those events, diffuse pressure from communities
most directly affected, and bring about change. Bearing witness
can take the form of communicating traumatic personal
experiences or documenting for others the dislocations, institutionalized
violence, and kinds of difference-making that
often escape social examination. Contributors build on these
forms by arguing that bearing witness is part of an archaeological
episteme. That is, as archaeologists, we produce
accounts of the past. When we produce such accounts, we
make choices about how they are narrated. Those choices, of
course, are constrained by existing traditions, our positions
in the field, and our political commitments. Most importantly,
those accounts are limited by what we are trained to
see as observers.
The Border and Its Bodies: The Embodiment of Risk along the US - México Line, 2019
Annual Review of Anthropology, 2020
Fleeing violence, poverty, abuse, war, and climatic change, tens of millions of people have fled ... more Fleeing violence, poverty, abuse, war, and climatic change, tens of millions of people have fled their homes in the Global South seeking refuge in adjacent nations and in the Global North. This modern migration entails a material, sensual experience in time. The craft of archaeology has traditionally engaged with the material, the sensual, and the temporal. Archaeologists who study the materiality of modern undocumented migration embrace activist-engaged research that applies the craft of archaeology to the contemporary world. They study the materiality of migration to reveal and comprehend the lived experience of displaced persons. They seek to understand the barriers erected to that journey, the things migrants acquire and leave on the trail, migrant placemaking, their stranded lives, how they build new lives, what the migrants have left behind in their home countries, and the heritage of forced migration. They approach this work in critical solidarity with displaced peoples.
What Does This Have to Do with Archaeology? Essays on the Occasion of the 65th Birthday of Reinhard Bernbeck. Ed by The Editorial Collective, pp.363-368. Leiden: Sidestone Press,, 2023
The great intellectual myth of the end of the 20th century was that the 21st century dawned in a ... more The great intellectual myth of the end of the 20th century was that the 21st century dawned in a world of “posts”; post-industrial, post-colonial, and most importantly, post-capitalist. The sociologist Ben Agger (1989; 1997; 2004) argues that we do not live in a post-capitalist world but rather in a world of hyped-up Capitalism or Fast Capitalism. More recently, the economist Thomas Piketty’s (2014) monumental work Capital in the 21st Century has redirected economic research back to the study of wealth and Capital. His work sustains Karl Marx’s fundamental observation that the processes of Capitalism tend to increase inequalities in wealth and Agger’s argument that the processes of Capitalism are little changed in the 21st century. In this paper, I build on my earlier arguments for a praxis of archaeology that challenges the status-quo and to slow down Fast Capitalism (McGuire 2008). This reflection is pessimistic of grand schemes to change the world but suggests that we can impede just a little the rush of Fast Capitalism. We can do this both in the practice of archaeology and in the larger world. The contradictions of Fast Capitalism shape the practice of archaeology both in contract archaeology and in the academy. We can also use archaeology to challenge the ideological lies that support, naturalize, and justify the growing inequalities in wealth.
American Antiquity, 1996
The idea of archaeology as craft challenges the separattion of reasoning and execttion that chara... more The idea of archaeology as craft challenges the separattion of reasoning and execttion that characterizes the field today. The
Arts and Craftis Movement of the lalte nineteenth century established craftwork as an aesthetic of opposition. We establish
craft in a Marxian critique of alienated labor, and we propose a unified practice of'hand, heart, ald mind for archaeology.
The debates engenldered by postprocessual archaeology have firmly situated archaeology in the present as a cultural and
political practice. Many, however, still do not knoiw how to work with these ideas. We argue that a resolution to this dilemma
lies in thinking of archaeology as a craft. This resolultion does not provide a method, or a cookbook, for the practice of
archaleology is indeed the core of our argutment is that attempts at such standardization lie at the heart of the alienation of archaeology. Rather, we wish to consider archaeology as a nmode of cultural production, a unified method practiced by
archaeologist, "client" public, and contemporary society.
Archaeologist not only study class they also live it. Archaeology as a discipline serves class in... more Archaeologist not only study class they also live it. Archaeology as a discipline serves class interests and as a profession,or occupation, it has its own class structure. The discipline of archaeology has, since its founding, primarily served middle class interests. It has formed part of the symbolic capital that has been necessary for membership in the middle class during this century. Archaeology has traditionally reproduced itself in the university using a guild model of apprenticeship and mastery. In both the academy and in cultural resource man agement today this guild model has become an ideology that obscures the existence of an archaeological proletariat of teaching assistants, adjuncts, and field techs. The ideology justifies denying these archaeologists respect, a living wage, job security, and benefits. A seven step program is proposed to rectify the structural class inequalities of modern archaeology.
Archaeologists in North America are busy doing archaeology. The arguments of the end of the last ... more Archaeologists in North America are busy doing archaeology. The arguments of the end of the last century over epistemology, theory and philosophy have ebbed and cooled. The differences between Processual, Post-Processual, Marxist and Feminist archaeologies still exist but researchers are now more focused on the practice of archaeology than theoretical differences. Mid-level articulations that effectively cross cut theoretical differences have facilitated this move from thinking about archaeology to practice. These articulations include increasing research on the recent past and contemporary world, the realization that archaeology can serve multiple publics and collaboration with diverse communities. A major focus of contemporary archaeological practice has been on building public scholarship. Some archaeologists have used such scholarship as political activism. Most North American archaeologists continue to study the ancient past but they can no longer see such research as a refuge from the present.
Many postprocessual archaeologists have argued that active individuals make history. The apotheos... more Many postprocessual archaeologists have argued that active individuals make history. The apotheosis of the individual has been achieved under the rubric “identity,” the most pervasive theoretical term of the last few years. This focus obscures the fundamental idea that individuals do not exist in isolation. The relational concept of struggle will help us past this theoretical impasse. This concept has many components including real struggles in the past, our struggles to know the past, and using the past to struggle in the present. Our goal is to “struggle past” identity politics and the individual by focusing on peoples’ real struggles in real cases.
"Consumer behavior and choice models have assumed a major role in historical archaeology. Recent ... more "Consumer behavior and choice models have assumed a major role in historical archaeology. Recent interest in consumption is an honest attempt to move beyond an emphasis on production. Consumer models have clear material referents, making them useful in historical archaeology. These models, however, separate production from consumption, and privilege the autonomous individual as the preferred unit of analysis. They also reinforce and validate ideologies that obscure inequalities
and power relations in modern society. For us the important issue is how people reproduce themselves as social beings. Focusing on social reproduction integrates both production and consumption."
In North America, as in the rest of the world, V. Gordon Childe is one of the best-known and most... more In North America, as in the rest of the world, V. Gordon Childe is one of the best-known and most cited archaeologists of the 20th century. Childe had a long and significant association with North American anthropology and archaeology. Many of his ideas had a profound influence on North American scholarship that continues until today. North American archaeologists, however, never quite knew what to make of Childe and his theory. Throughout most of the second half of the century they consistently misread Childe, labeling him first a diffusionist, then as a neo-evolutionist. On the one hand, they correlated his concerns with history, diffusion, and archaeological cultures with a normative culture history. On the other hand, he seemed a neo-evolutionary materialist who took a systemic view of society, studied evolutionary change and searched for patterning in the archaeological record. Yet his ideas never fit easily into the pigeonholes of culture history or cultural evolution, and few North American archaeologists studied his writings on society and knowledge. It was only at the end of the 20th century, when a handful of Anglophone archaeologists became serious about reading Marx, that scholars in North America began to study, understand and employ the totality of Childe’s thought.
Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, , 1982
American Behavioral Scientist 1982 25: 705
John M. Andresen , Brian F. Byrd , Mark D. Elson , Randall H. McGuire , Ruben G. Mendoza , Edward Staski & J. Peter White (1981): The deer hunters: Star Carr reconsidered, World Archaeology, 13:1, 31-46
Anthropology News 01/1986; 27(9):2-2. DOI: 10.1111/an.1986.27.9.2.1
A rudimentary theory to explain the design of vernacular architecture is presented. Conceiving of... more A rudimentary theory to explain the design of vernacular architecture is presented. Conceiving of architectural design as a social process, the theory focusses on the influence of utilitarian and symbolic functions as well as on the trade-offs between production and maintenance costs. A particular design is viewed as the outcome of a process of compromise among conflicting goals, influenced by factors of adaptation and social organization. The theory is used to generate an explanatory sketch for why the prehistoric Anasazi if the American Southwest went from pithouse to pueblo dwellers.
2003, in Ethical Issues in Archaeology, Edited by L. Zimmerman, K.T. Vitelli, and J. Howell-Zimme... more 2003, in Ethical Issues in Archaeology, Edited by L. Zimmerman, K.T. Vitelli, and J. Howell-Zimmer, Alta Mira Press
Current Anthropology
... For Mark Leone and many fellow Marxist historical archaeologists, the field is synonymous wit... more ... For Mark Leone and many fellow Marxist historical archaeologists, the field is synonymous with the study of capitalism, and they ... 2004) and the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University (est. ... Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 6, December 2010 ...
Critical Heritage Studies and the Futures of Europe, 2023
This article explores the phenomenon of contested statues in the southwestern USA. Here the count... more This article explores the phenomenon of contested statues in the southwestern USA. Here the counter- heritages of Indigenous and Hispanic/ Latino communities come into conflict with one another. Specifically over statues to Juan de Oñate in New Mexico and Junípero Serra in California. Anglos co- opted and used these heritage struggles to advance Anglo- American interests, complicating conventional understandings of authorised heritage discourses in European colonial settler societies.
The recovery of meaning: Historical archaeology in the …, Jan 1, 1988
A gang of historians has gunned down the "romantic West." They have dismissed the notion of the W... more A gang of historians has gunned down the "romantic West." They have dismissed the notion of the West as a frontier of opportunity for all comers. The American West has been redefined as an arena of struggle involving complex relations of class, gender, ethnicity, and race. Western work camps and company towns existed as extensions of a global economy centered on the eastern United States. From the mid-19th century through the first decades of the 20th century, capital and people flowed into the West from Europe, Asia, and Mexico. In this internal periphery of U.S. capitalism, workers experienced the same type of exploitation and engaged in the same struggles as their brethren in other parts of the United States. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the coalfields of Colorado. The work camps and company towns that archaeologists excavate were loci of struggle, and historians cannot claim to understand them without considering these conflicts.
The question is simple: What is the most effective motivator for household recycling behaviors am... more The question is simple: What is the most effective motivator for household recycling behaviors among different socio-economic groups. The answer is equally simple for every socio-economic group, money.
International Journal of Historical Archaeology (2014) 18:259–271, Apr 12, 2014
Traditionally when Americans went to work they expected that they would earn a reasonable wage, w... more Traditionally when Americans went to work they expected that they would earn a reasonable wage, work in a safe environment, put in a 40 h week, collect paid vacation days, earn sick leave, have the right to organize and receive health and retirement benefits. Increasingly, however, fewer and fewer workers receive these rights and today only a minority of people in the United States work under these conditions. The decline in real wages, benefits, rights and safety experienced by twenty-first century American workers has correlated with a decline in organized labor. Corporations and the right have assailed unions to erode worker’s rights and “increase competitiveness” in a globalized, neo-liberal, capitalist, world. The attacks on unions spring from a monstrous lie, that politicians and corporations gave labor these benefits and thus workers no longer need unions. On the battlefield of public policy, these assaults on organized labor work in a fundamentally ideological way that calls the continued existence of unions into question. In this paper, I will discuss how archaeological studies of labor’s struggle can reveal that contrary to the monstrous lie, workers and their families won worker’s rights with blood and that solidarity and organization remain essential to maintain these rights. The paper begins with the present state of labor’s struggle and looks to the past to consider its preconditions. Archaeologists have studied strikes, the lived experience of working class life and class war to study history backwards and these studies contribute to the labor’s struggle for the future.
Despite increasing interest in the archaeological study of ethnic groups few historical archaeolo... more Despite increasing interest in the archaeological study of ethnic groups few historical archaeologists have addressed the broad question of how such groups form and change. This paper presents a theory of ethnic group formation and change drawn from both anthropological and sociological research. The theory is based on the examination of the relationship of three variables: competition, ethnocentrism, and differential power. Of these variables, the differential distribution of power is given the most weight in determining changes in ethnic boundary maintenance. The development of ethnic boundaries in southern Arizona between 1854 and the early 1900s provides an example of the interrelationships among these variables. Consideration of archaeological material from this time period illustrates the necessity of archaeological data for testing the
proposed theory. Further suggestions are made for the testing of the proposed theory, using historical and archaeological data.
SAA Archaeological Record, 2021