Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2015
The relationship between archaeology and history is not just an abstract theoretical question: it is one which determines the practical organization of archaeological activity and the publication of its results. It is a general problem of archaeology in Europe, where the subject has had to differentiate itself from the historical study of a long series of literate cultures; and it is especially acute in the former Soviet bloc, where a Marxist orthodoxy of historical science formerly prevailed. Leo Klejn is Russaian archaeology's most distinguished theoretician. Here he discusses in his own words both the academic sociology of the historical sciences and the role which he sees for archaeology within them.